IX
Philosophy, as it before us lies,
Seems to have borrow'd some ungrateful taste
Of doubts, impertinence, and niceties,
From every age through which it pass'd,
But always with a stronger relish of the last.
This beauteous queen, by Heaven design'd
To be the great original
For man to dress and polish his uncourtly mind,
In what mock habits have they put her since the fall!
More oft in fools' and madmen's hands than sages',
She seems a medley of all ages,
With a huge farthingale to swell her fustian stuff,
A new commode, a topknot, and a ruff,
Her face patch'd o'er with modern pedantry,
With a long sweeping train
Of comments and disputes, ridiculous and vain,
All of old cut with a new dye:
How soon have you restored her charms,
And rid her of her lumber and her books,
Drest her again genteel and neat,
And rather tight than great!
How fond we are to court her to our arms!
How much of heaven is in her naked looks!
X
Thus the deluding Muse oft blinds me to her ways,
And ev'n my very thoughts transfers
And changes all to beauty and the praise
Of that proud tyrant sex of hers.
The rebel Muse, alas! takes part,
But with my own rebellious heart,
And you with fatal and immortal wit conspire
To fan th'unhappy fire.
Cruel unknown! what is it you intend?
Ah! could you, could you hope a poet for your friend!
Rather forgive what my first transport said:
May all the blood, which shall by woman's scorn be shed,
Lie upon you and on your children's head!
For you (ah! did I think I e'er should live to see
The fatal time when that could be!)
Have even increased their pride and cruelty.
Woman seems now above all vanity grown,
Still boasting of her great unknown
Platonic champions, gain'd without one female wile,
Or the vast charges of a smile;
Which 'tis a shame to see how much of late
You've taught the covetous wretches to o'errate,
And which they've now the consciences to weigh
In the same balance with our tears,
And with such scanty wages pay
The bondage and the slavery of years.
Let the vain sex dream on; the empire comes from us;
And had they common generosity,
They would not use us thus.
Well—though you've raised her to this high degree,
Ourselves are raised as well as she;
And, spite of all that they or you can do,
'Tis pride and happiness enough to me,
Still to be of the same exalted sex with you.
XI
Alas, how fleeting and how vain
Is even the nobler man, our learning and our wit!
I sigh whene'er I think of it:
As at the closing an unhappy scene
Of some great king and conqueror's death,
When the sad melancholy Muse
Stays but to catch his utmost breath.
I grieve, this nobler work, most happily begun,
So quickly and so wonderfully carried on,
May fall at last to interest, folly, and abuse.
There is a noontide in our lives,
Which still the sooner it arrives,
Although we boast our winter sun looks bright,
And foolishly are glad to see it at its height,
Yet so much sooner comes the long and gloomy night.
No conquest ever yet begun,
And by one mighty hero carried to its height,
E'er flourished under a successor or a son;
It lost some mighty pieces through all hands it pass'd,
And vanish'd to an empty title in the last.
For, when the animating mind is fled,
(Which nature never can retain,
Nor e'er call back again,)
The body, though gigantic, lies all cold and dead.
XII
And thus undoubtedly 'twill fare
With what unhappy men shall dare
To be successors to these great unknown,
On learning's high-establish'd throne.
Censure, and Pedantry, and Pride,
Numberless nations, stretching far and wide,
Shall (I foresee it) soon with Gothic swarms come forth
From Ignorance's universal North,
And with blind rage break all this peaceful government:
Yet shall the traces of your wit remain,
Like a just map, to tell the vast extent
Of conquest in your short and happy reign:
And to all future mankind shew
How strange a paradox is true,
That men who lived and died without a name
Are the chief heroes in the sacred lists of fame.
[Footnote 1: "I have been told, that Dryden having perused these verses,
said, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet;' and that this
denunciation was the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to
Dryden."—Johnson in his "Life of Swift."—W. E. B.
In Malone's "Life of Dryden," p. 241, it is stated that John Dunton,
the original projector of the Athenian Society, in his "Life and
Errours," 1705, mentions this Ode, "which being an ingenious poem, was
prefixed to the fifth Supplement of the Athenian Mercury."—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The Ode I writ to the king in Ireland.—Swift.]
[Footnote 3: The floating island, which, by order of Neptune, became
fixed for the use of Latona, who there brought forth Apollo and Diana.
See Ovid, "Metam.," vi, 191, etc.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Gyges, who, thanks to the possession of a golden ring, which
made him invisible, put Candaules to death, married his widow, and
mounted the throne, 716 B.C. See the story in Cicero, "De Off.," iii,
9.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Proteus. See Ovid, "Fasti," lib. i.—W. E. B.]
