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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341060" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Neque sermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in præmiis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suiste oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant,sed loquentur tamen.<br>(Cicero, De Re Publica VI.23)["... you will not any longer attend to the vulgar mob's gossip nor put your trust in human rewards for your deeds; virtue, through her own charms, should lead you to true glory. Let what others say about you be their concern; whatever it is, they will say it anyway."<br> Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said, <br> Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.<br> The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,<br> All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:<br> Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,<br> They rave, recite, and madden round the land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?<br> They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;<br> By land, by water, they renew the charge;<br> They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.<br> No place is sacred, not the church is free;<br> Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:<br> Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,<br> Happy! to catch me just at dinner-time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Is there a parson, much bemus'd in beer,<br> A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,<br> A clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,<br> Who pens a stanza, when he should engross?<br> Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls<br> With desp'rate charcoal round his darken'd walls?<br> All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain<br> Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.<br> Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,<br> Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause:<br> Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,<br> And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,<br> The world had wanted many an idle song)<br> What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?<br> Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?<br> A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,<br> If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.<br> Seiz'd and tied down to judge, how wretched I!<br> Who can't be silent, and who will not lie;<br> To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,<br> And to be grave, exceeds all pow'r of face.<br> I sit with sad civility, I read<br> With honest anguish, and an aching head;<br> And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,<br> This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> "Nine years!" cries he, who high in Drury-lane<br> Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,<br> Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,<br> Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends:<br> "The piece, you think, is incorrect: why, take it,<br> I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Three things another's modest wishes bound,<br> My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.<br> Pitholeon sends to me: "You know his Grace,<br> I want a patron; ask him for a place."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Pitholeon libell'd me--"but here's a letter<br> Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.<br> Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,<br> He'll write a Journal, or he'll turn Divine."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Bless me! a packet--"'Tis a stranger sues,<br> A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse."<br> If I dislike it, "Furies, death and rage!"<br> If I approve, "Commend it to the stage."<br> There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,<br> The play'rs and I are, luckily, no friends.<br> Fir'd that the house reject him, "'Sdeath I'll print it,<br> And shame the fools--your int'rest, sir, with Lintot!"<br> "Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much."<br> "Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch."<br> All my demurs but double his attacks;<br> At last he whispers, "Do; and we go snacks."<br> Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,<br> "Sir, let me see your works and you no more."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring,<br> (Midas, a sacred person and a king)<br> His very minister who spied them first,<br> (Some say his queen) was forc'd to speak, or burst.<br> And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,<br> When ev'ry coxcomb perks them in my face?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> "Good friend, forbear! you deal in dang'rous things.<br> I'd never name queens, ministers, or kings;<br> Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick;<br> 'Tis nothing"--Nothing? if they bite and kick?<br> Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,<br> That secret to each fool, that he's an ass:<br> The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)<br> The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> You think this cruel? take it for a rule,<br> No creature smarts so little as a fool.<br> Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,<br> Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:<br> Pit, box, and gall'ry in convulsions hurl'd,<br> Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.<br> Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,<br> He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;<br> Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,<br> The creature's at his dirty work again;<br> Thron'd in the centre of his thin designs;<br> Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!<br> Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer,<br> Lost the arch'd eye-brow, or Parnassian sneer?<br> And has not Colley still his lord, and whore?<br> His butchers Henley, his Free-masons Moore?<br> Does not one table Bavius still admit?<br> Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit?<br> Still Sappho-- "Hold! for God-sake--you'll offend:<br> No names!--be calm!--learn prudence of a friend!<br> I too could write, and I am twice as tall;<br> But foes like these!" One flatt'rer's worse than all.<br> Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,<br> It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.<br> A fool quite angry is quite innocent;<br> Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> One dedicates in high heroic prose,<br> And ridicules beyond a hundred foes;<br> One from all Grub Street will my fame defend,<br> And, more abusive, calls himself my friend.<br> This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,<br> And others roar aloud, "Subscribe, subscribe."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> There are, who to my person pay their court:<br> I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short,<br> Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high,<br> Such Ovid's nose, and "Sir! you have an eye"--<br> Go on, obliging creatures, make me see<br> All that disgrac'd my betters, met in me:<br> Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,<br> "Just so immortal Maro held his head:"<br> And when I die, be sure you let me know<br> Great Homer died three thousand years ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Why did I write? what sin to me unknown<br> Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own?<br> As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,<br> I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.<br> I left no calling for this idle trade,<br> No duty broke, no father disobey'd.