Not ——­’s self e’er tells more fibs than I;
When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,
And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;
We wake next morning in a raging fit,
And call for pen and ink to show our wit. 
He served a prenticeship, who sets up shop;
Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop;
Even Radcliffe’s doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they’ve learned to dance. 
Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? 
(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;)
But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. 
Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;
These madmen never hurt the church or state: 
Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;
And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. 
Allow him but his plaything of a pen,
He ne’er rebels, or plots, like other men: 
Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he’ll never mind;
And knows no losses while the Muse is kind. 
To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter,
The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,
Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;
And then—­a perfect hermit in his diet. 
Of little use the man you may suppose
Who says in verse what others say in prose;
Yet let me show, a poet’s of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state. 
What will a child learn sooner than a song? 
What better teach a foreigner the tongue? 
What’s long or short, each accent where to place,
And speak in public with some sort of grace? 
I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,
Unless he praise some monster of a king;
Or virtue, or religion turn to sport,
To please a lewd, or unbelieving Court. 
Unhappy Dryden!—­In all Charles’s days,
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;
And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)
No whiter page than Addison remains. 
He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth,
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart. 
Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,
Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;
And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved,
‘The rights a court attacked, a poet saved.’ 
Behold the hand that wrought a nation’s cure,
Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor,
Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn,
And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn. 
Not but there are, who merit other palms;
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms: 
The boys and girls whom charity maintains,
Implore your help in these pathetic strains: 
How could devotion touch the country pews,
Unless the Gods bestowed a proper Muse? 
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk,
The silenced preacher yields to potent strain,