TO MR. CONGREVE
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1693
Thrice, with a prophet's voice, and prophet's power,
The Muse was called in a poetic hour,
And insolently thrice the slighted maid
Dared to suspend her unregarded aid;
Then with that grief we form in spirits divine,
Pleads for her own neglect, and thus reproaches mine.
Once highly honoured! false is the pretence
You make to truth, retreat, and innocence!
Who, to pollute my shades, bring'st with thee down
The most ungenerous vices of the town;
Ne'er sprung a youth from out this isle before
I once esteem'd, and loved, and favour'd more,
Nor ever maid endured such courtlike scorn,
So much in mode, so very city-born;
'Tis with a foul design the Muse you send,
Like a cast mistress, to your wicked friend;
But find some new address, some fresh deceit,
Nor practise such an antiquated cheat;
These are the beaten methods of the stews,
Stale forms, of course, all mean deceivers use,
Who barbarously think to 'scape reproach,
By prostituting her they first debauch.
Thus did the Muse severe unkindly blame
This offering long design'd to Congreve's fame;
First chid the zeal as unpoetic fire,
Which soon his merit forced her to inspire;
Then call this verse, that speaks her largest aid,
The greatest compliment she ever made,
And wisely judge, no power beneath divine
Could leap the bounds which part your world and mine;
For, youth, believe, to you unseen, is fix'd
A mighty gulf, unpassable betwixt.
Nor tax the goddess of a mean design
To praise your parts by publishing of mine;
That be my thought when some large bulky writ
Shows in the front the ambition of my wit;
There to surmount what bears me up, and sing
Like the victorious wren perch'd on the eagle's wing.
This could I do, and proudly o'er him tower,
Were my desires but heighten'd to my power.
Godlike the force of my young Congreve's bays,
Softening the Muse's thunder into praise;
Sent to assist an old unvanquish'd pride
That looks with scorn on half mankind beside;
A pride that well suspends poor mortals' fate,
Gets between them and my resentment's weight,
Stands in the gap 'twixt me and wretched men,
T'avert th'impending judgments of my pen.
Thus I look down with mercy on the age,
By hopes my Congreve will reform the stage:
For never did poetic mind before
Produce a richer vein, or cleaner ore;
The bullion stamp'd in your refining mind
Serves by retail to furnish half mankind.
With indignation I behold your wit
Forced on me, crack'd, and clipp'd, and counterfeit,
By vile pretenders, who a stock maintain
From broken scraps and filings of your brain.
Through native dross your share is hardly known,
And by short views mistook for all their own;
So small the gains those from your wit do reap,
Who blend it into folly's larger heap,
Like the sun's scatter'd beams which loosely pass,
When some rough hand breaks the assembling glass.
Yet want your critics no just cause to rail,
Since knaves are ne'er obliged for what they steal.
These pad on wit's high road, and suits maintain
With those they rob, by what their trade does gain.
Thus censure seems that fiery froth which breeds
O'er the sun's face, and from his heat proceeds,
Crusts o'er the day, shadowing its partent beam,
As ancient nature's modern masters dream;
This bids some curious praters here below
Call Titan sick, because their sight is so;
And well, methinks, does this allusion fit
To scribblers, and the god of light and wit;
Those who by wild delusions entertain
A lust of rhyming for a poet's vein,
Raise envy's clouds to leave themselves in night,
But can no more obscure my Congreve's light,
Than swarms of gnats, that wanton in a ray
Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day.
What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit?
Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit?
How would you blush the shameful birth to hear
Of those you so ignobly stoop to fear;
For, ill to them, long have I travell'd since,
Round all the circles of impertinence,
Search'd in the nest where every worm did lie
Before it grew a city butterfly;
I'm sure I found them other kind of things
Than those with backs of silk and golden wings;
A search, no doubt, as curious and as wise
As virtuosoes' in dissecting flies:
For, could you think? the fiercest foes you dread,
And court in prologues, all are country bred;
Bred in my scene, and for the poet's sins
Adjourn'd from tops and grammar to the inns;
Those beds of dung, where schoolboys sprout up beaux
Far sooner than the nobler mushroom grows:
These are the lords of the poetic schools,
Who preach the saucy pedantry of rules;
Those powers the critics, who may boast the odds
O'er Nile, with all its wilderness of gods;
Nor could the nations kneel to viler shapes,
Which worshipp'd cats, and sacrificed to apes;
And can you think the wise forbear to laugh
At the warm zeal that breeds this golden calf?
Haply you judge these lines severely writ
Against the proud usurpers of the pit;
Stay while I tell my story, short, and true;
To draw conclusions shall be left to you;
Nor need I ramble far to force a rule,
But lay the scene just here at Farnham[1] school.
