<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341064" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere<br> (Horace, Epistles II.i.267)<br> While you, great patron of mankind, sustain <br> The balanc'd world, and open all the main;<br> Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,<br> At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;<br> How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal<br> An hour, and not defraud the public weal?<br> Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,<br> And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,<br> After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,<br> The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,<br> Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,<br> Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;<br> Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find<br> Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!<br> All human virtue, to its latest breath<br> Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.<br> The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,<br> Had still this monster to subdue at last.<br> Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray<br> Each star of meaner merit fades away!<br> Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat,<br> Those suns of glory please not till they set.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> To thee the world its present homage pays,<br> The harvest early, but mature the praise:<br> Great friend of liberty! in kings a name<br> Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:<br> Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,<br> As Heav'n's own oracles from altars heard.<br> Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes<br> None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Just in one instance, be it yet confest<br> Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:<br> Foes to all living worth except your own,<br> And advocates for folly dead and gone.<br> Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;<br> It is the rust we value, not the gold.<br> Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,<br> And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:<br> One likes no language but the Faery Queen ;<br> A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:<br> And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,<br> He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,<br> Why should not we be wiser than our sires?<br> In ev'ry public virtue we excel:<br> We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,<br> And learned Athens to our art must stoop,<br> Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> If time improve our wit as well as wine,<br> Say at what age a poet grows divine?<br> Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,<br> Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?<br> End all dispute; and fix the year precise<br> When British bards begin t'immortalize?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Who lasts a century can have no flaw,<br> I hold that wit a classic, good in law.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?<br> And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,<br> Or damn to all eternity at once,<br> At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;We shall not quarrel for a year or two;<br> By courtesy of England, he may do.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,<br> I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,<br> And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:<br> While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,<br> And estimating authors by the year,<br> Bestow a garland only on a bier.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill<br> Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)<br> For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,<br> And grew immortal in his own despite.<br> Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed<br> The life to come, in ev'ry poet's creed.<br> Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,<br> His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;<br> Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,<br> But still I love the language of his heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!<br> What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?<br> In all debates where critics bear a part,<br> Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,<br> Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;<br> How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;<br> How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;<br> But, for the passions, Southerne sure and Rowe.<br> These, only these, support the crowded stage,<br> From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> All this may be; the people's voice is odd,<br> It is, and it is not, the voice of God.<br> To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,<br> And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,<br> Or say our fathers never broke a rule;<br> Why then, I say, the public is a fool.<br> But let them own, that greater faults than we<br> They had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.<br> Spenser himself affects the obsolete,<br> And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:<br> Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound,<br> Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,<br> In quibbles, angel and archangel join,<br> And God the Father turns a school divine.<br> Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,<br> Like slashing Bentley with his desp'rate hook,<br> Or damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected fool<br> At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> But for the wits of either Charles's days,<br> The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;<br> Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,<br> (Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er)<br> One simile, that solitary shines<br> In the dry desert of a thousand lines,<br> Or lengthen'd thought that gleams through many a page,<br> Has sanctified whole poems for an age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> I lose my patience, and I own it too,<br> When works are censur'd, not as bad, but new;<br> While if our elders break all reason's laws,<br> These fools demand not pardon, but applause.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> On Avon's bank, where flow'rs eternal blow,<br> If I but ask if any weed can grow?<br> One tragic sentence if I dare deride,<br> Which Betterton's grave action dignified,<br> Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims<br> (Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names)<br> How will our fathers rise up in a rage,<br> And swear, all shame is lost in George's age!<br> You'd think no fools disgrac'd the former reign,<br> Did not some grave examples yet remain,<br> Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,<br> And, having once been wrong, will be so still.<br> He, who to seem more deep than you or I,<br> Extols old bards, or Merlin's Prophecy,<br> Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,<br> And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.<br> Had ancient times conspir'd to disallow<br> What then was new, what had been ancient now?<br> Or what remain'd, so worthy to be read<br> By learned critics, of the mighty dead?