Ev'n copious Dryden wanted or forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.

Some doubt, if equal pains or equal fire
The humble Muse of comedy require:
But in known images of life, I guess
The labor greater, as the indulgence less.
Observe how seldom ev'n the best succeed:
Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed.
What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ!
How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!
The stage how loosely does Astrea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed!
And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,
To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!
But fill their purse, our poets' work is done,
Alike to them by pathos or by pun.

280

285

290

295

O, you! whom vanity's light bark conveys
On fame's mad voyage, by the wind of praise,
With what a shifting gale your course you
ply,

For ever sunk too low, or borne too high!
Who pants for glory finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.
Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play,
The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.

There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit:
A senseless, worthless, and unhonor'd crowd;
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,

300

305

287 Congreve. He alludes to the characters of Brisk and Witwood.

290 Astrea. A name taken by Mrs. Behn, authoress of several gross plays, &c.

Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke,
Call for the farce, the Bear, or the Black-joke.
What dear delight to Britons farce affords ! 310
Ever the taste of mobs, but now of lords:
Taste, that eternal wanderer, which flies
From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes.
The play stands still; damn action and discourse;
Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse; 315
Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn,
Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;
The champion too; and, to complete the jest,
Old Edward's armor beams on Cibber's breast.
With laughter sure Democritus had died,
Had he beheld an audience gape so wide.
Let bear or elephant be e'er so white,
The people, sure, the people are the sight!
Ah, luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,
That bear or elephant shall heed thee more;
While all its throats the gallery extends,
And all the thunder of the pit ascends!
Loud as the wolves, on Orcas' stormy steep,
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep;
Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat;

320

325

330

313 From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes. The course of theatrical degeneracy, as Warburton says, 'from plays to operas, and from operas to pantomimes.

319 Old Edward's armor beams on Cibber's breast. The coronation of Henry VIII. and queen Anne Boleyn, in which the playhouses vied with each other to represent all the pomp of a coronation. In this noble contention the armor of one of the kings of England was borrowed from the Tower to dress the champion.-Pope.

328 Orcas' stormy steep. The farthest northern promontory of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades.-Pope.

Or when from court a birth-day suit bestow'd
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.
Booth enters hark! the universal peal!

But has he spoken ?'- Not a syllable.'

335

'What shook the stage, and made the people

stare?'

'Cato's long wig, flower'd gown, and lacker'd chair.'

Yet, lest you think I rally more than teach,
Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach;

Let me for once presume to instruct the times 340
To know the poet from the man of rhymes:
"Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains;
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;

337 Cato's long wig. Few things in even the capricious history of taste are more extraordinary than the absolute barbarism of our ancestors in stage costume. Imogen in a hoop-petticoat, with a fly-cap, and a tower of powdered curls on her innocent head! Macbeth, in the full dress of an English general officer of the days of George II. with a laced uniform, bag wig, and court sword, invoking the demons! and old Lear raving to the vexed winds in a judge's wig and robes! It is scarcely possible to imagine the existence of theatric illusion under such absurdities.

343 Can make me feel each passion that he feigns. Hurd falls into the curious error of conceiving that tragedy is an inferior effort of genius to comedy; for the reason, that tragedy produces its end, the pathetic, by action; while comedy produces its end, the humorous, by character; it being more difficult to paint manners than to plan action.' To this short-sighted dogma, the obvious answer has been given;-that tragedy does much more than plan action; that it paints passion: that, unlike and superior to comedy, which adopts only the language and describes only the manners of the hour, it adopts the language of nature, and is mistress of the manners of all ages. But, if a mediocre tragedy is the easiest work of man, as is evident from the multitude that have crowded the stage and perished; that a great tragedy is the most difficult achieve.

345

Enrage, compose, with more than magic art;
With pity, and with terror, tear my heart;
And snatch me, o'er the earth, or through the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
But not this part of the poetic state
Alone deserves the favor of the great:
Think of those authors, sir, who would rely
More on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.
Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?
Who climb their mountain, or who taste their
spring?

How shall we fill a library with wit,

When Merlin's cave is half unfinish'd yet?

350

355

My liege! why writers little claim your thought, I guess; and, with their leave, will tell the fault:

ment of genius, is not less evident from the infrequency of its appearance. Of Greece, but three tragic writers survive; of France, but Corneille and Racine; of Germany, but Schiller; of England, Shakspeare alone keeps unquestioned possession of the stage-Shakspeare, superior to all the past of mankind, from his incontestable superiority of passion, vividness, and insight into the soul.

349 Deserves the favor of the great. The authors of George II's day frequently advert to the royal neglect of patronage; but the king, a German born, busied with foreign wars, and still more busied by the perpetual turbulence of faction at home, could have found but little leisure for the calmer appeals of letters. Yet the anecdote recorded of him by Warton is unlucky: some one in the royal presence happening to mention Milton, with the due panegyric; the monarch asked, Who he was?' On being answered ;- Pho! pho!' said the king: why did he not write his Paradise Lost' in prose?' It is only justice to say, that the taste and education of his successors have been more suitable to their high dignity.

355 Merlin's cave. A building in the royal gardens of Richmond, where is a small, but choice collection of books.-Pope.

360

365

We poets are, (upon a poet's word)
Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd;
The season, when to come and when to go,
To sing or cease to sing, we never know;
And if we will recite nine hours in ten,
You lose your patience just like other men.
Then too we hurt ourselves, when to defend
A single verse, we quarrel with a friend;
Repeat unask'd; lament, the wit's too fine
For vulgar eyes, and point out every
line:
But most, when straining with too weak a wing,
We needs will write epistles to the king;
And from the moment we oblige the town,
Expect a place, or pension from the crown;
Or dubb'd historians by express command,
To enrol your triumphs o'er the seas and land;
Be call'd to court to plan some work divine,
As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.

370

375

Yet think, great sir, (so many virtues shown) Ah, think, what poet best may make them known; Or choose at least some minister of grace, Fit to bestow the laureat's weighty place.

Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair, 380 Assign'd.his figure to Bernini's care;

381 To Bernini's care. A striking anecdote of the physiognomical skill of this famous sculptor is given by Warburton, from a Ms. of Panzani, the pope's agent. Henrietta Maria wrote to cardinal Barberini to procure two busts, one of Charles, and one of herself, from the sculptor; mentioning the king's exquisite taste in the arts. Bernini, on seeing the picture which was sent to him for his model, instantly observed 'such melancholic lines, that they in a manner spoke some dismal fate that would befall the person so represented.' Yet why a melancholy countenance should predict a melan