[Footnote 11:  ‘Guthrie:’  a scribbler of all work in that age.]

[Footnote 12:  ‘Bosom of the wood:’  this last line relates to the behaviour of the Hanoverian general in the battle of Dettingen.]

* * * * *

  REPROOF:  A SATIRE.

  POET.

  Howe’er I turn, or wheresoe’er I tread,
  This giddy world still rattles round my head! 
  I pant for silence e’en in this retreat—­
  Good Heaven! what demon thunders at the gate?

  FRIEND.

  In vain you strive, in this sequester’d nook,
  To shroud you from an injured friend’s rebuke.

  POET.

  An injured friend! who challenges the name? 
  If you, what title justifies the claim? 
  Did e’er your heart o’er my affliction grieve,
  Your interest prop me, or your praise relieve? 10
  Or could my wants my soul so far subdue,
  That in distress she crawl’d for aid to you? 
  But let us grant the indulgence e’er so strong;
  Display without reserve the imagined wrong: 
  Among your kindred have I kindled strife,
  Deflower’d your daughter, or debauch’d your wife;
  Traduced your credit, bubbled you at game;
  Or soil’d with infamous reproach your name?

  FRIEND.

  No:  but your cynic vanity (you’ll own)
  Exposed my private counsel to the town. 20

  POET.

  Such fair advice ’twere pity sure to lose: 
  I grant I printed it for public use.

  FRIEND.

  Yes, season’d with your own remarks between,
  Inflamed with so much virulence of spleen
  That the mild town (to give the devil his due)
  Ascribed the whole performance to a Jew.

  POET.

  Jews, Turks, or Pagans—­hallow’d be the mouth
  That teems with moral zeal and dauntless truth! 
  Prove that my partial strain adopts one lie,
  No penitent more mortified than I; 30
  Not e’en the wretch in shackles doom’d to groan,
  Beneath the inhuman scoffs of Williamson.[1]

  FRIEND.

Hold—­let us see this boasted self-denial—­
The vanquish’d knight[2] has triumph’d in his trial.

POET.

What then?

FRIEND.

              Your own sarcastic verse unsay,
  That brands him as a trembling runaway.

POET.

With all my soul;—­the imputed charge rehearse;
I’ll own my error and expunge my verse. 
Come, come, howe’er the day was lost or won,
The world allows the race was fairly run. 40
But, lest the truth too naked should appear,
A robe of fable shall the goddess wear: 
When sheep were subject to the lion’s reign,
E’er man acquired dominion o’er the plain,
Voracious wolves, fierce rushing from the rocks,
Devour’d without control the unguarded flocks;