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 | 5 |
| 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: | |
| Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our defence, | |
| And fills up all the mighty void of Sense: | 10 |
| If once right Reason drives that cloud away, | |
| Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. | |
| Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, | |
| Make use of ev’ry friend—and ev’ry foe. | |
| A little learning is a dangerous thing; | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| While from the bounded level of our mind | |
| Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind: | |
| But more advanc’d, behold with strange surprise | |
| New distant scenes of endless science rise! | |
| So pleas’d at first the tow’ring Alps we try, | 25 |
| Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; | |
| Th’ eternal snows appear already past, | |
| 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; | 30 |
| Th’ increasing prospect tires our wand’ring eyes, | |
| Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! | |
| 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 | 35 |
| Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the mind: | |
| Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, | |
| The gen’rous pleasure to be charm’d with wit. | |
| But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow, | |
| Correctly cold, and regularly low, | 40 |
| That shunning faults one quiet tenor keep, | |
| We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep. | |
| In Wit, as Nature, what affects our hearts | |
| Is not th’ exactness of peculiar parts; | |
| ’T is not a lip or eye we beauty call, | 45 |
| But the joint force and full result of all. | |
| Thus when we view some well proportion’d dome, | |
| (The world’s just wonder, and ev’n thine, O Rome!) | |
| No single parts unequally surprise, | |
| All comes united to th’ admiring eyes; | 50 |
| 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, | 55 |
| 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, | |
| T’ avoid great errors must the less commit; | 60 |
| Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, | |
| For not to know some trifles is a praise. | |
| Most critics, fond of some subservient art, | |
| Still make the whole depend upon a part: | |
| They talk of Principles, but Notions prize, | 65 |
| And all to one lov’d folly sacrifice. | |
| Once on a time La Mancha’s Knight, they say, | |
| A certain bard encount’ring on the way, | |
| Discours’d in terms as just, with looks as sage, | |
| As e’er could Dennis, of the Grecian Stage; | 70 |
| Concluding all were desperate sots and fools | |
| Who durst depart from Aristotle’s rules. | |
| 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, | 75 |
| The Manners, Passions, Unities; what not? | |
| All which exact to rule were brought about, | |
| Were but a combat in the lists left out. | |
| ‘What! leave the combat out?’ exclaims the knight. | |
| ‘Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.’ | 80 |
| ‘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 in a plain.’ | |
| Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, | 85 |
| Curious, not knowing, not exact, but nice, | |
| Form short ideas, and offend in Arts | |
| (As most in Manners), by a love to parts. | |
| Some to Conceit alone their taste confine, | |
| And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at every line; | 90 |
| Pleas’d 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, | 95 |
| 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. | 100 |
| 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 thro’ excess of blood. | |
| Others for language all their care express, | 105 |
| And value books, as women men, for dress: | |
| Their praise is still—the Style is excel., lent; | |
| The Sense they humbly take upon content. | |
| Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, | |
| Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. | 110 |
| 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 th’ unchanging sun, | 115 |
| 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 | 120 |
| Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d: | |
| For diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort, | |
| As sev’ral garbs with country, town, and court. | |
| Some by old words to fame have made pretence, | |
| Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; | 125 |
| Such labour’d nothings, in so strange a style, | |
| Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile; | |
| Unlucky as Fungoso in the play, | |
| These sparks with awkward vanity display | |
| What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; | 130 |
| And but so mimic ancient wits at best, | |
| As apes our grandsires in their doublets drest. | |
| 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, | 135 |
| Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. | |
| But most by Numbers judge a poet’s song, | |
| And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong. | |
| In the bright Muse tho thousand charms conspire, | |
| Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; | 140 |
| Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, | |
| Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, | |
| Not for the doctrine, but the music there. | |
| These equal syllables alone require, | |
| Tho’ oft the ear the open vowels tire, | 145 |
| While expletives their feeble aid do join, | |
| And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: | |
| While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, | |
| With sure returns of still expected rhymes; | |
| Where’er you find ‘the cooling western breeze,’ | 150 |
| In the next line, it ‘whispers thro’ 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, | 155 |
| A needless Alexandrine ends the song, | |
| That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. | |
| Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know | |
| What ’s roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; | |
| And praise the easy vigour of a line | 160 |
| 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. | |
| ’T is not enough no harshness gives offence; | |
| The sound must seem an echo to the sense. | 165 |
| 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, | 170 |
| The line, too, labours, and the words move slow: | |
| Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, | |
| Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main. | |
| Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise, | |
| And bid alternate passions fall and rise! | 175 |
| 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, | 180 |
| 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 pleas’d too little or too much. | 185 |
| At ev’ry 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; | 190 |
