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LXXI-LXXX
LXXI
`Foolish, no doubt, and wicked, to oppress
A poor unlucky devil without a shilling;
But then I blame the man himself much less
Than Bute and Grafton, and shall be unwilling
To see him punish`d here for their excess,
Since they were both damn`d long ago, and still in
Their place below: for me, I have forgiven,
And vote his "habeas corpus" into heaven.`
LXXII
`Wilkes,` said the Devil, `I understand all this;
You turn`d to half a courtier ere you died,
And seem to think it would not be amiss
To grow a whole one on the other side
Of Charon`s ferry; you forget that his
Reign is concluded; whatso`er betide,
He won`t be sovereign more: you`ve lost your labor,
For at the best he will be but your neighbour.
LXXIII
`However, I knew what to think of it,
When I beheld you in your jesting way,
Flitting and whispering round about the spit
Where Belial, upon duty for the day,
With Fox`s lard was basting William Pitt,
His pupil; I knew what to think, I say:
That fellow even in hell breeds farther ills;
I`ll have him gagg`d `twas one of his own bills.
LXXIV
`Call Junius!` From the crowd a shadow stalk`d,
And at the same there was a general squeeze,
So that the very ghosts no longer walk`d
In comfort, at their own aλrial ease,
But were all ramm`d, and jamm`d (but to be balk`d,
As we shall see), and jostled hands and knees,
Like wind compress`d and pent within a bladder,
Or like a human colic, which is sadder.
LXXV
The shadow came a tall, thin, grey-hair`d figure,
That look`d as it had been a shade on earth;
Quick in it motions, with an air of vigour,
But nought to mar its breeding or its birth;
Now it wax`d little, then again grew bigger,
With now an air of gloom, or savage mirth;
But as you gazed upon its features, they
Changed every instant to what, none could say.
LXXVI
The more intently the ghosts gazed, the less
Could they distinguish whose the features were;
The Devil himself seem`d puzzled even to guess;
They varied like a dream now here, now there;
And several people swore from out the press
They knew him perfectly; and one could swear
He was his father: upon which another
Was sure he was his mother`s cousin`s brother:
LXXVII
Another, that he was a duke, or a knight,
An orator, a lawyer, or a priest,
A nabob, a man-midwife; but the wight
Mysterious changed his countenance at least
As oft as they their minds; though in full sight
He stood, the puzzle only was increased;
The man was a phantasmagoria in
Himself he was so volatile and thin.
LXXVIII
The moment that you had pronounce him one,
Presto! his face change`d and he was another;
And when that change was hardly well put on,
It varied, till I don`t think his own mother
(If that he had a mother) would her son
Have known, he shifted so from one to t`other;
Till guessing from a pleasure grew a task,
At this epistolary `Iron Mask.`
LXXIX
For sometimes he like Cerberus would seem
`Three gentlemen at once` (as sagely says
Good Mrs. Malaprop); then you might deem
That he was not even one; now many rays
Were flashing round him; and now a thick steam
Hid him from sight like fogs on London days:
Now Burke, now Tooke he grew to people`s fancies,
And certes often like Sir Philip Francis.
LXXX
I`ve an hypothesis `tis quite my own;
I never let it out till now, for fear
Of doing people harm about the throne,
And injuring some minister or peer,
On whom the stigma might perhaps be blown;
It is my gentle public, lend thine ear!
`Tis, that what Junius we are wont to call
Was really, truly, nobody at all.
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