Read boldly, and unprejudic'd peruse
Each fav'rite modern, ev'n each ancient muse.
With all the comic salt and tragic rage
The great stupendous genius of our stage,
Boast of our island, pride of human-kind, 115
Had faults to which the boxes are not blind.
His frailties are to ev'ry gossip known:
Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town.
Ne'er be the dupe of Names, however high;
For some outlive good parts, some misapply. 120
Each elegant Spectator you admire;
But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire?
Masques for the court, and oft a clumsey jest,
Disgrac'd the muse that wrought the Alchemist.
"But to the ancients."—Faith! I am not clear, 125
For all the smooth round type of Elzevir,
That every work which lasts in prose or song,
Two thousand years, deserves to last so long.
For not to mention some eternal blades
Known only now in th' academic shades, 130
(Those sacred groves where raptur'd spirits stray,
And in word-hunting waste the live-long day)
Ancients whom none but curious critics scan,
Do, read[A] Messala's praises if you can.
Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smart 135
While soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?
With him the Loves and Muses melt in tears;
But not a word of some hexameters.
"You grow so squeamish and so dev'lish dry,
You'll call Lucretius vapid next." Not I. 140
Some find him tedious, others think him lame:
But if he lags his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads thro' barren wilds he tried,
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride:
Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright, 145
He streams athwart the philosophic night.
Find you in Horace no insipid Odes?—
He dar'd to tell us Homer sometimes nods;
And but for such a aide's hardy skill
Homer might slumber unsuspected still. 150
[Footnote A: A poem of Tibullus's in hexameter verse; as yawning and
insipid as his elegies are tender and natural.]
Tasteless, implicit, indolent and tame,
At second-hand we chiefly praise or blame.
Hence 'tis, for else one knows not why nor how,
Some authors flourish for a year or two:
For many some, more wond'rous still to tell; 155
Farquhar yet lingers on the brink of hell.
Of solid merit others pine unknown; }
At first, tho'[A] Carlos swimmingly went down, }
Poor Belvidera fail'd to melt the town. }
Sunk in dead night the giant Milton lay 160
'Till Sommer's hand produc'd him to the day.
But, thanks to heav'n and Addison's good grace
Now ev'ry fop is charm'd with Chevy Chace.
[Footnote A: Don Carlos, a tragedy of Otway's, now long and justly
forgotten, went off with great applause; while his Orphan, a
somewhat better performance, and what is yet more strange, his
Venice Preserved, according to the theatrical anecdotes of those
times, met with a very cold reception.]
Specious and sage, the sovereign of the flock
Led to the downs, or from the wave-worn rock 165
Reluctant hurl'd, the tame implicit train
Or crop the downs, or headlong seek the main.
As blindly we our solemn leaders follow,
And good, and bad, and execrable swallow.
Pray, on the first throng'd evening of a play 170
That wears the[A] facies hippocratica,
Strong lines of death, signs dire of reprobation;
Have you not seen the angel of salvation
Appear sublime; with wise and solemn rap
To teach the doubtful rabble where to clap?— 175
The rabble knows not where our dramas shine;
But where the cane goes pat—by G— that's fine!
[Footnote A: The appearance of the face in the last stage
of a consumption, as it is described by Hippocrates.]
Judge for yourself; nor wait with timid phlegm
Till some illustrious pedant hum or hem. 179
The lords who starv'd old Ben were learn'dly fond
Of Chaucer, whom with bungling toil they conn'd,
Their sons, whose ears bold Milton could not seize, }
Would laugh o'er Ben like mad, and snuff and sneeze, }
And swear, and seem as tickled as you please. }
Their spawn, the pride of this sublimer age, 185
Feel to the toes and horns grave Milton's rage.
Tho' liv'd he now he might appeal with scorn
To Lords, Knights, 'Squires and Doctors, yet unborn;
Or justly mad to Moloch's burning fane
Devote the choicest children of his brain. 190
Judge for yourself; and as you find report.
Of wit as freely as of beef or port.
Zounds! shall a pert or bluff important wight,
Whose brain is fanciless, whose blood is white;
A mumbling ape of taste; prescribe us laws 195
To try the poets, for no better cause
Than that he boasts per ann. ten thousand clear,
Yelps in the House, or barely sits a Peer?
For shame! for shame! the liberal British soul
To stoop to any stale dictator's rule! 200
I may be wrong, and often am no doubt,
But right or wrong with friends with foes 'twill out.
Thus 'tis perhaps my fault if I complain
Of trite invention and a flimsy vein,
Tame characters, uninteresting, jejune, 205
And passions drily copied from [A]Le Brun.
For I would rather never judge than wrong
That friend of all men, generous Fenelon.
But in the name of goodness, must I be 210
The dupe of charms I never yet could see?
And then to flatter where there's no reward—
Better be any patron-hunting bard,
Who half our Lords with filthy praise besmears,
And sing an Anthem to ALL MINISTERS:
Taste th' Attic salt in ev'ry Peer's poor rebus, 215
And crown each Gothic idol for a Phoebus.
[Footnote A: First painter to Lewis XIV. who, to speak in fashionable French English, called himself LEWIS THE GREAT. Our sovereign lords the passions, Love, Rage, Despair, &c. were graciously pleased to sit to him in their turns for their portraits: which he was generous enough to communicate to the public; to the great improvement, no doubt, of history-painting. It was he who they say poison'd Le Sueur; who, without half his advantages in many other respects, was so unreasonable and provoking as to display a genius with which his own could stand no comparison. It was he and his Gothic disciples, who, with sly scratches, defac'd the most masterly of this Le Sueur's performances, as often as their barbarous envy could snugly reach them. Yet after all these atchievements he died in his bed! A catastrophe which could not have happened to him in a country like this, where the fine arts are as zealously and judiciously patronised as they are well understood.]