Volume Ii Part 43 (2/2)

Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman?

Chairman to yon d.a.m.n'd committee!

Yet I look on thee with pity.

Dreadful sight! what, learned Morgan Metamorphosed to a Gorgon![21]

For thy horrid looks, I own, Half convert me to a stone.

Hast thou been so long at school, Now to turn a factious tool?

Alma Mater was thy mother, Every young divine thy brother.

Thou, a disobedient varlet, Treat thy mother like a harlot!

Thou ungrateful to thy teachers, Who are all grown reverend preachers!

Morgan, would it not surprise one!

To turn thy nourishment to poison!

When you walk among your books, They reproach you with their looks; Bind them fast, or from their shelves They'll come down to right themselves: Homer, Plutarch, Virgil, Flaccus, All in arms, prepare to back us: Soon repent, or put to slaughter Every Greek and Roman author.

Will you, in your faction's phrase, Send the clergy all to graze;[22]

And to make your project pa.s.s, Leave them not a blade of gra.s.s?

How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!

Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art.

Were but you and I acquainted, Every monster should be painted: You should try your graving tools On this odious group of fools; Draw the beasts as I describe them: Form their features while I gibe them; Draw them like; for I a.s.sure you, You will need no _car'catura;_ Draw them so that we may trace All the soul in every face.

Keeper, I must now retire, You have done what I desire: But I feel my spirits spent With the noise, the sight, the scent.

”Pray, be patient; you shall find Half the best are still behind!

You have hardly seen a score; I can show two hundred more.”

Keeper, I have seen enough.

Taking then a pinch of snuff, I concluded, looking round them, ”May their G.o.d, the devil, confound them!”[23]

[Footnote 1: St. Andrew's Church, close to the site of the Parliament House.]

[Footnote 2: On a sc.r.a.p of paper, containing the memorials respecting the Dean's family, there occur the following lines, apparently the rough draught of the pa.s.sage in the text: ”Making good that proverb odd, Near the church and far from G.o.d, Against the church direct is placed, Like it both in head and waist.”--_Scott_.]

[Footnote 3: From the answer of the demoniac that the devils which possessed him were Legion.--St. Mark, v, 9.--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 4: Sir Thomas Prendergast, a prominent opponent of the clergy, and a servile supporter of the government. See the verses on ”Noisy Tom,”

_ante_, p. 260.]

[Footnote 5: ”Di quibus imperium est animarum umbraeque silentes Sit mihi fas audita loqui.”--VIRG., _Aen_., vi, 264.]

[Footnote 6: ”Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;”--273.]

[Footnote 7:”----Discordia demens Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.”--281.]

[Footnote 8: ”Corripit his subita trepidus, ----strictamque aciem venientibus offert.”--290.]

[Footnote 9: ”Et ni docta comes tenues sine corpore vitas.”--VIRG., _Aen_., vi, 291.]

[Footnote 10: ”Et centumgeminus Briareus.”--287.]

[Footnote 11: The Right Honourable Walter Carey. He was secretary to the Duke of Dorset when lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The Duke of Dorset came to Ireland in 1731.]

[Footnote 12: ”Two hundred” written by Swift in the margin.--_Forster_.]

[Footnote 13: John Waller, Esq., member for the borough of Dongaile. He was grandson to Sir Hardress Waller, one of the regicide judges, and who concurred with them in pa.s.sing sentence on Charles I. This Sir Hardressmarried the daughter and co-heir of John Dowdal of Limerick, in Ireland, by which alliance he became so connected with the country, that after the rebellion was over, the family made it their residence.--_Scott._]

[Footnote 14: Rev. Roger Throp, whose death was said to have been occasioned by the persecution which he suffered from Waller. His case was published by his brother, and never answered, containing such a scene of petty vexatious persecutions as is almost incredible; the cause being the refusal of Mr. Throp to compound, for a compensation totally inadequate, some of the rights of his living which affected Waller's estate. In 1739, a pet.i.tion was presented to the House of Commons by his brother, Robert Throp, gentleman, complaining of this persecution, and applying to parliament for redress, relative to the number of attachments granted by the King's Bench, in favour of his deceased brother, and which could not be executed against the said Waller, on account of the privilege of Parliament, etc. But this pet.i.tion was rejected by the House, _nem. con._ The Dean seems to have employed his pen against Waller. See a letter from Mrs. Whiteway to Swift, Nov. 15, 1735, edit. Scott, xviii, p.

414.--_W. E. B_.]

[Footnote 15: Richard Tighe, so called because descended from a baker who supplied Cromwell's army with bread. Bettesworth is termed the _player_, from his pompous enunciation.]

[Footnote 16: ”Right Honourable Owen Wynne, county of Sligo.--Owen Wynne, Esq., borough of Sligo.--John Wynne, Esq., borough of Castlebar.”]

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