With quicker life, as gilded coaches pass,

In fideling courtesy she drops the glass.
With better ftrength, on vifit-days the bears
To mount her fifty flights of ample stairs.

Her mien, her shape, her temper, eyes, and tongue,
Are fure to conquer-for the rogue is young:
And all that's madly wild, or oddly gay,

We call it only pretty Fanny's way.

Let Time, that makes you homely, make you fage, The sphere of wifdom is the fphere of age.

'Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire,
And hears the flattering tongues of foft defire,
If not from virtue, from its gravest ways
The foul with pleafing avocation ftrays.
But beauty gone, 'tis easier to be wise;
As harpers better by the lofs of eyes.
Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs,
Haunt lefs the plays, and more the public prayers,
Reject the Mechlin head, and gold brocade,
Go pray, in fober Norwich crape array'd.
Thy pendant diamonds let thy Fanny take
(Their trembling luftre shows how much you shake);
Or bid her wear thy necklace row'd with pearl,
You'll find your Fanny an obedient girl.

So for the reft, with lefs incumbrance hung,
You walk through life, unmingled with the young,
And view the shade and substance as you pass
With joint endeavour trifling at the glass,
Or Folly dreft, and rambling all her days,
To meet her counterpart, and grow by praise :

Yet ftill fedate yourself, and gravely plain,
You neither fret, nor envy at the vain.

'T was thus, if man with woman we compare,
The wife Athenian croft a glittering fair,

Unmov'd by tongue and fights, he walk'd the place,
Through tape, toys, tinfel, gimp, perfume, and lace;
Then bends from Mars's hill his awful eyes,
And-What a World I never want? he cries:
But cries unheard: for folly will be free.
So parts the buzzing gaudy crowd and he:
As careless he for them, as they for him :
He wrapt in wisdom, and they whirl'd by whim.

C

THE BOOK-WOR M.

O ME hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day,
The Book-worm, ravening beast of prey,
Produc'd by parent Earth, at odds,
As Fame reports it, with the Gods.
Him frantic hunger wildly drives
Against a thousand authors lives:
Through all the fields of wit he flies;
Dreadful his head with clustering eyes,
With horns without, and tusks within,
And scales to ferve him for a skin.
Observe him nearly, left he climb
To wound the Bards of ancient time,
Or down the vale of Fancy go
To tear fome modern wretch below,

On every corner fix thine eye,

Or ten to one he flips thee by.

See where his teeth a paffage eat : We'll roufe him from the deep retreat. But who the shelter's forc'd to give? 'Tis facred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song, He draws the tadpole form along, He mounts the gilded edge before, He's up, he fcuds the cover o'er, He turns, he doubles, there he past, And here we have him, caught at last. Infatiate brute, whose teeth abuse The sweetest fervants of the Mufe. (Nay never offer to deny,

I took thee in the fact to fly.) His rofes nipt in every page, My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage; By thee my Ovid wounded lies; By thee my Lesbia's fparrow dies; Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd The work of love in Biddy Floyd, They rent Belinda's locks away, And spoil'd the Blouzelind of Gay. For all, for every single deed, Relentless Juftice bids thee bleed. Then fall a victim to the Nine, Myself the priest, my defk the fhrine.

Bring Homer, Virgil, Taffo near, To pile a facred altar here;

Hold, boy, thy hand out-runs thy wit, You reach'd the plays that Dennis writ; You reach'd me Philips' ruftic ftrain; Pray take your mortal Bards again.

Come, bind the victim,-there he lies, And here between his numerous eyes This venerable dust I lay, From manufcripts just swept away. The goblet in my hand I take, (For the libation's yet to make) A health to poets! all their days May they have bread, as well as praise; Senfe may they feek, and lefs engage In papers fill'd with party-rage. But if their riches fpoil their vein, Ye Muses, make them poor again.

Now bring the weapon, yonder blade,
With which my tuneful pens are made.
I ftrike the scales that arm thee round,
And twice and thrice I print the wound;
The facred altar floats with red,

And now he dies, and now he's dead.
How like the fon of Jove I stand,
This Hydra ftretch'd beneath my hand!
Lay bare the monster's entrails here,
To fee what dangers threat the year:
Ye Gods! what fonnets on a wench!
What lean tranflations out of French!
'Tis plain, this lobe is fo unfound,

S

prints, before the months

go

round.

But hold, before I close the scene,
The facred altar fhould be clean.
Oh had I Shadwell's fecond bays,
Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays!
(Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow

I

never mifs'd your works till now)

I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, (That only way you please the Nine) But fince I chance to want these two, I'll make the fongs of Durfey do. Rent from the corps, on yonder pin, I hang the scales that brac'd it in ; I hang my ftudious morning-gown, And write my own infcription down. "This trophy from the Python won, "This robe, in which the deed was done, "These, Parnell, glorying in the feat,

Hung on these shelves, the Mufes feat. "Here ignorance and hunger found Large realms of wit to ravage round: "Here ignorance and hunger fell: "Two foes in one I fent to hell.

"Ye

poets, who my labours fee,

"Come share the triumph all with me!

"Ye Critics! born to vex the Muse,

"Go mourn the grand ally you

lofe."