Return well travell'd, and transform'd to beasts; The man that loves and laughs must sure do well. E'en take the counsel which I gave you first: THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE. IN THE MANNER OF DR. SWIFT. 'Tis true, my lord, I gave my word 5 Earl of Rochester. And what a dust in every place! 'The dogdays are no more the case.' 'Tis true, but winter comes apace: Then southward let your bard retire, Hold out some months 'twixt sun and fire, And you shall see the first warm weather Me and the butterflies together. My lord, your favours well I know; 'Tis with distinction you bestow, And not to every one that comes, Just as a Scotchman does his plums. 'Pray take them, sir-enough's a feast: Eat some, and pocket up the rest :' What, rob your boys? those pretty rogues! 'No, sir, you'll leave them to the hogs.' Thus fools with compliments besiege ye, Contriving never to oblige ye. Scatter your favours on a fop, Ingratitude's the certain crop; ye wherefore: You give the things you never care for. A wise man always is, or should, Be mighty ready to do good, But makes a difference in his thought Now this I'll say, you'll find in me But if you'd have me always near, To give me back my constitution, That laugh'd down many a summer sun, A weasel once made shift to slink All that may make me none of mine. So bought an annual rent or two, 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 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 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 prede |