COUNTERPART TO SATIRE AGAINST VIRTUE.
237
Mayst thou go on unpitied, till thou be
Brought to the parish, bridge, and beggary;
Till urged by want, like broken scribblers, thou
Turn poet to a booth, a Smithfield show,
And write heroic verse for Bartholomew;
Then slighted by the very Nursery,[1]
Mayst thou at last be forced to starve, like me.'
PARDON me, Virtue, whatsoe'er thou art,
(For sure thou of the godhead art a part,
And all that is of him must be
The very deity)
- ↑ The Nursery stood in Barbican. It was a theatre established under letters patent for training boys and girls in the art of acting. See Dryden's Poems, Ann. Ed. ii. 28, note.
- ↑ Amongst the pieces published with the Satires on the Jesuits was a Pindaric ode, entitled A Satire against Virtue, followed by some verses designed as an apology for what might otherwise have appeared to imply a serious attack on morality and religion. In these verses, which he calls an epilogue, Oldham declares that he has been merely acting in masquerade, and that the true aim of his satire is to expose the vices of the age. He avows that his muse on this occasion had intentionally spoken like one who, by converse with bullies, had grown wicked, and 'learned the mode to cry all virtue down;' but that in future, should he continue to write, he will adopt a more direct and open course:—
’Though against virtue once he drew his pen,
He'll ne'er for aught, but her defence again.
Had he a genius and poetic rage,
Great as the vices of this guilty age,
Were he all gall, and armed with store of spite,
'Twere worth his gains to undertake to write;
To noble satire he'd direct his aim,
And by't mankind and poetry reclaim;
He'd shoot his quills, just like a porcupine,
At vice, and make them stab in every line;
The world should learn to blush.'
It must be confessed that the Satire against Virtue required, not an
