In office here fair Cloacina stands, And ministers to Jove with purest hands. Forth from the heap she pick'd her votary's prayer, And placed it next him, a distinction rare! Oft had the goddess heard her servant's call, From her black grottos near the Temple-wall, Listening delighted to the jest unclean Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene; 100 Where as he fish'd her nether realms for wit, She oft had favour'd him, and favours yet. Renew'd by ordure's sympathetic force, As oil'd with magic juices for the course, Vigorous he rises; from the effluvia strong Imbibes new life, and scours and stinks along; Repasses Lintot, vindicates the race, Nor heeds the brown dishonours of his face. And now the victor stretch'd his eager hand Where the tall Nothing stood, or seem'd to stand; 110 A shapeless shade, it melted from his sight, Like forms in clouds, or visions of the night. To seize his papers, Curll, was next thy care; His papers light, fly diverse, toss'd in air; Songs, sonnets, epigrams the winds uplift, And whisk them back to Evans, Young, and Swift.[305] The embroider'd suit at least he deem'd his prey, That suit an unpaid tailor snatch'd away. No rag, no scrap, of all the beau, or wit, That once so flutter'd, and that once so writ. 120 Heaven rings with laughter: of the laughter vain, Dulness, good queen, repeats the jest again. Three wicked imps, of her own Grub Street choir, She deck'd like Congreve, Addison, and Prior; Mears, Warner, Wilkins run: delusive thought! Breval, Bond, Bezaleel,[306] the varlets caught. Curll stretches after Gay, but Gay is gone, He grasps an empty Joseph[307] for a John: So Proteus, hunted in a nobler shape, Became, when seized, a puppy, or an ape. 130 To him the goddess: 'Son! thy grief lay down, And turn this whole illusion on the town:[308] As the sage dame, experienced in her trade, By names of toasts retails each batter'd jade; (Whence hapless Monsieur much complains at Paris Of wrongs from duchesses and Lady Maries;) Be thine, my stationer! this magic gift; Cook shall be Prior,[309] and Concanen, Swift: So shall each hostile name become our own, And we too boast our Garth and Addison.' 140 With that she gave him (piteous of his case, Yet smiling at his rueful length of face[310]) A shaggy tapestry, worthy to be spread On Codrus' old, or Dunton's modern bed;[311] Instructive work! whose wry-mouth'd portraiture Display'd the fates her confessors endure. Earless on high, stood unabash'd Defoe, And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge below.[312] There Ridpath, Roper,[313] cudgell'd might ye view, The very worsted still look'd black and blue. 150 Himself among the storied chiefs he spies,[314] As, from the blanket, high in air he flies, And oh! (he cried) what street, what lane but knows Our purgings, pumpings, blanketings, and blows? In every loom our labours shall be seen, And the fresh vomit run for ever green!