If such the plague and pains to write by rule, 180 Better (say I) be pleased, and play the fool; Call, if you will, bad rhyming a disease, It gives men happiness, or leaves them ease. There lived _in primo Georgii_ (they record) A worthy member, no small fool, a lord; Who, though the House was up, delighted sat, Heard, noted, answer'd, as in full debate: In all but this, a man of sober life, Fond of his friend, and civil to his wife; Not quite a madman, though a pasty fell, 190 And much too wise to walk into a well. Him, the damn'd doctors and his friends immured, They bled, they cupp'd, they purged; in short, they cured: Whereat the gentleman began to stare-- 'My friends!' he cried, 'pox take you for your care! That from a patriot of distinguish'd note, Have bled and purged me to a simple vote.' Well, on the whole, plain prose must be my fate: Wisdom (curse on it!) will come soon or late. There is a time when poets will grow dull: 200 I'll e'en leave verses to the boys at school: To rules of poetry no more confined, I learn to smooth and harmonise my mind, Teach every thought within its bounds to roll, And keep the equal measure of the soul. Soon as I enter at my country door, My mind resumes the thread it dropped before; Thoughts, which at Hyde-park-corner I forgot, Meet, and rejoin me, in the pensive grot, There all alone, and compliments apart, 210 I ask these sober questions of my heart: If, when the more you drink, the more you crave, You tell the doctor; when the more you have, The more you want, why not with equal ease Confess as well your folly, as disease? The heart resolves this matter in a trice, 'Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.' When golden angels cease to cure the evil, You give all royal witchcraft to the devil: When servile chaplains[163] cry, that birth and place 220 Indue a peer with honour, truth, and grace, Look in that breast, most dirty D----! be fair, Say, can you find out one such lodger there? Yet still, not heeding what your heart can teach, You go to church to hear these flatterers preach. Indeed, could wealth bestow or wit or merit, A grain of courage, or a spark of spirit, The wisest man might blush, I must agree, If D---- loved sixpence more than he. If there be truth in law, and use can give 230 A property, that's yours on which you live. Delightful Abbs Court,[164] if its fields afford Their fruits to you, confesses you its lord: All Worldly's hens, nay, partridge, sold to town, His ven'son, too, a guinea makes your own: He bought at thousands, what with better wit You purchase as you want, and bit by bit; Now, or long since, what difference will be found? You pay a penny, and he paid a pound.