.

After a Life of gen'rous Toils endur'd,
The Gaul fubdu❜d, or Property fecur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty Cities ftorm'd,
Or Laws establish'd, and the World reform'd;
Clos'd their long Glories with a figh, to find
Th' unwilling Gratitude of base mankind!
All human Virtue to its latest breath.
Finds Envy never conquer'd, but by Death.
The great Alcides, ev'ry Labour past,
Had ftill this Monfter to fubdue at laft.
Sure fate of all, beneath whose rifing ray

Each Star of meaner merit fades away;

Opprefs'd we feel the Beam directly beat,

Thofe Suns of Glory please not till they set.

3 To Thee, the World its prefent homage pays,
The Harveft early, but mature the Praise :
Great Friend of LIBERTY! in Kings a Name
Above all Greek, above all Roman Fame:
Whofe Word is Truth, as facred and rever'd,
As Heav'n's own Oracles from Altars heard.

Wonder

Prafenti tibi, &c.

Wonder of Kings! like whom, to mortal eyesɔnl None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rife.

4 + Juft in one inftance, be it yet confeft
Your People, Sir, are partial in the rest..
Foes to all living worth except your own,
And Advocates for Folly dead and gone.

Authors, like Coins, grow dear as they grow old
It is the ruft 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 † Chrift's Kirk o' the Green;
And each true Briton is to Ben fo civil,

He fwears the Mufes met him at the Devil.

5 Tho' juftly Greece her eldest fons admires, Why should not we be wifer than our Sires?

In

* Sed tuus hoc populus, &c.

5 Si, quia Græcorum funt, &c.

* Skelton, Poet Laureat to Hen. 8. a Volume of whose Verses has been lately reprinted, confifting almost wholly of Ribaldry, Obscenity, and Billingsgate Language.

+ Chrift's Kirk o' the Green, a Ballad made by a King of Scotland. The Devil Tavern, where Ben. Johnson held his Poetical Club.

In ev'ry publick Virtue we excell,

We build, we paint, we fing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our Art must stoop,

Could fhe behold us tumbling thro' a hoop.

6

"If Time improve our Wit as well as Wine,

Say at what age a Poet grows divine ?

Shall we, or fhall we not, account him fo,
Who dy'd, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
End all difpute; and fix the year precife
When British bards begin t'Immortalize ?

"Who lasts a Century can have no flaw,
έσ I hold that Wit a Claffick, good in law. !
"Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him Ancient, right and found,
Or damn to all Eternity at once,

At ninety nine, a Modern, and a Dunce?

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

"By Courtefy 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,

6 Si meliora dies, ut vina, &c. Quid? qui deperiit minor, &c. Utor permiffo, caudæque, &c.

1

And

(5)

And melt down Ancients like a heap of snow
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,

And estimating Authors by the year," Konink
Bestow a Garland only on a Bier. noffe i ods to quit
"Shakespear*, (whom you and ev'ry Play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,⠀⠀⠀
And grew Immortal in his own defpight,

II

Ben, old and poor, as little feem'd to heed, ToT The Life to come, in ev'ry Poet's Creed.

Who now reads Cowley ? if he pleases. yet,

His moral pleases, not his pointed wit; {--

Forgot his Epic, nay + Pindaric Art, jawo me) ud to But still I love the language of his Heart.

❝ 10 Yet furely, furely, these were famous men ! "What Boy but hears the fayings of old Ben? "In all debates where Criticks bear a part,

"Not one but nods, and talks of Johnson's Art,

* Shakespear and Ben. Johnfon may truly be said not much to have thought of Immortal Fame, the one in many picces compofed in hafte for the Stage; the other in his Latter works in general, which Dryden calls his Dotages.

+ ---Pindaric art, which has much more merit than his Epic: but very unlike the Character, as well as Numbers, of Pindar.

་་་

"Of Shakespear's Nature, and of Cowley's Wit;! "How Beaumont's Judgment check'd what Fletcher writ; " How Shadwell * hafty, Wycherly was flow

"But, for the Paffions, Southern fure and Rowe..! These, only thefe, fupport the crouded stage, ........... "From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age,

II

All this may be the People's Voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God. homm! vong h
Tot Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny the Carélefs Hufband praife,

Or fay our fathers never broke a rule;) dur von oll!! Why then I fay, the Publick is a fool,aniq Imcruit But let them own, that greater faults than we A They had, and greater Virtues, I'll agree. If Spenfer himself affects the obfolete,

And Sydney's verse halts ill on Roman feet: "

3

rk Endicdel went to

10 Interdum vulgus, &c.

Milton's

* Shadwell hafty, Wycherly was flow.] Nothing was lefs true than this particular: But this Paragraph has a mixture of Irony, and muft not altogether be taken for Horace's own Judgment, only the common Chatt of the pretenders to Criticifm; in fome things right, in others wrong: as he tells us in his anfwer,

Interdum vulgus rectum videt, eft ubi peccat.

Tall Gammer Gurton, a piece of very low humour, one of the first printed Plays in English, and therefore much valued by fome Antiquaries.

Spenser too much affects the obsolete. Particularly in the Shepherd's Calendar, where he imitates the unequal Measures, as well as the Language, of Chaucer.