And minister to him who serves a slave;
  Be sure you fasten on promotion’s scale,
  Even if you seize some footman by the tail:  70
  The ascent is easy, and the prospect clear,
  From the smirch’d scullion to the embroider’d peer. 
  The ambitious drudge preferr’d, postilion rides,
  Advanced again, the chair benighted guides;
  Here doom’d, if Nature strung his sinewy frame,
  The slave, perhaps, of some insatiate dame;
  But if, exempted from the Herculean toil,
  A fairer field awaits him, rich with spoil,
  There shall he shine, with mingling honours bright,
  His master’s pathic, pimp, and parasite; 80
  Then strut a captain, if his wish be war,
  And grasp, in hope, a truncheon and a star: 
  Or if the sweets of peace his soul allure,
  Bask at his ease, in some warm sinecure;
  His fate in consul, clerk, or agent vary,
  Or cross the seas, an envoy’s secretary;
  Composed of falsehood, ignorance, and pride,
  A prostrate sycophant shall rise a Lloyd;
  And, won from kennels to the impure embrace,
  Accomplish’d Warren triumph o’er disgrace. 90

  POET.

  Eternal infamy his name surround,
  Who planted first that vice on British ground! 
  A vice that, spite of sense and nature, reigns,
  And poisons genial love, and manhood stains! 
  Pollio! the pride of science and its shame,
  The Muse weeps o’er thee, while she brands thy name! 
  Abhorrent views that prostituted groom,
  The indecent grotto, or polluted dome! 
  There only may the spurious passion glow,
  Where not one laurel decks the caitiff’s brow, 100
  Obscene with crimes avow’d, of every dye,
  Corruption, lust, oppression, perjury. 
  Let Chardin[8], with a chaplet round his head,
  The taste of Maro and Anacreon plead,
  ’Sir, Flaccus knew to live as well as write,
  And kept, like me, two boys array’d in white;’
  Worthy to feel that appetence of fame
  Which rivals Horace only in his shame! 
  Let Isis[9] wail in murmurs as she runs,
  Her tempting fathers, and her yielding sons; 110
  While dulness screens the failings of the Church,
  Nor leaves one sliding Rabbi in the lurch: 
  Far other raptures let the breast contain,
  Where heaven-born taste and emulation reign.

  FRIEND.

  Shall not a thousand virtues, then, atone us
  In thy strict censure for the breach of one? 
  If Bubo keeps a catamite or whore,
  His bounty feeds the beggar at his door: 
  And though no mortal credits Curio’s word,
  A score of lacqueys fatten at his board:  120
  To Christian meekness sacrifice thy spleen,
  And strive thy neighbour’s weaknesses to screen.

  POET.