The Old Bard finding it impossible

To draw our Poet from the love of verse,

And bury him in indolence, attempts

By calumny to scare him from the stage;

Pretending that in all his former plays

The characters are low, and mean the style;

Because he ne’er describ’d a mad-brain’d youth,

Who in his fits of frenzy thought he saw

A hind, the dogs in full cry after her;

Her too imploring and beseeching him