High tow’ring next, as he’d eclipse the moon,
With pride upblown, behold yon live balloon. 
All trades above, all sciences and arts,
To fame he climbs through very scorn of parts;
With solemn emptiness distends his state,
And, great in nothing, soars above the great;
Nay stranger still, through apathy of blood,
By candour number’d with the chaste and good: 
With wife, and child, domestic, stranger, friend,
Alike he lives, as though his being’s end
Were o’er his house like formal guest to roam,
And walk abroad to leave himself at home.

But who is he, that sweet obliging youth? 
He looks the picture of ingenuous truth. 
Oh, that’s his antipode, of courteous race,
The man of bows and ever-smiling face. 
Why Nature made him, or for what design’d,
Never he knew, nor ever sought to find,
’Till cunning came, blest harbinger of ease! 
And kindly whisper’d, ‘thou wert born to please.’ 
Rous’d by the news, behold him now expand,
Like beaten gold, and glitter o’er the land. 
Well stored with nods and sly approving winks,
Now first with this and now with that he thinks;
Howe’er opposing, still assents to each,
And claps a dovetail to each booby’s speech. 
At random thus for all, for none, he lives,
Profusely lavish though he nothing gives;
The world he roves as living but to show
A friendless man without a single foe;
From bad to good, to bad from good to run,
And find a character by seeking none.

Who covets fame should ne’er be over nice,
Some slight distortion pays the market price. 
If haply lam’d by some propitious chance,
Instruct in attitude, or teach to dance;
Be still extravagant in deed, or word;
If new, enough, no matter how absurd.

Then what is Genius?  Nay, if rightly us’d,
Some gift of Nature happily abus’d. 
Nor wrongly deem by this eccentrick rule
That Nature favours whom she makes a fool;
Her scorn and favour we alike despise;
Not Nature’s follies but our own we prize.

“Or what is wit?” a meteor bright and rare,
What comes and goes we know not whence, or where;
A brilliant nothing out of something wrought,
A mental vacuum by condensing thought.

Behold Tortoso.  There’s a man of wit;
To all things fitted, though for nothing fit;
Scourge of the world, yet crouching for a name,
And honour bartering for the breath of fame: 
Born to command, and yet an arrant slave;
Through too much honesty a seeming knave;
At all things grasping, though on nothing bent,
And ease pursuing e’en with discontent;
Through Nature, Arts, and Sciences he flies,
And gathers truth to manufacture lies.

Nor only Wits, for tortur’d talents claim
Of sov’reign mobs the glorious meed of fame;
E’en Sages too, of grave and rev’rend air,
Yclepp’d Philosophers, must have their share;
Who deeper still in conjuration skill’d,
A mighty something out of nothing build.