If in a battle you should find

One, whom you love of all mankind,
Had fome heroic action done,
A champion kill'd, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopt,

Would you not with his laurels cropt?
Dear honeft Ned is in the gout,

Lies rack'd with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan !
How glad, the case is not your own!

WHAT poet would not grieve to fee
His brother write as well as he?
But, rather than they should excel,
Would with his rivals all in hell?

HER end when emulation miffes,

She turns to envy, ftings, and hiffes :

The strongest friendship yields to pride,
Unless the odds be on our fide.

VAIN human-kind! fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide.
Give others riches, power, and ftation;
"Tis all on me an ufurpation.

I have no title to aspire;

Yet, when you fink, I feem the higher.
In Pope I cannot read a line,

But with a figh I wish it mine:
When he can in one couplet fix
More fenfe than I can do in fix,
It gives me fuch a jealous fit,
I cry, Pox take him and his wit.
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own hum'rous biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend

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Which I was born to introduce,

Refin'd it firft, and fhew'd its ufe.

St John*, as well as Pultney †, knows
That I had fome repute for profe;
And, till they drove me out of date;
Could maul a minister of ftate.
If they have mortify'd my pride,
And made me throw my pen afide;

If with fuch talents heav'n hath bless'd 'em,
Have I not reason to deteft 'em?

To all my foes, dear Fortune, fend
Thy gifts, but never to my friend :.
I tamely can endure the first;
But this with envy makes me burft.

THUS much may ferve by way

Proceed we therefore to our poem.

of proem;

THE time is not remote, when I
Muft by the course of nature die;
When, I forefee, my fpecial friends
Will try to find their private ends :
And, tho' 'tis hardly understood,

Which way my death can do them good,
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak :
See, how the Dean begins to break !
Poor Gentleman, he drops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him, till he's dead.
Befides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he fays;
He cannot call his friends to mind.
Forgets the place where last he din'd;
Plies you with ftories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before.

Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.

↑ William Pultney Efq; now Earl of Bath.

How does he fancy, we can fit
To hear his out of-fashion wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
'Faith he must make his stories shorter,

Or change his comrades once a quarter :
In half the time he talks them round:
There must another fet be found.

FOR poetry, he's past his prime;
He takes an hour to find a rhyme:
His fire is out, his wit decay'd,
His fancy funk, his mufe a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen ;·
But there's no talking to some men.

By addig largely to my years:

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AND then their tenderness appears

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He's older than he would be reckon'd,

And well remembers Charles the Second.

He hardly drinks a pint of wine;

And that, I doubt, is no good fign.

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His ftomach too begins to fail:

Last year we thought him ftrong and hale;
But now he's quite another thing:

I wish he may hold out till spring.

They hug themselves, and reason thus ;
It is not yet so bad with us.

IN fuch a cafe they talk in tropes,

And by their fears exprefs their hopes..
Some great misfortune to portend,

No

enemy can match a friend.

With all the kindness they profefs,

The merit of a lucky guess

(When daily how-d'ye's come of course, And fervants answer,

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Worfe and worfe!")

Would please them better, than to tell,
That, God be prais'd, the Dean is well.

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Then he who prophefy'd the best,

Approves his forefight to the reft:

"You know I always fear'd the worst,
"And often told you fo at first.”
He'd rather chufe that I fhould die,
Than his predictions prove a lie.
Not one foretels I fhall recover;

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-But all agree to give me over.

YET, fhould fome neighbour feel a pain

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Just in the parts where I complain ;
How many a meffage would he fend?
What hearty pray'rs that I fhould mend?
Inquire what regimen I kept;

What gave me ease, and how I flept?
And more lament when I was dead,
Than all the fniv❜lers round my bed.

My good companions, never fear;
For tho' you may mistake a year,
Tho' your prognostics run too fast,
They must be verify'd at last.

BEHOLD the fatal day arrive!
How is the Dean? he's just alive.
Now the departing pray'r is read;

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He hardly breathes-The Dean is dead.

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BEFORE the paffing-bell begun,
The news thro' half the town is run.
Oh! may we all for death prepare !
What has he left ? and who's his heir ?
I know no more than what the news is ;

"Tis all bequeath'd to public uses.
To public ufes! there's a whim!
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all-but firft he dy'd.

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And had the Dean in all the nation
No worthy friend, no poor relation ?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood.

Now Grubftreet wits are all employ'd ;

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With elegies the town is cloy'd':

Some paragraph in ev'ry paper

To curfe the Dean, or blefs the Drapier †.
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wifely on me lay all the blame.
We must confess his case was nice;
But he would never take advice.
Had he been rul'd, for ought appears,
He might have liv'd these twenty years:
For when we open'd him, we found,
That all his vital parts were found.
From Dublin foon to London spread,

"Tis told at court, the Dean is dead .
And Lady Suffolk || in the spleen
Runs laughing up to tell.***

The fo gracious, mild, and good,
Cries," Is he gone 'tis time he should.

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The author imagines, that the fcribblers of the prevailing party, which he always oppofed, will libel him after his death; but that others will remember him with gratitude, who confider the fervice he had done to Ireland, under the name of M. B. Drapier, by utterly defeating the destructive project of Wood's half-pence, in five letters to the people of Ireland, at that time read univerfally, and convincing every reader. Dub. edit.—See the letters, in vol. iii.

The Dean fuppofed himself to die in Ireland, where he was born.

Mrs Howard, then Countess of Suffolk, and of the bed chamber to the late Queen, profeffed much friendfhip for the Dean. The Queen, then Princefs, fent a dozen times to the Dean, then in London, with her commands to attend her: which at last he did, by advice of all his friends. She often fent for him afterwards, and always treated him very graciously. He taxed her with a prefent worth ten pounds, which the promised before he should return to Ireland; but on his taking leave, the medals were not ready. Dub. edit.