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> In days of ease, when now the weary sword<br> Was sheath'd, and luxury with Charles restor'd;<br> In ev'ry taste of foreign courts improv'd,<br> &quot;All, by the King's example, liv'd and lov'd.&quot;<br> Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t'excel,<br> Newmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;<br> The soldier breath'd the gallantries of France,<br> And ev'ry flow'ry courtier writ romance.<br> Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm,<br> And yielding metal flow'd to human form:<br> Lely on animated canvas stole<br> The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.<br> No wonder then, when all was love and sport,<br> The willing Muses were debauch'd at court:<br> On each enervate string they taught the note<br> To pant or tremble through an eunuch's throat.<br> But Britain, changeful as a child at play,<br> Now calls in princes, and now turns away:<br> Now Whig, now Tory, what we lov'd we hate;<br> Now all for pleasure, now for Church and state;<br> Now for prerogative, and now for laws;<br> Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Time was, a sober Englishman would knock<br> His servants up, and rise by five o'clock,<br> Instruct his family in ev'ry rule,<br> And send his wife to church, his son to school.<br> To worship like his fathers was his care;<br> To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;<br> To prove that luxury could never hold,<br> And place, on good security, his gold.<br> Now times are chang'd, and one poetic itch<br> Has seiz'd the court and city, poor and rich:<br> Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,<br> Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,<br> To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,<br> And all our grace at table is a song.<br> I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,<br> Not {-}{-}{-}{-}{-}'s self e'er tells more fibs than I;<br> When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,<br> And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;<br> We wake next morning in a raging fit,<br> And call for pen and ink to show our wit.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop;<br> Ward tried on puppies and the poor, his drop;<br> Ev'n Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,<br> Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance.<br> Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?<br> (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile)<br> But those who cannot write, and those who can,<br> All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;<br> These madmen never hurt the Church or state:<br> Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;<br> And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind.<br> Allow him but his plaything of a pen,<br> He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:<br> Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;<br> And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.<br> To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;<br> The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,<br> Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;<br> And then--a perfect hermit in his diet.<br> Of little use the man you may suppose,<br> Who says in verse what others say in prose:<br> Yet let me show, a poet's of some weight,<br> And (though no soldier) useful to the state.<br> What will a child learn sooner than a song?<br> What better teach a foreigner the tongue?<br> What's long or short, each accent where to place,<br> And speak in public with some sort of grace.<br> I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,<br> Unless he praise some monster of a king;<br> Or virtue or religion turn to sport,<br> To please a lewd, or unbelieving court.<br> Unhappy Dryden!--In all Charles's days,<br> Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;<br> And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)<br> No whiter page than Addison remains.<br> He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,<br> And sets the passions on the side of truth,<br> Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,<br> And pours each human virtue in the heart.<br> Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,<br> Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;<br> And leave on Swift this grateful verse engrav'd,<br> &quot;The rights a court attack'd, a poet sav'd.&quot;<br> Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,<br> Stretch'd to relieve the idiot and the poor,<br> Proud vice to brand, or injur'd worth adorn,<br> And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.<br> Not but there are, who merit other palms;<br> Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:<br> The boys and girls whom charity maintains,<br> Implore your help in these pathetic strains:<br> How could devotion touch the country pews,<br> Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?<br> Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,<br> Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.<br> The silenc'd preacher yields to potent strain,<br> And feels that grace his pray'r besought in vain;<br> The blessing thrills through all the lab'ring throng,<br> And Heav'n is won by violence of song.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Our rural ancestors, with little blest,<br> Patient of labour when the end was rest,<br> Indulg'd the day that hous'd their annual grain,<br> With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain:<br> The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share,<br> Ease of their toil, and part'ners of their care:<br> The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,<br> Smooth'd ev'ry brow, and open'd ev'ry soul:<br> With growing years the pleasing licence grew,<br> And taunts alternate innocently flew.<br> But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclin'd,<br> Produc'd the point that left a sting behind;<br> Till friend with friend, and families at strife,<br> Triumphant malice rag'd through private life.<br> Who felt the wrong, or fear'd it, took th' alarm,<br> Appeal'd to law, and justice lent her arm.<br> At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound,<br> The poets learn'd to please, and not to wound:<br> Most warp'd to flatt'ry's side; but some, more nice,<br> Preserv'd the freedom, and forbore the vice.<br> Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit,<br> And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms;<br> Her arts victorious triumph'd o'er our arms;<br> Britain to soft refinements less a foe,<br> Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow.<br> Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join<br> The varying verse, the full-resounding line,<br> The long majestic march, and energy divine.<br> Though still some traces of our rustic vein<br> And splayfoot verse remain'd, and will remain.<br> Late, very late, correctness grew our care,<br> When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war.<br> Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire<br> Show'd us that France had something to admire.<br> Not but the tragic spirit was our own,<br> And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:<br> But Otway fail'd to polish or refine,<br> And fluent Shakespeare scarce effac'd a line.<br> Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,<br> The last and greatest art, the art to blot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire<br> The humbler Muse of comedy require.