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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=457097" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Epistle To Fleetwood Shephard, Esq. Burleigh, May 14, 1689</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sir, <br>As once a twelvemonth to the priest,<br>Holy at Rome, here Antichrist,<br>The Spanish king presents a jennet<br>To show his love, -- that's all that's in it; <br>For if his Holiness would thump<br>His reverend bum 'gainst horse's rump,<br>He might be 'quipp'd from his own stable<br>With one more white and eke more able.<br>Or as with gondolas and men his <br>Good excellence the duke of Venice<br>(I wish, for rhyme, it had been the king)<br>Sails out, and gives the Gulf a ring,<br>Which trick of state he wisely maintains,<br>Keeps kindness up 'twixt old acquaintance,<br>For else, in honest truth, the sea<br>Has much less need of gold than he.<br>Or, not to rove and pump one's fancy<br>For popish similes beyond sea,<br>As folks from mudwall'd tenement<br>Bring landlords pepper corn for rent, <br>Present a turkey or a hen<br>To those might better spare them ten;<br>Even so, with all submission, I <br>(For first men instance, then apply)<br>Send you each year a homely letter,<br>Who may return me much a better.<br>Then take it, Sir, as it was writ <br>To pay respect, and not show wit,<br>Nor look askew at what is saith;<br>There's no petition in it, -- 'faith.<br>Here some would scratch their heads, and try <br>What they should write, and how, and why;<br>But I conceive such folks are quite in<br>Mistakes in theory of writing.<br>If once for principle 'tis laid<br>That thought is trouble to the head,<br>I argue thus: The world agrees<br>That he writes well who writes with ease;<br>Then he, by sequel logical, <br>Writes best who never thinks at all.<br>Verse comes from heaven like inward light;<br>Mere human pains can ne'er come by't;<br>The god, not we, the poem makes;<br>We only tell folks what he speaks.<br>Hence when anatomists discourse<br>How like brutes' organs are to ours,<br>They grant, if higher powers think fit,<br>A bear might soon be made a wit,<br>And that for any thing in nature,<br>Figs might squeak love-odes, dogs bark satire.<br>Memnon, though stone, was counted vocal,<br>But 'twas the god meanwhile that spoke all.<br>Rome oft has heard a cross haranguing,<br>With prompting priests behind the hanging:<br>The wooden head resolved the question,<br>While you and Pettis help'd the jest on.<br>Your crabbed rogues that read Lucretius<br>Are against gods you know and teach us, <br>The gods make not the poet; but <br>The thesis vice versa put, <br>Should Hebrew-wise be understood,<br>And means, the poet makes the god.<br>Egyptian gardeners thus are said to<br>Have set the leeks they after pray'd to;<br>And Romish bakers praised the deity,<br>They chipp'd while yet in its paniety.<br>That when you poets swear and cry <br>The god inspires, I rave, I die;<br>If inward wind does truly swell ye,<br>'T must be the cholic in your belly:<br>That writing is but just like dice,<br>And lucky mains make people wise:<br>That jumbled words, if fortune throw 'em, <br>Shall well as Dryden form a poem,<br>Or make a speech correct and witty,<br>As you know who -- at the committee.<br>So atoms, dancing round the centre,<br>They urge, made all things at a venture.<br>But granting matters should be spoke<br>By method rather than by luck.<br>This may confine their younger styles<br>Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's,<br>But never could be meant to tie<br>Authentic wits like you and I:<br>For as young children, who are tied in<br>Gocarts, to keep their steps from sliding,<br>When members knit, and legs grow stronger,<br>Make use of such machine no longer,<br>But leap pro libitu, and scout <br>On horse call'd Hobby, or without;<br>So when at school we first declaim,<br>Old Busby walks us in a theme,<br>Whose props support our infant vein,<br>And help the rickets in the brain;<br>But when our souls their force dilate,<br>And thoughts grow up to wit's estate,<br>In verse or prose we write or chat,<br>Not sixpence matter upon what.