' 170
Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)
Show, there was one who held it in disdain.
* * * * *
VARIATIONS.
After VER. 2 in the MS.--
You don't, I hope, pretend to quit the trade,
Because you think your reputation made:
Like good Sir Paul, of whom so much was said,
That when his name was up, he lay a-bed.
Come, come, refresh us with a livelier song,
Or, like Sir Paul, you'll lie a-bed too long.
_P_. Sir, what I write, should be correctly writ.
_F_. Correct! 'tis what no genius can admit.
Besides, you grow too moral for a wit.
VER. 112 in some editions--'Who starves a mother.'
DIALOGUE II.
_Fr_. 'Tis all a libel--Paxton[203] (sir) will say.
_P_. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow, faith, it may;
And for that very cause I print to-day.
How should I fret to mangle every line,
In reverence to the sins of thirty-nine!
Vice with such giant strides comes on amain,
Invention strives to be before in vain;
Feign what I will, and paint it e'er so strong,
Some rising genius sins up to my song.
_F_. Yet none but you by name the guilty lash; 10
Ev'n Guthrie[204] saves half Newgate by a dash.
Spare then the person, and expose the vice.
_P_. How, sir! not damn the sharper, but the dice?
Come on then, Satire! general, unconfined,
Spread thy broad wing, and souse on all the kind.
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