What news? they cried with one accord
I pray you, said a noble lord,
Tell me if in the world above
I still retain the people’s love: 
Or whether they, like us below,
The motives of a Patriot know? 
And me inform, another said,
What think they of a Buck that’s dead? 
Have they discerned that, being dull,
I knock’d my wit from watchmen’s skull? 
And me, cried one, of knotty front,
With many a scar of pride upon’t
Resolve me if the world opine
Philosophers are still divine;
That having hearts for friends too small,
Or rather having none at all,
Profess’d to love, with saving grace,
The abstract of the human race? 
And I, exclaim’d a fourth, would ask
What think they of the Critick’s task? 
Perceive they now our shallow arts;
That merely from the want of parts
To write ourselves, we gravely taught
How books by others should be wrought? 
Whom interrupting, then inquir’d
A fifth, in squalid garb attir’d,
Do now the world with much regard
In mem’ry hold the dirty Bard,
Who credit gain’d for genius rare
By shabby coat and uncomb’d hair? 
Or do they, said a Shade of prose,
With many a pimple’s ghost on nose,
Th’ eccentric author still admire,
Who wanting that same genius’ fire,
Diving in cellars underground,
In pipe the spark ethereal found: 
Which, fann’d by many a ribbald joke,
From brother tipplers puff’d in smoke,
Such blaze diffused with crackling loud,
As blinded all the staring croud? 
And last, with jealous glancing eye,
That seem’d in all around to pry,
A Painter’s ghost in voice suppres’d,
Thus questioning, the group address’d;

Sweet strangers, may I too demand,
How thrive the offspring of my hand? 
Whether, as when in life I flourish’d,
They still by puffs of fame are nourish’d? 
Or whether have the world discern’d
The tricks by which my fame was earn’d;
That, lacking in my pencil skill,
I made my tongue its office fill: 
That, marking (as for love of truth)
In others’ works a limb uncouth,
Or face too young, or face too old,
Or colour hot, or colour cold;
Or hinting, (if to praise betray’d)
‘Though coloured well, it yet might fade;’
And ’though its grace I can’t deny,
Yet pity ’tis so hard and dry.’—­
I thus by implication show’d
That mine were wrought in better mode;
And talking thus superiors down,
Obliquely raise my own renown? 
In short, I simply this would ask,—­
If Truth has stript me of the mask;
And, chasing Fashion’s mist away,
Expos’d me to the eye of day—­[2]
A Painter false, without a heart,
Who lov’d himself, and not his art?

At which, with fix’d and fishy
The Strangers both express’d amaze. 
Good Sir, said they, ’tis strange you dare
Such meanness of yourself declare.