No More Learning

Things change their titles, as our manners turn;
His counting-house employed the Sunday morn;
Seldom at church ('twas such a busy life),
But duly sent his family and wife.
There (so the devil ordained) one Christmas tide
My good old lady catched a cold and died.
A nymph of quality admires our knight;
He marries, bows at court, and grows polite:
Leaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair)
The well bred c*ck**ds in St. James's air;
First, for his son a gay commission buys,
Who drinks and fights, and in a duel dies;
His daughter flaunts a viscount's tawdry wife;
She bears a coronet and ---- for life.
In Britain's senate he a seat obtains,
And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.
My lady falls to play; so bad her chance,
He must repair it; takes a bribe from France;
The House impeach him; Coningsby harangues;
The Court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs;
Wife, son, and daughter, Satan! are thine own,
His wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the Crown:
The Devil and the King divide the prize,
And sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies.


EPISTLE IV. TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON.

ARGUMENT.


Of the Use of Riches.

The Vanity of Expense in people of Wealth and Quality. The abuse of the
word Taste, v. 13.
That the first Principle and foundation, in this as in
everything else, is Good Sense, v. 40. The chief Proof of it is to
follow Nature even in works of mere Luxury and Elegance. Instanced in
Architecture and Gardening, where all must be adapted to the Genius and
Use of the Place, and the Beauties not forced into it, but resulting from
it, v. 50. How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings,
for want of this true Foundation, without which nothing can please long,
if at all: and the best Examples and Rules will but be perverted into
something burdensome or ridiculous, v. 65, etc. , to 92. A description of
the false Taste of Magnificence; the first grand Error of which is to
imagine that Greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the
Proportion and Harmony of the whole, v. 97, and the second, either in
joining together Parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the
Repetition of the same too frequently, v. 105, etc. A word or two of
false Taste in Books, in Music, in Painting, even in Preaching and
Prayer, and lastly in Entertainments, v. 133, etc. Yet Providence is
justified in giving Wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is
dispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind, v. 169 (recurring to
what is laid down in the first book, Ep. ii.