WHILE you, great Patron of Mankind! sustain | |
| The balanced world, and open all the main; | |
| Your country, chief, in Arms abroad defend, | |
| At home with Morals, Arts, and Laws amend; | |
| How shall the Muse, from such a monarch, steal | 5 |
| An hour, and not defraud the public weal? | |
| Edward and Henry, now the boast of Fame, | |
| And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name, | |
| After a life of gen’rous toils endured,— | |
| The Gaul subdued, or property secured, | 10 |
| Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm’d, | |
| Or laws establish’d, and the world reform’d— | |
| Closed their long glories with a sigh, to find | |
| Th’ unwilling gratitude of base Mankind! | |
| All human Virtue, to its latest breath, | 15 |
| Finds Envy never conquer’d but by Death. | |
| The great Alcides, ev’ry labour past, | |
| Had still this monster to subdue at last: | |
| Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray | |
| Each star of meaner merit fades away! | 20 |
| Oppress’d we feel the beam directly beat; | |
| Those suns of glory please not till they set. | |
| To thee the World its present homage pays, | |
| The harvest early, but mature the praise: | |
| Great friend of Liberty! in Kings a name | 25 |
| Above all Greek, above all Roman fame; | |
| Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered | |
| As Heav’n’s own oracles from altars heard. | |
| Wonder of Kings! like whom to mortal eyes | |
| None e’er has risen, and none e’er shall rise. | 30 |
| Just in one instance, be it yet confest | |
| Your people, sir, are partial in the rest; | |
| Foes to all living worth except your own, | |
| And advocates for folly dead and gone. | |
| Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; | 35 |
| It is the Rust we value, not the Gold. | |
| Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learn’d by rote, | |
| And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote; | |
| One likes no language but the Faery Queen; | |
| A Scot will fight for Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green; | 40 |
| And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, | |
| He swears the Muses met him at the Devil. | |
| Tho’ justly Greece her eldest sons admires, | |
| Why should not we be wiser than our sires? | |
| In every public virtue we excel, | 45 |
| We build, we paint, we sing, we dance, as well; | |
| And learned Athens to our art must stoop, | |
| Could she behold us tumbling thro’ a hoop. | |
| If time improve our Wit as well as Wine, | |
| Say at what age a poet grows divine? | 50 |
| Shall we, or shall we not, account him so | |
| Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago? | |
| End all dispute; and fix the year precise | |
| When British bards begin t’ immortalize? | |
| ‘Who lasts a century can have no flaw; | 55 |
| I hold that Wit a classic, good in law.’ | |
| Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? | |
| And shall we deem him ancient, right, and sound, | |
| Or damn to all eternity at once | |
| At ninety-nine a modern and a dunce? | 60 |
| ‘We shall not quarrel for a year or two; | |
| By courtesy of England he may do.’ | |
| Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare, | |
| I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, | |
| And melt down Ancients like a heap of snow, | 65 |
| While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe, | |
| And estimating authors by the year, | |
| Bestow a garland only on a bier. | |
| Shakespeare (whom you and every play-house bill | |
| Style the divine! the matchless! what you will) | 70 |
| For Gain, not Glory, wing’d his roving flight, | |
| And grew immortal in his own despite. | |
| Ben, old and poor, as little seem’d to heed | |
| The life to come in every poet’s creed. | |
| Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet, | 75 |
| His Moral pleases, not his pointed Wit: | |
| Forgot his Epic, nay, Pindaric art, | |
| But still I love the language of his heart. | |
| ‘Yet surely, surely these were famous men! | |
| What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben? | 80 |
| In all debates where Critics bear a part, | |
| Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson’s Art, | |
| Of Shakespeare’s Nature, and of Cowley’s Wit; | |
| How Beaumont’s judgment check’d what Fletcher writ; | |
