With handsome garters at your knees,
No matter what a fellow sees. 
  Filled with disdain, with rage inflamed
Both of herself and sex ashamed,
The nymph stood silent out of spite,
Nor would vouchsafe to set them right. 
Away the fair detractors went,
And gave by turns their censures vent. 
She’s not so handsome in my eyes: 
For wit, I wonder where it lies! 
She’s fair and clean, and that’s the most: 
But why proclaim her for a toast? 
A baby face; no life, no airs,
But what she learn’d at country fairs;
Scarce knows what difference is between
Rich Flanders lace and Colberteen. [2]
I’ll undertake, my little Nancy
In flounces has a better fancy;
With all her wit, I would not ask
Her judgment how to buy a mask. 
We begg’d her but to patch her face,
She never hit one proper place;
Which every girl at five years old
Can do as soon as she is told. 
I own, that out-of-fashion stuff
Becomes the creature well enough. 
The girl might pass, if we could get her
To know the world a little better. 
(To know the world! a modern phrase
For visits, ombre, balls, and plays.)
  Thus, to the world’s perpetual shame,
The Queen of Beauty lost her aim;
Too late with grief she understood
Pallas had done more harm than good;
For great examples are but vain,
Where ignorance begets disdain. 
Both sexes, arm’d with guilt and spite,
Against Vanessa’s power unite: 
To copy her few nymphs aspired;
Her virtues fewer swains admired. 
So stars, beyond a certain height,
Give mortals neither heat nor light. 
Yet some of either sex, endow’d
With gifts superior to the crowd,
With virtue, knowledge, taste, and wit
She condescended to admit: 
With pleasing arts she could reduce
Men’s talents to their proper use;
And with address each genius held
To that wherein it most excell’d;
Thus, making others’ wisdom known,
Could please them, and improve her own. 
A modest youth said something new;
She placed it in the strongest view. 
All humble worth she strove to raise,
Would not be praised, yet loved to praise. 
The learned met with free approach,
Although they came not in a coach: 
Some clergy too she would allow,
Nor quarrell’d at their awkward bow;
But this was for Cadenus’ sake,
A gownman of a different make;
Whom Pallas once, Vanessa’s tutor,
Had fix’d on for her coadjutor. 
  But Cupid, full of mischief, longs
To vindicate his mother’s wrongs. 
On Pallas all attempts are vain: 
One way he knows to give her pain;
Vows on Vanessa’s heart to take
Due vengeance, for her patron’s sake;
Those early seeds by Venus sown,
In spite of Pallas now were grown;
And Cupid hoped they would improve
By time, and ripen into love. 
The boy made use of all his craft,
In vain discharging many a shaft,
Pointed at colonels, lords, and beaux: