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ON

MR. POPE AND HIS POEMS,

BY HIS GRACE

JOHN SHEFFIELD,

DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

WITH age decay'd, with courts and bus'ness tir'd,

Caring for nothing but what ease requir'd;

Too dully serious for the Muse's sport,
And from the critics safe arriv'd in port;
I little thought of launching forth agen,
Amidst advent'rous rovers of the pen;
And after so much undeserv'd success,
Thus hazarding at last to make it less.

Encomiums suit not this censorious time,
Itself a subject for satiric rhyme;
Ignorance honour'd, wit and worth defam❜d,
Folly triumphant, and e'en Homer blam'd!
But to this genius, join'd with so much art,
Such various learning mix'd in ev'ry part,
Poets are bound a loud applause to pay;
Apollo bids it, and they must obey.

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And yet so wonderful, sublime a thing,
As the great Iliad, scarce could make me sing;
Except I justly could at once commend
A good companion and as firm a friend.
One moral, or a mere well-natured deed,
Can all desert in sciences exceed.

'Tis great delight to laugh at some men's ways, But a much greater to give merit praise.

TO MR. POPE,

ON HIS PASTORALS.

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IN these more dull, as more censorious days,
When few dare give, and fewer merit praise,
A Muse sincere, that never flatt'ry knew,
Pays what to friendship and desert is due.

Young, yet judicious, in your verse are found

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Art strength'ning Nature, sense improv'd by sound;

Unlike those wits, whose numbers glide along
So smooth, no thought e'er interrupts the song:
Laboriously enervate they appear,

And write not to the head, but to the ear:

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Our minds unmov'd and unconcern'd they lull,
And are at best most musically dull :

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So purling streams with even murmurs creep,
And hush the heavy hearers into sleep.
As smoothest speech is most deceitful found,
The smoothest numbers oft are empty sound:
But wit and judgment join at once in you,
Sprightly as youth, as age consummate too:
Your strains are regularly bold, and please
With unforc'd care, and unaffected ease,
With proper thoughts and lively images.
Such as by nature to the ancients shown,
Fancy improves, and judgment makes your own;
For great men's fashions to be followed are,
Altho' disgraceful 'tis their clothes to wear.
Some in a polish'd style write pastoral;
Arcadia speaks the language of the Mall.
Like some fair shepherdess, the sylvan muse
Should wear those flow'rs her native fields produce;
And the true measure of the shepherd's wit

Should, like his garb, be for the country fit:
Yet must his pure and unaffected thought
More nicely than the common swain's be wrought.
So, with becoming art, the players dress
In silks the shepherd and the shepherdess;
Yet still unchang'd the form and mode remain,
Shap'd like the homely russet of the swain.

VOL. I.

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Your rural Muse appears to justify

The long lost graces of simplicity :

So rural beauties captivate our sense

With virgin charms and native excellence.

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Yet long her modesty those charms conceal'd,
'Till by men's envy to the world reveal'd;
For wits industrious to their trouble seem,
And needs will envy what they must esteem.

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Live and enjoy their spite! nor mourn that fate Which would, if Virgil liv'd, on Virgil wait; Whose Muse did once, like thine, in plains delight: Thine shall, like his, soon take a higher flight: So larks, which first from lowly fields arise, Mount by degrees, and reach at last the skies.

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W. WYCHERLEY.

TO MR. POPE,

ON HIS WINDSOR FOREST.

HAIL! sacred bard! a muse unknown before
Salutes thee from the bleak Atlantic shore.
To our dark world thy shining page is shown,
And Windsor's gay retreat becomes our own.

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