Of all the causes which conspire to blindMan's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,What the weak head with strongest bias rules,Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.Whatever nature has in worth denied,[126]205She gives in large recruits of needful pride;For as in bodies, thus in souls, we findWhat wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:[127]Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,And fills up all the mighty void of sense.210If once right reason drives that cloud away,Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.A little learning is a dang'rous thing;215Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130]220While from the bounded level of our mind,Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,New distant scenes of endless science rise!So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132]225Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,Th' eternal snows appear already past,And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:But those attained, we tremble to surveyThe growing labours of the lengthened way,230Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find235Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,[136]Correctly cold,[137]and regularly low,240That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.In wit, as nature, what affects our heartsIs not th' exactness of peculiar parts;'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,245But the joint force and full result of all.[138]Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])No single parts unequally surprise,All comes united to th' admiring eyes;250No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]The whole at once is bold, and regular.Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.[141]In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,255Since none can compass more than they intend;And if the means be just, the conduct true,Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.[142]As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,T' avoid great errors, must the less commit:260Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]Most critics, fond of some subservient art,Still make the whole depend upon a part:They talk of principles, but notions prize,265And all to one loved folly sacrifice.Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]A certain bard encount'ring on the way,Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;[146]270Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.Our author, happy in a judge so nice,Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;Made him observe the subject, and the plot,275The manners, passions, unities, what not,All which, exact to rule, were brought about,Were but a combat in the lists left out."What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.280"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain."Then build a new, or act it in a plain."[147]Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,285Curious not knowing,[148]not exact but nice,Form short ideas; and offend in arts,As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]Some to conceit alone their taste confine,And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;290Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to traceThe naked nature, and the living grace,With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,295And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]True wit is nature[151]to advantage dressed;What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.300As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]As bodies perish through excess of blood.Others for language all their care express,305And value books, as women men, for dress:Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:310False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;The face of nature we no more survey,All glares alike, without distinction gay;}{But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,315{Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,{It gilds all objects, but it alters none.[157]Expression is the dress of thought, and stillAppears more decent,[158]as more suitable:[159]A vile conceit in pompous words expressed320Is 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,[160]Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;325Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.}{Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play ,[161]{These sparks with awkward vanity display{What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;330And 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,[162]335Nor 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:[163]In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;340}{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.[164]These equal syllables alone require,Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;[165]345While expletives their feeble aid do join;[166]And ten low words[167]oft creep in one dull line:[168]While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,With sure returns of still expected rhymes;[169]Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"350In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep:"[170]Then, at the last and only couplet fraughtWith some unmeaning thing they call a thought,355A needless Alexandrine ends the song,That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.[171]Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,[172]and knowWhat's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;And praise[173]the easy vigour of a line,360Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.[174]True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,[175]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.[176]365Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,[177]And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,[178]The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,[179]370The line too labours, and the words move slow:[180]Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,Flies o'er th' unbending corn,[181]and skims along the main.[182]Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,[183]And bid alternate passions fall and rise![184]375While at each change, the son of Libyan JoveNow 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:[185]Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,380And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.[186]Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,Who still are pleased too little or too much.385At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,That always shows great pride, or little sense: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;390For fools admire, but men of sense approve:[187]As things seem large which we through mists descry,Dulness is ever apt to magnify.Some foreign writers,[188]some our own despise;The ancients only, or the moderns prize.395Thus wit, like faith, by each man is appliedTo one small sect, and all are damned beside.[189]Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,And force that sun but on a part to shine,Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,400But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;Which, from the first has shone on ages past,Enlights[190]the present, and shall warm the last;Though each may feel increases and decays,[191]And see now clearer and now darker days:405Regard 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,[192]But catch the spreading notion of the town:They reason and conclude by precedent,410And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.Some judge of authors' names, not works, and thenNor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.Of all this servile herd, the worst is heThat in proud dulness joins with quality,[193]415A 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![194]But let a lord once own the happy lines,420How 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 learn'd by being singular;425So much they scornthe crowd, that if the throngBy chance go right, they purposely go wrong:So schismatics the plain believers quit,[196]And are but damned for having too much wit.Some praise at morning what they blame at night;430But always think the last opinion right.A muse by these is like a mistress used,This hour she's idolised, the next abused;While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.