As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. 
  Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
  And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks
  Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
  Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
  In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
  Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 
  His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
  Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
  And he himself one vile antithesis. 
  Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
  The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
  Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
  Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. 
  Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
  A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest;
  Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;
  Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. 
    Not fortune’s worshipper, nor fashion’s fool,
  Not lucre’s madman, nor ambition’s tool,
  Not proud, nor servile;—­be one poet’s praise,
  That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways: 
  That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,
  And thought a lie in verse or prose the same. 
  That not in fancy’s maze he wandered long,
  But stooped to truth, and moralized his song: 
  That not for fame, but virtue’s better end,
  He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
  The damning critic, half-approving wit,
  The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
  Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
  The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
  The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
  The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
  The tale revived, the lie so oft o’erthrown,
  The imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
  The morals blackened when the writings scape,
  The libelled person, and the pictured shape;
  Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,
  A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
  The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
  Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign’s ear:—­
  Welcome for thee, fair virtue! all the past;
  For thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last!
    A.  But why insult the poor, affront the great?
    P.  A knave’s a knave, to me, in every state: 
  Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,
  Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,
  A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
  Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
  If on a pillory, or near a throne,
  He gain his prince’s ear, or lose his own. 
    Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
  Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;
  This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess
  Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress;
  So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald’s door,
  Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore. 
  Full ten years slandered, did he once reply? 
  Three thousand suns went down on Welsted’s