On Poetry a Rhapsody. 1733

All human race would fain be wits,And millions miss for one that hits.Young's universal passion, pride,Was never known to spread so wide.Say, Britain, could you ever boastThree poets in an age at most?Our chilling climate hardly bearsA sprig of bays in fifty years;While every fool his claim alleges,As if it grew in common hedges.What reason can there be assign'dFor this perverseness in the mind?Brutes find out where their talents lie:A bear will not attempt to fly;A founder'd horse will oft debate,Before he tries a five-barr'd gate;A dog by instinct turns aside,Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.But man we find the only creatureWho, led by Folly, combats Nature;Who, when she loudly cries, Forbear,With obstinacy fixes there;And, where his genius least inclines,Absurdly bends his whole designs.Not empire to the rising sunBy valour, conduct, fortune won;Not highest wisdom in debates,For framing laws to govern states;Not skill in sciences profoundSo large to grasp the circle round,Such heavenly influence require,As how to strike the Muse's lyre.Not beggar's brat on bulk begot;Not bastard of a pedler Scot;Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,The spawn of Bridewell or the stews;Not infants dropp'd, the spurious pledgesOf gipsies litter'd under hedges;Are so disqualified by fateTo rise in church, or law, or state,As he whom Phoebus in his ireHas blasted with poetic fire.What hope of custom in the fair,While not a soul demands your ware?Where you have nothing to produceFor private life, or public use?Court, city, country, want you not;You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.For poets, law makes no provision;The wealthy have you in derision:Of state affairs you cannot smatter;Are awkward when you try to flatter;Your portion, taking Britain round,Was just one annual hundred pound;Now not so much as in remainder,Since Cibber brought in an attainder;For ever fix'd by right divine(A monarch's right) on Grub Street line.Poor starv'ling bard, how small thy gains!How unproportion'd to thy pains!And here a simile comes pat in:Though chickens take a month to fatten,The guests in less than half an hourWill more than half a score devour.So, after toiling twenty daysTo earn a stock of pence and praise,Thy labours, grown the critic's prey,Are swallow'd o'er a dish of tea;Gone to be never heard of more,Gone where the chickens went before.How shall a new attempter learnOf different spirits to discern,And how distinguish which is which,The poet's vein, or scribbling itch?Then hear an old experienced sinner,Instructing thus a young beginner.Consult yourself; and if you findA powerful impulse urge your mind,Impartial judge within your breastWhat subject you can manage best;Whether your genius most inclinesTo satire, praise, or humorous lines,To elegies in mournful tone,Or prologue sent from hand unknown.Then, rising with Aurora's light,The Muse invoked, sit down to write;Blot out, correct, insert, refine,Enlarge, diminish, interline;Be mindful, when invention fails,To scratch your head, and bite your nails.Your poem finish'd, next your careIs needful to transcribe it fair.In modern wit all printed trash isSet off with numerous breaks and dashes.To statesmen would you give a wipe,You print it in Italic type.When letters are in vulgar shapes,'Tis ten to one the wit escapes:But, when in capitals express'd,The dullest reader smokes the jest:Or else perhaps he may inventA better than the poet meant;As learned commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.Your poem in its modish dress,Correctly fitted for the press,Convey by penny-post to Lintot,But let no friend alive look into't.If Lintot thinks 'twill quit the cost,You need not fear your labour lost:And how agreeably surprisedAre you to see it advertised!The hawker shows you one in print,As fresh as farthings from the mint:The product of your toil and sweating;A bastard of your own begetting.Be sure at Will's, the following day,Lie snug, and hear what critics say;And, if you find the general voguePronounces you a stupid rogue,Damns all your thoughts as low and little,Sit still, and swallow down your spittle;Be silent as a politician,For talking may beget suspicion;Or praise the judgment of the town,And help yourself to run it down.Give up your fond paternal pride,Nor argue on the weaker side:For, poems read without a nameWe justly praise, or justly blame;And critics have no partial views,Except they know whom they abuse:And since you ne'er provoke their spite,Depend upon't their judgment's right.But if you blab, you are undone:Consider what a risk you run:You lose your credit all at once;The town will mark you for a dunce;The vilest dogg'rel Grub Street sends,Will pass for yours with foes and friends;And you must bear the whole disgrace,Till some fresh