Her sons exult? your men of parts and skill
Change like their dress, their principles at will,
Where Mammon calls with haste obsequious run,
And bow like Persians to the rising sun.
Too long alas o'er Britain's bleeding land
Hath fell corruption wav'd her iron hand,
Too long possest a monarch's patient ear,
While all the sons of freedom shrunk with fear.
Is there then one, whose breast religion warms,
And virtue decks with all her brightest charms;
Whose fiery glance the loathsome den pervades,
Where vice, and foul corruption sculk in shades;
True to his king, and to the public just,
No dupe to passion, and no slave to lust;
Whom all the good revere, the vile abuse,
A friend to learning, and the gentle muse;
Scotchman, or Teague — be this his patriot view,
I'll praise him, love him, friend, and so shall you.
Curst be the lines (tho' ev'ry THESPIAN maid
Come uninvoked, and lend her timely aid,
View them, like THETIS, with a mother's eye,
And dip them o'er in dews of CASTALY)
Curst be the lines, that pow'rful vice adorn,
Or treat fair virtue, and her friends with scorn:
Let 'em cloath candles, wrap up cheese, line trunks;
Or flutt'ring on a rail, 'midst rogues and punks,
Ne'er meet the mild judicious critic's praise,
But die, like those that FANNY sings or says:
FANNY, dull wight, to whom the ghost appears
Of murder'd HORACE, pale and wan with tears;
FANNY, dull wight, a Mammon-serving slave,
Half politician, atheist, parson, knave,
That drunk each night, and liquor'd ev'ry chink,
Dyes his red face in port, and his black soul in ink.