ON A PRINTER’S[1] BEING SENT TO NEWGATE

Better we all were in our graves,
Than live in slavery to slaves;
Worse than the anarchy at sea,
Where fishes on each other prey;
Where every trout can make as high rants
O’er his inferiors, as our tyrants;
And swagger while the coast is clear: 
But should a lordly pike appear,
Away you see the varlet scud,
Or hide his coward snout in mud. 
Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach,
He dares not venture to approach;
Yet still has impudence to rise,
And, like Domitian,[2] leap at flies.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Faulkner, for printing the “Proposal for the better Regulation and Improvement of Quadrille.”]

[Footnote 2:  “Inter initia principatus cotidie secretum sibi horarum sumere solebat, nec quicquam amplius quam muscas captare ac stilo praeacuto configere; ut cuidam interroganti, essetne quis intus cum Caesare, non absurde responsum sit a Vibio Crispo, ne muscam quidem” (Suet. 3).—­W.  E. B.]

A VINDICATION OF THE LIBEL;
OR, A NEW BALLAD, WRITTEN BY A SHOE-BOY, ON AN ATTORNEY
WHO WAS FORMERLY A SHOE-BOY

“Qui color ater erat, nunc est contrarius atro."[1]

WITH singing of ballads, and crying of news,
With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes,
Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless,
And moneyless too, but not very dirtless;
Two pence he had gotten by begging, that’s all;
One bought him a brush, and one a black ball;
For clouts at a loss he could not be much,
The clothes on his back as being but such;
Thus vamp’d and accoutred, with clouts, ball, and brush,
He gallantly ventured his fortune to push: 
Vespasian[2] thus, being bespatter’d with dirt,
Was omen’d to be Rome’s emperor for’t. 
But as a wise fiddler is noted, you know,
To have a good couple of strings to one bow;
So Hartley[3] judiciously thought it too little,
To live by the sweat of his hands and his spittle: 
He finds out another profession as fit,
And straight he becomes a retailer of wit. 
One day he cried—­“Murders, and songs, and great news!”
Another as loudly—­“Here blacken your shoes!”
At Domvile’s[4] full often he fed upon bits,
For winding of jacks up, and turning of spits;
Lick’d all the plates round, had many a grubbing,
And now and then got from the cook-maid a drubbing;
Such bastings effect upon him could have none: 
The dog will be patient that’s struck with a bone. 
Sir Thomas, observing this Hartley withal
So expert and so active at brushes and ball,
Was moved with compassion, and thought it a pity
A youth should be lost, that had been so witty: 
Without more ado, he vamps up my spark,
And now we’ll suppose him an eminent clerk! 
Suppose him an adept in all the degrees
Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees;
Suppose him a miser, attorney, per bill,
Suppose him a courtier—­suppose what you will—­
Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible,
That he took up two news-boys for crying the libel?