| How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow; | 85 |
| But for the passions, Southern sure, and Rowe! | |
| These, only these, support the crowded stage, | |
| From eldest Heywood down to Cibber’s age.’ | |
| All this may be; the People’s voice is odd; | |
| It is, and it is not, the voice of God. | 90 |
| To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, | |
| And yet deny the Careless Husband praise, | |
| Or say our fathers never broke a rule; | |
| Why then, I say, the Public is a fool. | |
| But let them own that greater faults than we | 95 |
| They had, and greater virtues, I ’ll agree. | |
| Spenser himself affects the obsolete, | |
| And Sidney’s verse halts ill on Roman feet; | |
| Milton’s strong pinion now not Heav’n can bound, | |
| Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground. | 100 |
| In quibbles Angel and Archangel join, | |
| And God the Father turns a School-divine. | |
| Not that I ’d lop the beauties from his book, | |
| Like slashing Bentley with his desp’rate hook; | |
| Or damn all Shakespeare, like th’ affected fool | 105 |
| At Court, who hates whate’er he read at School. | |
| But for the Wits of either Charles’s days, | |
| The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease; | |
| Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more | |
| (Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o’er), | 110 |
| One simile that solitary shines | |
| In the dry Desert of a thousand lines, | |
| Or lengthen’d thought, that gleams thro’ many a page, | |
| Has sanctified whole poems for an age. | |
| I lose my patience, and I own it too, | 115 |
| When works are censured not as bad, but new; | |
| While, if our elders break all Reason’s laws, | |
| These fools demand not pardon, but applause. | |
| On Avon’s bank, where flowers eternal blow, | |
| If I but ask if any weed can grow, | 120 |
| One tragic sentence if I dare deride, | |
| Which Betterton’s grave action dignified, | |
| Or well-mouth’d Booth with emphasis proclaims, | |
| (Tho’ but perhaps a muster-roll of names), | |
| How will our fathers rise up in a rage, | 125 |
| And swear all shame is lost in GEORGE’S age! | |
| You ’d think no fools disgraced the former reign, | |
| Did not some grave examples yet remain, | |
| Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill, | |
| And having once been wrong, will be so still. | 130 |
| He who, to seem more deep than you or I, | |
| Extols old bards, or Merlin’s prophecy, | |
| Mistake him not; he envies, not admires, | |
| And to debase the sons exalts the sires. | |
| Had ancient times conspired to disallow | 135 |
| What then was new, what had been ancient now? | |
| Or what remain’d, so worthy to be read | |
| By learned critics of the mighty dead? | |
| In days of ease, when now the weary sword | |
| Was sheath’d, and luxury with Charles restor’d, | 140 |
| In every taste of foreign courts improv’d, | |
| ‘All by the King’s example liv’d and lov’d,’ | |
| Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t’ excel; | |
| Newmarket’s glory rose, as Britain’s fell; | |
| The soldier breathed the gallantries of France, | 145 |
| And ev’ry flowery Courtier writ Romance. | |
| Then marble, soften’d into life, grew warm, | |
| And yielding metal flow’d to human form; | |
| Lely on animated canvas stole | |
| The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul. | 150 |
| No wonder then, when all was love and sport, | |
| The willing Muses were debauch’d at court; | |
| On each enervate string they taught the note | |
| To pant, or tremble thro’ a Eunuch’s throat. | |
| But Britain, changeful as a child at play, | 155 |
| Now calls in princes, and now turns away. | |
| Now Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate; | |
| Now all for Pleasure, now for Church and State; | |
| Now for Prerogatives, and now for laws; | |
| Effects unhappy, from a noble cause. | 160 |
| Time was, a sober Englishman would knock | |
| His servants up, and rise by five o’clock; | |
| Instruct his family in ev’ry rule, | |
| And send his wife to church, his son to school. | |
| To worship like his fathers was his care; | 165 |
| To teach their frugal virtues to his heir; | |
| To prove that Luxury could never hold, | |
| And place on good security his gold. | |
| Now times are changed, and one poetic itch | |
| Has seized the Court and City, Poor and Rich; | 170 |
| Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays; | |
| Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays; | |
| To theatres and to rehearsals throng, | |
| And all our grace at table is a song. | |
| I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie: | 175 |
| Not —’s self e’er tells more fibs than I. | |
| When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore, | |
| And promise our best friends to rhyme no more, | |
| We wake next morning in a raging fit, | |
| And call for pen and ink to show our wit. | 180 |
| He served a ’prenticeship who sets up shop; | |
| Ward tried on puppies and the poor his drop; | |
| Ev’n Radcliff’s doctors travel first to France, | |
| Nor dare to practise till they ’ve learn’d to dance. | |
| Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? | 185 |
| (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile), | |
| But those who cannot write, and those who can, | |
| All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. | |
| Yet, Sir, reflect; the mischief is not great; | |
| These madmen never hurt the Church or State: | 190 |
| Sometimes the folly benefits mankind, | |
| And rarely av’rice taints the tuneful mind. | |
| Allow him but his plaything of a Pen, | |
| He ne’er rebels, or plots, like other men: | |
| Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he ’ll never mind, | 195 |
| And knows no losses while the Muse is kind. | |
| To cheat a friend or ward, he leaves to Peter; | |
| The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre, | |
| Enjoys his Garden and his Book in quiet; | |
| And then—a perfect hermit in his diet. | 200 |
| Of little use the man you may suppose | |
| Who says in verse what others say in prose; | |
| Yet let me show a Poet’s of some weight, | |
| And (tho’ no soldier) useful to the State. | |
| What will a child learn sooner than a song? | 205 |
| What better teach a foreigner the tongue— | |
| What ’s long or short, each accent where to place, | |
| And speak in public with some sort of grace? | |
| I scarce can think him such a worthless thing, | |
| Unless he praise some monster of a King; | 210 |
| Or virtue or religion turn to sport, | |
| To please a lewd or unbelieving Court. | |
| Unhappy Dryden!—In all Charles’s days | |
| Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays; | |
| And in our own (excuse some courtly stains) | 215 |
| No whiter page than Addison remains. | |
| He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth, | |
| And sets the passions on the side of Truth, | |
| Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest Art, | |
| And pours each human virtue in the heart. | 220 |
| Let Ireland tell how wit upheld her cause, | |
| Her trade supported, and supplied her laws; | |
| And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved, | |
| ‘The rights a Court attack’d, a Poet saved.’ | |
| Behold the hand that wrought a Nation’s cure, | 225 |
| Stretch’d to relieve the idiot and the poor; | |
| Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn, | |
| And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn. | |
| Not but there are, who merit other palms; | |
| Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms; | 230 |
| The boys and girls whom charity maintains | |
| Implore your help in these pathetic strains: | |
| How could Devotion touch the country pews | |
| Unless the Gods bestow’d a proper Muse? | |
| Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work, | 235 |
| Verse prays for peace, or sings down pope and Turk. | |
| The silenced preacher yields to potent strain, | |
| And feels that Grace his prayer besought in vain; | |
| The blessing thrills thro’ all the lab’ring throng, | |
| And Heav’n is won by violence of song. | 240 |
| Our rural ancestors, with little blest, | |
| Patient of labour when the end was rest, | |
| Indulged the day that housed their annual grain | |
| With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain. | |
| The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share, | 245 |
| Ease of their toil, and partners of their care: | |
| The Laugh, the Jest, attendants on the bowl, | |
| Smooth’d ev’ry brow, and open’d ev’ry soul: | |
| With growing years the pleasing license grew, | |
| And taunts alternate innocently flew. | 250 |
| But Times corrupt, and Nature, ill inclin’d, | |
| Produced the point that left a sting behind; | |