<br> The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife,<br> To help me through this long disease, my life,<br> To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,<br> And teach the being you preserv'd, to bear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> But why then publish? Granville the polite,<br> And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;<br> Well-natur'd Garth inflamed with early praise,<br> And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays;<br> The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,<br> Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head,<br> And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)<br> With open arms receiv'd one poet more.<br> Happy my studies, when by these approv'd!<br> Happier their author, when by these belov'd!<br> From these the world will judge of men and books,<br> Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Soft were my numbers; who could take offence,<br> While pure description held the place of sense?<br> Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,<br> A painted mistress, or a purling stream.<br> Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;<br> I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.<br> Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;<br> I never answer'd, I was not in debt.<br> If want provok'd, or madness made them print,<br> I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Did some more sober critic come abroad?<br> If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.<br> Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,<br> And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.<br> Commas and points they set exactly right,<br> And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.<br> Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds,<br> From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibbalds.<br> Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells,<br> Each word-catcher that lives on syllables,<br> Ev'n such small critics some regard may claim,<br> Preserv'd in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.<br> Pretty! in amber to observe the forms<br> Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms;<br> The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,<br> But wonder how the devil they got there?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Were others angry? I excus'd them too;<br> Well might they rage; I gave them but their due.<br> A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find,<br> But each man's secret standard in his mind,<br> That casting weight pride adds to emptiness,<br> This, who can gratify? for who can guess?<br> The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown,<br> Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,<br> Just writes to make his barrenness appear,<br> And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year:<br> He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,<br> Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:<br> And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,<br> Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:<br> And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,<br> It is not poetry, but prose run mad:<br> All these, my modest satire bade translate,<br> And own'd, that nine such poets made a Tate.<br> How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe?<br> And swear, not Addison himself was safe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires<br> True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires,<br> Blest with each talent and each art to please,<br> And born to write, converse, and live with ease:<br> Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,<br> Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,<br> View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,<br> And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;<br> Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,<br> And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;<br> Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,<br> Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;<br> Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,<br> A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;<br> Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,<br> And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;<br> Like Cato, give his little senate laws,<br> And sit attentive to his own applause;<br> While wits and templars ev'ry sentence raise,<br> And wonder with a foolish face of praise.<br> Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?<br> Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> What though my name stood rubric on the walls,<br> Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?<br> Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,<br> On wings of winds came flying all abroad?<br> I sought no homage from the race that write;<br> I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:<br> Poems I heeded (now berhym'd so long)<br> No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.<br> I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,<br> To spread about the itch of verse and praise;<br> Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town,<br> To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;<br> Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried,<br> With handkerchief and orange at my side;<br> But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,<br> To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,<br> Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill;<br> Fed with soft dedication all day long,<br> Horace and he went hand in hand in song.<br> His library (where busts of poets dead<br> And a true Pindar stood without a head,)<br> Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,<br> Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:<br> Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,<br> And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:<br> Till grown more frugal in his riper days,<br> He paid some bards with port, and some with praise,<br> To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,<br> And others (harder still) he paid in kind.<br> Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,<br> Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:<br> But still the great have kindness in reserve,<br> He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill!<br> May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!<br> So, when a statesman wants a day's defence,<br> Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense,<br> Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,<br> May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!<br> Blest be the great! for those they take away,<br> And those they left me--for they left me Gay;<br> Left me to see neglected genius bloom,<br> Neglected die! and tell it on his tomb;<br> Of all thy blameless life the sole return<br> My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Oh let me live my own! and die so too!<br> ("To live and die is all I have to do:")<br> Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,<br> And see what friends, and read what books I please.<br> Above a patron, though I condescend<br> Sometimes to call a minister my friend:<br> I was not born for courts or great affairs;<br> I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray'rs;<br> Can sleep without a poem in my head,<br> Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?<br> Heav'ns! was I born for nothing but to write?<br> Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)<br> Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?<br> "I found him close with Swift"--"Indeed? no doubt",<br> (Cries prating Balbus) "something will come out".<br> 'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.<br> "No, such a genius never can lie still,"<br> And then for mine obligingly mistakes<br> The first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes.<br> Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,<br> When ev'ry coxcomb knows me by my style?