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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
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 generous toils endured,
The Gaul subdued, or property secured,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or law establish'd, and the world reform'd,
Closed their long glories with a sigh, to find
The unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue to its latest breath

Finds envy never conquer'd but by death.
The great Alcides, every 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!
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
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame;
Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered,
As Heaven'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.
Just in one instance, be it yet confess'd,
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;
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 Fairy Queen :
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green;
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,

He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.

Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In every public virtue we excel;

We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well;
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.

If time improve our wits as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
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 to immortalize?

'Who lasts a century can have no flaw; 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?

'We shall not quarrel for a year or two; By courtesy of England he may do.'

Then by the rule that made the horse-tail bare,

I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt down ancients like a heap of snow
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a bier.

Shakspeare (whom you and every playhouse-oil
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
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,
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? In all debates where critics bear a part, Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, Of Shakspeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit; How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow; [writ; 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. 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 They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree. Spencer himself affects the obsolete,

And Sydney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:
Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound,
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground;
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 desperate hook;
Or damn all Shakspeare, like the affected fool
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, Sedly, and a hundred more
(Like twinkling stars, the miscellanies o'er,)
One simile, that solitary shines

In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a Has sanctified whole poems for an age.

VOL. II.

4

[page

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

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;

One tragic sentence if I dare deride,
Which Betterton's grave action dignified,
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims
(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names,)
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
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.
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
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 restored:
In every taste of foreign courts improved,
All, by the king's example lived and loved.'
Then peers grew proud in horsemanship to excel,
Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;
The soldier breathed the gallantries of France,
And every flowery courtier writ romance.
Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm,
And yielding metal flow'd to human form:
Lely on animated canvass stole

The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
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 through an eunuch's throat.
But Britain, changeful as a child at play,
Now calls in princes, and now turns away.
Now Whig, now Tory, what we love we hate;
Now all for pleasure, now for church or state;
Now for prerogative, and now for laws;
Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.

Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock;
Instruct his family in every rule,

And send his wife to church, his son to school.
To worship like his fathers, was his care;

To

To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;
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;
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will bear 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.

1, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,

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.

He served a 'prenticeship, who sets up shop; Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop; E'en Radcliffe'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? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile But those that 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.

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