Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry 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 wit 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 t' immortalise?
"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 ninty-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.

Shakespeare (whom you and every play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight,

1 Courtesy of England, a legal term for a law of custom.

2 The story to which Pope alludes is told in Plutarch's Life of Sertorius. To show to his troops that ingenuity was greater than force, ond perseverance than rash violence, he had two horseg brought into the field: one old and feeble; the other strong and young, with a very thick long tail. He desired a strong soldier to pull out the tail of the old horse. The man did his best to obey, by grasping it with both his hands and pulling with all his strength, but in vain.

Sertorius, meantime desired a very weak and small man to pull out the tail of the strong horse. He instantly began to pull out the hairs one by one, and "when the strong man had laboured much in vain," says the biographer, "and made himself the jest of all the spectators, he gave over. But the weak pitiful man in a short time and with little pains had left not a single hair on the great horse's tail."

3 Shakespeare and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought of this immortality, the one in many pieces composed in haste for the stage; the other in his latter works in general, which Dryden called his Dotages,-Pope.

And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seemed 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;
Forget his epic, nay Pindaric art;1

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 Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit; How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher

writ;

2

How Shadwell hasty, Wycherly was slow;
But for the passions, Southern3 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.

6

But let them own, that greater faults than we

1 Which has much more merit than his epic, but very unlike the character, as well as numbers of Pindar.-Pope.

2 Nothing was less true than this particular: But the whole paragraph has a mixture of irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own judgment, only the common chat of the pretenders to criticism in some things right, in others wrong: as he tells us in his answer.

Interdum vulgus rectum videt: est ubi peccat.-Pope.

Thomas Shadwell, an English poet, was born 1640, died 1726. At the revolution he was made poet laureate in the place of Dryden, who resented the appointment by the severest satire in his MacFlecknoe. He wrote seventeen plays.

William Wychlerly, an eminent comic dramatist, born 1640, died 1715. 3 Southern was born at Stratford-on-Avon 1660, died 1746. A dramatist of some celebrity, author of Oronooko, Isabella, &c. Nicholas Rowe, a dramatist; his best known plays are the "Fair Penitent," and "Jane Shore." He was poet laureate to George I. He was born 1673, and died 1718, lamented by Pope and all his friends.

4 Heywood, an Elizabethan dramatist. Charles Lamb describes him as a kind of prose Shakespeare. He wrote 220 dramas, but only 25 are now in existence.

5 A piece of very low humour, one of the first printed plays in English, and therefore much valued by some antiquaries.-Pope.

Cibber's "Careless Husband," a very celebrated play. Mrs. Oldfield won her fame as lady Betty Modish, one of the characters in it,

They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.
Spenser himself affects the obsolete,

And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:1
Milton's strong pinion now not heav'n 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 Shakespeare, like th' 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, Sedley, and a hundred more,
(Like twinkling stars the miscellanies o'er)
One simile, that solitary shines

4

In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

[page,

Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a Has sanctified whole poems for an age.

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

5

Which Betterton's grave action dignified,

Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims, (Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names')

1 As in this example from the Arcadia:

If the sphere's senseless yet doth hold a music.
If the swan's sweet voice be not heard but at death,
If the mute timber when it hath the life lost.
Yieldeth a lute's tone.- Warton.

2 Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, the friend of Cowley.

3 Thomas Carew, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles I. He was the friend of Ben Jonson and Davenant, and wrote some very pretty poems; he died about 1639.

4 Sir Charles Sedley was born 1639. He was one of the wits of Charles II.'s Court. His works consist of songs, plays, &c. The favourite song, "Shall I, wasting in despair," is ascribed to Sedley. He died 1701.

5 Thomas Betterton was an actor of great eminence, born 1635, died 1710. Steele in No. 167 of the " Tatler" laments the death of this distinguished actor and good man.

Barton Booth, celebrated as an actor, was born 1681. He was a Westminster scholar, and his genius for acting was first developed by the Latin plays acted by that school. He died 1733.

7 An absurd custom of several actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere proper names of Greeks or Romans, which (as they call it) fill the mouth of the player.-Pope."

Had ancient times conspired to disallow
What then was new, what had been ancient now?
Or what remained, so worthy to be read
By learned critics, of the mighty dead?

In days of ease, when now the weary sword
Was sheathed, ar 1 luxury with Charles restored;
In ev'ry taste of foreign courts improved,

All, by the king's example, lived and loved."'
Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel,'
Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;
The soldier breathed the gallantries of France
And ev'ry flowery courtier writ romance.
Then marble, softened into life, grew warm:
And yielding metal flowed to human form:
Lely on animated canvas stole

The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
No wonder then, when all was love and sport,
The willing Muses were debauched at court:
On each enervate string they taught the note3
To pant, or tremble through a 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 loved we hate;
Now all for pleasure, now for Church and 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,

1 A verse of the Lord Lansdown.-Pope.

2 The Duke of Newcastle's book of horsemanship: the romance f Parthenissa, by the Earl of Orrery, and most of the French romances ranslated by persons of quality.-Pope.

3 The siege of Rhodes, by Sir William Davenant the first opera sung n England.-Pope.

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;
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:
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,

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; '
Even Radcliff's doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance."
Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile ?
(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.
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;
And knows no losses while the muse is kind.
To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;

A famous empiric, whose pill and drop had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversa tion at this time.-Pope.

2 They visited France to examine into the medical science of that country, which has always been remarkable.

3 Ripley was a celebrated architecht of the time, and was employed by Sir Robert Walpole. He built the beautiful house in Houghton Park, Beds; now in ruins, but still showing what it was.

4 Alluding to the flight of Mr. Knight, one of the cashiers of the South Sea Company, by which Pope was a considerable loser.-Warton. 5 The friend, perhaps, was George Pitt, of Shroton, in the county of