| Till friend with friend, and families at strife, | |
| Triumphant malice raged thro’ private life. | |
| Who felt the wrong, or fear’d it, took th’ alarm, | 255 |
| Appeal’d to law, and Justice lent her arm. | |
| At length by wholesome dread of statutes bound, | |
| The poets learn’d to please, and not to wound: | |
| Most warp’d to Flatt’ry’s side; but some, more nice, | |
| Preserv’d the freedom, and forbore the vice. | 260 |
| Hence Satire rose, that just the medium hit, | |
| And heals with morals what it hurts with wit. | |
| We conquer’d France, but felt our captive’s charms, | |
| Her arts victorious triumph’d o’er our arms; | |
| Britain to soft refinements less a foe, | 265 |
| Wit grew polite, and numbers learn’d to flow. | |
| Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join | |
| The varying verse, the full resounding line, | |
| The long majestic march, and energy divine: | |
| Tho’ still some traces of our rustic vein | 270 |
| And splay-foot verse remain’d, and will remain. | |
| Late, very late, correctness grew our care, | |
| When the tired nation breathed from civil war | |
| Exact Racine and Corneille’s noble fire | |
| Show’d us that France had something to admire. | 275 |
| Not but the tragic spirit was our own, | |
| And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway, shone; | |
| But Otway fail’d to polish or refine, | |
| And fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line. | |
| Ev’n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, | 280 |
| The last and greatest art—the art to blot. | |
| Some doubt if equal pains or equal fire | |
| The humbler Muse of Comedy require. | |
| But in known images of life I guess | |
| The labour greater, as th’ indulgence less. | 285 |
| Observe how seldom ev’n the best succeed: | |
| Tell me if Congreve’s fools are fools indeed? | |
| What pert low dialogue has Farquhar writ! | |
| How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit: | |
| The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, | 290 |
| Who fairly puts all characters to bed! | |
| And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, | |
| To make poor Pinkey eat with vast applause! | |
| But fill their purse, our poet’s work is done, | |
| Alike to them by pathos or by pun. | 295 |
| O you! whom Vanity’s light bark conveys | |
| On Fame’s mad voyage by the wind of praise, | |
| With what a shifting gale your course you ply, | |
| For ever sunk too low, or borne too high. | |
| Who pants for glory finds but short repose; | 300 |
| A breath revives him, or a breath o’erthrows. | |
| Farewell the Stage! if just as thrives the play | |
| The silly bard grows fat or falls away. | |
| There still remains, to mortify a Wit, | |
| The many-headed monster of the pit; | 305 |
| A senseless, worthless, and unhonour’d crowd, | |
| Who, to disturb their betters, mighty proud, | |
| Clatt’ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke, | |
| Call for the Farce, the Bear, or the Blackjoke. | |
| What dear delight to Britons farce affords! | 310 |
| Ever the taste of Mobs, but now of Lords: | |
| (Taste! that eternal wanderer, which flies | |
| From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes.) | |
| The play stands still; damn action and discourse! | |
| Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse; | 315 |
| Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn, | |
| Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; | |
| The Champion too! and, to complete the jest, | |
| Old Edward’s armour beams on Cibber’s breast. | |
| With laughter sure Democritus had died, | 320 |
| Had he beheld an audience gape so wide. | |
| Let bear or elephant be e’er so white, | |
| The people sure, the people are the sight! | |
| Ah, luckless Poet! stretch thy lungs and roar, | |
| That bear or elephant shall heed thee more; | 325 |
| While all its throats the gallery extends, | |
| And all the thunder of the pit ascends! | |
| Loud as the wolves on Orcas’ stormy steep | |
| Howl to the roarings of the northern deep, | |
| Such is the shout, the long applauding note, | 330 |
| At Quin’s high plume, or Oldfield’s petticoat; | |
| Or when from court a birthday suit bestow’d, | |
| Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load. | |
| Booth enters—hark! the universal peal! | |
| ‘But has he spoken?’—Not a syllable. | 335 |
