Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan,
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever, lost!
Now with furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,

He trembles, he glows,

Amidst Rhodope's snows:

See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;

Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries-
Ah see, he dies!

Yet e'en in death Eurydice he sung:
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue

Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,

Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.

Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate's severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,

And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,

And to her Maker's praise confined the sound,
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,

The immortal powers incline their ear:
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell;
To bright Cecilia greater power is given:
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.

Altered from Shakspeare by the Duke of Bucking-
ham, at whose desire these two Chorusses were com-
posed, to supply as many, wanting in his Play.
They were set many years afterwards by the fa-
mous Bononcini, and performed at Buckingham-
house.

CHORUS OF ATHENIANS.
Strophe 1.

YE shades, where sacred truth is sought;
Groves, where immortal sages taught;
Where heavenly visions Plato fired,
And Epicurus lay inspired!

In vain your guiltless laurels stood
Unspotted long with human blood.

War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades,
And steel now glitters in the muses' shades.
Antistrophe 1.

Oh heaven-born sisters! source of art!
Who charm the sense, or mend the heart:
Who lead fair virtue's train along,
Moral truth and mystic song!

To what new clime, what distant sky,
Forsaken, friendless, shall ye fly?
Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore?
Or bid the furious Gaul be rude no more?
Strophe 2.

When Athens sinks by fates unjust,
When wild barbarians spurn her dust!
Perhaps e'en Britain's utmost shore
Shall cease to blush with stranger's gore:
See arts her savage sons controul,
And Athens rising near the pole !
Till some new tyrant lifts his purple hand,
And civil madness tears them from the land.
Antistrophe 2.

Ye gods! what justice rules the ball!
Freedom and arts together fall;
Fools grant whate'er ambition craves,
And men once ignorant are slaves.

O cursed effects of civil hate,
In every age, in every state !

Still, when the lust of tyrant power succeeds,
Some Athens perishes, some Tully bleeds.

CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS.
Semichorus.

On tyrant Love! hast thou possess'd
The prudent, learn'd, and virtuous breast?
Wisdom and wit in vain reclaim,
And arts but soften us to feel thy flame.
Love, soft intruder, enters here,
But entering learns to be sincere.
Marcus; with blushes owns he loves,
And Brutus tenderly reproves.
Why, virtue, dost thou blaine desire,
Which nature hath impress'd?
Why, nature, dost thou soonest fire
The mild and generous breast?
Chorus.

Love's purer flames the gods approve;
The gods and Brutus bend to love:
Brutus for absent Porcia sighs,

And sterner Cassius melts at Junia's eyes.
What is loose love? a transient gust,
Spent in a sudden storm of lust;
A vapour fed from wild desire;

A wandering, self-consuming fire.
'But Hymen's kinder flames unite,
And burn for ever one;
Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light,
Productive as the sun.

Trembling, hoping lingering, flying-
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away.

What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
Oh grave where is thy victory?
Oh death! where is thy sting.

AN

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Written in the Year 1709.

PART L

Introduction. That it is as great a fault to judge ill,
as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the
public, ver. 1. That a true taste is as rare to be
found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18. That most men
are born with some taste, but spoiled by false educa-
tion, ver. 10 to 25. The multitude of critics, and
causes of them, ver. 26 to 45. That we are to study
our own taste, and know the limits of it, ver. 46 to
67. Nature the best guide of judgment, ver. 68 to
87. Improved by art and rules, which are but me-
thodised nature, ver. 88. Rules derived from the
practice of ancient poets, ver. 88 to 110. That there-
fore the ancients are necessary to be studied a
critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to
138. Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients,
ver. 140 to 180. Reverence due to the ancients, and
praise of them, ver. 181, &c.

"Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill,
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But of the two, less dangerous is the offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this;
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss ;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
"Tis with our judgments as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;
Both must alike from Heaven derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well:
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true;
But are not critics to their judgment too?

To tell them would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's that might a hundred tire.

But you, who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning, go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit,

And wisely curb'd proud man's pretending wit:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts.
Like kings, we lose the conquests gain'd before,
By vain ambition still to make them more:
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.

First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright, '
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art;
Art from that fund each just supply provides;
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus the informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in the effects remains.
Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
"Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed:
The winged courser, like a generous horse,
Shews most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules of old discover'd, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized:
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.
Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
The generous critic fann'd the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
10 Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,

To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:
But following wits from that intention stray'd;
Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid;
Against the poets their own arms they turn'd,
Sure to hate most the men from whoin they learn'd.
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part,

50

60

70

90

100

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,

110

Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind: Nature affords at least a glimmering light,

20

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoil'd so much as they :
Some drily plain, without invention's aid,

Write dull receipts how poems may be made.
These leave the sense, their learning to display,

The lines, though touch'd but faintly, are drawn right.
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced,

Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,
So by false learning is good sense defaced:
Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,

There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd;
Turn'd critics next, and proved plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn'd witlings, numerous in our isle,
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:

And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then,whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each ancient's proper character:
His fable, subject, scope in every page:
Religion, country, genius of his age:

30 Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.