blockhead takes your place.Your secret kept, your poem sunk,And sent in quires to line a trunk,If still you be disposed to rhyme,Go try your hand a second time.Again you fail: yet Safe's the word;Take courage and attempt a third.But first with care employ your thoughtsWhere critics mark'd your former faults;The trivial turns, the borrow'd wit,The similes that nothing fit;The cant which every fool repeats,Town jests and coffeehouse conceits,Descriptions tedious, flat, and dry,And introduced the Lord knows why:Or where we find your fury setAgainst the harmless alphabet;On A's and B's your malice vent,While readers wonder whom you meant:A public or a private robber,A statesman, or a South Sea jobber;A prelate, who no God believes;A parliament, or den of thieves;A pickpurse at the bar or bench,A duchess, or a suburb wench:Or oft, when epithets you link,In gaping lines to fill a chink;Like stepping-stones, to save a stride,In streets where kennels are too wide;Or like a heel-piece, to supportA cripple with one foot too short;Or like a bridge, that joins a marishTo moorlands of a different parish.So have I seen ill-coupled houndsDrag different ways in miry grounds.So geographers, in Afric maps,With savage pictures fill their gaps,And o'er unhabitable downsPlace elephants for want of towns.But, though you miss your third essay,You need not throw your pen away.Lay now aside all thoughts of fame,To spring more profitable game.From party merit seek support;The vilest verse thrives best at court.And may you ever have the luckTo rhyme almost as ill as Duck;And, though you never learn'd to scan verseCome out with some lampoon on D'Anvers.A pamphlet in Sir Bob's defenceWill never fail to bring in pence:Nor be concern'd about the sale,He pays his workmen on the nail.Display the blessings of the nation,And praise the whole administration.Extol the bench of bishops round,Who at them rail, bid ---- confound;To bishop-haters answer thus:(The only logic used by us)What though they don't believe in ----Deny them Protestants--thou lyest.A prince, the moment he is crown'd,Inherits every virtue round,As emblems of the sovereign power,Like other baubles in the Tower;Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,And so continues till he dies:His humble senate this professes,In all their speeches, votes, addresses.But once you fix him in a tomb,His virtues fade, his vices bloom;And each perfection, wrong imputed,Is fully at his death confuted.The loads of poems in his praise,Ascending, make one funeral blaze:His panegyrics then are ceased,He grows a tyrant, dunce, or beast.As soon as you can hear his knell,This god on earth turns devil in hell:And lo! his ministers of state,Transform'd to imps, his levee wait;Where in the scenes of endless woe,They ply their former arts below;And as they sail in Charon's boat,Contrive to bribe the judge's vote;To Cerberus they give a sop,His triple barking mouth to stop;Or, in the ivory gate of dreams,Project excise and South-Sea schemes;Or hire their party pamphleteersTo set Elysium by the ears.Then, poet, if you mean to thrive,Employ your muse on kings alive;With prudence gathering up a clusterOf all the virtues you can muster,Which, form'd into a garland sweet,Lay humbly at your monarch's feet:Who, as the odours reach his throne,Will smile, and think them all his own;For law and gospel both determineAll virtues lodge in royal ermine:I mean the oracles of both,Who shall depose it upon oath.Your garland, in the following reign,Change but the names, will do again.But, if you think this trade too base,(Which seldom is the dunce's case)Put on the critic's brow, and sitAt Will's, the puny judge of wit.A nod, a shrug, a scornful smile,With caution used, may serve a while.Proceed no further in your part,Before you learn the terms of art;For you can never be too far goneIn all our modern critics' jargon:Then talk with more authentic faceOf unities, in time and place:Get scraps of Horace from your friends,And have them at your fingers' ends;Learn Aristotle's rules by rote,And at all hazards boldly quote;Judicious Rymer oft review,Wise Dennis, and profound Bossu.Read all the prefaces of Dryden,For these our critics much confide in;Though merely writ at first for filling,To raise the volume's price a shilling.A forward critic often dupes usWith sham quotations peri hupsous:And if we have not read Longinus,Will magisterially outshine us.Then, lest with Greek he overrun ye,Procure the book for love or money,Translated from Boileau's translation,And quote quotation on quotation.At Will's you hear a poem read,Where Battus from the table head,Reclining on his elbow-chair,Gives judgment with decisive air;To whom the tribe of circling witsAs to an oracle submits.He gives directions to the town,To cry it up, or run it down;Like courtiers, when they send a