True politicians only pay
For solid work, but not for play: 
Nor ever choose to work with tools
Forged up in colleges and schools,
Consider how much more is due
To all their journeymen than you: 
At table you can Horace quote;
They at a pinch can bribe a vote: 
You show your skill in Grecian story;
But they can manage Whig and Tory;
You, as a critic, are so curious
To find a verse in Virgil spurious;
But they can smoke the deep designs,
When Bolingbroke with Pulteney dines. 
  Besides, your patron may upbraid ye,
That you have got a place already;
An office for your talents fit,
To flatter, carve, and show your wit;
To snuff the lights and stir the fire,
And get a dinner for your hire. 
What claim have you to place or pension? 
He overpays in condescension. 
  But, reverend doctor, you we know
Could never condescend so low;
The viceroy, whom you now attend,
Would, if he durst, be more your friend;
Nor will in you those gifts despise,
By which himself was taught to rise: 
When he has virtue to retire,
He’ll grieve he did not raise you higher,
And place you in a better station,
Although it might have pleased the nation. 
  This may be true—­submitting still
To Walpole’s more than royal will;
And what condition can be worse? 
He comes to drain a beggar’s purse;
He comes to tie our chains on faster,
And show us England is our master: 
Caressing knaves, and dunces wooing,
To make them work their own undoing. 
What has he else to bait his traps,
Or bring his vermin in, but scraps? 
The offals of a church distrest;
A hungry vicarage at best;
Or some remote inferior post,
With forty pounds a-year at most? 
  But here again you interpose—­
Your favourite lord is none of those
Who owe their virtues to their stations,
And characters to dedications: 
For, keep him in, or turn him out,
His learning none will call in doubt;
His learning, though a poet said it
Before a play, would lose no credit;
Nor Pope would dare deny him wit,
Although to praise it Philips writ. 
I own he hates an action base,
His virtues battling with his place: 
Nor wants a nice discerning spirit
Betwixt a true and spurious merit;
Can sometimes drop a voter’s claim,
And give up party to his fame. 
I do the most that friendship can;
I hate the viceroy, love the man. 
  But you, who, till your fortune’s made,
Must be a sweetener by your trade,
Should swear he never meant us ill;
We suffer sore against his will;
That, if we could but see his heart,
He would have chose a milder part: 
We rather should lament his case,
Who must obey, or lose his place. 
  Since this reflection slipt your pen,
Insert it when you write again;
And, to illustrate it, produce
This simile for his excuse: 
  “So, to destroy a guilty land