SATIRES AND EPISTLES.

To Augustus.

(HORACE, 2 Epist. I.)

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE reflections of Horace, and the judgments past in his Epistle to Augustus, seem'd so seasonable to the present times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his prince; whom he paints with the great and good qualities of a monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the encrease of an absolute empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours.

This Epistle will shew the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate: Admonebat praetores, ne paterentur nomen suum obsolefieri, &c. The other, that this piece was only a general discourse of poetry; whereas it was an apology for the poets, in order to render Augustus more their patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his cotemporaries, first against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the theatre; and lastly against the Emperor himself, who had conceived them of little use to the Government. He shews (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste among the Romans) that the introduction of the polite arts of Greece had given the writers of his time great advantages over their predecessors; that their morals were much improved, and the licence of those ancient poets restrained: that

satire and comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagances were left on the stage, were owing to the ill taste of the nobility; that poets, under due regulations, were in many respects useful to the State, and concludes, that it was upon them the Emperor himelf must depend, for his fame with posterity.

We may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his court to this great prince by writing with a decent freedom toward him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character.

HILE you, great patron of mankind! sustain
The balanc'd 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 gen'rous toils endur'd,
The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath,
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.
The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,
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:

ΙΟ

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Great friend of liberty! in kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,
As heav'n'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 confest
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;

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A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green;
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the muses met him at The devil.

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Tho' justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why shou'd not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry 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 thro' 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 dy'd, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all dispute; and fix the year precise
When British bards begin t' immortalize?
'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.'

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.

Shakespear, whom you and ev'ry play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will,
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despight.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
The life to come in ev'ry 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.

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

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

But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe.
These, only these, support the crouded 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 Sydney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:
Milton's strong pinion now not heav'n 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 desp'rate hook,
Or damn all Shakespear, like th' affected fool
At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.
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

In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctify'd whole poems for an age.

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;

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

On Avon's bank, where flow'rs eternal blow, If I but ask, if any weed can grow;

F

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