Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/41

Will haunt us fools, and other vices too,
Why should not reason use her own just sense,
And square her punishments to each offence?
Suppose a slave, as he removes the dish,
Licks the warm gravy or remains of fish,
Should his vexed master gibbet the poor lad,
He'd be a second Labeo, staring mad.
Now take another instance, and remark
A case of madness, grosser and more stark.
A friend has crossed you:—'tis a slight affair;
Not to forgive it writes you down a bear:—
You hate the man and his acquaintance fly,
As Ruso's debtors hide from Ruso's eye;
Poor victims, doomed, when that black pay-day's come,
Unless by hook or crook they raise the sum,
To stretch their necks, like captives to the knife,
And listen to dull histories for dear life.
Say, he has drunk too much, or smashed some ware,
Evander's once, inestimably rare,
Or stretched before me, in his zeal to dine,
To snatch a chicken I had meant for mine;
What then? is that a reason he should seem
Less pleasant, less deserving my esteem?
How could I treat him worse, were he to thieve,
Betray a secret, or a trust deceive?
Your men of words, who rate all crimes alike,
Collapse and founder, when on fact they strike:
Sense, custom, all, cry out against the thing,