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Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn'd,
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorn'd :
But when from hence he plunged into the main,
Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste! from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!"
She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice—I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.
I go, ye nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove ;
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below!
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main,
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane!
On Phoebus' shrine my harp I'll then bestow,
And this inscription shall be placed below:
"Here she who sung, to him that did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre;
What suits with Sappho, Phoebus, suits with thee;
The gift, the giver, and the god agree.”

But why, alas! relentless youth, ah why,
To distant seas must tender Sappho fly?
Thy charms than those may far more powerful be,
And Phoebus' self is less a god to me.
Ah! canst thou doom me to the rocks and sea,
O far more faithless and more hard than they?
Ah! canst thou rather see this tender breast
Dash'd on these rocks than to thy bosom press'd?
This breast, which once, in vain! you liked so well;
Where the Loves play'd, and where the Muses dwell.
Alas! the Muses now no more inspire,
Untuned my lute, and silent is my lyre.
My languid numbers have forgot to flow,

And fancy sinks beneath the weight of woe.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
Themes of my verse, and SUBJECTS of my flames.
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling string:
My Phaon's fled, and I those arts resign-
(Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)
Return, fair youth, return, and bring along
Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:
Absent from thee, the poet's flame expires;
But ah! how fiercely burn the lover's fires!
Gods! can no prayers, no sighs, no numbers move
One savage heart, or teach it how to love?
The winds my prayers, my sighs, my numbers bear,
The flying winds have lost them all in air!
Or when, alas! shall more auspicious gales
To these fond eyes restore thy welcome sails!
If you return-ah why these long delays?
Poor Sappho dies while careless Phaon stays.
O launch the bark, nor fear the watery plain;
Venus for thee shall smooth her native main.
O launch thy bark, secure of prosperous gales;
Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sails.
If you will fly-(yet ah! what cause can be,
Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?)
If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
Ah let me seek it from the raging seas:
To raging seas unpitied I'll remove,
And either cease to live or cease to love!

THE DUNCIAD.

IN FOUR BOOKS.

BY AUTHORITY.

BY VIRTUE OF THE AUTHORITY IN US VESTED BY THE ACT FOR SUBJECTING POETS TO THE POWER OF A LICENSEK, WE HAVE REVISED THIS PIECE; WHERE, FINDING THE STYLE AND APPELLATION OF KING TO HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO A CERTAIN PRETENDER, PSEUDO-POET, OR PHANTOM, OF THE NAME OF TIBBALD; AND APPREHENDING THE SAME MAY BE DEEMED IN SOME SORT A REFLECTION ON MAJESTY, OR AT LEAST AN INSULT ON THAT LEGAL AUTHORITY WHICH HAS BESTOWED ON ANOTHER PERSON THE CROWN OF POESY: WE HAVE ORDERED THE SAID PRETENDER, PSEUDO-POET, OR PHANTOM, UTTERLY TO VANISH AND EVAPORATE OUT OF THIS WORK: AND DO DECLARE THE SAID THRONE OF POESY FROM HENCEFORTH TO BE ABDICATED AND VACANT, UNLESS DULY AND LAWFULLY SUPPLIED BY THE LAUREATE HIMSELF, AND IT IS HEREBY ENACTED, THAT NO OTHER PERSON DO PRESUME TO FILL THE SAME.

ос. сн.

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS,

HIS PROLEGOMENA AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DUNCIAD: WITH THE HYPER-CRITICS OF ARISTARCHUS.

A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER,

OCCASIONED BY THE FIRST CORRECT EDITION OF THE DUNCIAD.

It is with pleasure I hear that you have procured a correct copy of the DUNCIAD, which the many surreptitious ones have rendered so necessary: and it is yet with more, that I am informed it will be attended with a COMMENTARY: & work so requisite, that I cannot think the author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance of this poem.

Such notes as have occurred to me I herewith send you: you will oblige me by inserting them amongst those which are, or will be, transmitted to you by others; since not only the author's friends, but even strangers, appear engaged by humanity to take some care of an orphan of so much genius and spirit, which its parent seems to have abandoned from the very beginning, and suffered to step into the world naked, unguarded, and unattended.

It was upon reading some of the abusive papers lately published that my great regard to a person, whose friendship I esteem as one of the chief honours of my life, and a much greater respect to truth than to him or any man living, engaged me in inquiries, of which the inclosed notes are the fruit.

I perceived, that most of these authors had been (doubtless very wisely)' the first aggressors. They had tried, 'till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: nobody was either concerned or surprised if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce. But every one was curious to read what could be said to prove Mr POPE one, and was ready to pay something for such a discovery: a stratagem which, would they fairly own, it might not only reconcile them to me, but screen them from the resentment of their lawful superiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them.

I found this was not all: ill success in that had transported them to personal abuse, either of himself, or (what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men of virtue and honour bad men, long before he had either leisure or inclination to call them bad writers: and some had been such old offenders, that he had quite forgotten their persons as well as their slanders, till they were pleased to revive them.

Now what had Mr POPE done before, to incense them? He had published those works which are in the hands of everybody, in which not the least mention is made of any of them. And what has he done since? He has laughed, and written the DUNCIAD. What has that said of them?

A very serious truth, which the public had said before, that they were dull and what it had no sooner said, but they themselves were at great pains to procure or even purchase room in the prints, to testify under their hands to the truth of it.

I should still have been silent, if either I had seen any inclination in my friend to be serious with such accusers, or if they had only meddled with his writings; since whoever publishes puts himself on his trial by his country. But when his moral character was attacked, and in a manner from which neither truth nor virtue can secure the most innocent, in a manner, which, though it annihilates the credit of the accusation with the just and impartial, yet aggravates very much the guilt of the accusers,-I mean by authors without names: then I thought, since the danger was common to all, the concern ought to be so; and that it was an act of justice to detect the authors, not only on this account, but as many of them are the same who for several years past have made free with the greatest names in church and state, exposed to the world the private misfortunes of families, abused all, even to women, and whose prostituted papers (for one or other party, in the unhappy divisions of their country) have insulted the fallen, the friendless, the exiled, and the dead.

Besides this, which I take to be a public concern, I have already confessed I had a private one. I am one of that number who have long loved and esteemed Mr POPE; and had often declared it was not his capacity or writings (which we ever thought the least valuable part of his character), but the honest, open, and beneficent man, that we most esteemed and loved in him. Now, if what these people say were believed, I must appear to all my friends either a fool or a knave; either imposed on myself, or imposing on them; so that I am as much interested in the confutation of these calumnies as he is himself.

I am no author, and consequently not to be suspected either of jealousy or resentment against any of the men, of whom scarce one is known to me by sight; and as for their writings, I have sought them (on this one occasion) in vain,

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