POPE.

And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust; Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lie To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring

As elegance polite, as power elate.

SAVAGE: On Pope.

While we do admire

This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks,
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.

SHAKSPEARE.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need. SHEFFIELD: Essay on Poetry.

SWIFT.

Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks:
Thus envy pleads a natural claim
To persecute the muse's fame:

On poets, in all times, abusive;
From Homer down to Pope, inclusive.

SWIFT.

Wit, like wine, from happier climates brought, Dash'd by these rogues, turns English common draught.

They pall Molière's and Lopez's sprightly strain. SWIFT.

In Pope I cannot read a line, But with a sigh I wish it mine; When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six.

SWIFT.

Pope's filial piety excels

Whatever Grecian story tells.

SWIFT.

SHELLEY: Queen Mab.

Send those to paper-sparing Pope;

A little bench of heedless bishops here,

How many a rustic Milton has pass'd by,
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart
In unremitting drudgery and care.
How many a vulgar Cato has compell'd
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.

And there a chancellor in embryo,

Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so,

As Milton, Shakspeare, names that ne'er shall

die.

SHENSTONE: School-Mistress.

Witty as Horatius Flaccus,

As great a Jacobin as Gracchus,

Short, though not as fat, as Bacchus,
Riding on a little jackass.

SYDNEY SMITH: Impromptu on Jeffrey.

Wild dreams! but such

As Plato loved; such as with holy zeal
Our Milton worshipp'd.

SOUTHEY: Inscription on Henry Martyn. Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled.

SPENSER: Faerie Queene.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakspeare spake, the faith and morals hold

Which Milton held.

WORDSWORTH.

Meek Walton's heavenly memory.

WORDSWORTH: Walton's Book of Lives.

The feather whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,

Dropp'd from an angel's wing.

WORDSWORTH: Walton's Book of Lives.

As thou these ashes, little brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accursed
An emblem yields to friends and enemies,
How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dis-
persed.

WORDSWORTH: to Wickliffe.

Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train,
Nor hears that virtue which he loves complain?
YOUNG.

But what in oddness can be more sublime
Than S [loane] the foremost toyman of his time?
YOUNG.

AUTHORSHIP.

Each wit may praise it for his own dear sake,
And hint he writ it, if the thing should take.
ADDISON.

Much thou hast said which I know when
And where thou stol'st from other men;
Whereby 'tis plain thy light and gifts
Are all but plagiary shifts.

BUTLER: Hudibras.

'Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print; A book's a book although there's nothing in't. BYRON.

One hates an author that's all author, fellows In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink, So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,

One don't know what to say to them, or think, Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows; Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs, e'en the pink Are preferable to these shreds of paper, These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight

taper.

BYRON.