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"Twas what I said to Craggs* and Child,+
Who praised my modesty, and smiled.
'Give me,' I cried, 'enough for me,
My bread and independency!'
So bought an annual rent or two,
And lived-just as you see I do;
Near fifty, and without a wife,
I trust that sinking fund, my life.
Can I retrench? Yes, mighty well,
Shrink back to my paternal cell.
A little house, with trees a-row,
And, like its master, very low :
There died my father, no man's debtor;
And there I'll die, nor worse nor better.
To set this matter full before ye,
Our old friend Swift will tell his story.
'Harley, the nation's great support,'-
But you may read it; I.stop short.

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* James Craggs, Secretary at War. He was deeply implicated in the South Sea scheme.

+ Sir Francis Child, the banker.

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

TO AUGUSTUS.*

WHILE you, great patron of mankind! sustain
The balanced world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend;
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
After a life of generous toils endured,
The Gaul subdued, or property secured,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd ;-
Closed their long glories, with a sigh, to find
The unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath,
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death
The great Alcides, every labour pass'd,
Had still this monster to subdue at last.
Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray
Each star of meaner merit fades away!
Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat;
Those suns of glory please not till they set.
To thee the world its present homage pays;
The harvest early, but mature the praise:
Great friend of liberty! in kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame :

* George II.

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20

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Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered,
As Heaven's own oracles from altars heard.
Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes
None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.
Just in one instance, be it yet confess'd,
Your people, sir, are partial in the rest :
Foes to all living worth except your own,
And advocates for folly dead and gone.
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.
Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
And beastly Skelton* heads of houses quote;
One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen;'
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk of the Green;' +
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,

He swears the Muses met him at 'The Devil.'

Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In every public virtue we excel ;

We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well;
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
If time improve our wit as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine.
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin to immortalise?

'Who lasts a century can have no flaw; I hold that wit a classic, good in law.'

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Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? And shall we deem him ancient, right, and sound; Or damn to all eternity at once,

At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

'We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

By courtesy of England, he may do.'

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Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare,

I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair;

*Poet-laureate to Henry VIII.

+ A ballad by James I. of Scotland.

And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe ;
And, estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a bier.

Shakspeare, whom you and every play-house bill

Style the divine, the matchless, what you will; 70
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
The life to come, in every poet's creed.
Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art;
But still I love the language of his heart.

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'Yet surely, surely, these were famous men! What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben? In all debates where critics bear a part, Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, Of Shakspeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit; How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;

How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe.
These, only these, support the crowded stage,
From eldest Heywood* down to Cibber's age.'

All this may be; the people's voice is odd;
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton + if it give the bays,
And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
Why then, I say, the public is a fool:
But let them own, that greater faults than we
They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.
Spenser himself affects the obsolete,
And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:

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*Sir John Heywood, a musician of Henry VIII.'s time. A play by John Still (afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), curious as one of our earliest printed comedies. Colley Cibber's best play.

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