Or prune the spirit of each daring phrase,
To fly from error, not to merit praise?

Ye, who seek finish'd models, never cease, By day and night, to read the works of Greece. But our good fathers never bent their brains To heathen Greek, content with native strains. The few who read a page, or used a pen, Were satisfied with Chaucer and old Ben; The jokes and numbers suited to their taste Were quaint and careless, any thing but chaste; Yet whether right or wrong the ancient rules, It will not do to call our fathers fools! Though you and I, who eruditely know To separate the elegant and low, Can also, when a hobbling line appears, Detect with fingers, in default of ears.

In sooth I do not know, or greatly care To learn, who our first English strollers were; Or if, till roofs received the vagrant art,

Our Muse, like that of Thespis, kept a cart; But this is certain, since our Shakspeare's days, There's pomp enough, if little else, in plays;

Non laudem merui. Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.
At vestri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudavere sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stulte, mirati; si modo ego et vos
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto,
Legitimumque sonum digitis callemus et aure.
Ignotum tragicæ genus invenisse Camœnæ
Dicitur, et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis,
Quæ canerent agerentque peruncti fæcibus ora.
Post hunc personæ pallæque repertor honestæ

Nor will Melpomene ascend her throne

Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.

Old comedies still meet with much applause,
Though too licentious for dramatic laws:
At least, we moderns, wisely, 'tis confest,
Curtail, or silence, the lascivious jest.

Whate'er their follies, and their faults beside,
Our enterprising bards pass nought untried;
Nor do they merit slight applause who choose
An English subject for an English muse,
And leave to minds which never dare invent
French flippancy and German sentiment.
Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic, fame,

If all our bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop, like Pope (1), to polish by the way?

Æschylus, et modicis instravit pulpita tignis,
Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno.
Successit vetus his comœdia, non sine multa
Laude; sed in vitium libertas excidit, et vim
Dignam lege regi: lex est accepta; chorusque
Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.

Nil intentatum nostri liquere poetæ ;
Nec minimum meruere decus, vestigia Græca
Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta;
Vel qui prætextas, vel qui docuere togatas.

(1) ["They support Pope, I see, in the Quarterly,"-wrote Lord Byron in 1820, from Ravenna-" it is a sin, and a shame, and a damnation, that Pope!! should require it: but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets, disgrace themselves, and deny God, in running down Pope, the most faultless of poets.' Again, in 1821:-" Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age.

Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults, Who soon detect, and mark where'er we fail, And prove our marble with too nice a nail! Democritus himself was not so bad;

He only thought, but you would make, us mad!

But truth to say, most rhymers rarely guard
Against that ridicule they deem so hard;
In person negligent, they wear, from sloth,
Beards of a week, and nails of annual growth;
Reside in garrets, fly from those they meet,
And walk in alleys, rather than the street.

With little rhyme, less reason, if you please,
The name of poet may be got with ease,

Nec virtute foret clarisve potentius armis,
Quam lingua, Latium, si non offenderet unum.
quemque poetarum limæ labor, et mora. Vos, ô
Pompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite, quod non
Multa dies et multa litura coercuit, atque
Præsectum decies non castigavit ad unguem.
Ingenium misera quia fortunatius arte
Credit, et excludit sanos Helicone poetas
Democritus; bona pars non ungues ponere curat,
Non barbam: secreta petit loca, balnea vitat.
Nanciscetur enim pretium nomenque poetæ,

His poetry is the book of life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story.' Here is a statesman's opinion of poetry; it is honourable to him and to the art. Such a 'poet of a thousand years' was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our literature. But it can want them: he is himself a literature."-E]

So that not tuns of helleboric juice

Shall ever turn your head to any use;

Write but like Wordsworth, live beside a Lake, (1) And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; (2) Then print your book, once more return to town, And boys shall hunt your bardship up and down.

Si tribus Anticyris caput insanabile nunquam
Tonsori Licino commiserit. O ego lævus,

(1) ["That this is the age of the decline of English poetry, will be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That there are men of genius among the present poets, makes little against the fact; because it has been well said, that, next to him who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marini, who corrupted, not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe, for nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has been a kind of epidemic concurrence. The Lakers and their school, and every body else with their school, and even Moore without a school, and dilettanti lecturers at institutions, and elderly gentlemen who translate and imitate, and young ladies who listen and repeat, and baronets who draw indifferent frontispieces for bad poets, and noblemen who let them dine with them in the country, the small body of the wits and the great body of the blues, have latterly united in a depreciation, of which their forefathers would have been as much ashamed as their children will be. In the mean time, what have we got instead? The Lake School, which began with an epic poem 'written in six weeks,' (so' Joan of Arc' proclaimed herself), and finished with a ballad composed in twenty years, as Peter Bell's' creator takes care to inform the few who will enquire. What have we got instead? A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who have both made the best of our had materials and erroneous system. What have we got instead? Madoc, which is neither an epic nor any thing else, Thalaba, Kehama, Gebir, and such gibberish, written in all metres, and in no language." B. Letters, 1819.-See also the two pamphlets against Mr. Bowles, written at Ravenna in 1821, in which Lord Byron's enthusiastic reverence for Pope is the principal feature, antè, Vol. VI. p. 346.-E.]

(2) As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid, and may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads he crops, viz. — independence.

Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight,
To purge in spring-like Bayes (1)—before I write?
If this precaution soften'd not my bile,

I know no scribbler with a madder style;
But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice)
I cannot purchase fame at such a price,
I'll labour gratis as a grinder's wheel,

And, blunt myself, give edge to others' steel,
Nor write at all, unless to teach the art
To those rehearsing for the poet's part;
From Horace show the pleasing paths of song,
And from my own example – what is wrong.

Though modern practice sometimes differs quite, 'Tis just as well to think before you write;

Let

every book that suits your theme be read, So shall you trace it to the fountain-head.

Qui purgor bilem sub verni temporis horam!
Non alius faceret meliora poemata: verum
Nil tanti est: ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi:
Munus et officium, nil scribens ipse, docebo;
Unde parentur opes; quid alat formetque poetam ;
Quid deceat, quid non; quo virtus, quo ferat error
Scribendi recte, sapere est et principium et fons.
Rem tibi Socraticæ poterunt ostendere chartæ :
Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur.

(1) [See the "Rehearsal: "

"Bayes. Pray, Sir, how do you do when you write?

"Smith. Faith, Sir, for the most part I'm in pretty good health.

"Bayes. I mean, what do you do when you write?

"Smith. I take pen, ink, and paper, and sit down.

"Bayes. Now I write standing-that's one thing; and then another thing is, with what do you prepare yourself?

"Smith. Prepare myself! what the devil does the fool mean? "Bayes. Why, I'll tell you what I do. If I am to write familiar things, as sonnets to Armida, and the like, I make use of stewed prunes only; but when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take physic and let blood: for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge."-E]