The fittest tools to work for Bob;[2]
Will sooner coin a thousand lies,
Than suffer men of parts to rise;
They crowd about preferment’s gate,
And press you down with all their weight;
For as of old mathematicians
Were by the vulgar thought magicians;
So academic dull ale-drinkers
Pronounce all men of wit free-thinkers. 
  Wit, as the chief of virtue’s friends,
Disdains to serve ignoble ends. 
Observe what loads of stupid rhymes
Oppress us in corrupted times;
What pamphlets in a court’s defence
Show reason, grammar, truth, or sense? 
For though the Muse delights in fiction,
She ne’er inspires against conviction. 
Then keep your virtue still unmixt,
And let not faction come betwixt: 
By party-steps no grandeur climb at,
Though it would make you England’s primate;
First learn the science to be dull,
You then may soon your conscience lull;
If not, however seated high,
Your genius in your face will fly. 
  When Jove was from his teeming head
Of Wit’s fair goddess[3] brought to bed,
There follow’d at his lying-in
For after-birth a sooterkin;
Which, as the nurse pursued to kill,
Attain’d by flight the Muses’ hill,
There in the soil began to root,
And litter’d at Parnassus’ foot. 
From hence the critic vermin sprung,
With harpy claws and poisonous tongue: 
Who fatten on poetic scraps,
Too cunning to be caught in traps. 
Dame Nature, as the learned show,
Provides each animal its foe: 
Hounds hunt the hare, the wily fox
Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks
Thus Envy pleads a natural claim
To persecute the Muse’s fame;
On poets in all times abusive,
From Homer down to Pope inclusive. 
  Yet what avails it to complain? 
You try to take revenge in vain. 
A rat your utmost rage defies,
That safe behind the wainscot lies. 
Say, did you ever know by sight
In cheese an individual mite! 
Show me the same numeric flea,
That bit your neck but yesterday: 
You then may boldly go in quest
To find the Grub Street poet’s nest;
What spunging-house, in dread of jail,
Receives them, while they wait for bail;
What alley are they nestled in,
To flourish o’er a cup of gin;
Find the last garret where they lay,
Or cellar where they starve to-day. 
Suppose you have them all trepann’d,
With each a libel in his hand,
What punishment would you inflict? 
Or call them rogues, or get them kickt? 
These they have often tried before;
You but oblige them so much more: 
Themselves would be the first to tell,
To make their trash the better sell. 
  You have been libell’d—­Let us know,
What fool officious told you so? 
Will you regard the hawker’s cries,
Who in his titles always lies? 
Whate’er the noisy scoundrel says,
It might be something in your praise;
And praise bestow’d in Grub Street rhymes,
Would vex one more a thousand times. 
Till critics blame, and judges praise,
The poet cannot claim his bays. 
On me when dunces are satiric,
I take it for a panegyric. 
Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.