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Oft too the mind well-pleas'd furveys
Its progress from its childish days;
Sees how the current upwards ran,
And reads the child o'er in the man.
For men, in reafon's fober eyes,
Are children, but of larger fize,
Have still their idle hopes and fears,
And Hobby-Horse of riper years.

Whether a bleffing, or a curse,
My rattle is the love of verse.
Some fancied parts, and emulation,
Which still aspires to reputation,
Bad infant fancy plume her flight,
And held the laurel full to fight.
For vanity, the poet's fin,
Had ta'en poffeffion all within:
And he whose brain is verse-possest,
Is in himself as highly bleft,
As he, whofe lines and circles vie
With heav'ns direction of the fky.

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Howe'er the river rolls its tides,
The cork upon the furface rides.
And on Ink's Ocean, lightly buoy'd,
That cork of vanity is Lloyd.

Let me too use the common claim

And foufe at once upon my name,
Which fome have done with greater stress,
Who know me, and who love me lefs.

Poets are very harmless things,
Unless you teaze one till he stings;
And when affronts are plainly meant,
We're bound in honour to refent :
And what tribunal will deny
An injur'd perfon to reply?

In these familiar emanations,
Which are but writing converfations,
Where thought appears in dishabille,
And fancy does just what fhe will,
The foureft critic wou'd excuse
The vagrant fallies of the Muse:

Which lady, for Apollo's blessing
Has ftill attended our careffing,
As many children round her fees
As maggots in a Cheshire cheese,
Which I maintain at vaft expence,
Of pen and paper, time and sense:
And furely 'twas no small miscarriage
When first I enter'd into marriage.
The poet's title which I bear,
With some strange caftles in the air,
Was all my portion with the fair.

However narrowly I look,

In Phœbus's valorum book,
I cannot from enquiry find

Poets had much to leave behind.
They had a copyhold estate

In lands, which they themselves create,

A foolish title to a fountain,

A right of common in a mountain,

And yet they liv'd amongst the great,
More than their brethren do of late;

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Invited out at feafts to dine,

Eat as they pleas'd, and drank their wine;
Nor is it any where fet down

They tipt the fervants half a crown,
But pafs'd amid the waiting throng
And pay'd the porter with a song;
As once, a wag in modern days,
When all are in these bribing ways,
His fhillings to dispense unable,
Scrap'd half the fruit from off the table,
And walking gravely thro' the croud,
Which stood obfequiously, and bow'd,
To keep the fashion up of tipping,
Dropt in each hand a golden pippin.

But there's a difference indeed

"Twixt ancient bards and modern breed..
Tho' poet known, in Roman days,
Fearless he walk'd the public ways,
Nor ever knew that facred name
Contemptuous smile, or painful fhame :

gaze,

While with a foolish face of praise,
The folks wou'd stop to gape and
And half untold the story leave,
Pulling their neighbour by the fleeve,
While th' index of the finger fhews,
-There―yonder's Horace—there he goes.

This finger, I allow it true, Points at us modern poets too; But 'tis by way of wit and joke,

To laugh, or as the phrase is, Smoke.

Yet, there are those, who're fond of wit,

Altho' they never us'd it yet,

Who wits and witlings entertain

Of Tafte, Virtù, and Judgment vain,.

And dinner, grace, and grace-cup done,

Expect a wond'rous deal of fun :

"Yes― He at bottom-don't you know him? "That's He that wrote the last new poem.

“His Humour's exquifitely high,

"You'll hear him open by and by."

The

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