[197]435Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread;440Who knew most Sentences,[198]was deepest read;Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,And none had sense enough to be confuted:Scotists and Thomists,[199]now, in peace remain,Amidst their kindred cobwebs[200]in Duck-lane.[201]445If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?[202]Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,The current folly proves the ready wit;And authors think their reputation safe,450Which 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.455Parties in wit attend on those of state,And public faction doubles private hate.[203]Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;[204]But sense survived when merry jests were past;460For rising merit will buoy up at last.Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,[205]New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:[206]Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,Zoilus[207]again would start up from the dead.465Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;But like a shadow, proves the substance true:For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes knownTh' opposing body's grossness, not its own.When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,470It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,Reflect new glories, and augment the day.[208]Be thou the first true merit to befriend;His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.475Short 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,480And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;[209]Our sons their fathers' failing language see,And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.So when the faithful pencil has designedSome bright idea of the master's mind,485Where 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,490And each bold figure just begins to live,The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,[210]And all the bright creation fades away!Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,[211]Atones not for that envy which it brings.495In youth alone its empty praise we boast,[212]But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,[213]That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.What is this wit, which must our cares employ?[214]500The owner's wife,[215]that other men enjoy;Then most our trouble still when most admired,And still the more we give, the more required;[216]Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,[217]Sure some to vex, but never all to please;505'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,Ah let not learning too commence its foe![218]Of old, those met rewards who could excel,510And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:[219]Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,[220]Employ their pains to spurn some others down;515And while self-love each jealous writer rules,Contending wits become the sport of fools:[221]But still the worst with most regret commend,For each ill author is as bad a friend.[222]To what base ends, and by what abject ways,520Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise![223]Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,[224]Nor in the critic let the man be lost.Good-nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human, to forgive, divine.525But if in noble minds some dregs remainNot yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.No pardon vile obscenity should find,[225]530Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;[226]But dulness with obscenity must proveAs shameful sure as impotence in love.In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,Sprung the rank weed,[227]and thrived with large increase:535When love was all an easy monarch's care;Seldom at council, never in a war:Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:Nay, wits had pensions,[228]and young lords had wit;[229]The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,540And not a mask[230]went unimproved away:The modest fan was lifted up no more,[231]And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.The following licence of a foreign reignDid all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;[232]545Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,[233]And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;[234]Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,Lest God himself should seem too absolute:Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,550And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there![235]Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies,And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!555Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,Will needs mistake an author into vice;All seems infected that th' infected spy,As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.[236]
Of all the causes which conspire to blindMan's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,What the weak head with strongest bias rules,Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.Whatever nature has in worth denied,[126]205She gives in large recruits of needful pride;For as in bodies, thus in souls, we findWhat wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:[127]Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,And fills up all the mighty void of sense.210If once right reason drives that cloud away,Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.A little learning is a dang'rous thing;215Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130]220While from the bounded level of our mind,Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,New distant scenes of endless science rise!So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132]225Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,Th' eternal snows appear already past,And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:But those attained, we tremble to surveyThe growing labours of the lengthened way,230Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find235Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,[136]Correctly cold,[137]and regularly low,240That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.In wit, as nature, what affects our heartsIs not th' exactness of peculiar parts;'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,245But the joint force and full result of all.[138]Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])No single parts unequally surprise,All comes united to th' admiring eyes;250No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]The whole at once is bold, and regular.Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.[141]In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,255Since none can compass more than they intend;And if the means be just, the conduct true,Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.[142]As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,T' avoid great errors, must the less commit:260Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]Most critics, fond of some subservient art,Still make the whole depend upon a part:They talk of principles, but notions prize,265And all to one loved folly sacrifice.Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]A certain bard encount'ring on the way,Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;[146]270Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.Our author, happy in a judge so nice,Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;Made him observe the subject, and the plot,275The manners, passions, unities, what not,All which, exact to rule, were brought about,Were but a combat in the lists left out."What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.280"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain."Then build a new, or act it in a plain."