EPISTLE I.

TO AUGUSTUS.

WHILE you, great patron of mankind! sustain

The balanc'd world, and open all the main

Your country, chief in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the muse, from such a monarch, steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?

Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,
The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
Clos'd their long glories, with a sigh, to find
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath,
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.
The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,
Had still this monster to subdue at last.
Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray
Each star of meaner merit fades away!

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;

Oppress'd

Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat,
Those suns of glory please not till they set.
To thee, the world its present homage pays,
The harvest early, but mature the praise :
Great friend of LIBERTY! in Kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,
As Heav'n's own oracles from altars heard.
Wonder of Kings; like whom, to mortal eyes
None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.

Just in one instance, be it yet confest
Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest :
Foes to all living worth except your own,
And advocates for folly dead and gone.

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30

Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; 35
It is the rust we value, not the gold.

Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:

One likes no language but the Fairy Queen;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk of the Green; 40
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,

He swears the muses met him at the Devil.

Tho' justly Greece her eldest sons admires, Why should not we be wiser than our sires?

In

VER. 40. Christ's Kirk of the Green;] A ballad made by James the First, King of Scotland.

VIR. 42. met him at the Devil.] The Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his poetical club.

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In ev'ry public virtue we excel;

We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
If time improve our wit as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who dy'd, perhaps, a hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin t' immortalize?

"Who lasts a century can have no flaw, "I hold that wit a classic, good in law."

Suppose he wants a year, will you, compound? And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once,

At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

By courtesy of England, he may do.”

Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare,

I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,

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60

And melt down ancients like a heap of snow : 65 While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,

And estimating authors by the year,

Bestow a garland only on a bier.

Shakespear (whom you and ev'ry play-house bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will,) For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despight.

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Ben

Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
The life to come, in ev'ry poet's creed.
Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his Epic, nay Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.

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80

"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men! "What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben? "In all debates where critics bear a part, "Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, "Of Shakespear's nature, and of Cowley's wit; "How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher " writ ;

"How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
"But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe.
"These, only these, support the crowded stage,
"From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age."
All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;

Why then, I say, the public is a fool.

But let them own, that greater faults than we
They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.

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Spenser

VER. 91. Gammer Gurton] A piece of very low humour, one of the first printed plays in English, and therefore much valued by some antiquaries. Written by J. Still, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Spenser himself affects the obsolete,

And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet :
Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound,
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,
In quibbles, angel and archangel join,

And God the Father turns a school-divine.
Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,
Like slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook,
Or damn all Shakespear, like th' affected fool
At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,
(Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er,)
One simile, that solitary shines

In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

ΙΟΙ

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Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a Has sanctify'd whole poems for an age.

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;

While if our elders break all reason's laws,

These fools demand not pardon, but applause.

On Avon's bank, where flow'rs eternal blow, If I but ask, if any weed can grow?

One tragic sentence if I dare deride

Which Betterton's grave action dignify'd,

[page,

Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims, (Tho' but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names,)

X 2

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How