please,
  And born to write, converse, and live with ease: 
  Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
  Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. 
  View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
  And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
  Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
  And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
  Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
  Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
  Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
  A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
  Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
  And so obliging, that he ne’er obliged;
  Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
  And sit attentive to his own applause;
  While wits and templars every sentence raise,
  And wonder with a foolish face of praise:—­
  Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? 
  Who would not weep, if Atticus[200] were he? 
    Who though my name stood rubric on the walls,
  Or plaistered posts, with claps, in capitals? 
  Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers’ load,
  On wings of winds came flying all abroad?[201]
  I sought no homage from the race that write;
  I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight: 
  Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long)
  No more than thou, great George! a birthday song. 
  I ne’er with wits or witlings passed my days,
  To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
  Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town,
  To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
  Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried,
  With handkerchief and orange at my side;
  But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
  To Bufo left the whole Castillan state. 
    Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
  Sat full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill;[202]
  Fed with soft dedication all day long,
  Horace and he went hand in hand in song. 
  His library (where busts of poets dead
  And a true Pindar stood without a head),
  Received of wits an undistinguished race,
  Who first his judgment asked, and then a place: 
  Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat,
  And flattered every day, and some days eat: 
  Till grown more frugal in his riper days,
  He paid some bards with port, and some with praise
  To some a dry rehearsal was assigned,
  And others (harder still) he paid in kind,
  Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,
  Dryden alone escaped this judging eye: 
  But still the great have kindness in reserve,
  He helped to bury whom he helped to starve. 
    May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill! 
  May every Bavias have his Bufo still! 
  So, when a statesman wants a day’s defence,
  Or envy holds a whole week’s war with sense,
  Or simple pride for flattery makes demands,
  May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! 
  Blest be the great! for those they take