How cheerfully the hawkers cry
A satire, and the gentry buy!
While my hard-labour'd poem pines
Unsold upon the printer's lines.
A genius in the reverend gown
Must ever keep its owner down;
'Tis an unnatural conjunction,
And spoils the credit of the function.
Round all your brethren cast your eyes,
Point out the surest men to rise;
That club of candidates in black,
The least deserving of the pack,
Aspiring, factious, fierce, and loud,
With grace and learning unendow'd,
Can turn their hands to every job,
The fittest tools to work for Bob;
Will sooner coin a thousand lies,
Than suffer men of parts to rise;
They crowd about preferment's gate,
And press you down with all their weight.
For, as of old mathematicians
Were by the vulgar thought magicians;
So academick dull ale-drinkers,
Pronounce all men of wit, freethinkers.
Wit, as the chief of virtue's friends,
Disdains to serve ignoble ends.
Observe what loads of stupid rhymes
Oppress us in corrupted times:
What pamphlets in a court's defence
Show reason, grammar, truth, or sense?
For, though the Muse delights in fiction,
She ne'er inspires against conviction.
Then keep your virtue still unmixt:
And let not faction come betwixt:
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