<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354708" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Apology</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">ADDRESSED TO THE CRITICAL REVIEWERS.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tristitiam et Metus.--HORACE.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Laughs not the heart when giants, big with pride,<br>Assume the pompous port, the martial stride;<br>O'er arm Herculean heave the enormous shield,<br>Vast as a weaver's beam the javelin wield;<br>With the loud voice of thundering Jove defy,<br>And dare to single combat--what?--A fly!<br>And laugh we less when giant names, which shine<br>Establish'd, as it were, by right divine;<br>Critics, whom every captive art adores,<br>To whom glad Science pours forth all her stores; <br>Who high in letter'd reputation sit,<br>And hold, Astraea-like, the scales of wit,<br>With partial rage rush forth--oh! shame to tell!--<br>To crush a bard just bursting from the shell?<br>Great are his perils in this stormy time<br>Who rashly ventures on a sea of rhyme:<br>Around vast surges roll, winds envious blow,<br>And jealous rocks and quicksands lurk below:<br>Greatly his foes he dreads, but more his friends;<br>He hurts me most who lavishly commends. <br>Look through the world--in every other trade<br>The same employment's cause of kindness made,<br>At least appearance of good will creates,<br>And every fool puffs off the fool he hates:<br>Cobblers with cobblers smoke away the night,<br>And in the common cause e'en players unite;<br>Authors alone, with more than savage rage,<br>Unnatural war with brother authors wage.<br>The pride of Nature would as soon admit<br>Competitors in empire as in wit; <br>Onward they rush, at Fame's imperious call,<br>And, less than greatest, would not be at all.<br>Smit with the love of honour,--or the pence,--<br>O'errun with wit, and destitute of sense,<br>Should any novice in the rhyming trade<br>With lawless pen the realms of verse invade,<br>Forth from the court, where sceptred sages sit,<br>Abused with praise, and flatter'd into wit,<br>Where in lethargic majesty they reign,<br>And what they won by dulness, still maintain, <br>Legions of factious authors throng at once,<br>Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce.<br>To 'Hamilton's the ready lies repair--<br>Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there--<br>Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought,<br>The polish'd falsehood's into public brought.<br>Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford;<br>And reputation bleeds in every word.<br>A critic was of old a glorious name,<br>Whose sanction handed merit up to fame; <br>Beauties as well as faults he brought to view;<br>His judgment great, and great his candour too;<br>No servile rules drew sickly taste aside;<br>Secure he walk'd, for Nature was his guide.<br>But now--oh! strange reverse!--our critics bawl<br>In praise of candour with a heart of gall;<br>Conscious of guilt, and fearful of the light,<br>They lurk enshrouded in the vale of night;<br>Safe from detection, seize the unwary prey,<br>And stab, like bravoes, all who come that way. <br>When first my Muse, perhaps more bold than wise,<br>Bade the rude trifle into light arise,<br>Little she thought such tempests would ensue;<br>Less, that those tempests would be raised by you.<br>The thunder's fury rends the towering oak,<br>Rosciads, like shrubs, might 'scape the fatal stroke.<br>Vain thought! a critic's fury knows no bound;<br>Drawcansir-like, he deals destruction round;<br>Nor can we hope he will a stranger spare,<br>Who gives no quarter to his friend Voltaire. <br>Unhappy Genius! placed by partial Fate<br>With a free spirit in a slavish state;<br>Where the reluctant Muse, oppress'd by kings,<br>Or droops in silence, or in fetters sings!<br>In vain thy dauntless fortitude hath borne<br>The bigot's furious zeal, and tyrant's scorn.<br>Why didst thou safe from home-bred dangers steer,<br>Reserved to perish more ignobly here?<br>Thus, when, the Julian tyrant's pride to swell,<br>Rome with her Pompey at Pharsalia fell, <br>The vanquish'd chief escaped from Caesar's hand,<br>To die by ruffians in a foreign land.