For fees each term sweat in the crowded hall,
And there for charters, and cracked titles bawl;
Where Maynard[1] thrives, and pockets more each year
Than forty laureats of the theatre.
Or else to orders, and the church betake
Thyself, and that thy future refuge make;
There fawn on some proud patron to engage
The advowson of cast punk and parsonage.
Or soothe the court, and preach up kingly right,
To gain a prebend or a mitre by't.
In fine, turn pettifogger, canonist,
Civilian, pedant, mountebank, or priest,
Soldier or merchant, fiddler, painter, fencer,
Jack-pudding, juggler, player, or rope-dancer;[2]
Preach, plead, cure, fight, game, pimp, beg, cheat, or thieve;
Be all but poet, and there's way to live.
’But why do I in vain my counsel spend
On one whom there's so little hope to mend?
Where I perhaps as fruitlessly exhort,
As Lenten doctors, when they preach at court;
Not gamesters from the snares they once have tried,
Not fops and women from conceit and pride,
Not bawds from impudence, cowards from fear,
Nor seared unfeeling sinners past despair,
Are half so hard and stubborn to reduce,
As a poor wretch when once possessed with muse.
’If, therefore, what I've said cannot avail,
Nor from the rhyming folly thee recall,
But, spite of all, thou wilt be obstinate,
And run thyself upon avoidless fate;
- ↑ Sir John Maynard, King's Sergeant, who is said to have made a larger income at the bar than any of his contemporaries.
- ↑ Such people were lavishly patronized by the nobility. Ladies of rank were in the habit of inviting jugglers and conjurers to their houses to amuse their company. Richardson, the fire eater, was one of the most popular of these performers; and Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, occupies so conspicuous a position in the social annals of the time, that he may be regarded as a sort of spurious historical character.