120

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night:
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring:
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.
When first young Maro, in his boundless mind
A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd,
40 Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from nature's fountains scorn'd to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.

130

Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design,
And rules as strict his labour'd work confine,
As if the Stagyrite o'erlook'd each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem,
To copy nature, is to copy them.

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend
(Since rules were made but to promote their end),
Some lucky license answer to the full
The intent proposed, that license is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend.

But though the ancients thus their rules invade

(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made), Moderns, beware! or, if you must offend

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
140 Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know,
Make use of every friend-and every foe.
A little learning is a dangerous thing!
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

150 But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky!
The eternal snows appear already pass'd,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way:
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

160

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,

210

220

230

Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, e'en in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion'd to their light or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks, and fair array,
But with the occasion, and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.

See from each clime the learn'd their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting Pæans ring!
In praise so just let every voice be join'd,
And fill the general chorus of mankind.
Hail! bards triumphant ! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
O may some spark of your celestial fire,

The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That, on weak wings, from far pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes),
To teach vain wits a science little known,
To admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

PART II.

The generous pleasure to be charm'd with wit.
But, in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,

240

170

That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep;
We cannot blame indeed-but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts

Is not the exactness of peculiar parts;

180

"Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,

But the joint force and full result of all.

Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome,
(The world's just wonder, and e'en thine, O Rome!)
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes;

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear:
The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,

Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
In every work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend';
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
To avoid great errors, must the less commit;
Neglect the rule each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some trifles, is a praise.

190 Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,
A certain bard encountering on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.

200 Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produced his play, and begg'd the knight's advice;
Made him observe the subject, and the plot,
The manners, passions, unities; what not?
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.

Causes hindering a true judgment. 1. Pride, ver. 201. 2. Imperfect learning, ver. 215. 3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver. 233 to 288. Critics in wit, language, versification, only, 288, 305, 339, &c. 4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire, ver. 384. 5. Partiality-too much love to a sect, to the ancients or moderns, ver. 394. 6. Prejudice or prevention, ver. 408. 7. Singularity, ver. 424. 8. Inconstancy, ver. 430. 9. Party spirit, ver. 452, &c. 10. Envy, ver. 466. Against envy, and in praise of good-nature, ver. 508, &c. When severity is chiefly to be used by the critics, ver. 526, &c.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules;
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride!
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind:

250

260

270

280

'What! leave the combat out?' exclaims the knight.
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.'-
Not so, by heaven! (he answers in a rage)
Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage.-
'So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.'-
Then build a new, or act it on a plain.'
Curious, not knowing, not exact, but nice;
Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at every line; 290
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.

300

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;
For works may have more wit than does them good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still, the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay:
But true expression, like the unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;
It gilds all objects but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent as more suitable :
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd,
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd:
For different styles with different subjects sort.
As several garbs, with country, town, and court,
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungosa in the play,

These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,

As apes our grandsires in their doublets dress'd.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold ;
Alike fantastic, if too new or old;

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

310

As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize :
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes ;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days
Regard not then if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,

320 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd, the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with quality;
A constant critic at the great man's board
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney'd sonnetteer, or me!
But let a lord once-own the happy lines,

330 How the wit brightens! how the style refines !
Before his sacred name flies every fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

The vulgar thus through imitation err;

As oft the learn'd by being singular;

So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right they purposely go wrong:

So schismatics the plain believers quit,

And are but damn'd for having too much wit,

400

410

420

Some praise at morning what they blame at night, 430
But always think the last opinion right.

Nor yet the last to lay the whole aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song;

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:

In the bright muse though thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ;

340

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,

A muse by these is like a mistress used,

Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,

While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,

Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same nnvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find the cooling western breeze,'
In the next line it whispers through the trees :'
If crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep,
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with sleep :'
Then at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

350

Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 370
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

This hour she's idolized, the next abused;

Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.

Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say:

And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
Once school-divines this zealous isle o'erspread:
Who knew most sentences was deepest read:
Faith, Gospel, all, seem'd made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now in peace remain.
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane.
If faith itself has different dresses worn,.
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe,
Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.
Some, valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind :
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaux :
But sense survived, when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise;

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, main.

Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love:
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!
The power of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such
Who still are pleased too little or too much.
At every trifle scorn to take offence,

That always shows great pride, or little sense:
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move:
For fools admire, but men of sense approve :

Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;
But, like a shadow, proves the substance true :
For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known
The opposing body's grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too powerful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
380 But e'en those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all e'en that can boast;
390 Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.

440

450

460

470

480