The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 8/To Dean Swift
TO DEAN SWIFT
BY SIR ARTHUR ACHESON.
1728.
GOOD cause have I to sing and vapour,
For I am landlord to the drapier:
He, that of every ear's the charmer,
Now condescends to be my farmer.
And grace my villa with his strains;
Lives such a bard on British plains?
No; not in all the British court;
For none but witlings there resort,
Whose names and works (though dead) are made
Immortal by the Dunciad;
And, sure as monument of brass,
Their fame to future time shall pass;
How, with a weakly warbling tongue,
Of brazen knight they vainly sung:
A subject for their genius fit;
He dares defy both sense and wit.
What dares he not? He can, we know it,
A laureat make that is no poet;
A judge, without the least pretence
To common law, or common sense;
A bishop that is no divine
And coxcombs in red ribbons shine:
Nay, he can make, what's greater far,
A middle state 'twixt peace and war;
And say, there shall, for years together,
Be peace and war, and both, and neither.
Happy, O Market-hill! at least,
That court and courtiers have no taste:
You never else had known the dean,
But as of old, obscurely lain;
All things gone on the same dull track,
And Drapier's-hill[1] been still Drumlack;
But now your name with Penshurst vies,
Aud wing'd with fame shall reach the skies.
- ↑ The dean gave this name to a farm called Drumlack, which he rented of sir Arthur Acheson, whose seat lay between that and Market-hill; and intended to build a house upon it, but afterward changed his mind.