[147]Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,285Curious not knowing,[148]not exact but nice,Form short ideas; and offend in arts,As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]Some to conceit alone their taste confine,And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;290Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to traceThe naked nature, and the living grace,With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,295And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]True wit is nature[151]to advantage dressed;What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.300As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]As bodies perish through excess of blood.Others for language all their care express,305And value books, as women men, for dress:Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:310False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;The face of nature we no more survey,All glares alike, without distinction gay;}{But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,315{Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,{It gilds all objects, but it alters none.[157]Expression is the dress of thought, and stillAppears more decent,[158]as more suitable:[159]A vile conceit in pompous words expressed320Is 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,[160]Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;325Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.}{Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play ,[161]{These sparks with awkward vanity display{What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;330And 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,[162]335Nor 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:[163]In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;340}{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.[164]These equal syllables alone require,Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;[165]345While expletives their feeble aid do join;[166]And ten low words[167]oft creep in one dull line:[168]While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,With sure returns of still expected rhymes;[169]Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"350In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep:"[170]Then, at the last and only couplet fraughtWith some unmeaning thing they call a thought,355A needless Alexandrine ends the song,That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.[171]Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,[172]and knowWhat's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;And praise[173]the easy vigour of a line,360Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.[174]True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,[175]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.[176]365Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,[177]And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,[178]The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,[179]370The line too labours, and the words move slow:[180]Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,Flies o'er th' unbending corn,[181]and skims along the main.[182]Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,[183]And bid alternate passions fall and rise![184]375While at each change, the son of Libyan JoveNow 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:[185]Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,380And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.[186]Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,Who still are pleased too little or too much.385At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,That always shows great pride, or little sense: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;390For fools admire, but men of sense approve:[187]As things seem large which we through mists descry,Dulness is ever apt to magnify.Some foreign writers,[188]some our own despise;The ancients only, or the moderns prize.395Thus wit, like faith, by each man is appliedTo one small sect, and all are damned beside.[189]Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,And force that sun but on a part to shine,Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,400But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;Which, from the first has shone on ages past,Enlights[190]the present, and shall warm the last;Though each may feel increases and decays,[191]And see now clearer and now darker days:405Regard 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,[192]But catch the spreading notion of the town:They reason and conclude by precedent,410And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.Some judge of authors' names, not works, and thenNor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.Of all this servile herd, the worst is heThat in proud dulness joins with quality,[193]415A 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![194]But let a lord once own the happy lines,420How 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 learn'd by being singular;425So much they scornthe crowd, that if the throngBy chance go right, they purposely go wrong:So schismatics the plain believers quit,[196]And are but damned for having too much wit.Some praise at morning what they blame at night;430But always think the last opinion right.A muse by these is like a mistress used,This hour she's idolised, the next abused;While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.[197]435Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread;440Who knew most Sentences,[198]was deepest read;Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,And none had sense enough to be confuted:Scotists and Thomists,[199]now, in peace remain,Amidst their kindred cobwebs[200]in Duck-lane.[201]445If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?[202]Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,The current folly proves the ready wit;And authors think their reputation safe,450Which 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.455Parties in wit attend on those of state,And public faction doubles private hate.[203]Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;[204]But sense survived when merry jests were past;460For rising merit will buoy up at last.Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,[205]New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:[206]Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,Zoilus[207]again would start up from the dead.465Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;But like a shadow, proves the substance true:For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes knownTh' opposing body's grossness, not its own.When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,470It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,Reflect new glories, and augment the day.[208]Be thou the first true merit to befriend;His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.475Short 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,480And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;[209]Our sons their fathers' failing language see,And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.So when the faithful pencil has designedSome bright idea of the master's mind,485Where 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,490And each bold figure just begins to live,The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,[210]And all the bright creation fades away!Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,[211]Atones not for that envy which it brings.495In youth alone its empty praise we boast,[212]But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,[213]That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.What is this wit, which must our cares employ?