<br> But in known images of life, I guess<br> The labour greater, as th' indulgence less.<br> Observe how seldom ev'n the best succeed:<br> Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?<br> What pert, low dialogue has Farqu'ar writ!<br> How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!<br> The stage how loosely does Astr{ae}ea tread,<br> Who fairly puts all characters to bed!<br> And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,<br> To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!<br> But fill their purse, our poet's work is done,<br> Alike to them, by pathos or by pun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys<br> On fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise,<br> With what a shifting gale your course you ply,<br> For ever sunk too low, or borne too high!<br> Who pants for glory finds but short repose,<br> A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.<br> Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play,<br> The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> There still remains, to mortify a wit,<br> The many-headed monster of the pit:<br> A senseless, worthless, and unhonour'd crowd;<br> Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,<br> Clatt'ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke,<br> Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke.<br> What dear delight to Britons farce affords!<br> Farce once the taste of mobs, but now of lords;<br> (For taste, eternal wanderer, now flies<br> From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes.)<br> The play stands still; damn action and discourse,<br> Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;<br> Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn,<br> Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;<br> The champion too! and, to complete the jest,<br> Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast.<br> With laughter sure Democritus had died,<br> Had he beheld an audience gape so wide.<br> Let bear or elephant be e'er so white,<br> The people, sure, the people are the sight!<br> Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,<br> That bear or elephant shall heed thee more;<br> While all its throats the gallery extends,<br> And all the thunder of the pit ascends!<br> Loud as the wolves on Orcas' stormy steep,<br> Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep.<br> Such is the shout, the long-applauding note,<br> At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat,<br> Or when from Court a birthday suit bestow'd<br> Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.<br> Booth enters--hark! the universal peal!<br> &quot;But has he spoken?&quot; Not a syllable.<br> &quot;What shook the stage, and made the people stare?&quot;<br> Cato's long wig, flow'r'd gown, and lacquer'd chair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Yet lest you think I rally more than teach,<br> Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach,<br> Let me for once presume t'instruct the times,<br> To know the poet from the man of rhymes:<br> 'Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,<br> Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;<br> Enrage, compose, with more than magic art,<br> With pity and with terror tear my heart;<br> And snatch me o'er the earth or thro' the air,<br> To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> But not this part of the poetic state<br> Alone, deserves the favour of the great:<br> Think of those authors, Sir, who would rely<br> More on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.<br> Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?<br> Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?<br> How shall we fill a library with wit,<br> When Merlin's Cave is half unfurnish'd yet?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> My Liege! why writers little claim your thought,<br> I guess: and, with their leave, will tell the fault:<br> We poets are (upon a poet's word)<br> Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd:<br> The season, when to come, and when to go,<br> To sing, or cease to sing, we never know;<br> And if we will recite nine hours in ten,<br> You lose your patience, just like other men.<br> Then too we hurt ourselves, when to defend<br> A single verse, we quarrel with a friend;<br> Repeat unask'd; lament, the wit's too fine<br> For vulgar eyes, and point out ev'ry line.<br> But most, when straining with too weak a wing,<br> We needs will write epistles to the king;<br> And from the moment we oblige the town,<br> Expect a place, or pension from the Crown;<br> Or dubb'd historians by express command,<br> T'enroll your triumphs o'er the seas and land,<br> Be call'd to court to plan some work divine,<br> As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Yet think, great Sir! (so many virtues shown)<br> Ah think, what poet best may make them known?<br> Or choose at least some minister of grace,<br> Fit to bestow the laureate's weighty place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair,<br> Assign'd his figure to Bernini's care;<br> And great Nassau to Kneller's hand decreed<br> To fix him graceful on the bounding steed;<br> So well in paint and stone they judg'd of merit:<br> But kings in wit may want discerning spirit.<br> The hero William, and the martyr Charles,<br> One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles;<br> Which made old Ben, and surly Dennis swear,<br> &quot;No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> Not with such majesty, such bold relief,<br> The forms august, of king, or conqu'ring chief,<br> E'er swell'd on marble; as in verse have shin'd<br> (In polish'd verse) the manners and the mind.<br> Oh! could I mount on the M{ae}onian wing,<br> Your arms, your actions, your repose to sing!<br> What seas you travers'd! and what fields you fought!<br> Your country's peace, how oft, how dearly bought!<br> How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,<br> And nations wonder'd while they dropp'd the sword!<br> How, when you nodded, o'er the land and deep,<br> Peace stole her wing, and wrapp'd the world in sleep;<br> Till earth's extremes your mediation own,<br> And Asia's tyrants tremble at your throne--<br> But verse, alas! your Majesty disdains;<br> And I'm not us'd to panegyric strains:<br> The zeal of fools offends at any time,<br> But most of all, the zeal of fools in rhyme,<br> Besides, a fate attends on all I write,<br> That when I aim at praise, they say I bite.<br> A vile encomium doubly ridicules:<br> There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools;<br> If true, a woeful likeness; and if lies,<br> &quot;Praise undeserv'd is scandal in disguise.&quot;<br> Well may he blush, who gives it, or receives;<br> And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves<br> (Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things<br> As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings)<br> Clothe spice, line trunks, or flutt'ring in a row,<br> Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho.</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=341064" data-title="Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book de Alexander Pope" data-description="Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere (Horace, Epistles II.i.267) While you, great patron of mankind, sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend; How ..."></div> </div> </div>

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