Nought but inconstancy Britannia meets,
And broken faith in their abandon'd sheets;
From the same hand how various is the page!
What civil war their brother pamphlets wage!
Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare;
Say, is this lunacy?--I wish it were.
If such our writers, startled at the sight,
Felons may bless their stars they cannot write!
How justly Proteus' transmigrations fit
The monstrous changes of a modern wit!
Now, such a gentle stream of eloquence
As seldom rises to the verge of sense;
Now, by mad rage, transform'd into a flame,
Which yet fit engines, well applied, can tame;
Now, on immodest trash, the swine obscene,
Invites the town to sup at Drury Lane;
A dreadful lion, now he roars at power,
Which sends him to his brothers at the Tower;
He's now a serpent, and his double tongue
Salutes, nay licks, the feet of those he stung;
What knot can bind him, his evasion such?
One knot he well deserves, which might do much.
The flood, flame, swine, the lion, and the snake,
Those fivefold monsters, modern authors make:
The snake reigns most; snakes, Pliny says, are bred
When the brain's perish'd in a human head.
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