Classic Poem

All human race would fain be wits,
And millions miss, for one that hits.
Young's universal passion, Pride,
Was never known to spread so wide.
Say, Britain, could you ever boast
Three poets in an age at most?
Our chilling climate hardly bears
A sprig of bays in fifty years:
While ev'ry fool his claim alleges,
As if it grew in common hedges.
What reason can there be assigned
For this perverseness in the mind!
Brutes find out where their talents lie:
A bear will not attempt to fly:
A foundered horse will oft debate,
Before he tries a five-barred gate:
A dog by instinct turns aside,
Who sees the ditch too deep and wide,
But Man we find the only creature,
Who, led by folly, combats Nature:
Who, when she loudly cries, Forbear,
With obstinacy fixed there;
And, where his genius least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole designs.

Not empire to the rising sun,
By valour, conduct, fortune won;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing laws to govern states;
Not skill in sciences profound,
So large to grasp the circle round;
Such heav'nly influence require,
As how to strike the Muses' lyre.

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot;
Not bastard of a pedlar Scot;
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of Bridewell or the stews;
Not infants dropped, the spurious pledges
Of gypsies litt'ring under hedges,
Are so disqualified by fate
To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Hath blasted with poetic fire.

What hope of custom in the fair,
While not a soul demands your ware;
Where you have nothing to produce
For private life, or public use?
Court, city, country, wants you not;
You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.
For poets law makes no provision:
The wealthy have you in derision.
Of state affairs you cannot smatter;
Are awkward when you try to flatter.
Your portion, taking Britain round,
Was just one annual hundred pound;
Now not so much as in remainder,
Since Cibber brought in an attainder;
For ever fixed by right divine
(A monarch's right) on Grub Street line.

Poor starving bard, how small thy gains!
How unproportioned to thy pains!
And here a simile comes pat in:
Though chickens take a week to fatten,
The guests in less than half an hour,
Will more than half a score devour.
So, after toiling twenty days,
To earn a stock of pence and praise,
Thy labours grown the critics' prey,
Are swallowed o'er a dish of tea;
Gone, to be never heard of more;
Gone, where the chickens went before.

How shall a new attempter learn
Of diff'rent spirits to discern,
And how distinguish which is which,
The poet's vein or scribbling itch?
Then hear an old experienced sinner
Instructing thus a young beginner.

Consult yourself; and if you find
A powerful impulse urge your mind,
Impartial judge within your breast
What subject you can manage best;
Whether your genius most inclines
To satire, praise, or hum'rous lines;
To elegies in mournful tone,
Or prologue sent from hand unknown.
Then rising with Aurora's light,
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline:
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.

Your poem finished, next your care
Is needful, to transcribe it fair.
In modern wit all printed trash is
Set off with num'rous breaks--and dashes--
To statesmen would you give a wipe,
You print it in italic type.
When letters are in vulgar shapes,
'Tis ten to one the wit escapes;
But when in CAPITALS expressed,
The dullest reader smokes a jest.
Or else perhaps he may invent
A better than the poet meant:
As learned commentators view
In Homer, more than Homer knew.

Your poem in its modish dress,
Correctly fitted for the press,
Convey by penny post to Lintot,
But let no friend alive look into't.
If Lintot thinks 'twill quit the cost,
You need not fear your labour lost;
And, how agreeably surprised
Are you to see it advertised!
The hawker shows you one in print,
As fresh as farthings from the mint:
The product of your toil and sweating;
A bastard of your own begetting.

Be sure at Will's the following day,
Lie snug, to hear what critics say.
And if you find the general vogue
Pronounces you a stupid rogue;
Damns all your thoughts, as low and little;
Sit still, and swallow down your spittle.
Be silent as a politician,
For talking may beget suspicion:
Or praise the judgement of the town,
And help yourself to run it down.
Give up your fond paternal pride,
Nor argue on the weaker side:
For poems read without a name,
We justly praise, or justly blame:
And critics have no partial views,
Except they know whom they abuse.
And since you ne'er provoked their spite,
Depend upon't their judgment's right.
But if you blab you are undone;
Consider what a risk you run;
You lose your credit all at once;
The town will mark you for a dunce:
The vilest doggrel Grub Street sends,
Will pass for yours with foes and friends:
And you must bear the whole disgrace,
Till some fresh blockhead takes your place.

