No More Learning

Ask you what provocation I have had?
The strong antipathy of good to bad.
When truth or virtue an affront endures,
The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.
Mine, as a foe professed to false pretence,
Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense;
Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind
And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.
F. You're strangely proud.
P. So proud, I am no slave: }
So impudent I own myself no knave: }
So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave. }
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God afraid of me:
Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
O, sacred weapon left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
To all but heaven-directed hands denied
The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide:
Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,
To rouse the watchmen of the public weal;
To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,
And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.
Ye tinsel insects whom a Court maintains
That counts your beauties only by your stains,
Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day!
The muse's wing shall brush you all away;
All his Grace preaches, all his Lordship sings,
All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings.
All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,
Like the last gazette or the last address.
When black ambition stains a public cause,
A monarch's sword when mad vain-glory draws,
Not Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar
Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star.
Not so, when diademed with rays divine,
Touched with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine,
Her priestless muse forbids the good to die,
And opes the temple of Eternity.
There other trophies deck the truly brave,
Than such as Anstis casts into the grave;
Far other stars than * and * * wear,
And may descend to Mordington from Stair:
(Such as on Hough's unsullied mitre shine,
Or beam, good Digby, from a heart like thine).
Let envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,
And bark at honour not conferred by kings:
Let flattery sickening see the incense rise
Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:
Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,
And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.
Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw,
When truth stands trembling on the edge of law;
Here, last of Britons! let your names be read;
Are none, none living? let me praise the dead,
And for that cause which made your fathers shine
Fall by the votes of their degenerate line.
Fr. Alas! alas! pray end what you began,
And write next winter more essays on man.



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