The boys and girls whom charity maintains
Implore your help in these pathetic strains:
How could devotion touch the country pews
Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down pope and
Turk.
The silenced preacher yields to potent strain,
And feels that grace his prayer besought in vain;
The blessing thrills through all the labouring throng,
And Heaven is won by violence of song.
Our rural ancestors, with little bless'd,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain
With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain:
The joy their wives, their sons, and servants, share,
Ease of their toil and partners of their care:
The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,
Smooth'd every brow, and open'd every soul:
With growing years the pleasing licence grew,
And taunts alternate innocently flew.
But times corrupt, and Nature ill-inclined,
Produced the point that left a sting behind;
Till friend with friend, and families at strife,
Triumphant malice raged through private life.
Who felt the wrong, or fear'd it, took the' alarm,
Appeal'd to law, and Justice lent her arm.
At length by wholesome dread of statutes bound,
The poets learn'd to please, and not to wound:
Most warp'd to flattery's side; but some, more nice,
Preserved the freedom, and forbore the vice.
Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit,
And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.
We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms;
Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our arms;
Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow.
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine:
Though still some traces of our rustic vein
And splay-foot verse remain'd, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tired nation breathed from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire,
Show'd us that France had something to admire,
Not but the tragic spirit was our own,
And full in Shakspeare, fair in Otway, shone;
But Otway fail'd to polish or refine,
And fluent Shakspeare scarce effaced a line.
E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art,-the art to blot.
Some doubt if equal pains or equal fire
The humbler Muse of comedy require.
But in known images of life I guess
The labour greater as the' indulgence less.
Observe how seldom e'en the best succeed:
Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?
What pert low dialogue has Farquhar writ!
How Van' wants grace, who never wanted wit!
The stage how loosely does Astrea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed!
And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,
To make poor Pinkey eat with vast applause!
But fill their purse, our poet's work is done,
Alike to them by pathos or by pun.
O you! whom Vanity's light bark conveys On Fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise, 1 Sir John Vanbrugh.
With what a shifting gale your course you ply,
For ever sunk too low, or borne too high!
Who pants for glory finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.
Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play
The silly bard grows fat or falls away.
There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit;
A senseless, worthless, and unhonour'd crowd,
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,
Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke,
Call for the farce, the bear, or the Black-joke.
What dear delight to Britons farce affords!
Ever the taste of mobs, but now of lords:
(Taste! that eternal wanderer, which flies
From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes,)
The play stands still; damn action and discourse;
Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;
Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn,
Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;
The champion too! and, to complete the jest,
Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast.
With laughter sure Democritus had died,
Had he beheld an audience gape so wide.
Let bear or elephant be e'er so white,
The people, sure, the people are the sight!
Ah, luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,
That bear or elephant shall heed thee more;
While all its throats the gallery extends,
And all the thunder of the pit ascends!
Loud as the wolves on Orcas' stormy steep
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep;
Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat;
Or when from court a birth-day suit bestow'd
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.
Booth enters-hark! the universal peal!
But has he spoken?'--Not a syllable.
'What shook the stage, and made the people stare?'
Cato's long wig, flower'd gown, and lacker'd chair.
Yet, lest you think I rally more than teach,
Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach,
Let me for once presume to' instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes:
'Tis he who gives my breast a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art;
With pity and with terror tear my heart;
And snatch me o'er the earth, or through the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
But not this part of the poetic state
Alone deserves the favour of the great.
Think of those authors, sir, who would rely
More on a reader's sense than gazer's eye.
Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?
Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?
How shall we fill a library with wit,
When Merlin's cave is half unfurnish'd yet?
My liege! why writers little claim your thought I guess, and, with their leave, will tell the fault. We poets are (upon a poet's word)
Of all mankind the creatures most absurd:
The season when to come, and when to go,
To sing, or cease to sing, we never know;
And if we will recite nine hours in ten,
You lose your patience just like other men.
Then, too, we hurt ourselves when, to defend
A single verse, we quarrel with a friend;
Repeat, unask'd; lament, the wit's too fine
For vulgar eyes, and point out every line:
But most when, straining with two weak a wing,
We needs will write epistles to the king;
And from the moment we oblige the town,
Expect a place or pension from the crown;
Or dubb'd historians, by express command,
To' enroll your triumphs o'er the seas and land,
Be call'd to court to plan some work divine,
As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.
Yet think, great sir! (so many virtues shown)
Ah! think what poet best may make them known:
Or choose at least some minister of
grace,
Fit to bestow the laureat's weighty place.
Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair,
Assign'd his figure to Bernini's care;
And great Nassau to Kneller's hand decreed
To fix him graceful on the bounding steed;
So well in paint and stone they judged of merit :
But kings in wit may want discerning spirit.
The hero William, and the martyr Charles,
One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd
Quarles,
Which made old Ben and surly Dennis swear
'No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear.'
Not with such majesty, such bold relief, The forms august of king, or conquering chief, E'er swell'd on marble, as in verse have shined (In polish'd verse) the manners and the mind. O! could I mount on the Mæonian wing, Your arms, your actions, your repose, to sing! What seas you traversed, and what fields you fought!
Your country's peace how oft, how dearly bought!
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