| ‘What shook the stage, and made the people stare?’ | |
| Cato’s long wig, flower’d gown, and lacker’d chair. | |
| Yes, lest you think I rally more than teach, | |
| Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach, | |
| Let me for once presume t’ instruct the times, | 340 |
| To know the Poet from the man of rhymes: | |
| ’T is he who gives my breast a thousand pains, | |
| Can make me feel each passion that he feigns, | |
| Enrage, compose, with more than magic art, | |
| With pity and with terror tear my heart, | 345 |
| And snatch me o’er the earth, or thro’ the air, | |
| To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where. | |
| But not this part of the poetic state | |
| Alone deserves the favour of the great. | |
| Think of those authors, Sir, who would rely | 350 |
| More on a reader’s sense than gazer’s eye. | |
| Or who shall wander where the Muses sing? | |
| Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring? | |
| How shall we fill a library with Wit, | |
| When Merlin’s Cave is half unfurnish’d yet? | 355 |
| My liege! why writers little claim your thought | |
| I guess, and, with their leave, will tell the fault. | |
| We Poets are (upon a poet’s word) | |
| Of all mankind the creatures most absurd: | |
| The season when to come, and when to go, | 360 |
| To sing, or cease to sing, we never know; | |
| And if we will recite nine hours in ten, | |
| You lose your patience just like other men. | |
| Then, too, we hurt ourselves when, to defend | |
| A single verse, we quarrel with a friend; | 365 |
| Repeat, unask’d; lament, the wit’s too fine | |
| For vulgar eyes, and point out every line: | |
| But most when straining with too weak a wing | |
| We needs will write epistles to the King; | |
| And from the moment we oblige the town, | 370 |
| Expect a Place or Pension from the Crown; | |
| Or dubb’d historians by express command, | |
| T’ enrol your triumphs o’er the seas and land, | |
| Be call’d to Court to plan some work divine, | |
| As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine. | 375 |
| Yet think, great Sir! (so many virtues shown) | |
| Ah! think what poet best may make them known; | |
| Or choose at least some minister of grace, | |
| Fit to bestow the Laureate’s weighty place. | |
| Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair, | 380 |
| Assign’d his figure to Bernini’s care; | |
| And great Nassau to Kneller’s hand decreed | |
| To fix him graceful on the bounding steed: | |
| So well in paint and stone they judg’d of merit; | |
| But Kings in Wit may want discerning spirit. | 385 |
| The hero William, and the martyr Charles, | |
| One knighted Blackmore, and one pension’d Quarles, | |
| Which made old Ben and surly Dennis swear | |
| ‘No Lord’s anointed, but a Russian bear.’ | |
| Not with such majesty, such bold relief, | 390 |
| The forms august of King, or conquering Chief, | |
| E’er swell’d on marble, as in verse have shined | |
| (In polish’d verse) the manners and the mind. | |
| O! could I mount on the Mæonian wing, | |
| Your arms, your actions, your repose, to sing! | 395 |
| What seas you travers’d, and what fields you fought! | |
| Your country’s peace how oft, how dearly bought! | |
| How barb’rous rage subsided at your word, | |
| And nations wonder’d while they dropp’d the sword! | |
| How, when you nodded, o’er the land and deep, | 400 |
| Peace stole her wing, and wrapt the world in sleep, | |
| Till earth’s extremes your mediation own, | |
| And Asia’s tyrants tremble at your throne! | |
| But verse, alas! your Majesty disdains; | |
| And I ’m not used to panegyric strains. | 405 |
| The zeal of fools offends at any time, | |
| But most of all the zeal of fools in rhyme. | |
| Besides, a Fate attends on all I write, | |
| That when I aim at praise they say I bite. | |
| A vile encomium doubly ridicules: | 410 |
| There ’s nothing blackens like the ink of fools. | |
| If true, a woful likeness; and, if lies, | |
| ‘Praise undeserv’d is scandal in disguise.’ | |
| Well may he blush who gives it, or receives; | |
| And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves | 415 |
| (Like Journals, Odes, and such forgotten things, | |
| As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of Kings) | |
| Clothe spice, line trunk, or, flutt’ring in a row, | |
| Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho. | |
| |
