Who was too much despised to be accused,
And therefore scarce deserves to be abused;
Raised only by his mercenary tongue,
For railing smoothly, and for reasoning wrong.
As boys, on holidays let loose to play,
Lay waggish traps for girls that pass that way;
Then shout to see, in dirt and deep distress,
Some silly cit in her flowered foolish dress,-
So have I mighty satisfaction found,
To see his tinsel reason on the ground;
To see the florid fool despised, and know it,
By some who scarce have words enough to show it;
For sense sits silent, and condemns for weaker
The finer, nay sometimes the wittier speaker:
But 'tis prodigious so much eloquence
Should be acquired by such little sense;
For words and wit did anciently agree,
And Tully was no fool, though this man be:
At bar abusive; on the bench unable;
Knave on the woolsack; fop at council-table.
These are the grievances of such fools as would
Be rather wise than honest, great than good.
Some other kind of wits must be made known,
Whose harmless errors hurt themselves alone;
Excess of luxury they think can please,
And laziness call loving of their ease;
To live dissolved in pleasures still they feign,
Though their whole life's but intermitting pain;
ferment, he became as eager on the other side. North allows, that his course of life was scandalous.
* This seems to have been copied by Gay in his Trivia :
Why do you, boys, the kennel's surface spread,
To tempt, with faithless pass, the matron's tread?
How can you laugh to see the damsel spurn,
Sink in your frauds, and her green stocking mourn?
So much of surfeits, head-aches, claps are seen,
We scarce perceive the little time between ;
Well-meaning men, who make this gross mistake,
And pleasure lose only for pleasure's sake;
Each pleasure has its price, and when we pay
Too much of pain, we squander life away.
Thus Dorset, purring like a thoughtful cat,
Married, but wiser puss ne'er thought of that;
And first he worried her with railing rhyme,
Like Pembroke's mastives at his kindest time;
Then for one night sold all his slavish life,
A teeming widow, but a barren wife.
Swelled by contact of such a fulsome toad,
He lugged about the matrimonial load;
Till fortune, blindly kind as well as he,
Has ill restored him to his liberty;
Which he would use in his old sneaking way,
Drinking all night, and dozing all the day;
Dull as Ned Howard, whom his brisker times
Had famed for dulness in malicious rhymes. †
Mulgrave had much ado to 'scape the snare, Though learned in all those arts that cheat the fair;
*The witty Earl of Dorset, whom we have often had occasion to mention in these notes. His first wife was the Countess-Dowager of Falmouth. Sheffield insinuates, that he had previously lampooned this lady, and hints at some scandal now obsolete. She died without any issue by Dorset.
+ Alluding to Dorset's verses to Mr Edward Howard, "On his incomparable incomprehensible Puem, called the British Princess."
+ Mulgrave here alludes to some anecdotes of his own life and amours, which probably were well known at the time, but are now too obscure to be traced. He was three times married, and always to widows. His lordship is here pleased to represent himself as a gallant of the first order, skilled in all the arts of persua'sion and conquest. But his contemporaries did not esteem him so formidable, at least if we may believe the author of a satire,
For, after all his vulgar marriage-mocks,
With beauty dazzled, Numps was in the stocks;
Deluded parents dried their weeping eyes,
To see him catch his Tartar for his prize:
The impatient town waited the wished-for change,
And cuckolds smiled in hopes of sweet revenge;
Till Petworth plot made us with sorrow see,
As his estate, his person too was free:
Him no soft thoughts, no gratitude could move;
To gold he fled from beauty and from love;
Yet failing there he keeps his freedom still,
Forced to live happily against his will;
"Tis not his fault, if too much wealth and power
Break not his boasted quiet every hour.
And little Sid. * for simile renowned,
Pleasure has always sought, but never found;
called," A Heroical Epistle from Lord Allpride to Doll Common;" a bitter and virulent satire on Mulgrave. He is thus described, in an epigram on Lord Allpride:
Against his stars the coxcomb ever strives,
And to be something they forbid contrives.
