For if you want estate to set it forth,
In vain you boast the splendour of your birth;
Your prized gentility for madness goes,
And each your kindred shuns and disavows.
But he that's rich is praised at his full rate,
And though he once cried 'Small-coal!' in the street,
Though he, nor one of his e'er mentioned were,
But in the parish-book or register,
Dugdale,[1] by help of chronicle, shall trace
An hundred barons of his ancient race.
A SATIRE.
ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND THAT IS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE UNIVERSITY, AND COME ABROAD IN THE WORLD.
IF you're so out of love with happiness,
To quit a college life and learned ease,
Convince me first, and some good reasons give,
What methods and designs you'll take to live;
For such resolves are needful in the case,
Before you tread the world's mysterious maze.
Without the premises, in vain you'll try
To live by systems of philosophy;
Your Aristotle, Cartes, and Le Grand,
And Euclid too, in little stead will stand.
How many men of choice and noted parts,
Well fraught with learning, languages, and arts,
Designing high preferment in their mind,
And little doubting good success to find,
With vast and towering thoughts have flocked to town,
But to their cost soon found themselves undone,
- ↑ Sir William Dugdale, joint author with Dodgworth of the Monasticon Anglicanum, the first volume of which was published in 1655, and the second in 1661. Oldham's allusion to him more especially refers to his Baronage of England, published in 1675 and 1676.
