A. Your smooth eulogium to one crown ad

dressed,

Seems to imply a censure on the rest.

B. Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale,

Asked, when in hell, to see the royal jail;
Approved their method in all other things;
But where, good sir, do you confine your kings?
There said his guide-the group is full in view.
Indeed?—replied the Don-there are but few.
His black interpreter the charge disdained—
Few, fellow?-there all are that ever reigned.
Wit, undistinguishing, is apt to strike
The guilty and not guilty both alike.

I grant the sarcasm is too severe,

And we can readily refute it here;

While Alfred's name, the father of his age,

And the Sixth Edward's grace the historic page.

A. Kings then at last have but the lot of

all,

By their own conduct they must stand or fall.

B. True. While they live, the courtly laureat pays His quit-rent ode, his pepper-corn of praise;

And many a dunce whose fingers itch to write, Adds, as he can, his tributary mite;

A subject's faults a subject may proclaim,

A monarch's errors are forbidden game!

Thus free from censure, oyer-awed by fear,
And praised for virtues, that they scorn to wear,
The fleeting forms of majesty engage

Respect, while stalking over life's narrow stage;
Then leave their crimes for history to scan,
And ask with busy scorn, Was this the man?

I pity kings, whom worship waits upon
Obsequious from the cradle to the throne;
Before whose infant eyes the flatterer bows,
And binds a wreath about their baby brows;
Whom education stiffens into state,

And death awakens from that dream too late.

Oh! if servility with supple knees,

Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please;

If smooth dissimulation, skilled to grace

A devil's purpose with an angel's face;
If smiling peeresses, and simpering peers,
Encompassing his throne a few short years;
If the gilt carriage and the pampered steed,
That wants no driving, and disdains the lead;
If guards, mechanically form'd in ranks,

Playing, at beat of drum, their martial pranks,
Shouldering and standing as if stuck to stone,
While condescending majesty looks on;

If monarchy consist in such base things,
Sighing, I say again, I pity kings!

To be suspected, thwarted, and withstood,
Even when he labours for his country's good;
To see a band, called patriot for no cause,
But that they catch at popular applause,
Careless of all the anxiety he feels,

Hook disappointment on the public wheels; With all their flippant fluency of tongue,

Most confident, when palpably most wrong;

If this be kingly, then farewell for me,
All kingship; and may I be poor and free!
To be the Table Talk of clubs up stairs,

To which the unwashed artificer repairs,

To indulge his genius after long fatigue,
By diving into cabinet intrigue;

(For what kings deem a toil, as well they may, To him is relaxation and mere play)

To win no praise when well-wrought plans pre

vail,

But to be rudely censured when they fail;

To doubt the love his favourites may pretend,

And in reality to find no friend;

If he indulge a cultivated taste,

His galleries with the works of art well graced,
To hear it called extravagance and waste;
If these attendants, and if such as these,
Must follow royalty, then welcome ease;
However humbled and confined the sphere,
Happy the state, that has not these to fear.

A. Thus men, whose thoughts contemplative

have dwelt

On situations, that they never felt,

Start up sagacious, covered with the dust
Of dreaming study and pedantic rust,

And prate and preach about what others prove,
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Leave kingly backs to cope with kingly cares;
They have their weight to carry, subjects their's;
Poets, of all men, ever least regret

Increasing taxes and the nation's debt.

Could you contrive the payment, and rehearse

The mighty plan, oracular, in verse,

No bard, however majestic, old or new,

Should claim my fixt attention more than you.

B. Not Brindley nor Bridgewater would es

say

To turn the course of Helicon that way;
Nor would the nine consent the sacred tide
Should purl amidst the traffick of Cheapside,