[214]500The owner's wife,[215]that other men enjoy;Then most our trouble still when most admired,And still the more we give, the more required;[216]Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,[217]Sure some to vex, but never all to please;505'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,Ah let not learning too commence its foe![218]Of old, those met rewards who could excel,510And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:[219]Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,[220]Employ their pains to spurn some others down;515And while self-love each jealous writer rules,Contending wits become the sport of fools:[221]But still the worst with most regret commend,For each ill author is as bad a friend.[222]To what base ends, and by what abject ways,520Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise![223]Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,[224]Nor in the critic let the man be lost.Good-nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human, to forgive, divine.525But if in noble minds some dregs remainNot yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.No pardon vile obscenity should find,[225]530Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;[226]But dulness with obscenity must proveAs shameful sure as impotence in love.In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,Sprung the rank weed,[227]and thrived with large increase:535When love was all an easy monarch's care;Seldom at council, never in a war:Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:Nay, wits had pensions,[228]and young lords had wit;[229]The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,540And not a mask[230]went unimproved away:The modest fan was lifted up no more,[231]And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.The following licence of a foreign reignDid all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;[232]545Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,[233]And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;[234]Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,Lest God himself should seem too absolute:Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,550And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there![235]Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies,And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!555Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,Will needs mistake an author into vice;All seems infected that th' infected spy,As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.[236]
Of all the causes which conspire to blindMan's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,What the weak head with strongest bias rules,Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.Whatever nature has in worth denied,[126]205She gives in large recruits of needful pride;For as in bodies, thus in souls, we findWhat wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:[127]Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,And fills up all the mighty void of sense.210If once right reason drives that cloud away,Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.A little learning is a dang'rous thing;215Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130]220While from the bounded level of our mind,Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,New distant scenes of endless science rise!So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132]225Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,Th' eternal snows appear already past,And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:But those attained, we tremble to surveyThe growing labours of the lengthened way,230Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find235Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,[136]Correctly cold,[137]and regularly low,240That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.In wit, as nature, what affects our heartsIs not th' exactness of peculiar parts;'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,245But the joint force and full result of all.[138]Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])No single parts unequally surprise,All comes united to th' admiring eyes;250No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]The whole at once is bold, and regular.Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.[141]In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,255Since none can compass more than they intend;And if the means be just, the conduct true,Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.[142]As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,T' avoid great errors, must the less commit:260Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]Most critics, fond of some subservient art,Still make the whole depend upon a part:They talk of principles, but notions prize,265And all to one loved folly sacrifice.Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]A certain bard encount'ring on the way,Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;[146]270Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.Our author, happy in a judge so nice,Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;Made him observe the subject, and the plot,275The manners, passions, unities, what not,All which, exact to rule, were brought about,Were but a combat in the lists left out."What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.280"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain."Then build a new, or act it in a plain."[147]Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,285Curious not knowing,[148]not exact but nice,Form short ideas; and offend in arts,As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]Some to conceit alone their taste confine,And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;290Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to traceThe naked nature, and the living grace,With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,295And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]True wit is nature[151]to advantage dressed;What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.300As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]As bodies perish through excess of blood.Others for language all their care express,305And value books, as women men, for dress:Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:310False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;The face of nature we no more survey,All glares alike, without distinction gay;}{But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,315{Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,{It gilds all objects, but it alters none.[157]Expression is the dress of thought, and stillAppears more decent,[158]as more suitable:[159]A vile conceit in pompous words expressed320Is 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,[160]Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;325Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.}{Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play ,[161]{These sparks with awkward vanity display{What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;330And 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,[162]335Nor 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:[163]In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;340}{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.[164]These equal syllables alone require,Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;[165]345While expletives their feeble aid do join;[166]And ten low words[167]oft creep in one dull line:[168]While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,With sure returns of still expected rhymes;[169]Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"350In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep:"[170]Then, at the last and only couplet fraughtWith some unmeaning thing they call a thought,355A needless Alexandrine ends the song,That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.