Who rules in Cornwall, or who rules in Berks:
"This may be troublesome, is near the chair;
That makes three members, this can choose a mayor."
Instructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest,
Adopt him son, or cousin at the least,
Then turn about, and laugh at your own jest.
Or if your life be one continued treat,
If to live well means nothing but to eat;
Up, up! cries Gluttony, 'tis break of day,
Go drive the deer, and drag the finny prey;
With hounds and horns go hunt an appetite-
So Russel did, but could not eat at night,
Call'd happy dog! the beggar at his door,
And envied thirst and hunger to the poor.
Or shall we every decency confound,
Through taverns, stews, and bagnios take our round?
Go dine with Chartres, in each vice outdo
K-l's lewd cargo, or Ty-y's crew,

From Latian syrens, French Circæan feasts,
Return well travell'd, and transform'd to beasts,
Or for a titled WIFE, or foreign fame,
Renounce our country, and degrade our name?
If, after all, we must with Wilmot own,
The cordial drop of life is love alone;
And SWIFT cry wisely, "Vive la bagatelle !"
The man that loves and laughs, must sure do well.
Adieu-if this advice appear the worst,
Even take the counsel which I gave you first:
Or better precepts if you can impart,

Why do ; I'll follow them with all my heart.

THE FIRST EPISTLE

.OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The reflections of Horace, and the judgments passed in his epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present time, 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 all the great and good qualities of a monarch upon whom the Romans depended for the increase 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 show 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 prætores, 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 contemporaries, 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 shows (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 license of those ancient poets restrained; that satire and comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagancies 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 himself must depend for his fame with posterity.

We may further 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.

EPISTLE I.

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 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:
Great friend of LIBERTY! in kings a name
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
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:
* George II.

R

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 learned by rote,
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:
One likes no language but the Faery Queene;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green;*
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil
He swares the Muses met him at the Devil.t

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 began to immortalise?
"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
I hold that wit a classic, good in law.”

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound? And shall we deem him ancient, right, and sound, Or Fix 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.

A poem by James I., King of Scotland.

†The Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his Poetical Club.

Shakspeare, (whom you and every 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.
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.

"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. Spencer himself affects the obsolete, And Sidney'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, CONDEMN all Shakspeare, like the affected fool At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.