Your secret kept, your poem sunk,
And sent in quires to line a trunk:
If still you be disposed to rhyme,
Or try your hand a second time:
Again you fail; yet safe's the word;
Take courage, and attempt a third.
But first with care employ your thoughts,
Where critics marked your former faults:
The trivial turns, the borrowed wit,
The similes that nothing fit;
The cant which every fool repeats,
Town jests, and coffee-house conceits:
Descriptions tedious, flat and dry,
And introduced the Lord knows why:
Or, where we find your fury set
Against the harmless alphabet;
On A's and B's your malice vent,
While readers wonder whom you meant;
A public or a private robber;
A statesman, or a South-Sea jobber.
A prelate, who no God believes;
A parliament, or den of thieves.
A pickpurse at the Bar or Bench;
A duchess, or a suburb wench.
Or oft when epithets you link,
In gaping lines to fill a chink;
Like stepping-stones to save a stride,
In streets where kennels are too wide:
Or like a heel-piece to support
A cripple with one foot too short:
Or like a bridge that joins a marish
To moorlands of a diff'rent parish.
So, have I seen ill-coupled hounds
Drag diff'rent ways in miry grounds.
So geographers in Afric maps
With savage pictures fill their gaps;
And o'er uninhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

But, though you miss your third essay,
You need not throw your pen away.
Lay now aside all thoughts of fame,
To spring more profitable game.
From party merit seek support;
The vilest verse thrives best at Court.
A pamphlet in Sir Bob's defence
Will never fail to bring in pence;
Nor be concerned about the sale,
He pays his workmen on the nail.

A prince the moment he is crowned,
Inherits ev'ry virtue round;
As emblems of the sov'reign pow'r,
Like other baubles of the Tow'r.
Is gen'rous, valiant, just and wise,
And so continues till he dies.
His humble senate this professes,
In all their speeches, votes, addresses.
But once you fix him in a tomb,
His virtues fade, his vices bloom;
And each perfection wrong imputed,
Is fully at his death confuted.
The loads of poems in his praise,
Ascending, make one fun'ral blaze.
As soon as you can hear his knell,
This god on earth turns devil in hell.
And, lo, his ministers of state,
Transformed to imps, his levee wait:
Where, in the scenes of endless woe,
They ply their former arts below:
And as they sail in Charon's boat,
Contrive to bribe the judge's vote.
To Cerberus they give a sop,
His triple-barking mouth to stop:
Or, in the iv'ry gate of dreams,
Project excise and South-Sea schemes;
Or hire their party-pamphleteers,
To set Elysium by the ears.

Then, Poet, if you mean to thrive,
Employ your Muse on kings alive;
With prudence gath'ring up a cluster
Of all the virtues you can muster:
Which formed into a garland sweet,
Lay humbly at your monarch's feet;
Who, as the odours reach his throne,
Will smile, and think 'em all his own:
For law and gospel both determine
All virtues lodge in royal ermine.
(I mean the oracles of both,
Who shall depose it upon oath).
Your garland in the foll'wing reign,
Change but the names, will serve again.

But, if you think this trade too base
(Which seldom is the dunce's case),
Put on the critic's brow, and sit
At Will's, the puny judge of wit.
A nod, a shrug, a scornful smile,
With caution used, may serve awhile.
Proceed no further in your part,
Before you learn the terms of art:
(For you can never be too far gone,
In all our modern critics' jargon).
Then talk with more authentic face,
Of Unities, in Time and Place.
Get scraps of Horace from your friends,
And have them at your fingers' ends.
Learn Aristotle's rules by rote,
And at all hazards boldly quote:
Judicious Rymer oft review:
With Dennis, and profound Bossu.
Read all the prefaces of Dryden,
For these our critics much confide in
(Though merely writ at first for filling,
To raise the volume's price, a shilling).