[171]Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,[172]and knowWhat's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;And praise[173]the easy vigour of a line,360Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.[174]True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,[175]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.[176]365Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,[177]And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,[178]The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,[179]370The line too labours, and the words move slow:[180]Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,Flies o'er th' unbending corn,[181]and skims along the main.[182]Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,[183]And bid alternate passions fall and rise![184]375While at each change, the son of Libyan JoveNow 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:[185]Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,380And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.[186]Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,Who still are pleased too little or too much.385At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,That always shows great pride, or little sense: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;390For fools admire, but men of sense approve:[187]As things seem large which we through mists descry,Dulness is ever apt to magnify.Some foreign writers,[188]some our own despise;The ancients only, or the moderns prize.395Thus wit, like faith, by each man is appliedTo one small sect, and all are damned beside.[189]Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,And force that sun but on a part to shine,Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,400But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;Which, from the first has shone on ages past,Enlights[190]the present, and shall warm the last;Though each may feel increases and decays,[191]And see now clearer and now darker days:405Regard 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,[192]But catch the spreading notion of the town:They reason and conclude by precedent,410And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.Some judge of authors' names, not works, and thenNor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.Of all this servile herd, the worst is heThat in proud dulness joins with quality,[193]415A 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![194]But let a lord once own the happy lines,420How 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 learn'd by being singular;425So much they scornthe crowd, that if the throngBy chance go right, they purposely go wrong:So schismatics the plain believers quit,[196]And are but damned for having too much wit.Some praise at morning what they blame at night;430But always think the last opinion right.A muse by these is like a mistress used,This hour she's idolised, the next abused;While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.[197]435Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread;440Who knew most Sentences,[198]was deepest read;Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,And none had sense enough to be confuted:Scotists and Thomists,[199]now, in peace remain,Amidst their kindred cobwebs[200]in Duck-lane.[201]445If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?[202]Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,The current folly proves the ready wit;And authors think their reputation safe,450Which 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.455Parties in wit attend on those of state,And public faction doubles private hate.[203]Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;[204]But sense survived when merry jests were past;460For rising merit will buoy up at last.Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,[205]New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:[206]Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,Zoilus[207]again would start up from the dead.465Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;But like a shadow, proves the substance true:For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes knownTh' opposing body's grossness, not its own.When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,470It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,Reflect new glories, and augment the day.[208]Be thou the first true merit to befriend;His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.475Short 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,480And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;[209]Our sons their fathers' failing language see,And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.So when the faithful pencil has designedSome bright idea of the master's mind,485Where 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,490And each bold figure just begins to live,The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,[210]And all the bright creation fades away!Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,[211]Atones not for that envy which it brings.495In youth alone its empty praise we boast,[212]But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,[213]That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.What is this wit, which must our cares employ?[214]500The owner's wife,[215]that other men enjoy;Then most our trouble still when most admired,And still the more we give, the more required;[216]Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,[217]Sure some to vex, but never all to please;505'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,Ah let not learning too commence its foe![218]Of old, those met rewards who could excel,510And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:[219]Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,[220]Employ their pains to spurn some others down;515And while self-love each jealous writer rules,Contending wits become the sport of fools:[221]But still the worst with most regret commend,For each ill author is as bad a friend.[222]To what base ends, and by what abject ways,520Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise![223]Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,[224]Nor in the critic let the man be lost.Good-nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human, to forgive, divine.525But if in noble minds some dregs remainNot yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.No pardon vile obscenity should find,[225]530Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;[226]But dulness with obscenity must proveAs shameful sure as impotence in love.In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,Sprung the rank weed,[227]and thrived with large increase:535When love was all an easy monarch's care;Seldom at council, never in a war:Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:Nay, wits had pensions,[228]and young lords had wit;[229]The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,540And not a mask[230]went unimproved away:The modest fan was lifted up no more,[231]And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.The following licence of a foreign reignDid all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;[232]545Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,[233]And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;[234]Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,Lest God himself should seem too absolute:Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,550And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there![235]Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies,And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!555Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,Will needs mistake an author into vice;All seems infected that th' infected spy,As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.[236]
}
}
}
III.
