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:1
One likes no language but the Faery Queen;

A Scot will fight for Christ's kirk o' the Green :2
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.3

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 wits as well as wine,
Say at what age a poet grows divine?
Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin to immortalize?

"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,

I hold that wit a classic, good in law."

35

40

45

;

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?

50

55

And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,

Or damn to all eternity at once,

At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

60

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

By courtesy of England, he may do."

1 Skelton, Poet Laureate to Henry VIII., a volume of whose verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of ribaldry, obscenity, and scurrilous language.

[This censure of the old poets is exaggerated. Chaucer is a study; no one learns him by rote. Skelton is, indeed, often coarse, but not so much so as Rabelais, and his object was the same-to decry, under this garb of coarse licentiousness, (which he dared not do openly,) the vices of the clergy and the court. He often attacked Cardinal Wolsey, and that powerful prelate threatened him with vengeance, to escape which Skelton took refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster, where he died 21st June, 1529.]

2 A ballad made by a king of Scotland.

8 The Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his poetical club.

Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,

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.

65

Shakespear (whom you and every play-house bill4

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,

75

But still I love the language of his heart.

"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,

80

Of Shakespear's nature, and of Cowley's wit;

How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;
How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;

85

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,5

And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,

90

4 Shakespear and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought of this immortality; the one in many pieces composed in haste for the stage; the other in his latter works in general, which Dryden called his dotages.

5 A piece of very low humour, one of the first printed plays in English, and therefore much valued by some antiquaries.

[This comedy was written about the year 1565 by Dr. John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells. The humour of the piece, it must be admitted, is low enough, for it turns upon the loss and recovery of a needle with which Dame Gurton was mending the breeches of Hodge her husband. The song of "Jolly Good Ale" in this rude drama is the best part of it, and is still de servedly a favourite :

"I love no roast but a nut-brown toast,

And a crab laid in the fire;

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,

95

And Sydney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:

Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound,
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground;
In quibbles, angel and archangel join,
And God the Father turns a school-divine.
Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,
Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook,
Or damn all Shakspeare, like the affected fool
At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.6
But for the wits of either Charles's 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

100

105

110

In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page,

Has sanctified whole poems for an age.

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

115

When works are censured, not as bad but new;

On Avon's bank, where flowers eternal blow,

120

While if our elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon, but applause.

If I but ask, if any weed can grow;

One tragic sentence if I dare deride,

A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire.

No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,

Can hurt me if it wold,

I am so wrapt and thoroughly capt

Of jolly good ale and old."

The "Careless Husband," noticed in the next line, is Colley Cibber's best play, produced in 1706.]

6 [An indirect satire on Lord Hervey, who in his "Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court," has these lines:

"All I learn'd from Dr. Friend at school

Has quite deserted this poor John Trot head,
And left plain native English in its stead."]

Which Betterton's grave action dignified,7
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims,
(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names,) 8
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,

125

And swear, all shame is lost in George's age!
You'd think no fools disgraced the former reign,
Did not some grave examples yet remain,
Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,
And, having once been wrong will be so still.
He, who to seem more deep than you or I,
Extols old bards, or Merlin's prophecy,
Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,
And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.
Had ancient times conspired to disallow

130

135

What then was new, what had been ancient now?

Or what remain'd, so worthy to be read
By learned critics, of the mighty dead?

In days of ease, when now the weary sword Was sheath'd, and luxury with Charles restored; In every taste of foreign courts improved,

66

All, by the king's example, lived and loved."9

Then peers grew proud in horsemanship to excel,10

Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;

The soldier breathed the gallantries of France,

And every flowery courtier writ romance.

140

145

Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm,
And yielding metal flow'd to human form:
Lely on animated canvas stolell

The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.

150

7 [Thomas Betterton (born in 1635, died in 1710), was the Roscius of his times; a man of literary taste and excellent character. One of Pope's few existing attempts at the art of painting is a portrait of this actor. Barton Booth was born in 1681 and died in 1733. He was a splendid declaimer, and the original Cato in Addison's tragedy.]

8 An absurd custom of several actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere proper names of Greeks or Romans, which (as they call it) fills the mouth of the player.

9 A verse of the Lord Lansdown.

10 The Duke of Newcastle's Book of Horsemanship; the Romance of Parthenissa, by the Earl of Orrery; and most of the French romances translated by persons of quality.

11 This was the characteristic of this excellent colourist's expression, who was an excessive mannerist.

No wonder then, when all was love and sport,
The willing Muses were debauch'd at court:
On each enervate string they taught the note 12
To pant, or tremble through an eunuch's throat.
But Britain, changeful as a child at play,
Now calls in princes, and now turns away.
Now Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate;
Now all for pleasure, now for Church and State;
Now for prerogative, and now for laws;
Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.

Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock;
Instruct his family in every rule,

And send his wife to church, his son to school.

To worship like his fathers was his care;

To teach their frugal virtues to his heir:
To prove that luxury could never hold;
And place, on good security, his gold.

155

160

165

Now times are changed, and one poetic itch
Has seized the court and city, poor and rich:
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,

170

Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,
To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,
And all our grace at table is a song.

I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,

175

Not's self e'er tells more fibs than I;13

When sick of muse, our follies we deplore,

And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;
We wake next morning in a raging fit,

And call for pen and ink to show our wit.

180

He served a 'prenticeship, who sets up shop;
Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop; 14
E'en Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance.
Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile ?
(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile)

185

12 The Siege of Rhodes, by Sir William Davenant, the first opera sung in England.

13 [Probably Prior, who had many broken resolutions of this sort.]

14 A famous empiric, whose pill and drop had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at this time.