Her ample presence fills up all the place; A veil of fogs dilates her awful face: Great in her charms! as when on shrieves and mayors She looks, and breathes herself into their airs. She bids him wait her to her sacred dome: Well pleased he enter'd, and confessed his home. So, spirits ending their terrestrial race, Ascend, and recognise their native place. This the great mother dearer held than all The clubs of quidnuncs, or her own Guildhall: 270 Here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls, And here she plann'd the imperial seat of fools. Here to her chosen all her works she shows; Prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose: How random thoughts now meaning chance to find, Now leave all memory of sense behind: How prologues into prefaces decay, And these to notes are fritter'd quite away: How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail: 280 How, with less reading than makes felons 'scape, Less human genius than God gives an ape, Small thanks to France, and none to Rome or Greece, A past, vamp'd, future, old, revived, new piece, 'Twixt Plautus, Fletcher, Shakspeare, and Corneille, Can make a Cibber, Tibbald,[280] or Ozell.[281] The goddess then o'er his anointed head, With mystic words, the sacred opium shed. And, lo! her bird (a monster of a fowl, Something betwixt a Heidegger[282] and owl,) 290 Perch'd on his crown. 'All hail! and hail again, My son! the promised land expects thy reign. Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise; He sleeps among the dull of ancient days; Safe, where no critics damn, no duns molest, Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon[283] rest, And high-born Howard,[284] more majestic sire, With fool of quality completes the quire, Thou, Cibber! thou, his laurel shalt support, Folly, my son, has still a friend at Court. 300 Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come! Sound, sound, ye viols, be the cat-call dumb! Bring, bring the madding bay, the drunken vine; The creeping, dirty, courtly ivy join. And thou! his aide-de-camp, lead on my sons, Light-arm'd with points, antitheses, and puns. Let Bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear, Support his front, and Oaths bring up the rear: And under his, and under Archer's wing, Gaming[285] and Grub Street, skulk behind the king. 310 Oh! when shall rise a monarch all our own, And I, a nursing mother, rock the throne; 'Twixt prince and people close the curtain draw, Shade him from light, and cover him from law; Fatten the courtier, starve the learned band, And suckle armies, and dry-nurse the land: Till senates nod to lullabies divine, And all be sleep, as at an ode of thine.'