AUTHORS are judged by strange capricious rules, | |
| The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools: | |
| Yet sure the best are most severely fated; | |
| For Fools are only laugh’d at, Wits are hated. | |
| Blockheads with reason men of sense abhor; | 5 |
| But fool ’gainst fool, is barb’rous civil war. | |
| Why on all Authors then should Critics fall? | |
| Since some have writ, and shown no wit at all. | |
| Condemn a play of theirs, and they evade it; | |
| Cry, ‘Damn not us, but damn the French, who made it.’ | 10 |
| By running goods these graceless Owlers gain; | |
| Theirs are the rules of France, the plots of Spain: | |
| But wit, like wine, from happier climates brought, | |
| Dash’d by these rogues, turns English common draught. | |
| They pall Molière’s and Lopez’ sprightly strain, | 15 |
| And teach dull Harlequins to grin in vain. | |
| How shall our Author hope a gentler fate, | |
| Who dares most impudently not translate? | |
| It had been civil, in these ticklish times, | |
| To fetch his fools and knaves from foreign climes. | 20 |
| Spaniards and French abuse to the world’s end, | |
| But spare old England, lest you hurt a friend. | |
| If any fool is by our satire bit, | |
| Let him hiss loud, to show you all he ’s hit. | |
| Poets make characters, as salesmen clothes; | 25 |
| We take no measure of your Fops and Beaux; | |
| But here all sizes and all shapes you meet, | |
| And fit yourselves like chaps in Monmouth Street. | |
| Gallants, look here! this Foolscap has an air | |
| Goodly and smart, with ears of Issachar. | 30 |
| Let no one fool engross it, or confine | |
| A common blessing! now ’t is yours, now mine. | |
| But poets in all ages had the care | |
| To keep this cap for such as will, to wear. | |
| Our Author has it now (for every Wit | 35 |
| Of course resign’d it to the next that writ) | |
| And thus upon the stage ’t is fairly thrown; | |
| Let him that takes it wear it as his own. | |
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