See! where the British youth, engaged no more At Fig's,[174] at White's, with felons, or a whore, Pay their last duty to the court, and come All fresh and fragrant, to the drawing-room; In hues as gay, and odours as divine, As the fair fields they sold to look so fine. 'That's velvet for a king!' the flatterer swears; 'Tis true, for ten days hence 'twill be King Lear's. Our court may justly to our stage give rules, 220 That helps it both to fools' coats and to fools. And why not players strut in courtiers' clothes? For these are actors too, as well as those: Wants reach all states; they beg, but better dress'd, And all is splendid poverty at best. Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell, Like frigates fraught with spice and cochineal, Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes So weak a vessel, and so rich a prize! Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim, 230 He boarding her, she striking sail to him: 'Dear Countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!' And, 'Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!' Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought. 'Twould burst ev'n Heraclitus with the spleen, To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: The Presence seems, with things so richly odd, The mosque of Mahound, or some queer pagod. See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules, 240 Of all beau-kind the best proportion'd fools! Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw; But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole; Or should one pound of powder less bespread Those monkey tails that wag behind their head. Thus finish'd, and corrected to a hair, They march, to prate their hour before the fair. So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes, 250 With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in him, Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest: Prodigious! how the things protest, protest: Peace, fools! or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu! Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another. But here's the captain that will plague them both, 260 Whose air cries, Arm! whose very look's an oath: The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law. 270