English Satires eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 376 pages of information about English Satires.

English Satires eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 376 pages of information about English Satires.
No countryman living their tricks to discover: 
Detection her taper shall quench to a spark,
And Scotchman meet Scotchman and cheat in the dark. 

    Here lies David Garrick, describe him who can? 

An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;
As an actor, confessed without rival to shine;
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line;
Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart,
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art;
Like an ill-judging beauty his colours he spread,
And beplaster’d with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting: 
’Twas only that when he was off he was acting;
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn’d and he varied full ten times a day: 
Tho’ secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick
If they were not his own by finessing and trick;
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. 
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow’d what came,
And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame;
Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease,
Who pepper’d the highest was surest to please. 
But let us be candid, and speak out our mind: 
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 
Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave,
What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave! 
How did Grub-street re-echo the shouts that you raised,
When he was be-Roscius’d and you were bepraised! 
But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies,
To act as an angel, and mix with the skies! 
Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill,
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will;
Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love,
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above. 

    Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature,

And Slander itself must allow him good-nature: 
He cherish’d his friend, and he relish’d a bumper: 
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. 
Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser? 
I answer, no, no, for he always was wiser. 
Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat? 
His very worst foe can’t accuse him of that. 
Perhaps he confided in men as they go,
And so was too foolishly honest?  Ah no! 
Then what was his failing?  Come, tell it, and burn ye,—­
He was, could he help it? a special attorney. 

    Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind,

He has not left a wiser or better behind: 
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand: 
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart: 
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,
When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing: 
When they talk’d of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

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Project Gutenberg
English Satires from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.