<br>How could these self-elected monarchs raise<br>So large an empire on so small a base?<br>In what retreat, inglorious and unknown,<br>Did Genius sleep when Dulness seized the throne?<br>Whence, absolute now grown, and free from awe,<br>She to the subject world dispenses law.<br>Without her licence not a letter stirs,<br>And all the captive criss-cross-row is hers. <br>The Stagyrite, who rules from Nature drew,<br>Opinions gave, but gave his reasons too.<br>Our great Dictators take a shorter way--<br>Who shall dispute what the Reviewers say?<br>Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason,<br>In such a state as theirs, is downright treason.<br>True judgment now with them alone can dwell;<br>Like Church of Rome, they're grown infallible.<br>Dull superstitious readers they deceive,<br>Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, <br>And knowing nothing, everything believe!<br>But why repine we that these puny elves<br>Shoot into giants?--we may thank ourselves:<br>Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore,<br>The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore.<br>But let true Reason once resume her reign,<br>This god shall dwindle to a calf again.<br>Founded on arts which shun the face of day,<br>By the same arts they still maintain their sway.<br>Wrapp'd in mysterious secrecy they rise, <br>And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise.<br>At whomsoever aim'd, howe'er severe,<br>The envenom'd slander flies, no names appear:<br>Prudence forbids that step;--then all might know,<br>And on more equal terms engage the foe.<br>But now, what Quixote of the age would care<br>To wage a war with dirt, and fight with air?<br>By interest join'd, the expert confederates stand,<br>And play the game into each other's hand:<br>The vile abuse, in turn by all denied, <br>Is bandied up and down, from side to side:<br>It flies--hey!--presto!--like a juggler's ball,<br>Till it belongs to nobody at all.<br>All men and things they know, themselves unknown,<br>And publish every name--except their own.<br>Nor think this strange,--secure from vulgar eyes,<br>The nameless author passes in disguise;<br>But veteran critics are not so deceived,<br>If veteran critics are to be believed.<br>Once seen, they know an author evermore, <br>Nay, swear to hands they never saw before.<br>Thus in 'The Rosciad,' beyond chance or doubt,<br>They by the writing found the writers out:<br>That's Lloyd's--his manner there you plainly trace,<br>And all the Actor stares you in the face.<br>By Colman that was written--on my life,<br>The strongest symptoms of the 'Jealous Wife.'<br>That little disingenuous piece of spite,<br>Churchill--a wretch unknown!--perhaps might write.<br>How doth it make judicious readers smile, <br>When authors are detected by their style;<br>Though every one who knows this author, knows<br>He shifts his style much oftener than his clothes!<br>Whence could arise this mighty critic spleen,<br>The Muse a trifler, and her theme so mean?<br>What had I done, that angry Heaven should send<br>The bitterest foe where most I wish'd a friend?<br>Oft hath my tongue been wanton at thy name,<br>And hail'd the honours of thy matchless fame.<br>For me let hoary Fielding bite the ground, <br>So nobler Pickle stands superbly bound;<br>From Livy's temples tear the historic crown,<br>Which with more justice blooms upon thine own.<br>Compared with thee, be all life-writers dumb,<br>But he who wrote the Life of Tommy Thumb.<br>Who ever read 'The Regicide,' but swore<br>The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before?<br>Others for plots and under-plots may call,<br>Here's the right method--have no plot at all.<br>Who can so often in his cause engage <br>The tiny pathos of the Grecian stage,<br>Whilst horrors rise, and tears spontaneous flow<br>At tragic Ha! and no less tragic Oh!<br>To praise his nervous weakness all agree;<br>And then for sweetness, who so sweet as he!<br>Too big for utterance when sorrows swell,<br>The too big sorrows flowing tears must tell;<br>But when those flowing tears shall cease to flow,<br>Why--then the voice must speak again, you know.