Vulgar words in The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes (Page 1)
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,146 ~ ~ ~
Blackmore and Quarles, those blockheads of renown, Lavish'd their ink, but never harm'd the town.
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O had thy verse been impotent as dull, Nor spoke the rancorous heart, but lumpish scull; Had mobs distinguish'd, they who howl'd thy fame, The icicle from the pure diamond's flame, 120 From fancy's soul thy gross imbruted sense, From dauntless truth thy shameless insolence, From elegance confusion's monstrous mass, And from the lion's spoils the skulking ass, From rapture's strain the drawling doggrel line, From warbling seraphim the grunting swine; With gluttons, dunces, rakes, thy name had slept, Nor o'er her sullied fame Britannia wept: Nor had the Muse, with honest zeal possess'd, To avenge her country, by thy name disgraced, 130 Raised this bold strain for virtue, truth, mankind, And thy fell shade to infamy resign'd.
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140 But when a ruffian, whose portentous crimes, Like plagues and earthquakes terrify the times, Triumphs through life, from legal judgment free, For Hell may hatch what law could ne'er foresee: Sacred from vengeance shall his memory rest?-- Judas, though dead, though damn'd, we still detest.
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He characterizes the miser severely; he lashes the proud wicked man whom he sees pompously hearsed into Hell; with stern irony he pursues the beauty from her looking-glass to the clods where "The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd, Feeds on her damask cheek;" he derides the baffled son of Æsculapius, who is deserted and deceived by his own drugs; and he exerts all the fearful force of his genius to show us the suicide in that "Other Place," where "The common damn'd shun his society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."
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when for thy sake The fool throws up his interest in both worlds; First starved in this, then damn'd in that to come.
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Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage 410 To rush into the presence of our Judge; As if we challenged him to do his worst, And matter'd not his wrath!--Unheard-of tortures Must be reserved for such: these herd together; The common damn'd shun their society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul.
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While fools adore, and vassal-bards obey, Let the great monarch ass through Gotham bray!
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Let some soft mummy of a peer, who stains His rank, some sodden lump of ass's brains, To that abandon'd wretch his sanction give; Support his slander, and his wants relieve!