<br>'Tis not how well an author says,<br>But 'tis how much, that gathers praise.<br>Tonson, who is himself a wit,<br>Counts writers' merits by the sheet.<br>Thus each should down with all he thinks,<br>As boys eat bread to fill up chinks.<br>Kind Sir, I should be glad to see you;<br>I hope ye're well; so God be wi' you;<br>Was all I thought at first to write;<br>But things since then are altered quite;<br>Fancies flow in and Muse flies high,<br>So God knows when my clack will lie:<br>I must, Sir, prattle on, as afore,<br>And beg your pardon yet this half hour.<br>So at pure barn of loud Non-con,<br>Where with my grannam I have gone,<br>When Lobb had sifted all his text,<br>And I well hoped the pudding next,<br>Now to apply, has plagued me more<br>Than all his villain cant before.<br>For your religion; first, of her<br>Your friends do sav'ry things aver;<br>They say she's honest as your claret,<br>Not sour'd with cant, nor stumm'd with merit.<br>Your chamber is the sole retreat<br>Of chaplains every Sunday night;<br>Of grace no doubt a certain sign<br>When layman herds with man divine;<br>For if their fame be justly great<br>Who would no Popish nuncio treat,<br>That his is greater we must grant <br>Who will treat nuncios Protestant.<br>One single positive weighs more,<br>You know, than negatives a score.<br>In politics I hear you're staunch,<br>Directly bent against the French;<br>Deny to have your freeborn toe<br>Dragoon'd into a wooden shoe;<br>Are in no plots, but fairly drive at <br>The public welfare in your private;<br>And will for England's glory try <br>Turks, Jews, and Jesuits, to defy,<br>And keep your places till you die.<br>For me, whom wandering Fortune threw<br>From what I loved, the Town and you,<br>Let me just tell you how my time is<br>Past in a country life. -- Imprimis,<br>As soon as Phoebus' rays inspect us, <br>First, Sir, I read, and then I breakfast;<br>So on, till foresaid god does set,<br>I sometimes study, sometimes eat.<br>Thus of your heroes and brave boys,<br>With whom old Homer makes such noise,<br>The greatest actions I can find<br>Are, that they did their work and dined.<br>The books of which I'm chiefly fond<br>Are such as you have whilom conn'd, <br>That treat of China's civil law<br>And subjects' right in Golconda;<br>Of highway elephants at Ceylon,<br>That rob in clans like men o' th' Highland;<br>Of apes that storm or keep a town<br>As well almost as Count Lauzun;<br>Of unicorns and alligators,<br>Elks, mermaids, mummies, witches, satyrs,<br>And twenty other stranger matters,<br>Which, though they're things I've no concern in<br>Make all our grooms admire my learning.<br>Critiques I read on other men,<br>And hypers upon them again,<br>From whose remarks I give opinion<br>On twenty books, yet ne'er look in one.<br>Then all your wits that fleer and sham,<br>Down from Don Quixote to Tom Tram,<br>From whom I jests and puns purloin, <br>And slily put them off for mine,<br>Fond to be thoughts a country wit,<br>The rest -- when Fate and you think fit.<br>Sometimes I climb my mare and kick her<br>To bottled ale and neighbouring vicar;<br>Sometimes at Stamford take a quart;<br>Squire Shephard's health, -- with all my heart.<br>Thus, without much delight or grief,<br>I fool away an idle life,<br>Till Shadwell from the town retires<br>(Choked up with fume and seacoal fires)<br>To bless the wood with peaceful lyric;<br>Then hey for praise and panegyric;<br>Justice restored, and nations freed;<br>And wreaths round William's glorious head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Matthew+Prior">Matthew Prior</a><div class=q>
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<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=457097" data-title="An Epistle To Fleetwood Shephard, Esq. Burleigh, May 14, 1689 de Matthew Prior" data-description="Sir, 
As once a twelvemonth to the priest,
Holy at Rome, here Antichrist,
The Spanish king presents a jennet
To show his love, -- that's all that's in it; 
For if his Holiness would thump
His reverend bum 'gainst horse's rump,
He might be 'quipp'd..."></div>
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