TYBURN.

To the Marine Society.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The design of the Marine Society is in itself so laudable, and has been pursued so successfully for the public good, that I thought it merited a public acknowledgment: but, to take off from the flatness of a direct compliment, I have, through the whole poem, loaded their Institution with such reproaches as will show, I hope, in the most striking manner, its real utility.

By authentic accounts it appears, that from the first rise of the Society to the present year, 1762, they have collected, clothed, and fitted out, for the sea service, 5452 grown men, 4511 boys, in all 9963 persons; whom they have thus not only saved, in all probability, from perdition and infamy, but rendered them useful members of the community; at a time too when their country stood most in need of their assistance.

It has been (all examples show it)
The privilege of every poet,

From ancient down through modern time,
To bid dead matter live in rhyme;
With wit enliven senseless rocks,
Draw repartee from wooden blocks;
Make buzzards senators of note,
And rooks harangue that geese may
These moral fictions, first design'd

To mend and mortify mankind,
Old Æsop, as our children know,
Taught twice ten hundred years ago.
His Fly upon the chariot-wheel
Could all a statesman's merit feel,

vote.

And, to its own importance just,
Exclaim, with Bufo, ' What a dust!'
His horse-dung, when the flood ran high,
In Colon's air and accent cry,

While tumbling down the turbid stream,
‹ Lord love us, how we apples swim!'
But farther instances to cite

Would tire the hearer's patience quite.
No; what their numbers and their worth,
How these admire while those hold forth,
From Hyde Park on to Clerkenwell,
Let clubs, let coffee-houses tell,

Where England, through the world renown'd,
In all its wisdom may be found;
While I, for ornament and use,
An orator of wood produce.

Why should the gentle reader stare?
Are wooden orators so rare ?-
Saint Stephen's Chapel, Rufus' Hall,
That hears them in the pleader bawl,
That hears them in the patriot thunder,
Can tell if such things are a wonder:
So can St. Dunstan's in the West,
When good Romaine harangues his best,
And tells his staring congregation

That sober sense is sure damnation ;

That Newton's guilt was worse than treason
For using, what God gave him, reason.
'A pox of all this prefacing!

(Smart Balbus cries) come, name the thing;
That such there are we all agree:
What is this wood? Why-Tyburn-tree!
Hear then this reverend oak barangue,
Who makes men do so, ere they hang.

Patibulum loquitur.

Each thing whatever, when aggrieved,
Of right complains to be relieved.
When rogues so raised the price of wheat
That few folks could afford to eat,
(Just as when doctors' fees run high
Few patients can afford to die)
The poor durst into murmurs break,
For losers must have leave to speak;
Then from reproaching fell to mauling
Each neighbour-rogue they found forestalling.
As these again, their knaves and setters,
Durst vent complaints against their betters,
Whose only crime was in defeating
Their schemes of growing rich by cheating;
So shall not I my wrongs relate,
An injured minister of state?

The finisher of care and pain
May sure with better grace complain,
For reasons no less strong and true,
Marine Society! of you;

Of you, as every carman knows,
My latest and most fatal foes.

'My property you basely steal,
Which e'en a British oak can feel;
Feel and resent :-what wonder then
It should be felt by British men,
When France, insulting, durst invade
Their clearest property of trade?
For which both nations at the bar
Of that supreme tribunal-War,
To show their reasons have agreed,
And lawyers by ten thousands feed,

Who now for legal quirks and puns
Plead with the rhetoric of great guns,
And each his client's cause maintains
By knocking out the' opponent's brains;
While Europe all-but we adjourn
This wise digression, and return.

Your rules and statutes have undone me;
My surest cards begin to shun me:
My native subjects dare rebel,

Those who were born for me and Hell;
And but for you, the scoundrel line
Had every mother's son died mine :
A race unnumber'd as unknown,
Whom town or suburb calls her own:
Of vagrant love the various spawn,
From rags and filth, from lace and lawn;
Sons of Fleet Ditch, of bulks, of benches,
Where peer and porter meet their wenches;
For neither health nor shame can wean us
From mixing with the midnight Venus.

، Nor let my cits be here forgot;
They know to sin as well as sot.
When Night demure walks forth, array'd
In her thin negligée of shade,
Late risen from their long regale
Of beef and beer, and bawdy tale,
Abroad the Common-council sally,
To poach for game in lane or alley:
This gets a son, whose first essay
Will filch his father's till away;
A daughter that, who may retire,
Some few years hence, with her own sire;
And while his hand is on her locket
The filial virtue picks his pocket.

Change Alley, too, is grown so nice,
A broker dares refine on vice;
With lordlike scorn of marriage vows,
In her own arms he cuckolds spouse;

For young and fresh while he would wish her,
His loose thought glows with Kitty Fisher;
Or after nobler quarry running,
Profanely paints her out a Gunning.

Now these, of each degree and sort,
At Wapping dropp'd, perhaps at Court,
Bred up for me, to swear and lie,
To laugh at Hell, and Heaven defy ;*
These, Tyburn's regimented train,
Who risk their necks to spread my reign,
From age to age, by right divine,
Hereditary rogues, were mine;
And each, by discipline severe,
Improved beyond all shame and fear,
From guilt to guilt advancing daily,
My constant friend, the good Old Bailey,
To me made over, late or soon,
I think, at latest, once a moon;
But by your interloping care
Not one in ten shall be my share.

'Ere 'tis too late, your error see,
You foes to Britain and to me !
To me, agreed-but to the nation?-
I prove it thus by demonstration.

First, that there is much good in ill My great apostle Mandeville

Has made most clear. Read, if you please, His moral Fable of "The Bees."

Our reverend clergy next will own

Were all men good, their trade were gone;