A Wicked Treasonable Libel

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Title:     A Wicked Treasonable Libel
Author: Jonathan Swift [More Titles by Swift]

A Wicked Treasonable Libel[1]

While the king and his ministers keep such a pother,
And all about changing one whore for another,
Think I to myself, what need all this strife,
His majesty first had a whore of a wife,
And surely the difference mounts to no more
Than, now he has gotten a wife of a whore.
Now give me your judgment a very nice case on;
Each queen has a son, say which is the base one?
Say which of the two is the right Prince of Wales,
To succeed, when, (God bless him,) his majesty fails;
Perhaps it may puzzle our loyal divines
To unite these two Protestant parallel lines,
From a left-handed wife, and one turn'd out of doors,
Two reputed king's sons, both true sons of whores;
No law can determine it, which is first oars.
But, alas! poor old England, how wilt thou be master'd;
For, take which you please, it must needs be a bastard.

[Footnote 1: So the following very remarkable verses are entitled, in a copy which exists in the Dean's hand-writing bearing the following characteristic memorandum on the back: "A traitorous libel, writ several years ago. It is inconsistent with itself. Copied September 9, 1735. I wish I knew the author, that I might hang him." And at the bottom of the paper is subjoined this postscript. "I copied out this wicked paper many years ago, in hopes to discover the traitor of an author, that I might inform against him." For the foundation of the scandals current during the reign of George I, to which the lines allude, see Walpole's Reminiscences of the Courts of George the first and second, chap, ii, at p. cii, Walpole's Letters, edit. Cunningham.--_W. E. B._]

[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: Wicked Treasonable Libel

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