"
Should some brave youth (worth being drunk) prove nice,
And from his fair inviter meanly shrink,
'T would please the ghost of my departed vice,
If, at my council, he repent and drink.
But Hervey represents the time when dissipation had run a long course,
and disgust, sanctity, and misanthropy were succeeding. To him, as to
Swift, men were "a worthless species of animals," their vices, natural;
their virtues, affectation:
Mankind I know, their nature and their art,
Their vice their own, their virtue but a part
Ill played so oft, that all the cheat can tell,
And dangerous only when 't is acted well,
* * * * *
To such reflections when I turn my mind
_I loathe my being, and abhor mankind._
[Footnote 90: Carlyle, "Frederick the Great," p. 13. vol. i.]
[Footnote 91: Addison, "An Account of the Greatest English Poets."
Quoted by Henry Morley, LL.D., "English Literature in the Reign of
Victoria."]
[Footnote 92: Lecky's "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i,
p. 502.]
[Footnote 93: Lord Hervey, "Memoirs of George II," v. 3, p. 527.]
[Footnote 94: Hervey's "Mem. of George II," vol. 1, p. 147, note.]
[Footnote 95: Walpole's "Reminiscences"; Hervey's "Mem.
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