<br>Rude and unskilful in the poet's trade, <br>I kept no Naiads by me ready made;<br>Ne'er did I colours high in air advance,<br>Torn from the bleeding fopperies of France;<br>No flimsy linsey-woolsey scenes I wrote,<br>With patches here and there, like Joseph's coat.<br>Me humbler themes befit: secure, for me,<br>Let play-wrights smuggle nonsense duty free;<br>Secure, for me, ye lambs, ye lambkins! bound,<br>And frisk and frolic o'er the fairy ground.<br>Secure, for me, thou pretty little fawn! <br>Lick Sylvia's hand, and crop the flowery lawn;<br>Uncensured let the gentle breezes rove<br>Through the green umbrage of the enchanted grove:<br>Secure, for me, let foppish Nature smile,<br>And play the coxcomb in the 'Desert Isle.'<br>The stage I chose--a subject fair and free--<br>'Tis yours--'tis mine--'tis public property.<br>All common exhibitions open lie,<br>For praise or censure, to the common eye.<br>Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed; <br>Hence Monthly Critics earn their daily bread.<br>This is a general tax which all must pay,<br>From those who scribble, down to those who play.<br>Actors, a venal crew, receive support<br>From public bounty for the public sport.<br>To clap or hiss all have an equal claim,<br>The cobbler's and his lordship's right's the same.<br>All join for their subsistence; all expect<br>Free leave to praise their worth, their faults correct.<br>When active Pickle Smithfield stage ascends, <br>The three days' wonder of his laughing friends,<br>Each, or as judgment or as fancy guides,<br>The lively witling praises or derides.<br>And where's the mighty difference, tell me where,<br>Betwixt a Merry Andrew and a player?<br>The strolling tribe--a despicable race!--<br>Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place.<br>Vagrants by law, to justice open laid,<br>They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid,<br>And, fawning, cringe for wretched means of life <br>To Madam Mayoress, or his Worship's wife.<br>The mighty monarch, in theatric sack,<br>Carries his whole regalia at his back;<br>His royal consort heads the female band,<br>And leads the heir apparent in her hand;<br>The pannier'd ass creeps on with conscious pride,<br>Bearing a future prince on either side.<br>No choice musicians in this troop are found,<br>To varnish nonsense with the charms of sound;<br>No swords, no daggers, not one poison'd bowl; <br>No lightning flashes here, no thunders roll;<br>No guards to swell the monarch's train are shown;<br>The monarch here must be a host alone:<br>No solemn pomp, no slow processions here;<br>No Ammon's entry, and no Juliet's bier.<br>By need compell'd to prostitute his art,<br>The varied actor flies from part to part;<br>And--strange disgrace to all theatric pride!--<br>His character is shifted with his side.<br>Question and answer he by turns must be, <br>Like that small wit in modern tragedy,<br>Who, to patch up his fame--or fill his purse--<br>Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse;<br>Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known,<br>Defacing first, then claiming for his own.<br>In shabby state they strut, and tatter'd robe,<br>The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe:<br>No high conceits their moderate wishes raise,<br>Content with humble profit, humble praise.<br>Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, <br>The strolling pageant hero treads in air:<br>Pleased, for his hour he to mankind gives law,<br>And snores the next out on a truss of straw.<br>But if kind Fortune, who sometimes, we know,<br>Can take a hero from a puppet-show,<br>In mood propitious should her favourite call,<br>On royal stage in royal pomp to bawl,<br>Forgetful of himself, he rears the head,<br>And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred;<br>Conversing now with well dress'd kings and queens, <br>With gods and goddesses behind the scenes,<br>He sweats beneath the terror-nodding plume,<br>Taught by mock honours real pride to assume.<br>On this great stage, the world, no monarch e'er<br>Was half so haughty as a monarch player.