A Satire Anthology. Wells Carolyn

makes morality a crime,

      The most notorious of the time;

      Morality, which both the saints

      And wicked, too, cry out against?”

      “’Cause grace and virtue are within

      Prohibited degrees of kin;

      And therefore no true saint allows

      They shall be suffered to espouse.”

Samuel Butler.

      DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND

      A  COUNTRY that draws fifty foot of water,

      In which men live as in the hold of Nature,

      And when the sea does in upon them break,

      And drowns a province, does but spring a leak;

      That always ply the pump, and never think

      They can be safe but at the rate they stink;

      They live as if they had been run aground,

      And, when they die, are cast away and drowned;

      That dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey

      Upon the goods all nations’ fleets convey;

      And when their merchants are blown up and crackt,

      Whole towns are cast away in storms, and wreckt;

      That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes,

      And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes:

      A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,

      In which they do not live, but go aboard.

Samuel Butler.

      THE RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS

      FOR his religion it was fit

      To match his learning and his wit:

      Twas Presbyterian true blue;

      For he was of that stubborn crew

      Of errant saints, whom all men grant

      To be the true Church militant;

      Such as do build their faith upon

      The holy text of pike and gun;

      Decide all controversies by

      Infallible artillery,

      And prove their doctrine orthodox,

      By apostolic blows and knocks;

      Call fire, and sword, and desolation,

      A godly, thorough reformation.

      Which always must be carried on,

      And still be doing, never done;

      As if religion were intended

      For nothing else but to be mended;

      A sect whose chief devotion lies

      In odd perverse antipathies;

      In falling out with that or this,

      And finding somewhat still amiss;

      More peevish, cross, and splenetic,

      Than dog distract or monkey sick;

      That with more care keep holy-day

      The wrong, than others the right way;

      Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,

      By damning those they have no mind to;

      Still so perverse and opposite,

      As if they worshipped God for spite;

      The self-same thing they will abhor

      One way, and long another for;

      Free-will they one way disavow,

      Another, nothing else allow;

      All piety consists therein

      In them, in other men all sin;

      Rather than fail, they will defy

      That which they love most tenderly;

      Quarrel with minc’d pies, and disparage

      Their best and dearest friend, plum porridge;

      Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

      And blaspheme custard through the nose.

Samuel Butler.

      SATIRE ON THE SCOTS

      A  LAND where one may pray with cursed intent,

      Oh, may they never suffer banishment!

      Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang’d his doom —

      Not forc’d him wander, but confin’d him home.

      Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,

      As if the devil had ubiquity;

      Hence ’tis they live as rovers, and defy

      This or that place, rags of geography;

      They’re citizens o’ th’ world, they’re all in all;

      Scotland’s a nation epidemical.

      And yet they ramble not to learn the mode

      How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad…

      No, the Scots errant fight, and fight to eat;

      Their ostrich-stomachs make their swords their meat;

      Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt,

      Who use to string their teeth upon their belt…

      Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!

      How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!

      They wanted food and raiment; so they took

      Religion for their seamstress and their cook.

      Unmask them well, their honours and estate,

      As well as conscience, are sophisticate.

      Shrive but their title and their moneys poize,

      A laird and twenty pence pronounc’d with noise,

      When constru’d but for a plain yeoman go,

      And a good sober twopence, and well so.

      Hence, then, you proud impostors! get you gone,

      You Picts in gentry and devotion,

      You scandal to the stock of verse – a race

      Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace!

      Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce

      The ostracism, and sham’d it out of use.

      The Indian that heaven did forswear,

      Because he heard some Spaniards were there,

      Had he but known what Scots in hell had been,

      He would, Erasmus-like, have hung between.

      My muse hath done. A voyder for the nonce,

      I wrong the devil should I pick their bones;

      That dish is his; for when the Scots decease,

      Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles.

      A Scot when from the gallow-tree got loose,

      Drops into Styx, and turns a Soland goose.

John Cleiveland.

      SONG

      WHY should you swear I am forsworn,

      Since thine I vowed to be?

      Lady, it is already morn,

      And ’twas last night I swore to thee

      That fond impossibility.

      Have I not loved thee much and long,

      A