A forward critic often dupes us
With sham quotations Peri Hupsous:
And if we have not read Longinus,
Will magisterially outshine us.
Then lest with Greek he overrun ye,
Procure the book for love or money,
Translated from Boileau's translation,
And quote quotation on quotation.

At Will's you hear a poem read,
Where Battus from the table-head,
Reclining on his elbow-chair,
Gives judgment with decisive air.
To him the tribe of circling wits,
As to an oracle, submits.
He gives directions to the town,
To cry it up, or run it down
(Like courtiers, when they send a note,
Instructing members how to vote).
He sets the stamp of bad and good,
Though not a word be understood.
Your lesson learnt, you'll be secure
To get the name of connoisseur.
And when your merits once are known,
Procure disciples of your own.

For poets (you can never want 'em,
Spread through Augusta Trinobantum)
Computing by their pecks of coals,
Amount to just nine thousand souls.
These o'er their proper districts govern,
Of wit and humour, judges sov'reign.
In every street a City-bard
Rules like an alderman his ward.
His indisputed rights extend
Through all the lane, from end to end.
The neighbours round admire his shrewdness,
For songs of loyalty and lewdness.
Outdone by none in rhyming well,
Although he never learnt to spell.

Two bord'ring wits contend for glory;
And one is Whig, and one is Tory.
And this, for epics claims the bays,
And that for elegiac lays.
Some famed for numbers soft and smooth,
By lovers spoke in Punch's booth.
And some as justly fame extols
For lofty lines in Smithfield drolls.
Bavius in Wapping gains renown,
And Maevius reigns o'er Kentish Town:
Tigellius place in Phoebus' car
From Ludgate shines to Temple Bar.
Harmonious Cibber entertains
The Court with annual Birthday strains;
Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face;
Where Young must torture his invention,
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

But these are not a thousandth part
Of jobbers in the poet's art,
Attending each his proper station,
And all in due subordination;
Through ev'ry alley to be found,
In garrets high, or under ground:
And when they join their pericranies,
Out skips a book of Miscellanies.

Hobbes clearly proves that ev'ry creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.
The greater for the smaller watch,
But meddle seldom with their match.
A whale of mod'rate size will draw
A shoal of herrings down his maw;
A fox with geese his belly crams;
A wolf destroys a thousand lambs.
But search among the rhyming race,
The brave are worried by the base.
If on Parnassus' top you sit,
You rarely bite, are always bit:
Each poet of inferior size
On you shall rail and criticize;
And try to tear your limb from limb,
While others do as much for him:
The vermin only tease and pinch
Their foes superior by an inch.
So, nat'ralists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum:
Thus ev'ry poet in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind;
Who, though too little to be seen,
Can tease, and gall, and give the spleen;
Call dunces, fools, and sons of whores,
Lay Grub Street at each other's doors:
Extol the Greek and Roman masters,
And curse our modern poetasters:
Complain, as many an ancient bard did,
How genius is no more rewarded:
How wrong a taste prevails among us;
How much our ancestors outsung us;
Can personate an awkward scorn
For those who are not poets born:
And all their brother dunces lash,
Who crowd the press with hourly trash.

O Grub Street! how I do bemoan thee,
Whose graceless children scorn to own thee.
Their filial piety forgot,
Deny their country like a Scot:
Though by their idiom and grimace,
They soon betray their native place:
Yet thou hat greater cause to be
Ashamed of them, than they of thee;
Degen'rate from their ancient brood,
Since first the Court allowed them food.

Remains a difficulty still,
To purchase fame by writing ill:
From Flecknoe down to Howard's time,
How few have reached the low sublime?
For when our highborn Howard died,
Blackmore alone his place supplied:
And lest a chasm should intervene,
When death had finished Blackmore's reign,
The leaden crown devolved to thee,
Great Poet of the Hollow Tree.
But, oh, how unsecure thy throne!
Ten thousand bards thy right disown:
They plot, to turn in factious zeal
Duncenia to a commonweal;
And with rebellious arms pretend
An equal priv'lege to descend.