<br>Doth it more move our anger or our mirth<br>To see these things, the lowest sons of earth,<br>Presume, with self-sufficient knowledge graced,<br>To rule in letters, and preside in taste?<br>The town's decisions they no more admit, <br>Themselves alone the arbiters of wit;<br>And scorn the jurisdiction of that court<br>To which they owe their being and support.<br>Actors, like monks of old, now sacred grown,<br>Must be attack'd by no fools but their own.<br>Let the vain tyrant sit amidst his guards,<br>His puny green-room wits and venal bards,<br>Who meanly tremble at the puppet's frown,<br>And for a playhouse-freedom lose their own;<br>In spite of new-made laws, and new-made kings, <br>The free-born Muse with liberal spirit sings.<br>Bow down, ye slaves! before these idols fall;<br>Let Genius stoop to them who've none at all:<br>Ne'er will I flatter, cringe, or bend the knee<br>To those who, slaves to all, are slaves to me.<br>Actors, as actors, are a lawful game,<br>The poet's right, and who shall bar his claim?<br>And if, o'erweening of their little skill,<br>When they have left the stage, they're actors still;<br>If to the subject world they still give laws, <br>With paper crowns, and sceptres made of straws;<br>If they in cellar or in garret roar,<br>And, kings one night, are kings for evermore;<br>Shall not bold Truth, e'en there, pursue her theme,<br>And wake the coxcomb from his golden dream?<br>Or if, well worthy of a better fate,<br>They rise superior to their present state;<br>If, with each social virtue graced, they blend<br>The gay companion and the faithful friend;<br>If they, like Pritchard, join in private life <br>The tender parent and the virtuous wife;<br>Shall not our verse their praise with pleasure speak,<br>Though Mimics bark, and Envy split her cheek?<br>No honest worth's beneath the Muse's praise;<br>No greatness can above her censure raise;<br>Station and wealth to her are trifling things;<br>She stoops to actors, and she soars to kings.<br>Is there a man, in vice and folly bred,<br>To sense of honour as to virtue dead,<br>Whom ties, nor human, nor divine can bind, <br>Alien from God, and foe to all mankind;<br>Who spares no character; whose every word,<br>Bitter as gall, and sharper than the sword,<br>Cuts to the quick; whose thoughts with rancour swell;<br>Whose tongue, on earth, performs the work of hell?<br>If there be such a monster, the Reviews<br>Shall find him holding forth against abuse:<br>Attack profession!--'tis a deadly breach!<br>The Christian laws another lesson teach:--<br>Unto the end shall Charity endure, <br>And Candour hide those faults it cannot cure.<br>Thus Candour's maxims flow from Rancour's throat,<br>As devils, to serve their purpose, Scripture quote.<br>The Muse's office was by Heaven design'd<br>To please, improve, instruct, reform mankind;<br>To make dejected Virtue nobly rise<br>Above the towering pitch of splendid Vice;<br>To make pale Vice, abash'd, her head hang down,<br>And, trembling, crouch at Virtue's awful frown.<br>Now arm'd with wrath, she bids eternal shame, <br>With strictest justice, brand the villain's name;<br>Now in the milder garb of ridicule<br>She sports, and pleases while she wounds the fool.<br>Her shape is often varied; but her aim,<br>To prop the cause of Virtue, still the same.<br>In praise of Mercy let the guilty bawl;<br>When Vice and Folly for correction call,<br>Silence the mark of weakness justly bears,<br>And is partaker of the crimes it spares.<br>But if the Muse, too cruel in her mirth, <br>With harsh reflections wounds the man of worth;<br>If wantonly she deviates from her plan,<br>And quits the actor to expose the man;<br>Ashamed, she marks that passage with a blot,<br>And hates the line where candour was forgot.<br>But what is candour, what is humour's vein,<br>Though judgment join to consecrate the strain,<br>If curious numbers will not aid afford,<br>Nor choicest music play in every word?<br>Verses must run, to charm a modern ear, <br>From all harsh, rugged interruptions clear.