Ere bribes convince you whom to choose,
The precepts of Lord Coke peruse. 
Observe an elephant, says he,
And let him like your member be: 
First take a man that’s free from Gaul,
For elephants have none at all;
In flocks or parties he must keep;
For elephants live just like sheep. 
Stubborn in honour he must be;
For elephants ne’er bend the knee. 
Last, let his memory be sound,
In which your elephant’s profound;
That old examples from the wise
May prompt him in his noes and ayes. 
  Thus the Lord Coke hath gravely writ,
In all the form of lawyer’s wit: 
And then, with Latin and all that,
Shows the comparison is pat. 
Yet in some points my lord is wrong,
One’s teeth are sold, and t’other’s tongue: 
Now, men of parliament, God knows,
Are more like elephants of shows;
Whose docile memory and sense
Are turn’d to trick, to gather pence;
To get their master half-a-crown,
They spread the flag, or lay it down: 
Those who bore bulwarks on their backs,
And guarded nations from attacks,
Now practise every pliant gesture,
Opening their trunk for every tester. 
Siam, for elephants so famed,
Is not with England to be named: 
Their elephants by men are sold;
Ours sell themselves, and take the gold.

PAULUS:  AN EPIGRAM

BY MR. LINDSAY[1]

Dublin, Sept. 7, 1728.

“A SLAVE to crowds, scorch’d with the summer’s heats,
In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats;
While smiling Nature, in her best attire,
Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire. 
Can he, who knows that real good should please,
Barter for gold his liberty and ease?”—­
This Paulus preach’d:—­When, entering at the door,
Upon his board the client pours the ore: 
He grasps the shining gift, pores o’er the cause,
Forgets the sun, and dozes on the laws.

[Footnote 1:  A polite and elegant scholar; at that time an eminent pleader at the bar in Dublin, and afterwards advanced to be one of the Justices of the Common Pleas.—­H.]

THE ANSWER.  BY DR. SWIFT

Lindsay mistakes the matter quite,
And honest Paulus judges right. 
Then, why these quarrels to the sun,
Without whose aid you’re all undone? 
Did Paulus e’er complain of sweat? 
Did Paulus e’er the sun forget;
The influence of whose golden beams
Soon licks up all unsavoury steams? 
The sun, you say, his face has kiss’d: 
It has; but then it greased his fist. 
True lawyers, for the wisest ends,
Have always been Apollo’s friends. 
Not for his superficial powers
Of ripening fruits, and gilding flowers;
Not for inspiring poets’ brains
With penniless and starveling strains;
Not for his boasted healing art;
Not for his skill to shoot the dart;