beaux Far sooner than the nobler mushroom grows:      These are the lords of the poetic schools, Who preach the saucy pedantry of rules; Those powers the critics, who may boast the odds O'er Nile, with all its wilderness of gods; Nor could the nations kneel to viler shapes, Which worshipp'd cats, and sacrificed to apes; And can you think the wise forbear to laugh At the warm zeal that breeds this golden calf? Haply you judge these lines severely writ Against the proud usurpers of the pit; Stay while I tell my story, short, and true; To draw conclusions shall be left to you; Nor need I ramble far to force a rule, But lay the scene just here at Farnham[1] school. Last year, a lad hence by his parents sent With other cattle to the city went; Where having cast his coat, and well pursued The methods most in fashion to be lewd, Return'd a finish'd spark this summer down, Stock'd with the freshest gibberish of the town; A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds, Or crazy rules to make us wits by rote, Last just as long as every cuckoo's note:      What bungling, rusty tools are used by fate!      'Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate, My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed:      When man's ill genius to my presence sent This wretch, to rouse my wrath, for ruin meant; Who in his idiom vile, with Gray's-Inn grace, Squander'd his noisy talents to my face; Named every player on his fingers' ends, Swore all the wits were his peculiar friends; Talk'd with that saucy and familiar ease Of Wycherly, and you, and Mr. Bayes:[2]      Said, how a late report your friends had vex'd, Who heard you meant to write heroics next; For, tragedy, he knew, would lose you quite, And told you so at Will's[3] but t'other night. Thus are the lives of fools a sort of dreams, Rendering shades things, and substances of names; Such high companions may delusion keep, Lords are a footboy's cronies in his sleep. As a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown, Render'd the topping beauty of the town, Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot, To boast of favours that he never got; Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate, Brings his good parts and breeding in debate; And not 

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