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,560For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,That not alone what to your sense is dueAll may allow, but seek your friendship too.565Be silent always when you doubt your sense;And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]Some positive, persisting fops we know,Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;But you with pleasure own your errors past,570And make each day a critique on the last.'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;Men must be taught as if you taught them not,And things unknown proposed as things forgot.575Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;That only makes superior sense beloved.Be niggards of advice on no pretence:For the worst avarice is that of sense.With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust,580Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,But Appius reddens[239]at each word you speak,585And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;Such, without wit, are poets when they please,590As without learning they can take degrees.[241]Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,And flattery to fulsome dedicators,Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.595'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]Your silence there is better than your spite,For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,600And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]False steps but help them to renew the race,As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.What crowds of these, impenitently bold,In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,605Still run on poets in a raging vein,Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,Strain out the last dull droppings[245]of their sense,And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true,610There are as mad, abandoned critics too.The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]With his own tongue still edifies his ears,And always list'ning to himself appears.615All books he reads, and all he reads assails,From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.With him most authors steal their works, or buy;Garth did not write his own Dispensary.[247]Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,620Nay, showed his faults—but when would poets mend?No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]Nor is Paul's church[249]more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251]625}{Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,{It still looks home, and short excursions makes;[252]{But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,And never shocked, and never turned aside,Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.630But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;Modestly bold, and humanly[253]severe;636Who to a friend his faults can freely show,And gladly praise the merit of a foe?Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;A knowledge both of books and human kind;640Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;And love to praise,[254]with reason on his side?Such once were critics; such the happy few,Athens and Rome in better ages knew.[255]The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,645Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;[256]He steered securely, and discovered far,[257]Led by the light of the Mæonian star.[258]Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,Still fond and proud of savage liberty,650Received his laws;[259]and stood convinced 'twas fit,Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.[260]Horace still charms with graceful negligence,[261]And without method talks us into sense;Will, like a friend, familiarly convey655The truest notions in the easiest way.He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,Yet judged with coolness,[262]though he sung with fire;His precepts teach but what his works inspire.660Our critics take a contrary extreme,They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:[263]Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translationsBy wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.[264]See Dionysius[265]Homer's thoughts refine,665And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.[266]In grave Quintilian's[267]copious work, we findThe justest rules, and clearest method joined:670Thus useful arms in magazines we place,All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,Still fit for use, and ready at command.[268]Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,[269]675And bless their critic with a poet's fire.An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:Whose own example strengthens all his laws;And is himself that great sublime he draws.[270]680Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;And arts still followed where her eagles flew;From the same foes, at last, both felt[271]their doom,685And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.[272]With tyranny, then superstition joined,As that the body, this enslaved the mind;[273]Much was believed, but little understood,[274]And to be dull was construed to be good;[275]690A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,And the monks finished what the Goths begun.[276]At length Erasmus, that great injured name,(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)[277]Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,[278]695And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days,Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,[279]Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head.700Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;[280]With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;[281]A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.[282]Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow705The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:[283]Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,As next in place to Mantua, next in fame![284]But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.[285]710Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,But critic-learning flourished most in France;The rules a nation, born to serve,[286]obeys;And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.[287]But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,715And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,We still defied the Romans, as of old.[288]Yet some there were, among the sounder fewOf those who less presumed, and better knew,720Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,And here restored wit's fundamental laws.Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."[289]Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,[290]725With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.[291]Such late was Walsh,[292]the muse's judge and friend,Who justly knew to blame or to commend:730To failings mild, but zealous for desert;The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,This praise at least a grateful muse may give:The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,735Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,But in low numbers short excursions tries;[293]Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,The learn'd reflect on what before they knew:740Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;[294]Averse alike to flatter, or offend;Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.[295]
