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Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed:
For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,
As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence.1
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearned, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,2

These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,

As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song

And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;*
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line;

1 Abolita et abrogata retinere, insolentiæ cujusdam est, et frivolæ in parvis jactantiæ.-Quint. lib. i. c. 6; "Opus est, et verba a vetustate repetita neque crebra sint, neque manifesta, quia nil est odio.. sius affectatione, nec utique ab ultimis repetita temporibus. Oratio cujus summa virtus est perspicuitas, quam sit vitiosa, se egeat interprete? Ergo ut novorum optima erunt maxime vetera ita veterum maxime nova.' Idem.-Pope.

See Ben Johnson's "Every Man out of his Humour."-Pope.

3 "Quis populi sermo est? quis enim? nisi carmine molli.
Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per læve severos.
Effundat junctura ungues: scit tendere versum.

Non secus ac si oculo rubricam dirigat uno.”—Pers. Sat. i.—
Pope.

4 Fugiemus crebras vocalium concursiones, quæ vastam atque hiantem orationem reddunt. Cic. ad Heren. lib. 4. Vide etiam Quint, lib. 9, c. 4.-Pope,

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep:"
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught-
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song [along.
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow;
And praiae the easy vigour of a line,
[join.
Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, [main.
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!
The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleased too little or too much,
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence;

That always shows great pride, or little sense;

1 Sir JOHN DENHAM wrote "Cooper's Hill," a descriptive poem, in 1643. He was born 1615, died 1668. EDMUND WALLER, the wellknown English poet, was born 1605, died 1687.

2 See "Alexander's Feast, or the power of Music; an Ode by Mr. Dryden.- Pope,

Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days.
Regard not then if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own
But catch the spreading notion of the town:
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of author's names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with quality.
A constant critic at the great man's board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me?
But let a lord once own the happy lines,1
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learned by being singular;

So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong;
So schismatics the plain believers quit,

1 "You ought not to write verses," said George II., who had little taste, to Lord Hervey, "tis beneath your rank. Leave such work to little Mi. Pope; it is his trade," Warton.

Once school-divines this zealous isle o'erspread;
Who knew most sentences, was deepest read;
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain;2
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane."
If Faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,

What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,

The current folly proves the ready wit,
And authors think their reputation safe,

Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.
Some valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind:
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of State,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,

1 The "Book of Sentences" was a work on theology, written by Peter Lombard, and commentated on by Thomas Acquinas.

2 Scotists and Thomists. The Scotists were the disciples or pupils of Johannes Duns Scotus, a famous schoolman or doctor of the middle ages. "Erasmus," says Warburton, "tells us that an eminent Scotist assured him that it was impossible to understand one single proposition of this famous Duns' unless you had his whole metaphysics by heart." He was a teacher of the Franciscan order, called the "sable doctor," and was the last to be given up by the adherents of the old learning. Our word "Dunce" is supposed to be derived from his name. "Remember ye not," says Tyndal, "how within there these thirty years, and far less, the old barking curs, 'Dunce's disciples' (meaning Duns Scotus), and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?" See Trench on the "Study of Words." The Thomists were the pupils of Thomas Aquinas, another theolo gian of those ages, but a great genius notwithstanding.

A place near Smithfield where old and secondhand books were gold,

In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaux;'
But sense survived, when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.

Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores2 and New Milbourns must arise:
Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;

But like a shadow, proves the substance true:
For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known
Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
But even those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays, till all commend.
Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all even that can boast;
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has designed
Some bright idea of the master's mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his command,
And ready nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live,

1 The parson alluded to was Jeremy Collier, who powerfully and justly attacked the extreme licence of the stage. The Duke of Buckingham was the critic, who ridiculed Dryden's occasional bombast in his plays. The Duke wrote the "Rehearsal," from whence Sheridan's "Critic" was undoubtedly derived.

2 Blackmore satirised Dryden in his "Satire against Will," 1700. He finds just fault with the indecency of Dryden's plays. Milbourn wrote "Notes to Dryden's Virgil," 1698. His criticisms were unjust and contemptible.

3 Zoilus was the critic on Homer. In the fifth book of Vitruvius is an account of Zoilus coming to the Court of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and presenting to him his virulent and brutal censures of Homer, and begging to be rewarded for his work. The King, it is said, or. dered him to be crucified, or, as some say, stoned."-Warton.

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