Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/425

Where having cast his coat, and well pursued
The methods most in fashion to be lewd,
Return’d a finish'd spark this summer down,
Stock'd with the freshest gibberish of the town;
A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit,
Confounded in that Babel of the pit;
Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak, and wild,
Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child;
Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts,
Before the play, or else between the acts:
Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds
Should spring such short and transitory kinds,
Or crazy rules to make us wits by rote
Last just as long as ev'ry cuckoo's note:
What bungling, rusty tools, are us'd by fate!
’Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate,
My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed^[1];
When man's ill genius to my presence sent
This wretch, to rouse my wrath, for ruin meant;
Who in his idiom vile, with Gray's inn grace,
Squander'd his noisy talents to my face;
Named ev'ry player on his fingers ends,
Swore all the wits were his peculiar friends;
Talk'd with that saucy and familiar ease
Of Wycherley, and you, and Mr. Bays;
Said, how a late report your friends had vex'd,
Who heard you meant to write heroicks next;
For, tragedy, he knew, would lose you quite,
And told you so at Will's but t'other night.

1. Thus early in life did Swift feel the efforts of his genius struggling for birth, and prognosticate its vigorous exertions against vice and folly, when arrived at maturity.