BY turns transform'd into all kinds of shapes,
Constant to none, F—TE laughs, cries, struts, and scrapes:
Now in the centre, now in van or rear,
The Proteus shifts, Bawd, Parson, Auctioneer.
His strokes of humour, and his bursts of sport,
Are all contain'd in this one word, Distort.
Doth a man stutter, look a-squint, or halt;
Mimics draw humour out of Nature's fault:
With personal defects their mirth adorn,
And hang misfortunes out to public scorn.
E'en I, whom Nature cast in hideous mould,
Whom having made, she trembled to behold,
Beneath the load of mimicry may groan,
And find that Nature's errors are my own.