The stage the truest mirror is of life;
Our passions there revolve in active strife;
Each character is there display'd to view;

Each hates his own, though well assured 'tis true.
No marvel, then, that all the world should own
In Peachum's treachery Justice Fielding known;
Since thieves so common are, and, Justice, you
Thieves to the gallows for reward pursue.
Had Gay, by writing, roused the stealing trade,
You'd been less active to suppress your bread;
For, trust me! when a robber loses ground,
You lose your living with your forty pound.

'Twas woman first that snatch'd the luring bait, The tempter taught her to transgress and eat; Though wrong the deed, her quick compunction told; She banish'd Adam from an age of gold.

When women now transgress fair virtue's rules,
Men are their pupils, and the stews their schools.
From simple whoredom greater sins began
To shoot, to bloom, to centre all in man;
Footpads on Hounslow flourish here to-day,
The next, old Tyburn sweeps them all away;
For woman's faults, the cause of every wrong,
Men robb'd and murder'd, thieves at Tyburn strung.
In panting breasts to raise the fond alarm,
Make females in the cause of virtue warm,

Gay has compared them to the summer flower,
The boast and glory of an idle hour;

When cropp'd, it falls, shrinks, withers, and decays,
And to oblivion dark consigns its days.

Hath this a power to win the female heart
Back from its vice, from virtue ne'er to part?
If so the wayward virgin will restore,
And murders, rapes, and plunders be no more.
These were the lays of him who virtue knew,
Her dictates who revered, and practised too;
No idle theorist in her stainless ways,
He gave the parent goddess all his days.

O Queensberry!* his best and earliest friend,
All that his wit or learning could commend;
Best of patrons! the Muse's only pride!
Still in her pageant shalt thou first preside;-
No idle pomp that riches can procure,
Sprung at a start, and faded in an hour,
But pageant, lasting as the uncropp'd bay,
That verdant triumphs with the Muse of Gay.

TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

FOOD FOR A NEW EDITION OF HIS DICTIONARY.

Let Wilkes and Churchill rage no more,
Though scarce provision, learning's good:
What can these hungries next implore?
E'en Samuel Johnson loves our food.

GREAT pedagogue! whose literarian lore,
With syllable and syllable conjoin'd,
To transmutate and varify, has learn'd
The whole revolving scientific names
That in the alphabetic columns lie,
Far from the knowledge of mortalic shapes;
As we, who never can peroculate
The miracles by thee miraculised,

The Muse, silential long, with mouth apert,
Would give vibration to stagnatic tongue,
And loud encomiate thy puissant name,
Eulogiated from the green decline
Of Thames's banks to Scoticanian shores,
Where Lochlomondian liquids undulise.

To meminate thy name in after times,
The mighty mayor of each regalian town
Shall consignate thy work to parchment fair

*Charles, the good Duke of Queensberry, the patron of Gay, was then still alive.

In roll burgharian, and their tables all
Shall fumigate with fumigation strong:
Scotland, from perpendicularian hills,
Shall emigrate her fair muttonian store,
Which late had there in pedestration walk'd,
And o'er her airy heights perambulised.
O, blackest execrations on thy head,
Edina shameless! Though he came within
The bounds of your notation, though you knew
His honorific name, you noted not,

But basely suffer'd him to chariotise

Far from your towers, with smoke that nubilate,
Nor drank one amicitial swelling cup

To welcome him convivial. Bailies all!
With rage inflated, catenations tear,*
Nor ever after be you vinculised,
Since you that sociability denied
To him whose potent lexiphanian style
Words can prolongate, and inswell his page
With what in others to a line's confined.
Welcome, thou verbal potentate and prince!
To hills and valleys, where emerging oats
From earth assuage our pauperty to bay,
And bless thy name, thy dictionarian skill,
Which there definitive will still remain,
And oft be speculised by taper blue,
While youth studentious turn thy folio page.
Have you, as yet, in per' patetic mood
Regarded with the texture of the eye
The cave cavernic, where fraternal bard,
Churchill, depicted pauperated swains

With thraldom and bleak want reducted sore;
Where nature, colourised, so coarsely fades,
And puts her russet par'phernalia on?
Have you, as yet, the way explorified
To let lignarian chalice, swell'd with oats,
Thy orifice approach? Have you, as yet,

*Catenations, vide Chains.--JOHNSON.

With skin fresh rubified by scarlet spheres,
Applied brimstonic unction to your hide,
To terrify the salamandrian fire
That from involuntary digits asks

The strong allaceration? Or can you swill
The usquebalian flames of whisky blue
In fermentation strong? Have you applied
The kilt aërian to your Anglian thighs,
And with renunciation assignised

Your breeches in Londona to be worn?
Can you, in frigour of Highlandian sky,
On heathy summits take nocturnal rest?
It cannot be. You may as well desire
An alderman leave plum-puddenian store,
And scratch the tegument from pottage dish,
As bid thy countrymen, and thee, conjoin'd,
Forsake stommachic joys. Then hie you home,
And be a malcontent, that naked hinds,
On lentiles fed, can make your kingdom quake,
And tremulate Old England libertised!

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY MR. WILSON, AT THE THEATRE ROYAL, IN THE CHARACTER OF AN EDINBURGH BUCK.

YE who often finish care in Lethe's cup,
Who love to swear, and roar, and keep it up,
List to a brother's voice, whose sole delight
Is-sleep all day, and riot all the night.

Last night, when potent draughts of mellow wine Did sober reason into wit refine;

When lusty Bacchus had contrived to drain
The sullen vapours from our shallow brain;
We sallied forth (for valour's dazzling sun
Up to his bright meridian had run),
And, like renown'd Quixotte and his squire,
Spoils and adventures were our sole desire.

First we approach'd a seeming sober dame,
Preceded by a lanthorn's pallid flame,
Borne by a liveried puppy's servile hand,

The slave obsequious of her stern command.

66

Curse on those cits," said I, "who dare disgrace

Our streets at midnight with a sober face;

Let never tallow-chandler give them light,

To guide them through the dangers of the night!"
The valet's cane we snatch'd, and dam'me! I
Made the frail lanthorn on the pavement lie.
The guard, still watchful of the lieges' harm,
With slow-paced motion stalk'd at the alarm.

Guard, seize the rogues!" the angry madam cried;
And all the guard, with "Seize ta rogue," replied.
As in a war, there's nothing judged so right
As a concerted and prudential flight,

So we, from guard and scandal to be freed,
Left them the field and burial of their dead.

Next we approach'd the bounds of George's Square: Blest place!-no watch, no constables, come there. Now had they borrow'd Argus' eyes who saw us, All was made dark and desolate as chaos:

Lamps tumbled after lamps, and lost their lustres,
Like doomsday, when the stars shall fall in clusters.
Let fancy paint what dazzling glory grew
From crystal gems, when Phoebus came in view:
Each shatter'd orb ten thousand fragments strews,
And a new sun in every fragment shows.

Hear, then, my bucks, how drunken fate decreed us
For a nocturnal visit to the Meadows;
And how we, valorous champions! durst engage-
O deed unequall'd!-both the Bridge and Cage; *
The rage of perilous winters which had stood-
This 'gainst the wind, and that against the flood;

*

*The Cage was a small circular building at the end of the central walk in the Meadows, for the shelter of loungers during a shower. The Bridge bestrode a small stream which crossed the same walk.— Robert Chambers.