<br>Soft let them breathe, as Zephyr's balmy breeze,<br>Smooth let their current flow, as summer seas;<br>Perfect then only deem'd when they dispense<br>A happy tuneful vacancy of sense.<br>Italian fathers thus, with barbarous rage,<br>Fit helpless infants for the squeaking stage;<br>Deaf to the calls of pity, Nature wound,<br>And mangle vigour for the sake of sound.<br>Henceforth farewell, then, feverish thirst of fame; <br>Farewell the longings for a poet's name;<br>Perish my Muse--a wish 'bove all severe<br>To him who ever held the Muses dear--<br>If e'er her labours weaken to refine<br>The generous roughness of a nervous line.<br>Others affect the stiff and swelling phrase;<br>Their Muse must walk in stilts, and strut in stays;<br>The sense they murder, and the words transpose,<br>Lest poetry approach too near to prose.<br>See tortured Reason how they pare and trim, <br>And, like Procrustes, stretch, or lop the limb.<br>Waller! whose praise succeeding bards rehearse,<br>Parent of harmony in English verse,<br>Whose tuneful Muse in sweetest accents flows,<br>In couplets first taught straggling sense to close.<br>In polish'd numbers and majestic sound,<br>Where shall thy rival, Pope! be ever found?<br>But whilst each line with equal beauty flows.<br>E'en excellence, unvaried, tedious grows.<br>Nature, through all her works, in great degree, <br>Borrows a blessing from variety.<br>Music itself her needful aid requires<br>To rouse the soul, and wake our dying fires.<br>Still in one key, the nightingale would tease;<br>Still in one key, not Brent would always please.<br>Here let me bend, great Dryden! at thy shrine,<br>Thou dearest name to all the Tuneful Nine!<br>What if some dull lines in cold order creep,<br>And with his theme the poet seems to sleep?<br>Still, when his subject rises proud to view, <br>With equal strength the poet rises too:<br>With strong invention, noblest vigour fraught,<br>Thought still springs up and rises out of thought;<br>Numbers ennobling numbers in their course,<br>In varied sweetness flow, in varied force;<br>The powers of genius and of judgment join,<br>And the whole Art of Poetry is thine.<br>But what are numbers, what are bards to me,<br>Forbid to tread the paths of poesy?<br>A sacred Muse should consecrate her pen-- <br>Priests must not hear nor see like other men--<br>Far higher themes should her ambition claim:<br>Behold where Sternhold points the way to fame!<br>Whilst with mistaken zeal dull bigots burn,<br>Let Reason for a moment take her turn.<br>When coffee-sages hold discourse with kings,<br>And blindly walk in paper leading-strings,<br>What if a man delight to pass his time<br>In spinning reason into harmless rhyme,<br>Or sometimes boldly venture to the play? <br>Say, where's the crime, great man of prudence, say?<br>No two on earth in all things can agree;<br>All have some darling singularity:<br>Women and men, as well as girls and boys,<br>In gew-gaws take delight, and sigh for toys.<br>Your sceptres and your crowns, and such like things,<br>Are but a better kind of toys for kings.<br>In things indifferent Reason bids us choose,<br>Whether the whim's a monkey or a Muse.<br>What the grave triflers on this busy scene, <br>When they make use of this word Reason, mean,<br>I know not; but according to my plan,<br>'Tis Lord Chief-Justice in the court of man;<br>Equally form'd to rule in age or youth,<br>The friend of virtue and the guide to truth;<br>To her I bow, whose sacred power I feel;<br>To her decision make my last appeal;<br>Condemn'd by her, applauding worlds in vain<br>Should tempt me to take up the pen again;<br>By her absolved, my course I'll still pursue: <br>If Reason's for me, God is for me too.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Charles+Churchill">Charles Churchill</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=354708" data-title="The Apology de Charles Churchill" data-description="ADDRESSED TO THE CRITICAL REVIEWERS. Tristitiam et Metus.--HORACE. Laughs not the heart when giants, big with pride, Assume the pompous port, the martial stride; O'er arm Herculean heave the enormous shield, Vast as a weaver's beam the javelin w..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black