[Footnote 1: Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford. Young’s seventh satire is inscribed to him.—Scott.]
[Footnote 2: Sir Spencer Compton, then Speaker, afterwards Earl of Wilmington, to whom the eighth satire is dedicated. See vol. i, 219.—W. E. B.]
THE DOG AND THIEF. 1726
Quoth the thief to the dog, let me into your door
And I’ll give you these delicate
bits.
Quoth the dog, I shall then be more villain than you’re,
And besides must be out of my wits.
Your delicate bits will not serve me a meal,
But my master each day gives me bread;
You’ll fly, when you get what you came here
to steal,
And I must be hang’d in your stead.
The stockjobber thus from ’Change Alley goes
down,
And tips you the freeman a wink;
Let me have but your vote to serve for the town,
And here is a guinea to drink.
Says the freeman, your guinea to-night would be spent!
Your offers of bribery cease:
I’ll vote for my landlord to whom I pay rent,
Or else I may forfeit my lease.
From London they come, silly people to chouse,
Their lands and their faces unknown:
Who’d vote a rogue into the parliament-house,
That would turn a man out of his own?
A DIALOGUE[1] BETWEEN MAD MULLINIX AND TIMOTHY 1728
M.
I own, ’tis not my bread and butter,
But prithee, Tim, why all this clutter?
Why ever in these raging fits,
Damning to hell the Jacobites?
When if you search the kingdom round,
There’s hardly twenty to be found;
No, not among the priests and friars——
T. ’Twixt you and me,
G—d d—n the liars!
M. The Tories are gone every
man over
To our illustrious house of Hanover;
From all their conduct this is plain;
And then——
T. G—d d—n
the liars again!
Did not an earl but lately vote,
To bring in (I could cut his throat)
Our whole accounts of public debts?
M. Lord, how this frothy coxcomb
frets! [Aside.
T. Did not an able statesman
bishop
This dangerous horrid motion dish up
As Popish craft? did he not rail on’t?
Show fire and fagot in the tail on’t?
Proving the earl a grand offender;
And in a plot for the Pretender;
Whose fleet, ‘tis all our friends’ opinion,
Was then embarking at Avignon?
M. These wrangling jars of
Whig and Tory,
Are stale and worn as Troy-town story:
The wrong, ’tis certain, you were both in,
And now you find you fought for nothing.
Your faction, when their game was new,
Might want such noisy fools as you;
But you, when all the show is past,
Resolve to stand it out the last;
Like Martin Marall,[2] gaping on,
Not minding when the song is done.