Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?
Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind :: Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light;
The lines, tho' touch'd but faintly, are drawn right.
But as the slightest sketch, if justly trac❜d,
Is by ill colouring but the more disgrac❜d,
So by false learning is good sense defac'd::
Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs Nature meant but
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spight,
There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets past,
Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
A's heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle,
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.
Milo, forbear to call him blest,
Who only boasts a large estate,
Should all the treasures of the west
Meet, and conspire to make him great.
Let a broad stream with golden sands
Through all his meadows roll,
He's but a wretch with all his lands
That wears a narrow soul.
Were I so tall to reach the pole,
grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul:
The mind's the standard of the man!
BE Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t'outlast immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw:
But when t'examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
HORACE still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense,
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey
The truest notions in the easiest way.
He, who supreme in judgment as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judg'd with coolness, tho' he sung with fire,.
His precepts teach but what his works inspire.
POPE.
HONOUR and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies,
Fortune in men has some small difference made,,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
What differ more (you cry) than crown and
cowl?"
I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with
'That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings, Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece :
But by your father's worth if your's you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies?
Where, but among the heroes and the wise?
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make, an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Nor ne'er looks forward further than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise;
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes;
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer; these can
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
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