Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad: He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, But fagoted his notions as they fell, And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well. 420 Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire, For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature: He needs no more than birds and beasts to think, All his occasions are to eat and drink. If he call rogue and rascal from a garret, He means you no more mischief than a parrot; The words for friend and foe alike were made, To fetter them in verse is all his trade. For almonds he'll cry whore to his own mother: And call young Absalom king David's brother. 430 Let him be gallows-free by my consent, And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant. Hanging supposes human soul and reason-- This animal's below committing treason: Shall he be hang'd who never could rebel? That's a preferment for Achitophel. The woman....... Was rightly sentenced by the law to die; But 'twas hard fate that to the gallows led The dog that never heard the statute read. 440 Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows, and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transpose. 'Twere pity treason at his door to lay, _Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key_:[75] Let him rail on, let his invective muse Have four and twenty letters to abuse, Which, if he jumbles to one line of sense, Indict him of a capital offence. 450 In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite-- Those are the only serpents he can write; The height of his ambition is, we know, But to be master of a puppet-show; On that one stage his works may yet appear, And a month's harvest keeps him all the year.