And while they toss my name about,
With favour some, and some without,
One, quite indiff’rent in the cause,
My character impartial draws: 
  The Dean, if we believe report,
Was never ill receiv’d at court. 
As for his works in verse and prose
I own myself no judge of those;
Nor can I tell what critics thought ’em: 
But this I know, all people bought ’em. 
As with a moral view design’d
To cure the vices of mankind: 
And, if he often miss’d his aim,
The world must own it, to their shame,
The praise is his, and theirs the blame. 
“Sir, I have heard another story: 
He was a most confounded Tory,
And grew, or he is much belied,
Extremely dull, before he died.” 
  Can we the Drapier then forget? 
Is not our nation in his debt? 
’Twas he that writ the Drapier’s letters!—­
  “He should have left them for his betters,
We had a hundred abler men,
Nor need depend upon his pen.—­
Say what you will about his reading,
You never can defend his breeding;
Who in his satires running riot,
Could never leave the world in quiet;
Attacking, when he took the whim,
Court, city, camp—­all one to him.—­
  “But why should he, except he slobber’t,
Offend our patriot, great Sir Robert,
Whose counsels aid the sov’reign power
To save the nation every hour? 
What scenes of evil he unravels
In satires, libels, lying travels! 
Not sparing his own clergy-cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth!”
His vein, ironically grave,
Exposed the fool, and lash’d the knave. 
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.[24]
  “He never thought an honour done him,
Because a duke was proud to own him,
Would rather slip aside and chuse
To talk with wits in dirty shoes;
Despised the fools with stars and garters,
So often seen caressing Chartres.[25]
He never courted men in station,
Nor persons held in admiration;
Of no man’s greatness was afraid,
Because he sought for no man’s aid. 
Though trusted long in great affairs
He gave himself no haughty airs: 
Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends;
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatterers; no allies in blood: 
But succour’d virtue in distress,
And seldom fail’d of good success;
As numbers in their hearts must own,
Who, but for him, had been unknown. 
  “With princes kept a due decorum,
But never stood in awe before ’em. 
He follow’d David’s lesson just;
In princes never put thy trust:
And would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in power. 
The Irish senate if you named,
With what impatience he declaim’d! 
Fair LIBERTY was all his cry,
For her he stood prepared to die;
For her he boldly stood alone;
For her he oft exposed his own. 
Two kingdoms,[26] just as faction led,
Had set a price upon his head;