An [7]angel sent by Heaven’s command,
While he obeys Almighty will,
Perhaps may feel compassion still;
And wish the task had been assign’d
To spirits of less gentle kind.” 
  But I, in politics grown old,
Whose thoughts are of a different mould,
Who from my soul sincerely hate
Both kings and ministers of state;
Who look on courts with stricter eyes
To see the seeds of vice arise;
Can lend you an allusion fitter,
Though flattering knaves may call it bitter;
Which, if you durst but give it place,
Would show you many a statesman’s face: 
Fresh from the tripod of Apollo,
I had it in the words that follow: 
Take notice to avoid offence,
I here except his excellence: 
  “So, to effect his monarch’s ends,
From hell a viceroy devil ascends;
His budget with corruptions cramm’d,
The contributions of the damn’d;
Which with unsparing hand he strews
Through courts and senates as he goes;
And then at Beelzebub’s black hall,
Complains his budget was too small.” 
  Your simile may better shine
In verse, but there is truth in mine. 
For no imaginable things
Can differ more than gods and kings: 
And statesmen, by ten thousand odds,
Are angels just as kings are gods.

[Footnote 1:  Earl of Halifax; see Johnson’s “Life of Montague.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2:  The whole of this paragraph is unjust both to Halifax and Congreve; for immediately after the production of Congreve’s first play, “The Old Bachelor,” Halifax gave him a place in the Pipe Office, and another in the Customs, of L600 a year.  Ultimately he had at least four sinecure appointments which together afforded him some L1,200 a year.  See Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” edit.  Cunningham.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 3:  William, Duke of Cumberland, son to George II, “The Butcher.”]

[Footnote 4:  See ante, p. 215, note.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 5:  See Johnson’s “Life of Addison.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 6:  See “Prologue to the Satires,” 390 to the end.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 7:  “So when an angel by divine command,” etc.  ADDISON’S Campaign.]

TO DR. DELANY ON THE LIBELS WRITTEN AGAINST HIM. 1729

—­Tanti tibi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi quodque in mare volvitur aurum.—­Juv. iii, 54.

As some raw youth in country bred,
To arms by thirst of honour led,
When at a skirmish first he hears
The bullets whistling round his ears,
Will duck his head aside, will start,
And feel a trembling at his heart,
Till ’scaping oft without a wound
Lessens the terror of the sound;
Fly bullets now as thick as hops,
He runs into a cannon’s chops. 
An author thus, who pants for fame,
Begins the world with fear and shame;
When first in print you see him dread