| For fools admire, but men of sense approve: | |
| As things seem large which we thro’ mist descry, | |
| Dulness is ever apt to magnify. | |
| Some foreign writers, some our own despise; | |
| The ancients only, or the moderns prize. | 195 |
| 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, | 200 |
| But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; | |
| Which from the first has shone on ages past, | |
| Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; | |
| Tho’ each may feel increases and decays, | |
| And see now clearer and now darker days. | 205 |
| 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, | 210 |
| 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; | 215 |
| A constant critic at the great man’s board, | |
| To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord. | |
| What woful stuff this madrigal would be | |
| In some starv’d hackney sonneteer or me! | |
| But let a lord once own the happy lines, | 220 |
| 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 thro’ imitation err, | |
| As oft the learn’d by being singular; | 225 |
| 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. | |
| Some praise at morning what they blame at night, | 230 |
| But always think the last opinion right. | |
| A Muse by these is like a mistress used, | |
| This hour she ’s idolized, the next abused; | |
| While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, | |
| ’Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. | 235 |
| 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; | 240 |
| 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. | 245 |
| If Faith itself has diff’rent 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, | 250 |
| Which lives as long as fools are pleas’d 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. | 255 |
| 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; | 260 |
| For rising merit will buoy up at last. | |
| Might he return and bless once more our eyes, | |
| New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise. | |
| Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, | |
| Zoilus again would start up from the dead. | 265 |
| Envy will Merit as its shade pursue, | |
| But like a shadow proves the substance true; | |
| For envied Wit, like Sol eclips’d, makes known | |
| Th’ opposing body’s grossness, not its own. | |
| When first that sun too powerful beams displays, | 270 |
| It draws up vapours which obscure its rays; | |
| But ev’n 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. | 275 |
| Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes, | |
| And ’t is 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, | 280 |
| And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast: | |
| Our sons their fathers’ failing language see, | |
| And such as Chaucer is shall Dryden be. | |
| So when the faithful pencil has design’d | |
| Some bright idea of the master’s mind, | 285 |
| Where a new world leaps out at his command, | |
| And ready Nature waits upon his hand; | |
| When the ripe colours soften and unite, | |
| And sweetly melt into just shade and light; | |
| When mellowing years their full perfection give, | 290 |
| And each bold figure just begins to live, | |
| The treach’rous colours the fair art betray, | |
| And all the bright creation fades away! | |
| Unhappy Wit, like most mistaken things, | |
| Atones not for that envy which it brings: | 295 |
| In youth alone its empty praise we boast, | |
| But soon the short-lived vanity is lost; | |
| Like some fair flower the early Spring supplies, | |
| That gaily blooms, but ev’n in blooming dies. | |
| What is this Wit, which must our cares employ? | 300 |
| The owner’s wife that other men enjoy; | |
| Then most our trouble still when most admired, | |
| And still the more we give, the more required; | |
| Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease, | |
| Sure some to vex, but never all to please, | 305 |
| ’T is what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun; | |
| By fools ’t is hated, and by knaves undone! | |
| If Wit so much from Ignorance undergo, | |
| Ah, let not Learning too commence its foe! | |
| Of old those met rewards who could excel, | 310 |
| And such were prais’d who but endeavour’d well; | |
| Tho’ triumphs were to gen’rals only due, | |
| Crowns were reserv’d to grace the soldiers too. | |
| Now they who reach Parnassus’ lofty crown | |
| Employ their pains to spurn some others down; | 315 |
| And while self-love each jealous writer rules, | |
| Contending wits become the sport of fools; | |
| But still the worst with most regret commend, | |
| For each ill author is as bad a friend. | |
| To what base ends, and by what abject ways, | 320 |
| Are mortals urged thro’ sacred lust of praise! | |
| Ah, ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast, | |
| Nor in the critic let the man be lost! | |
| Good nature and good sense must ever join; | |
| To err is human, to forgive divine. | 325 |
| But if in noble minds some dregs remain, | |
| Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain, | |
| Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, | |
| Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times. | |
| No pardon vile obscenity should find, | 330 |
| Tho’ Wit and Art conspire to move your mind; | |
| But dulness with obscenity must prove | |
| As shameful sure as impotence in love. | |
| In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease | |
| Sprung the rank weed, and thrived with large increase: | 335 |
| When love was all an easy monarch’s care, | |
| Seldom at council, never in a war; | |
| Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ; | |
| Nay wits had pensions, and young lords had wit; | |
| The Fair sat panting at a courtier’s play, | 340 |
| And not a mask went unimprov’d away; | |
| The modest fan was lifted up no more, | |
| And virgins smil’d at what they blush’d before. | |
| The following license of a foreign reign | |
| Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain; | 345 |
| Then unbelieving priests reform’d the nation, | |
| And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; | |
| Where Heav’n’s free subjects might their rights dispute, | |
| Lest God himself should seem too absolute; | |
| Pulpits their sacred satire learn’d to spare, | 350 |
| And vice admired to find a flatt’rer there! | |
| Encouraged thus, Wit’s Titans braved the skies, | |
| And the press groan’d with licens’d blasphemies. | |
| These monsters, Critics! with your darts engage, | |
| Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage! | 355 |
| Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice, | |
| Will needs mistake an author into vice: | |
| All seems infected that th’ infected spy, | |
| As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye. | |
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