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,560For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,That not alone what to your sense is dueAll may allow, but seek your friendship too.565Be silent always when you doubt your sense;And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]Some positive, persisting fops we know,Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;But you with pleasure own your errors past,570And make each day a critique on the last.'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;Men must be taught as if you taught them not,And things unknown proposed as things forgot.575Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;That only makes superior sense beloved.Be niggards of advice on no pretence:For the worst avarice is that of sense.With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust,580Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,But Appius reddens[239]at each word you speak,585And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;Such, without wit, are poets when they please,590As without learning they can take degrees.[241]Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,And flattery to fulsome dedicators,Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.595'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]Your silence there is better than your spite,For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,600And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]False steps but help them to renew the race,As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.What crowds of these, impenitently bold,In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,605Still run on poets in a raging vein,Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,Strain out the last dull droppings[245]of their sense,And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true,610There are as mad, abandoned critics too.The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]With his own tongue still edifies his ears,And always list'ning to himself appears.615All books he reads, and all he reads assails,From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.With him most authors steal their works, or buy;Garth did not write his own Dispensary.[247]Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,620Nay, showed his faults—but when would poets mend?No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]Nor is Paul's church[249]more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251]625}{Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,{It still looks home, and short excursions makes;[252]{But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,And never shocked, and never turned aside,Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.630But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;Modestly bold, and humanly[253]severe;636Who to a friend his faults can freely show,And gladly praise the merit of a foe?Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;A knowledge both of books and human kind;640Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;And love to praise,[254]with reason on his side?Such once were critics; such the happy few,Athens and Rome in better ages knew.[255]The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,645Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;[256]He steered securely, and discovered far,[257]Led by the light of the Mæonian star.[258]Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,Still fond and proud of savage liberty,650Received his laws;[259]and stood convinced 'twas fit,Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.[260]Horace still charms with graceful negligence,[261]And without method talks us into sense;Will, like a friend, familiarly convey655The truest notions in the easiest way.He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,Yet judged with coolness,[262]though he sung with fire;His precepts teach but what his works inspire.660Our critics take a contrary extreme,They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:[263]Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translationsBy wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.[264]See Dionysius[265]Homer's thoughts refine,665And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.[266]In grave Quintilian's[267]copious work, we findThe justest rules, and clearest method joined:670Thus useful arms in magazines we place,All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,Still fit for use, and ready at command.[268]Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,[269]675And bless their critic with a poet's fire.An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:Whose own example strengthens all his laws;And is himself that great sublime he draws.[270]680Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;And arts still followed where her eagles flew;From the same foes, at last, both felt[271]their doom,685And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.[272]With tyranny, then superstition joined,As that the body, this enslaved the mind;[273]Much was believed, but little understood,[274]And to be dull was construed to be good;[275]690A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,And the monks finished what the Goths begun.[276]At length Erasmus, that great injured name,(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)[277]Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,[278]695And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days,Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,[279]Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head.700Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;[280]With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;[281]A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.[282]Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow705The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:[283]Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,As next in place to Mantua, next in fame![284]But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.[285]710Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,But critic-learning flourished most in France;The rules a nation, born to serve,[286]obeys;And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.[287]But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,715And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,We still defied the Romans, as of old.[288]Yet some there were, among the sounder fewOf those who less presumed, and better knew,720Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,And here restored wit's fundamental laws.Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."[289]Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,[290]725With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.[291]Such late was Walsh,[292]the muse's judge and friend,Who justly knew to blame or to commend:730To failings mild, but zealous for desert;The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,This praise at least a grateful muse may give:The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,735Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,But in low numbers short excursions tries;[293]Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,The learn'd reflect on what before they knew:740Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;[294]Averse alike to flatter, or offend;Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.[295]
