The finer, nay sometimes the wittier speaker: 
  But ’tis prodigious so much eloquence
  Should be acquired by such little sense;
  For words and wit did anciently agree, 160
  And Tully was no fool, though this man be: 
  At bar abusive, on the bench unable,
  Knave on the woolsack, fop at council-table. 
  These are the grievances of such fools as would
  Be rather wise than honest, great than good.

   Some other kind of wits must be made known,
  Whose harmless errors hurt themselves alone;
  Excess of luxury they think can please,
  And laziness call loving of their ease: 
  To live dissolved in pleasures still they feign, 170
  Though their whole life’s but intermitting pain: 
  So much of surfeits, headaches, claps are seen,
  We scarce perceive the little time between: 
  Well-meaning men who make this gross mistake,
  And pleasure lose only for pleasure’s sake;
  Each pleasure has its price, and when we pay
  Too much of pain, we squander life away.

   Thus Dorset, purring like a thoughtful cat,
  Married, but wiser puss ne’er thought of that: 
  And first he worried her with railing rhyme, 180
  Like Pembroke’s mastives at his kindest time;
  Then for one night sold all his slavish life,
  A teeming widow, but a barren wife;
  Swell’d by contact of such a fulsome toad,
  He lugg’d about the matrimonial load;
  Till fortune, blindly kind as well as he,
  Has ill restored him to his liberty;
  Which he would use in his old sneaking way,
  Drinking all night, and dozing all the day;
  Dull as Ned Howard,[61] whom his brisker times 190
  Had famed for dulness in malicious rhymes.

   Mulgrave had much ado to ’scape the snare,
  Though learn’d in all those arts that cheat the fair: 
  For after all his vulgar marriage mocks,
  With beauty dazzled, Numps was in the stocks;
  Deluded parents dried their weeping eyes,
  To see him catch his Tartar for his prize;
  The impatient town waited the wish’d-for change,
  And cuckolds smiled in hopes of sweet revenge;
  Till Petworth plot made us with sorrow see, 200
  As his estate, his person too was free: 
  Him no soft thoughts, no gratitude could move;
  To gold he fled from beauty and from love;
  Yet, failing there, he keeps his freedom still,
  Forced to live happily against his will: 
  ’Tis not his fault, if too much wealth and power
  Break not his boasted quiet every hour.

    And little Sid,[62] for simile renown’d,
  Pleasure has always sought but never found: 
  Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall, 210
  His are so bad, sure he ne’er thinks at all. 
  The flesh he lives upon is rank and strong,
  His meat and mistresses are kept too long.