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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 threaten'd, 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,

354

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know

What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line,

360

Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness

join.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance; As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. "Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 365 Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

365 The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Johnson, in the 'Rambler,' justly controverts this principle; denies that Pope's examples exemplify any thing but the failure of his theory; and contemptuously asks, why the speed of Camilla should be pictured by the slowest line in our language? The obvious source of the error in the text exists in the supposition that the Greek and Roman quantities can be transferred to English poetry. The genius of the classic and the English tongues is totally distinct; and all attempts to mould English syllables into ancient harmony have only given additional evidence of the hopelessness of the enterprise.

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,

370

The line too labors, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along
the main.

375

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: 379
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!
The
power
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 every trifle scorn to take offence;

385

390

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;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve :
As things seem large which we through mist 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 damn'd beside,

395

400

405

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 authors' names, not works, and

then

410

415

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 woful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies every fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
The vulgar thus through imitation err,
As oft the learn'd by being singular;

420

425

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

And are but damn'd for having too much wit. 429

Some praise at morning what they blame at night; But always think the last opinion right.

437

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.
Ask 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;
Who knew most sentences was deepest read; 441
Faith, Gospel, all, seem'd made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists now in peace remain
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane. 445
If faith itself has different 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,

450

Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.

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444 Scotists. The disciples of Johannes Duns Scotus, the great unintelligible doctor, the Kant of his day. Thomists,' the disciples of Thomas Aquinas, celebrated for his singular subtlety, and his Summa Summæ,' containing comments on Aristotle, &c.

445 Kindred cobwebs. Bale narrates, as a miracle of the seventh century, that, at the sixth general council of Constantinople, where the mass was established, and the clergy were forbidden to marry, a vast quantity of cobwebs were seen suddenly to fall on the heads of the people.

445 Duck-lane. A place where old and second-hand books were sold formerly, near Smithfield.-Pope.

455

Some, valuing those of their own side or mind, Still make themselves the measure of mankind: Fondly we think we honor 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, In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaux; But sense survived when merry jests were pass'd; For rising merit will buoy up at last.

459

465

Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores 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
The opposing body's grossness, not its own..

469

458 Against Dryden rose. Dryden unhappily exposed himself too much to the censure of the moralist: living in a loose day, he submitted to the general habit, and increased the degeneracy which his powerful mind was given to reclaim. The parson here carelessly alluded to, was Jeremy Collier, a rough critic, but an honest writer: the critic was the duke of Buckingham, who ridiculed with memorable pleasantry the extravagances of Dryden's plays.

463 Milbourns. Luke Milbourn, a clergyman, and a tolerable critic; but, unluckily for his fame, opposed to Pope in his comments on Shakspeare.

465 Zoilus. A lesson to criticism in both his life and death: a general trafficker in abuse, he wrote against all the highest names of Greek literature, Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Demosthenes, &c.: having thus rendered himself obnoxious to his countrymen, he fled to Egypt, where, according to the narrative of Vitruvius, he was seized by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who, in his abhorrence of critical libel, ordered him to be stoned to death.

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