Criers and clerks, and all the savage crew
Which wretched man at his own charge undo?
If after prospect of all this, the ass
Should find the voice he had in Æsop's days;
Then, doctor, then, casting his eyes around
On human fools, which everywhere abound,
Content with thistles, from all envy free,
And shaking his grave head, no doubt he'd cry,
'Good faith, man is a beast as much as we!'
A SATIRE TOUCHING NOBILITY.
OUT OF MONSIEUR BOILEAU.[1]
' TIS granted, that nobility in man
Is no wild fluttering notion of the brain,
Where he, descended of an ancient race,
Which a long train of numerous worthies grace,
By virtue's rules guiding his steady course,
Traces the steps of his bright ancestors.
But yet I can't endure an haughty ass,
Debauched with luxury and slothful ease,
Who, besides empty titles of high birth,
Has no pretence to anything of worth,
Should proudly wear the fame which others sought,
And boast of honour which himself ne'er got.
I grant, the acts which his forefathers did
Have furnished matter for old Hollinshed,
For which their scutcheon, by the conqueror graced,
Still bears a lion rampant for its crest;
But what does this vain mass of glory boot
To be the branch of such a noble root,
- ↑ Pope's obligations to Boileau have been to some extent traced by his critics. That he was also indebted to Oldham, may be easily determined by a comparison between this fluent and spirited version of one of Boileau's Satires, and the Fourth Epistle of the Essay on Man.