In bulk there are not more degrees,
From elephants to mites in cheese,
Than what a curious eye may trace
In creatures of the rhyming race.
From bad to worse, and worse they fall,
But, who can reach to worst of all?
For though, in nature, depth and height
Are equally held infinite,
In poetry the height we know;
'Tis only infinite below.
For instance: when you rashly think,
No rhymer can like Welsted sink:
His merits balanced, you shall find,
The Laureate leaves him far behind.
Concannon, more aspiring bard,
Soars downwards, deeper by a yard:
Smart Jemmy Moore with vigour drops,
The rest pursue as thick as hops:
With heads to points the gulf they enter,
Linked perpendic'lar to the centre:
And as their heels belated rise,
Their heads attempt the nether skies.

O what indignity and shame
To prostitute the Muse's name,
By flatt'ring kings whom Heav'n designed
The plague and scourges of mankind,
Bred up in ignorance and sloth,
And ev'ry vice that nurses both.

Fair Britain, in thy monarch blest,
Whose virtues bear the strictest test;
Whom never faction can bespatter,
Nor minister nor poet flatter.
What justice in rewarding merit!
What magnanimity of spirit!
What lineaments divine we trace
Through all his figure, mien and face!
Though Peace with olive bind his hands,
Confessed the conqu'ring hero stands.
Hydaspes, Indus, and the Ganges,
Dread from his arm impending changes.
From him the Tartar, and Chinese,
Short by the knees, intreat for Peace,
The consort of his throne and bed,
A perfect goddess born and bred:
Appointed sov'reign judge to sit
On learning, eloquence and wit.
Our eldest hope, divine Iulus
(Late, very late, O may he rule us).
What early manhood has he shown,
Before his downy beard was grown!
Then think what wonders will be done
By going on as he begun;
An heir for Britain to secure,
As long as sun and moon endure.

The remnant of the Royal Blood
Comes pouring on me like a flood.
Bright goddesses, in number five;
Duke William, sweetest prince alive.

Now sing the Minister of State,
Who shines alone, without a mate.
Observe with what majestic port
This Atlas stands to prop the Court;
Intent the public debts to pay,
Like prudent Fabius, by delay.
Thou great Vice-regent of the King,
Thy praises every Muse shall sing:
In all affairs thou sole director,
Of wit and learning chief protector;
Though small the time thou hast to spare,
The Church is thy peculiar care.
Of pious prelates what a stock
You choose, to rule the sable flock!
You raise the honour of the peerage,
Proud to attend you at the steerage.
You dignify the noble race,
Content yourself with humbler place.
Now learning, valour, virtue, sense,
To titles give the sole pretence:
St. George beheld thee with delight
Vouchsafe to be an azure knight
When on thy breast and sides Herculean
He fixed the Star and String cerulean.

Say, Poet, in what other nation
Shone ever such a constellation.
Attend ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
And tune your harps, and strow your bays,
Your panegyrics here provide,
You cannot err on flatt'ry's side.
Above the stars exalt your style,
You still are low ten thousand mile.
On Lewis all his bards bestowed
Of incense many a thousand load;
But Europe mortified his pride,
And swore the fawning rascals lied:
Yet what the world refused to Lewis,
Applied to George exactly true is:
Exactly true! Invidious Poet!
'Tis fifty thousand times below it.

Translate me now some lines, if you can,
From Virgil, Martial, Ovid, Lucan;
They could all pow'r in Heav'n divide,
And do no wrong to either side:
They teach you how to split a hair,
Give George and Jove an equal share.
Yet, why should we be laced so straight;
I'll give my monarch butter-weight.
And reason good; for many a year
Jove never intermeddled here:
Nor, though his priests be duly paid,
Did ever we desire his aid:
We now can better do without him,
Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him.