With mind serene, and could not wish to see His vile accuser drink as deep as he.

DRYDEN.

Burns o'er the plough sung sweet his woodnotes wild,

And richest Shakspeare was a poor man's child.
E. ELLIOTT.

O ye muses! deign your bless'd retreat,
Where Horace wantons at your spring,
And Pindar sweeps a bolder string.

FENTON.
Morals snatch from Plutarch's tatter'd page,
A mildew'd Bacon, or Stagyra's sage.

GAY. Thus flourish'd love, and beauty reign'd in state, Till the proud Spaniard gave this glory's date: Past is the gallantry; the fame remains, Transmitted safe in Dryden's lofty scenes. GRANVILLE.

Dryden himself, to cure a frantic age,
Was forced to let his judgment stoop to rage;
To a wild audience he conform'd his voice,
Complied to custom, but not err'd through

choice:

Deem then the people's, not the writer's sin,
Almansor's rage, and rants of Maximin.
GRANVILLE.

Homer shall last, like Alexander, long;
As much recorded, and as often sung.

GRANVILLE.

Like hedgehogs dress'd in lace.

O. W. HOLMES: Music Grinders.

Good Homer sometimes nods.

HORACE.

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage
flow,

And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Vanity of Human Wishes.
Martial, thou gav'st far nobler epigrams
To thy Domitian than I can my James;
But in my royal subject I pass thee,
Thou flattered'st thine, mine cannot flatter'd be.
BEN JONSON.

Soule of the Age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our
Stage!

My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
Thou art a Monument, without a tombe,
And art aliue still, while thy Booke doth liue,
And we haue wits to read, and praise to giue.
BEN JONSON: Preface to First Folio, 1622.
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite.
LAMB.

Love warms our fancy with enliv'ning fires,
Refines our genius, and our verse inspires;
From him Theocritus, on Enna's plains,
Learnt the wild sweetness of his Doric strains;
Virgil by him was taught the moving art,
That charm'd each ear and soften'd every heart.
LORD LYTTELTON.

For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaventaught lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire;
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
LORD LYTTELTON: Prologue to Thomson's
Coriolanus.

What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,

The labour of an Age in piled stones,

Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy
Name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument:
For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each part
[heart]

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke, Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke;

Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving,
And so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe does lie,
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.
MILTON.

Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

MILTON.
The plain good man, whose actions teach
More virtue than a sect can preach,
Pursues his course unsagely blest,
His tutor whisp'ring in his breast:
Nor could he act a purer part
Though he had Tully all by heart;
And when he drops the tear on woe,
He little knows, or cares to know,
That Epictetus blamed that tear,
By Heav'n approved, to virtue dear.

MOORE.

Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;

How rays are confused, or how particles fly Through the medium refined of a glance or a sigh?

Is there one who but once would not rather have known it

Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?

MOORE.

In English lays, and all sublimely great,
Thy Homer charms with all his ancient heat.
PARNELL

Thus tender Spenser lived, with mean repast
Content, depress'd with penury, and pined
In foreign realm: yet not debased his verse.
JOHN PHILIPS.

How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe,

And swear! not Addison himself was safe. POPE.

Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

POPE.

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;

Or, ravish'd with the whistling of a name,

See Cromwell damn'd to everlasting fame.

POPE.

Words that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spoke. POPE.

Her gray-hair'd synods damning books unread, And Bacon trembling for his brazen head.

POPE.

The hero William, and the martyr Charles, One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles. POPE.

Could pension'd Boileau lash in honest strain Flatt'rers and bigots, even in Louis' reign; And I not strip the gilding off a knave, Unplaced, unpension'd, no man's heir or slave? POPE.

Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by ev'ry quill,
Fed by soft dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
POPE.

Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote, And beastly Skelton Heads of Houses quote.

POPE.

Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock, Each fierce logician still expelling Locke, Came whip and spur.

POPE.

Thee, bold Longinus, all the Nine inspire, And bless their critic with a poet's fire.

POPE.

If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than he can write.

POPE.

Milton's strong pinion now no heaven can bound,

Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground. РОРЕ.

Now times are changed, and one poetic itch Has seized the court and city, poor and rich: Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,

Plutarch, that writes his life,

Tells us that Cato dearly loved his wife.

POPE.
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipp'd me in ink? my parents' or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
Pore.

Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire
Taught us that France had something to admire.
POPE.

Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous; answer him, ye owls.
Pope.

Roscommon not more learn'd than good,
With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev'ry author's merit but his own.

POPE.

POPE.

And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust;
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes.
POPE.

Against your worship when had S-k writ?
Or P-ge pour'd forth the torrent of his wit?
POPE.

Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.