The Versifiers—Heaven defend us!
They play’d the very devil with their rhymes.
They hope’d Apollo a new set would send us;
And then, invidiously enough,
Place’d modish verse, which they call’d stuff,
Against the writing of the elder times.
To say the truth, a modern versifier
Clap’d cheek by jowl
With Pope, with Dryden, and with Prior,
Would look most scurvily, upon my soul!