On A Printer's Being Sent To Newgate

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Title:     On A Printer's Being Sent To Newgate
Author: Jonathan Swift [More Titles by Swift]

On a Printer's[1] Being Sent to Newgate

Better we all were in our graves,
Than live in slavery to slaves;
Worse than the anarchy at sea,
Where fishes on each other prey;
Where every trout can make as high rants
O'er his inferiors, as our tyrants;
And swagger while the coast is clear:
But should a lordly pike appear,
Away you see the varlet scud,
Or hide his coward snout in mud.
Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach,
He dares not venture to approach;
Yet still has impudence to rise,
And, like Domitian,[2] leap at flies.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Faulkner, for printing the "Proposal for the better Regulation and Improvement of Quadrille."]

[Footnote 2: "Inter initia principatus cotidie secretum sibi horarum sumere solebat, nec quicquam amplius quam muscas captare ac stilo praeacuto configere; ut cuidam interroganti, essetne quis intus cum Caesare, non absurde responsum sit a Vibio Crispo, _ne muscam quidem_" (Suet. 3).--_W. E. B._]

[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: On A Printer's Being Sent To Newgate

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