note,Instructing members how to vote.He sets the stamp of bad and good,Though not a word be understood.Your lesson learn'd, you'll be secureTo get the name of connoisseur:And, when your merits once are known,Procure disciples of your own.For poets (you can never want 'em)Spread through Augusta Trinobantum,Computing by their pecks of coals,Amount to just nine thousand souls:These o'er their proper districts govern,Of wit and humour judges sovereign.In every street a city bardRules, like an alderman, his ward;His undisputed rights extendThrough all the lane, from end to end;The neighbours round admire his shrewdnessFor songs of loyalty and lewdness;Outdone by none in rhyming well,Although he never learn'd to spell.Two bordering wits contend for glory;And one is Whig, and one is Tory:And this, for epics claims the bays,And that, for elegiac lays:Some famed for numbers soft and smooth,By lovers spoke in Punch's booth;And some as justly fame extolsFor lofty lines in Smithfield drolls.Bavius in Wapping gains renown,And Mævius reigns o'er Kentish town:Tigellius placed in Phooebus' carFrom Ludgate shines to Temple-bar:Harmonious Cibber entertainsThe court with annual birth-day strains;Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace;Where Pope will never show his face;Where Young must torture his inventionTo flatter knaves or lose his pension.But these are not a thousandth partOf jobbers in the poet's art,Attending each his proper station,And all in due subordination,Through every alley to be found,In garrets high, or under ground;And when they join their pericranies,Out skips a book of miscellanies.Hobbes clearly proves, that every creatureLives in a state of war by nature.The greater for the smaller watch,But meddle seldom with their match.A whale of moderate size will drawA shoal of herrings down his maw;A fox with geese his belly crams;A wolf destroys a thousand lambs;But search among the rhyming race,The brave are worried by the base.If on Parnassus' top you sit,You rarely bite, are always bit:Each poet of inferior sizeOn you shall rail and criticise,And strive to tear you limb from limb;While others do as much for him.The vermin only teaze and pinchTheir foes superior by an inch.So, naturalists observe, a fleaHas smaller fleas that on him prey;And these have smaller still to bite 'em,And so proceed ad infinitum.Thus every poet, in his kind,Is bit by him that comes behind:Who, though too little to be seen,Can teaze, and gall, and give the spleen;Call dunces, fools, and sons of whores,Lay Grub Street at each other's doors;Extol the Greek and Roman masters,And curse our modern poetasters;Complain, as many an ancient bard did,How genius is no more rewarded;How wrong a taste prevails among us;How much our ancestors outsung us:Can personate an awkward scornFor those who are not poets born;And all their brother dunces lash,Who crowd the press with hourly trash.O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee,Whose graceless children scorn to own thee!Their filial piety forgot,Deny their country, like a Scot;Though by their idiom and grimace,They soon betray their native place:Yet thou hast greater cause to beAshamed of them, than they of thee,Degenerate from their ancient broodSince first the court allow'd them food.Remains a difficulty still,To purchase fame by writing ill.From Flecknoe down to Howard's time,How few have reach'd the low sublime!For when our high-born Howard died,Blackmore alone his place supplied:And lest a chasm should intervene,When death had finish'd Blackmore's reign,The leaden crown devolved to thee,Great poet of the "Hollow Tree."But ah! how unsecure thy throne!A thousand bards thy right disown:They plot to turn, in factious zeal,Duncenia to a common weal;And with rebellious arms pretendAn equal privilege to descend.In bulk there are not more degreesFrom elephants to mites in cheese,Than what a curious eye may traceIn creatures of the rhyming race.From bad to worse, and worse they fall;But who can reach the worst of all?For though, in nature, depth and heightAre equally held infinite:In poetry, the height we know;'Tis only infinite below.For instance: when you rashly think,No rhymer can like Welsted sink,His merits balanced, you shall findThe Laureate leaves him far behind.Concanen, more aspiring bard,Soars downward deeper by a yard.Smart Jemmy Moore with vigour drops;The rest pursue as thick as hops:With heads to point the gulf they enter,Link'd perpendicular to the centre;And as their heels elated rise,Their heads attempt the nether skies.O, what indignity and shame,To prostitute the Muses' name!By flattering kings, whom Heaven design'dThe plagues and scourges of mankind;Bred up in ignorance and sloth,And every vice that nurses both.Perhaps you say, Augustus shines,Immortal made in Virgil's lines,And Horace brought the tuneful quire,To