Last year, a lad hence by his parents sent
With other cattle to the city went;
Where having cast his coat, and well pursued
The methods most in fashion to be lewd,
Return'd a finish'd spark this summer down,
Stock'd with the freshest gibberish of the town;
A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit,
Confounded in that Babel of the pit;
Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild,
Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child;
Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts,
Before the play, or else between the acts;
Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds
Should spring such short and transitory kinds,
Or crazy rules to make us wits by rote,
Last just as long as every cuckoo's note:
What bungling, rusty tools are used by fate!
'Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate,
My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed:
When man's ill genius to my presence sent
This wretch, to rouse my wrath, for ruin meant;
Who in his idiom vile, with Gray's-Inn grace,
Squander'd his noisy talents to my face;
Named every player on his fingers' ends,
Swore all the wits were his peculiar friends;
Talk'd with that saucy and familiar ease
Of Wycherly, and you, and Mr. Bayes:[2]
Said, how a late report your friends had vex'd,
Who heard you meant to write heroics next;
For, tragedy, he knew, would lose you quite,
And told you so at Will's[3] but t'other night.
Thus are the lives of fools a sort of dreams,
Rendering shades things, and substances of names;
Such high companions may delusion keep,
Lords are a footboy's cronies in his sleep.
As a fresh miss, by fancy, face, and gown,
Render'd the topping beauty of the town,
Draws every rhyming, prating, dressing sot,
To boast of favours that he never got;
Of which, whoe'er lacks confidence to prate,
Brings his good parts and breeding in debate;
And not the meanest coxcomb you can find,
But thanks his stars, that Phillis has been kind;
Thus prostitute my Congreve's name is grown
To every lewd pretender of the town.
Troth, I could pity you; but this is it,
You find, to be the fashionable wit;
These are the slaves whom reputation chains,
Whose maintenance requires no help from brains.
For, should the vilest scribbler to the pit,
Whom sin and want e'er furnish'd out a wit;
Whose name must not within my lines be shown,
Lest here it live, when perish'd with his own;[4]
Should such a wretch usurp my Congreve's place,
And choose out wits who ne'er have seen his face;
I'll bet my life but the dull cheat would pass,
Nor need the lion's skin conceal the ass;
Yes, that beau's look, that vice, those critic ears,
Must needs be right, so well resembling theirs.
Perish the Muse's hour thus vainly spent
In satire, to my Congreve's praises meant;
In how ill season her resentments rule,
What's that to her if mankind be a fool?
Happy beyond a private Muse's fate,
In pleasing all that's good among the great,[5]
Where though her elder sisters crowding throng,
She still is welcome with her innocent song;
Whom were my Congreve blest to see and know,
What poor regards would merit all below!
How proudly would he haste the joy to meet,
And drop his laurel at Apollo's feet!
Here by a mountain's side, a reverend cave
Gives murmuring passage to a lasting wave:
'Tis the world's watery hour-glass streaming fast,
Time is no more when th'utmost drop is past;
Here, on a better day, some druid dwelt,
And the young Muse's early favour felt;
Druid, a name she does with pride repeat,
Confessing Albion once her darling seat;
Far in this primitive cell might we pursue
Our predecessors' footsteps still in view;
Here would we sing—But, ah! you think I dream,
And the bad world may well believe the same;
Yes: you are all malicious slanders by,
While two fond lovers prate, the Muse and I.
Since thus I wander from my first intent,
Nor am that grave adviser which I meant,
Take this short lesson from the god of bays,
And let my friend apply it as he please:
Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod,
But give the vigorous fancy room.
For when, like stupid alchymists, you try
To fix this nimble god,
This volatile mercury,
The subtile spirit all flies up in fume;
Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find
More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6]
While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come,
And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom;
The Muse like some bright country virgin shows
Fallen by mishap among a knot of beaux;
They, in their lewd and fashionable prate,
Rally her dress, her language, and her gait;
Spend their base coin before the bashful maid,
Current like copper, and as often paid:
She, who on shady banks has joy'd to sleep
Near better animals, her father's sheep,
Shamed and amazed, beholds the chattering throng,
To think what cattle she is got among;
But with the odious smell and sight annoy'd,
In haste she does th'offensive herd avoid.
'Tis time to bid my friend a long farewell,
The muse retreats far in yon crystal cell;
Faint inspiration sickens as she flies,
Like distant echo spent, the spirit dies.
In this descending sheet you'll haply find
Some short refreshment for your weary mind,
Nought it contains is common or unclean,
And once drawn up, is ne'er let down again.[7]