With a red nose, splay foot, and goggle eye,
A ploughman's booby mien, face all awry,
A filthy breath, and every loathsome mark,
The punchinello sets up for a spark:
With equal self-conceit he takes up arms,
But with such vile success his part performs,
That he burlesques the trade, and, what is best
In others, turns, like Harlequin, to jest:
So have I seen, at Smithfield's wonderous fair,
When all his brother-monsters flourish there,
A lubbard elephant divert the town,
With making legs, and shooting of a gun.
Go where he will, he never finds a friend,
Shame and derision all his steps attend;
Alike abroad, at home, i'the camp, and court,
This knight o'the burning pestle makes us sport.
This seems to have been written by the offended Sir Car Scrope.
* Derrick is inclined to think, that Sidney, brother of the Earl
of Leicester, and of the famous Algernon Sidney, is here meant.
Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall,
His are so bad, sure he ne'er thinks at all.
The flesh he lives upon is rank and strong,
His meat and mistresses are kept too long.
But sure we all mistake this pious man,
Who mortifies his person all he can:
What we uncharitably take for sin,
Are only rules of this odd capuchin;
For never hermit, under grave pretence,
Has lived more contrary to common sense;
And 'tis a miracle, we may suppose,
No nastiness offends his skilful nose;
Which from all stink can, with peculiar art,
Extract perfume and essence from a f-t.
Expecting supper is his great delight;
He toils all day but to be drunk at night;
Then o'er his cups this night-bird chirping sits,
Till he takes Hewet* and Jack Hall* for wits.
But the character better suits Sir Charles Sedley or Sidley, for he spelled the name both ways. In explanation of the line, there is, in the 4to edition of Sheffield's Works, this short note, markable for making pleasant and proper similies upon all occasions." In a satire in the State Poems, Vol. II.
To a soul so mean e'en Shadwell is a stranger;
Nay, little Sid. it seems, less values danger.
*Sir George Hewet was a coxcomb of the period, after whom
Etherege is said to have modelled Sir Fopling Flutter's character:
Scarce will their greater grief pierce every heart,
Should Sir George Hewit or Sir Car depart.
Had it not better been, than thus to roam,
To stay and tie the cravat string at home;
To strut, look big, shake pantaloon, and swear
With Hewit, "Damme, there's no action here!"
His pretensions to gallantry are elsewhere ridiculed:
Yet most against their genius blindly run,
The wrong they chase, and what they're made for shun;
Rochester I despise for want of wit,
Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet;
For, while he mischief means to all mankind,
Himself alone the ill effects does find;
And so, like witches, justly suffers shame,
Whose harmless malice is so much the same.
False are his words, affected is his wit;
So often he does aim, so seldom hit;
every face he cringes while he speaks,
But when the back is turned the head he breaks.
Thus Arlington thinks for state affairs he's fit,
Hewit for ogling, Cly for a wit.
May Hewet's billets doux successful prove,
In tempting of her little Grace to love.
Sir George Hewet attended the Prince of Denmark when he joined the Prince of Orange.
Jack Hall, the rotten Uzza of "Absalom and Achitophel," (Vol. IX. pp. 331. 373.) He seems to have gone into opposition to the court with Sidley, his patron. There is a comical account given of a literary effort of his in one of the State Poems:
But first writ something that he durst not own;
Of prologue lawfully begotten,
And full nine months maturely thought on;
Born with hard labour and much pain,
Ousely was doctor chamberlain. †
At length, from stuff and rubbish picked,
As bears' cubs into form are licked,
When Wharton, Etherege, and Soame,
To give it their last strokes were come,
Those critics differed in their doom;
Yet Swan says, he admired it 'scaped,
Being Jack Hall's, without being clapped.
Then a famous accoucheur.
The same, I suppose, whom Dryden dignifies with the title of honest Mr
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