}
Would't thou, to run the gauntlet, thefe expofe
To a whole company of hob-nail'd shoes?
Sure the good-breeding of wife citizens
Should teach them more good-nature to their fhins.
Besides, whom canft thou think so much thy friend,
Who dares appear thy business to defend ?
Dry up thy tears, and pocket up th' abuse,
Nor put thy friend to make a bad excufe:
The judge cries out, Your evidence produce.
Will he, who faw the foldier's mutton-fift,
And faw thee maul'd, appear within the lift,,
To witness truth? When I fee one fo brave,
The dead, think I, are rifen from the grave;
And with their long spade beards, and matted hair,
"Our honeft ancestors are come.to take the air.
Against a clown, with more fecurity,
A witness may be brought to swear a lye,
Than, though his evidence be full and fair,
To vouch a truth against a man of war.
More benefits remain, and claim'd as rights,
Which are a standing army's perquifites.
If any rogue vexatious fuits advance
Against me for my known inheritance,
Enter by violence my fruitful grounds,
Or take the facred land-mark from my bounds,
Those bounds, which with poffeffion and with prayer)
And offer'd cakes, have been my annual care:
Or if my debtors do not keep their day,
Deny their hands, and then refuse to pay;
I muft, with patience, all the terms attend,
Among the common causes that depend,
Till mine is call'd; and that long look'd-for day
Is ftill encumber'd with fome new delay:
Perhaps the cloth of state is only spread,
Some of the quorum may be fick a-bed;
That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this
O'er night was bowfy, and goes out to piss:
So many rubs appear, the time is gone
For hearing, and the tedious fuit goes on:
But buff and belt-men never know these cares,
No time, nor trick of law their action bars:
Their caufe they to an eafter iffue put:
They will be heard, or they lug out, and cut.
Another branch of their revenue ftill
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Remains, beyond their boundless right to kill,
Their father, yet alive, impower'd to make a will.
For, what their prowefs gain'd, the law declares
Is to themselves alone, and to their heirs :
No fhare of that goes back to the begetter,
But if the fon fights well, and plunders better,
Like ftout Coranus, his old fhaking fire
Does a remembrance in his will defire:
Inquifitive of fights, and longs in vain
To find him in the number of the flain:
But ftill he lives, and rifing by the war,
Enjoys his gains, and has enough to spare:
For 'tis a noble general's prudent part
To cherish valour, and reward defert :
Let him be daub'd with lace, live high, and whore;
Sometimes be loufy, but be never poor.
Argument of the PROLOGUE to the Firft Satire.
THE defign of the author was to conceal his name and quality. He lived in the dangerous times of the tyrant Nero; and aims particularly at him in most of his fatires. For which reafon, though he was a Roman knight, and of a plentiful fortune, he would appear in this prologue but a beggarly poet, who writes for bread. After this, he breaks into the business of the firft fatire; which is chiefly to decry the poetry then in fashion, and the impudence of those who were endeavouring to pass their stuff upon
the world.
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