The broken heart, the busy fiend,
The inward call, on Spleen depend.
Law, licensed breaking of the peace,
To which vacation is disease;
A gipsy diction, scarce known well
By the magi, who law-fortunes tell,
I shun; nor let it breed within
Anxiety, and that the Spleen;
Law, grown a forest, where perplex
The mazes, and the brambles vex;
Where its twelve verderers every day
Are changing still the public way :
Yet if we miss our path and err,
We grievous penalties incur ;

And wanderers tire, and tear their skiu,
And then get out where they went in.
I never game, and rarely bet,
Am loth to lend, or run in debt.
No compter-writs me agitate;
Who moralizing pass the gate,

And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding visits there,
And forces folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.

This view, profusely when inclined,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience join'd with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.

Passion, (as frequently is seen)
Subsiding, settles into Spleen.
Hence, as the plague of happy life,
I run away from partv-strife.

A prince's cause, a church's claim,
I've known to raise a mighty flame,
And priest, as stoker, very free
To throw in peace and charity.
That tribe, whose practicals decree
Small beer the deadliest heresy ;
Who, fond of pedigree, derive
From the most noted whore alive;
Who own wine's old prophetic aid,
And love the mitre Bacchus made;
Forbid the faithful to depend

On half-pint drinkers for a friend;
And in whose gay, red-letter'd face,
We read good living more than grace :
Nor they so pure, and so precise,
Immaculate as their white of eyes,
Who for the spirit hug the Spleen,
Phylacter'd throughout all their mien;
Who their ill-tasted home-brew'd prayer,
To the state's mellow forms prefer;
Who doctrines, as infectious, fear,
Which are not steep'd in vinegar,
And samples of heart-chested grace
Expose in show-glass of the face,
Did never me as yet provoke
Either to honour band and cloke,
Or deck my hat with leaves of oak.

1 rail not, with mock-patriot grace,
At folks, because they are in place;
Nor, hired to praise with stallion pen,
Serve the ear-lechery of men ;
But, to avoid religious jars,
The laws are my expositors,

Which in my doubting mind create
Conformity to church and state.
I go, pursuant to my plan,
To Mecca with the Caravan ;
And think it right in common sense
Both for diversion and defence.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat,
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their labour'd end,
At once both wind and stream contend:
Success herein is seldom seen,

And zeal, when baffled, turns to Spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent,
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent;
His skiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pull'd against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd,
Sees unconcern'd life's wager row'd,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.

By these reflections, I repeal
Each hasty promise made in zeal.
When gospel propagators say,
We're bound our great light to display,
And Indian darkness drive away;
Yet none but drunken watchmen send
And scoundrel link-boys for that end;
When they cry up this holy war,
Which every Christian should be for,
Yet such as owe the law their ears,
We find employ'd as engineers ;-

This view my forward zeal so shocks, In vain they hold the money-box. At such a conduct, which intends By vicious means such virtuous ends, I laugh off Spleen, and keep my pence From spoiling Indian innocence. Yet philosophic love of ease I suffer not to prove disease, But rise up in the virtuous cause Of a free press, and equal laws. The press restrain'd! nefandous thought! In vain our sires have nobly fought : While free from force the press remains, Virtue and Freedom cheer our plains, And Learning largesses bestows, And keeps uncensured open house. We to the nation's public mart Our works of wit, and schemes of art, And philosophic goods this way, Like water carriage, cheap convey. This tree, which knowledge so affords, Inquisitors with flaming swords From lay-approach with zeal defend, Lest their own paradise should end. The press from her fecundous womb Brought forth the arts of Greece and Rome; Her offspring, skill'd in logic war, Truth's banner waved in open air; The mouster Superstition fled, And hid in shades its Gorgon head; And lawless power, the long-kept field, By reason quell'd, was forced to yield. This nurse of arts, and freedom's fence To chain, is treason against sense;

And, Liberty, thy thousand tongues
None silence, who design no wrongs;
For those, who use the gag's restraint,
First rob, before they stop complaint.

Since disappointment galls within,
And subjugates the soul to Spleen,
Most schemes, as money-snares, I hate,
And bite not at projector's bait.
Sufficient wrecks appear each day,
And yet fresh fools are cast away.
Ere well the bubbled can turn round,
Their painted vessel runs aground;
Or in deep seas it oversets
By a fierce hurricane of debts;
Or helm-directors in one trip,
Freight first embezzled, sink the ship.
Such was of late a corporation,'
The brazen-serpent of the nation,
Which, when hard accidents distress'd,
The poor must look at to be bless'd,
And thence expect, with paper seal'd
By fraud and usury, to be heal'd.

I in no soul-consumption wait
Whole years at levees of the great,
And hungry hopes regale the while
On the spare diet of a smile.

The Charitable Corporation, instituted for the relief of the industrious poor, by assisting them with small sums upon pledges at legal interest. By the villany of those who had the management of this scheme, the proprietors were defrauded of very considerable sums of money. In 1732 the conduct of the directors of this body became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, and some of them, who were members of the House of Commons, were expelled for their concern in this iniquitous transaction.