Foes to all living worth except your own,
And Advocates for folly dead and gone.
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; 35
It is the rust we value, not the gold.

Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn’d by rote,
And beastly Skelton Heads of houses quote:
One likes no language but the Faery Queen;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk on the Green; 40
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
m He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.

Tho' juftly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not We be wiser than our fires ?
In ev'ry Public virtue we excell;

45
We build, we paint, we fing, we dance as well,
And P learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling thro' a hoop.

If 4 Time improve our Wit as well as Wine, Say at what age a Poet grows divine ?

50 Shall we, or shall we not, account him so, Who dy'd, perhaps, an hundred years ago ? End all dispute ; and fix the year precise When British bards begin t' immortalize?

VER. 40. Christ's Kirk o' the Green ;] A Ballad made by a King of Scotland. P.

VER. 42. met him at the Devil] The Devil Tavern, where Ben Johnson held his Poetical Club. P.

Eft vetus atque probus, ' centum qui perficit annos.
Quid? qui deperiit minor uno mense vel anno,
Inter quos referendus erit ? s veteresne poetas,
An quos et praesens et postera respuat aetas ?
Ifte quidem veteres inter ponetur honefte,
Qui vel mense brevi, vel toto est junior anno.

Utor permisso, caudaeque pilos ut' equinae Paulatim vello: et demo unum, demo et item unum;

Dum cadat elusus ratione " ruentis acervi,

Qui redit in * fajtos, et virtutem aeftimat annis,
Miraturque nihil, nisi quod » Libitina facravit.

Ennius et sapiens, et fortis, et alter Homerus,
Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur
Quo * promiffa cadant, et fomnia Pythagorea.

NOTES. VER. 69. Sbakespear.] Shakespear and Ben Johnson may truly be said not much to have thought of this Im-' mortality, the one in many pieces composed in hafte for the Stages the other in his latter works in general, which Dryden call'd his Dotages. P.

Ibid. and ev'ry Playhouse bill] A ridicule on those who talk of Shakespear, because he is in fashion ; who, if they

« Who lasts a' century can have no faw,
so I hold that Wit a Claffic, good in law.

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him . Ancient, right and sound,
Or damn to all eternity at once,
At ninety nine, a Modern and a Dunce? 60

“ We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
“ By courtesy of England, he may do.

Then, by the rule that made the ' Horse-tail bare,
I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt w down Ancients like a heap of snow: 65
While you, to measure merits, look in * Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Beftow a Garland only on a y Bier.

Shakespear (whom you and ev'ry Play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will) 70
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew Immortal in his own despight.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
* The Life to come, in ev'ry Poet's Creed.

Z

Notes.

dared to do justice, either to their taste or their consci-
ence, would own they liked Durfey better.
VER.

74: The life to come, in ev'ry Poet's Creed.]

Quo promija cadant, et fomnia Pythagorea. The beauty of this arises from a circumstance in Ennius's. fory. But as this could not be imitated, our Poet endeavoured to equal it; and has succeeded,

b Naevius in manibus non est ; at mentibus haeret

.d

Pene recens :

adeo fanétum est vetus omne poema.

Ambigitur quoties, uter utro fit prior; aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti:
Dicitur Afranî toga conveniffe Menandro;
Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentiuş arte.
Hos edisçit, et hos arcto ftipata theatro
Spectat Roma potens; 'habet hos numeratque poetas
Ad noftrum tempus, Livî scriptoris ab aevo.
. Interdum vulgus rectum videt: est ubi peccat.

Si veteres ita miratur laudatque poetas,

Nores.

Ver. 77. Pindaric Art,] which has much more merit than his Epic, but very unlike the Character, as well as Numbers, of Pindar. P.

VER. 81. In all debates etc.] The Poer has here put the bald cant of women and boys into extreme fine verse. This is in strict imitation of his Original, where the same impertinent and gratuitous criticism is admirably ridiculed.

VER. 85. Shadwell hasty, Wycherly was flow.] Nothing was less true than this particular : But the whole paragraph has a mixture of Irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own dgment, only the com

Who now reads 6 Cowley ? if he pleases yet, 75
His Moral pleases, not his pointed wit ;
Forgot his Epic, nay Pindaric Art,
But still • I love the language of his heart.

“ Yet surely, “surely, these were famous men! " What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben? 80 " In alle debates where Critics bear a part, “ Not one but nods, and talks of Johnson's Art, “ Of Shakespear’s Nature, and of Cowley's Wit; “ How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher

66 writ;

“ How Shadwell hasty, Wycherly was flow; 85 “ But, for the Paffions, Southern fure and Rowe. “ These, f only these, support the crouded stage, " From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age.

All this may be; the People's Voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God.

go To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,

Notes. mon Chat of the pretenders to Criticism ; in some things right, in others, wrong ; as he tells us in his answer,

Interdum vulgus re&tum videt : eft ubi peccat. P. - hafty Shadwell and Now Wycherley, is a line of Wil. mot, Earl of Rochester; the sense of which seems to have been generally mistaken. It gives to each his epithet, not to design the difference of their talents, but the number of their productions. VER. 91. Gammer Gurton) A piece of very low hu.