sing his virtues on the lyre;Without reproach for flattery, true,Because their praises were his due.For in those ages kings, we find,Were animals of human kind.But now, go search all Europe roundAmong the savage monsters ----With vice polluting every throne,(I mean all thrones except our own;)In vain you make the strictest viewTo find a ---- in all the crew,With whom a footman out of placeWould not conceive a high disgrace,A burning shame, a crying sin,To take his morning's cup of gin.Thus all are destined to obeySome beast of burthen or of prey.'Tis sung, Prometheus, forming man,Through all the brutal species ran,Each proper quality to findAdapted to a human mind;A mingled mass of good and bad,The best and worst that could be had;Then from a clay of mixture baseHe shaped a ---- to rule the race,Endow'd with gifts from every bruteThat best the * * nature suit.Thus think on ----s: the name denotesHogs, asses, wolves, baboons, and goats.To represent in figure just,Sloth, folly, rapine, mischief, lust;Oh! were they all but Neb-cadnezers,What herds of ----s would turn to grazers!Fair Britain, in thy monarch blest,Whose virtues bear the strictest test;Whom never faction could bespatter,Nor minister nor poet flatter;What justice in rewarding merit!What magnanimity of spirit!What lineaments divine we traceThrough all his figure, mien, and face!Though peace with olive binds his hands,Confess'd the conquering hero stands.Hydaspes, Indus, and the Ganges,Dread from his hand impending changes.From him the Tartar and Chinese,Short by the knees, entreat for peace.The consort of his throne and bed,A perfect goddess born and bred,Appointed sovereign judge to sitOn learning, eloquence, and wit.Our eldest hope, divine Iülus,(Late, very late, O may he rule us!)What early manhood has he shown,Before his downy beard was grown,Then think, what wonders will be doneBy going on as he begun,An heir for Britain to secureAs long as sun and moon endure.The remnant of the royal bloodComes pouring on me like a flood.Bright goddesses, in number five;Duke William, sweetest prince alive.Now sing the minister of state,Who shines alone without a mate.Observe with what majestic portThis Atlas stands to prop the court:Intent the public debts to pay,Like prudent Fabius, by delay.Thou great vicegerent of the king,Thy praises every Muse shall sing!In all affairs thou sole director;Of wit and learning chief protector,Though small the time thou hast to spare,The church is thy peculiar care.Of pious prelates what a stockYou choose to rule the sable flock!You raise the honour of the peerage,Proud to attend you at the steerage.You dignify the noble race,Content yourself with humbler place.Now learning, valour, virtue, sense,To titles give the sole pretence.St. George beheld thee with delight,Vouchsafe to be an azure knight,When on thy breast and sides Herculean,He fix'd the star and string cerulean.Say, poet, in what other nationShone ever such a constellation!Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,And tune your harps, and strew your bays:Your panegyrics here provide;You cannot err on flattery's side.Above the stars exalt your style,You still are low ten thousand mile.On Lewis all his bards bestow'dOf incense many a thousand load;But Europe mortified his pride,And swore the fawning rascals lied.Yet what the world refused to Lewis,Applied to George, exactly true is.Exactly true! invidious poet!'Tis fifty thousand times below it.Translate me now some lines, if you can,From Virgil, Martial, Ovid, Lucan.They could all power in Heaven divide,And do no wrong on either side;They teach you how to split a hair,Give George and Jove an equal share.Yet why should we be laced so strait?I'll give my monarch butter-weight.And reason good; for many a yearJove never intermeddled here:Nor, though his priests be duly paid,Did ever we desire his aid:We now can better do without him,Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him.Caetera desiderantur.

"Sunt geminae Somni portae: quarum altera ferturCornea; qua veris facilis datur exitus Vmbris:Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto;Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia Manes."

placed by the fire, and in the summer in the balcony. Malone's "Life ofDryden," p. 485. Why Battus? Battus was a herdsman who, because heBetrayed Mercury's theft of some cattle, was changed by the god into a

Journal to Stella, "Prose Works," ii, 249; and Cunningham's "Handbook of

Opera," but which obtained him the friendship of the Duke and Duchess of

"Fertur Prometheus, addere principiLimo coactus particulam undiqueDesectam, et insani leonisVim stomacho apposuisse nostro."

"---- super et Garamantas et Indos,Proferet imperium; -------- jam nunc et Caspia regnaResponsis horrent divom."

"Unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem."