He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of Truth;
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart.
Horace, speaking of an old comic poet, Livius (Ep. II, i, 69), whom he had been compelled to read at school, is indignant that a single neat line or happy phrase should preserve an otherwise contemptible composition. This is Pope's expansion:
But, for the wits of either Charles' 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