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Curs'd be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,<br> That tends to make one worthy man my foe,<br> Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,<br> Or from the soft-ey'd virgin steal a tear!<br> But he, who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,<br> Insults fall'n worth, or beauty in distress,<br> Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,<br> Who writes a libel, or who copies out:<br> That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,<br> Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame;<br> Who can your merit selfishly approve,<br> And show the sense of it without the love;<br> Who has the vanity to call you friend,<br> Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;<br> Who tells what'er you think, whate'er you say,<br> And, if he lie not, must at least betray:<br> Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,<br> And sees at Cannons what was never there;<br> Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,<br> Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie.<br> A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,<br> But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Let Sporus tremble--"What? that thing of silk,<br> Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?<br> Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?<br> Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"<br> Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,<br> This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;<br> Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,<br> Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'r enjoys,<br> So well-bred spaniels civilly delight<br> In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.<br> Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,<br> As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.<br> Whether in florid impotence he speaks,<br> And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;<br> Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,<br> Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,<br> In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,<br> Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.<br> His wit all see-saw, between that and this ,<br> Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,<br> And he himself one vile antithesis.<br> Amphibious thing! that acting either part,<br> The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,<br> Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,<br> Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.<br> Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have express'd,<br> A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;<br> Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,<br> Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,<br> Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,<br> Not proud, nor servile, be one poet's praise,<br> That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways;<br> That flatt'ry, even to kings, he held a shame,<br> And thought a lie in verse or prose the same:<br> That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,<br> But stoop'd to truth, and moraliz'd his song:<br> That not for fame, but virtue's better end,<br> He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,<br> The damning critic, half-approving wit,<br> The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;<br> Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,<br> The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;<br> The distant threats of vengeance on his head,<br> The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;<br> The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown;<br> Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;<br> The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape;<br> The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;<br> Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,<br> A friend in exile, or a father, dead;<br> The whisper, that to greatness still too near,<br> Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear:--<br> Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:<br> For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> "But why insult the poor? affront the great?"<br> A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state:<br> Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,<br> Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,<br> A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,<br> Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;<br> If on a pillory, or near a throne,<br> He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,<br> Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:<br> This dreaded sat'rist Dennis will confess<br> Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:<br> So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,<br> Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhym'd for Moore.<br> Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?<br> Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.<br> To please a mistress one aspers'd his life;<br> He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife.<br> Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill,<br> And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his will;<br> Let the two Curlls of town and court, abuse<br> His father, mother, body, soul, and muse.<br> Yet why? that father held it for a rule,<br> It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:<br> That harmless mother thought no wife a whore,--<br> Hear this! and spare his family, James Moore!<br> Unspotted names! and memorable long,<br> If there be force in virtue, or in song.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,<br> While yet in Britain honour had applause)<br> Each parent sprung--"What fortune, pray?"--Their own,<br> And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.<br> Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,<br> Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,<br> Stranger to civil and religious rage,<br> The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.<br> No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,<br> Nor dar'd an oath, nor hazarded a lie:<br> Un-learn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,<br> No language, but the language of the heart.<br> By nature honest, by experience wise,<br> Healthy by temp'rance and by exercise;<br> His life, though long, to sickness past unknown;<br> His death was instant, and without a groan.<br> O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!<br> Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!<br> Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:<br> Me, let the tender office long engage<br> To rock the cradle of reposing age,<br> With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,<br> Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death,<br> Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,<br> And keep a while one parent from the sky!<br> On cares like these if length of days attend,<br> May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend,<br> Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,<br> And just as rich as when he serv'd a queen.<br> Whether that blessing be denied or giv'n,<br> Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav'n.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alexander+Pope">Alexander Pope</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341060" data-title="Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot de Alexander Pope" data-description="Neque sermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in præmiis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suiste oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant,sed loquentur tamen. (Cicero, De Re Publica VI.23)["... y..."></div> </div> </div>
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