THE RABBLE: OR, WHO PAYS?
How various and innumerable
Are those who live upon the rabble!
'Tis they maintain the Church and State,
Employ the priest and magistrate;
Bear all the charge of government,
And pay the public fines and rent;
Defray all taxes and excises,
And impositions of all prices;
Bear all th' expense of peace and war,
And pay the pulpit and the bar;
Maintain all churches and religions,
And give their pastors exhibitions;
And those who have the greatest flocks
Are primitive and orthodox;
Support all schismatics and sects,
And pay them for tormenting texts;
Take all their doctrines off their hands,
And pay 'em in good rents and lands;
Discharge all costly offices,
The doctor's and the lawyer's fees,
The hangman's wages, and the scores
Of caterpillar bawds and whores;
Discharge all damages and costs
Of Knights and Squires of the Post;
All statesmen, cut-purses, and padders,
And pay for all their ropes and ladders;
All pettifoggers, and all sorts
Of markets, churches, and of courts;
All sums of money paid or spent,
With all the charges incident,
Laid out, or thrown away, or given
To purchase this world, Hell or Heaven.
As the Chameleon who is known
To have no colors of its own:
But borrows from his neighbor's hue
His white or black, his green or blue;
And struts as much in ready light,
Which credit gives him upon sight:
As if the rainbow were in tail
Settled on him, and his heirs male;
So the young squire, when first he comes
From country school to Will or Tom's:
And equally, in truth is fit
To be a statesman or a wit;
Without one notion of his own,
He saunters wildly up and down;
Till some acquaintance, good or bad,
Takes notice of a staring lad;
Admits him in among the gang:
They jest, reply, dispute, harangue;
He acts and talks, as they befriend him,
Smear'd with the colors which they lend him.
Thus merely, as his fortune chances,
His merit or his vice advances.
If haply he the sect pursues,
That read and comment upon news;
He takes up their mysterious face:
He drinks his coffee without lace.
This week his mimic tongue runs o'er
What they have said the week before;
His wisdom sets all Europe right,
And teaches Marlborough when to fight.
Or if it be his fate to meet
With folks who have more wealth than wit:
He loves cheap port, and double bub;
And settles in the hum-drum club:
He learns how stocks will fall or rise;
Holds poverty the greatest vice;
Thinks wit the bane of conversation;
And says that learning spoils a nation.
But if, at first, he minds his hits,
And drinks champagne among the wits!
Five deep he toasts the towering lasses;
Repeats you verses wrote on glasses;
Is in the chair; prescribes the law;
And lies with those he never saw.
SLY Merry Andrew, the last Southwark fair
(At Barthol'mew he did not much appear:
So peevish was the edict of the Mayor)
At Southwark, therefore, as his tricks he show'd,
To please our masters, and his friends the crowd;
A huge neat's tongue he in his right hand held:
His left was with a huge black pudding fill'd.
With a grave look in this odd equipage,
The clownish mimic traverses the stage:
Why, how now, Andrew! cries his brother droll,
To-day's conceit, methinks, is something dull:
Come on, sir, to our worthy friends explain,
What does your emblematic worship mean?
Quoth Andrew; Honest English let us speak:
Your emble-(what d' ye call 't) is heathen Greek.
To tongue or pudding thou hast no pretense;
Learning thy talent is, but mine is sense.
That busy fool I was, which thou art now;
Desirous to correct, not knowing how :
With very good design, but little wit,
Blaming or praising things, as I thought fit.
I for this conduct had what I deserv'd;
And dealing honestly, was almost starv'd.
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