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,560For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,That not alone what to your sense is dueAll may allow, but seek your friendship too.565Be silent always when you doubt your sense;And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]Some positive, persisting fops we know,Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;But you with pleasure own your errors past,570And make each day a critique on the last.'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;Men must be taught as if you taught them not,And things unknown proposed as things forgot.575Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;That only makes superior sense beloved.Be niggards of advice on no pretence:For the worst avarice is that of sense.With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust,580Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,But Appius reddens[239]at each word you speak,585And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;Such, without wit, are poets when they please,590As without learning they can take degrees.[241]Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,And flattery to fulsome dedicators,Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.595'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]Your silence there is better than your spite,For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,600And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]False steps but help them to renew the race,As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.What crowds of these, impenitently bold,In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,605Still run on poets in a raging vein,Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,Strain out the last dull droppings[245]of their sense,And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true,610There are as mad, abandoned critics too.The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]With his own tongue still edifies his ears,And always list'ning to himself appears.615All books he reads, and all he reads assails,From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.With him most authors steal their works, or buy;Garth did not write his own Dispensary.[247]Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,620Nay, showed his faults—but when would poets mend?No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]Nor is Paul's church[249]more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251]625}{Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,{It still looks home, and short excursions makes;[252]{But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,And never shocked, and never turned aside,Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.630But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;Modestly bold, and humanly[253]severe;636Who to a friend his faults can freely show,And gladly praise the merit of a foe?Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;A knowledge both of books and human kind;640Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;And love to praise,[254]with reason on his side?Such once were critics; such the happy few,Athens and Rome in better ages knew.[255]The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,645Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;[256]He steered securely, and discovered far,[257]Led by the light of the Mæonian star.[258]Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,Still fond and proud of savage liberty,650Received his laws;[259]and stood convinced 'twas fit,Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.[260]Horace still charms with graceful negligence,[261]And without method talks us into sense;Will, like a friend, familiarly convey655The truest notions in the easiest way.He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,Yet judged with coolness,[262]though he sung with fire;His precepts teach but what his works inspire.660Our critics take a contrary extreme,They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:[263]Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translationsBy wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.[264]See Dionysius[265]Homer's thoughts refine,665And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.[266]In grave Quintilian's[267]copious work, we findThe justest rules, and clearest method joined:670Thus useful arms in magazines we place,All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,Still fit for use, and ready at command.[268]Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,[269]675And bless their critic with a poet's fire.An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:Whose own example strengthens all his laws;And is himself that great sublime he draws.[270]680Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;And arts still followed where her eagles flew;From the same foes, at last, both felt[271]their doom,685And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.[272]With tyranny, then superstition joined,As that the body, this enslaved the mind;[273]Much was believed, but little understood,[274]And to be dull was construed to be good;[275]690A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,And the monks finished what the Goths begun.[276]At length Erasmus, that great injured name,(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)[277]Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,[278]695And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days,Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,[279]Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head.700Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;[280]With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;[281]A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.[282]Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow705The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:[283]Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,As next in place to Mantua, next in fame![284]But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.[285]710Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,But critic-learning flourished most in France;The rules a nation, born to serve,[286]obeys;And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.[287]But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,715And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,We still defied the Romans, as of old.[288]Yet some there were, among the sounder fewOf those who less presumed, and better knew,720Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,And here restored wit's fundamental laws.Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."[289]Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,[290]725With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.[291]Such late was Walsh,[292]the muse's judge and friend,Who justly knew to blame or to commend:730To failings mild, but zealous for desert;The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,This praise at least a grateful muse may give:The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,735Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,But in low numbers short excursions tries;[293]Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,The learn'd reflect on what before they knew:740Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;[294]Averse alike to flatter, or offend;Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.[295]
}
APPENDIX.
Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of his intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was perpetually dazzled and misled, by the eager desire of seeing everything in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and forced comments. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such unsubstantial objects. Accordingly his notes on Shakspeare have been totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the roots his fanciful and visionary interpretation of the sixth book of Virgil. And but few readers, I believe, will be found that will cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered,[296]that his notes on Pope's Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever. For, to instance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Essay on Man to the doctrines of revelation, is the rashest adventure in which ever critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to divine, rather than to explain an author's meaning.—Warton.
If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on the subject. For these reasons I havethought it advisable, in this edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious, if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.—Roscoe.
Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts, was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another, and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity, though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren.