Love warms our fancy with enliv'ning fires,
Refines our genius, and our verse inspires;
From him Theocritus, on Enna's plains,
Learnt the wild sweetness of his Doric strains;
Virgil by him was taught the moving art,
That charm'd each ear and soften'd every heart.
LORD LYTTELTON.
For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaventaught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire;
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
LORD LYTTELTON: Prologue to Thomson's
Coriolanus.
What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an Age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy
Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument:
For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each part
[heart]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke, Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke;
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving,
And so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe does lie,
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.
MILTON.
Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
MILTON.
The plain good man, whose actions teach
More virtue than a sect can preach,
Pursues his course unsagely blest,
His tutor whisp'ring in his breast:
Nor could he act a purer part
Though he had Tully all by heart;
And when he drops the tear on woe,
He little knows, or cares to know,
That Epictetus blamed that tear,
By Heav'n approved, to virtue dear.
Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine,
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line.
And praise the easy vigour of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweet-
Plutarch, that writes his life, Tells us that Cato dearly loved his wife.
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipp'd me in ink? my parents' or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
POPE.
Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire
Taught us that France had something to admire.
РОРЕ.
Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls, And makes night hideous; answer him, ye owls.
Roscommon not more learn'd than good,
With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev'ry author's merit but his own.
РОРЕ. Thy relicks, Rowe, to this fair shrine we trust, And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust; Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies, To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes. POPE.
Against your worship when had S-k writ?
Or P-ge pour'd forth the torrent of his wit?
РОРЕ.
Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er,
But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.
Shakspeare, whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite.
The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore,
He steer'd securely, and discover'd far,
Led by the light of the Mæonian star.
Spenser himself affects the obsolete,
And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet.
POPE.
O thou! whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,
Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,
Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind.
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