’Twas now the noon of night, and
all was still,
Except a hapless Rhymer and his quill.
In vain he calls each Muse in order down,
Like other females, these will sometimes
frown;
He frets, be fumes, and ceasing to invoke
The Nine, in anguish’d accents thus
he spoke:
Ah what avails it thus to waste my time,
To roll in Epic, or to rave in Rhyme?
What worth is some few partial readers’
praise.
If ancient Virgins croaking ‘censures’
raise?
Where few attend, ’tis useless to
indite;
Where few can read, ’tis folly sure
to write;
Where none but girls and striplings dare
admire,
And Critics rise in every country Squire—
But yet this last my candid Muse admits,
When Peers are Poets, Squires may well
be Wits;
When schoolboys vent their amorous flames
in verse,
Matrons may sure their characters asperse;
And if a little parson joins the train,
And echos back his Patron’s voice
again—
Though not delighted, yet I must forgive,
Parsons as well as other folks must live:—
From rage he rails not, rather say from
dread,
He does not speak for Virtue, but for
bread;
And this we know is in his Patron’s
giving,
For Parsons cannot eat without a ‘Living’.
The Matron knows I love the Sex too well,
Even unprovoked aggression to repel.
What though from private pique her anger
grew,
And bade her blast a heart she never knew?
What though, she said, for one light heedless
line,
That Wilmot’s [2] verse was far
more pure than mine!
In wars like these, I neither fight nor
fly,
When ‘dames’ accuse ’tis
bootless to deny;
Her’s be the harvest of the martial
field,
I can’t attack, where Beauty forms
the shield.
But when a pert Physician loudly cries,
Who hunts for scandal, and who lives by
lies,
A walking register of daily news,
Train’d to invent, and skilful to
abuse—
For arts like these at bounteous tables
fed,
When S——condemns a book
he never read.
Declaring with a coxcomb’s native
air,
The ‘moral’s’ shocking,
though the ‘rhymes’ are fair.
Ah! must he rise unpunish’d from
the feast,
Nor lash’d by vengeance into truth
at least?
Such lenity were more than Man’s
indeed!
Those who condemn, should surely deign
to read.
Yet must I spare—nor thus my
pen degrade,
I quite forgot that scandal was his trade.
For food and raiment thus the coxcomb
rails,
For those who fear his physic, like his
tales.
Why should his harmless censure seem offence?
Still let him eat, although at my expense,
And join the herd to Sense and Truth unknown,
Who dare not call their very thoughts
their own,
And share with these applause, a godlike
bribe,
In short, do anything, except prescribe:—
For though in garb of Galen he appears,
His practice is not equal to his years.
Without improvement since he first began,
A young Physician, though an ancient Man—
Now let me cease—Physician,
Parson, Dame,
Still urge your task, and if you can,
defame.
The humble offerings of my Muse destroy,
And crush, oh! noble conquest! crush a
Boy.
What though some silly girls have lov’d
the strain,
And kindly bade me tune my Lyre again;
What though some feeling, or some partial
few,
Nay, Men of Taste and Reputation too,
Have deign’d to praise the firstlings
of my Muse—
If you your sanction to the theme
refuse,
If you your great protection still
withdraw,
Whose Praise is Glory, and whose Voice
is law!
Soon must I fall an unresisting foe,
A hapless victim yielding to the blow.—
Thus Pope by Curl and Dennis was destroyed,
Thus Gray and Mason yield to furious Lloyd;
From Dryden, Milbourne [4] tears the palm
away,
And thus I fall, though meaner far than
they.
As in the field of combat, side by side,
A Fabius and some noble Roman died.
Dec. 1806.
[Footnote 1: From an autograph
MS. at Newstead, now for the first time printed.]
[Footnote 2: John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester (1647-1680). His ‘Poems’
were published in the year of his death.]
[Footnote 3: Robert Lloyd (1733-1764).
The following lines occur in the first of two odes
to ’Obscurity and Oblivion’—parodies
of the odes of Gray and Mason:—
“Heard ye the din of modern rhymers
bray?
It was cool M——n and
warm G——y,
Involv’d in tenfold smoke.”]
[Footnote 4: The Rev. Luke Milbourne
(died 1720) published, in 1698, his ‘Notes on
Dryden’s Virgil’, containing a venomous
attack on Dryden. They are alluded to in ‘The
Dunciad’, and also by Dr. Johnson, who wrote
(’Life of Dryden’),
“His outrages seem to be the ebullitions
of a mind agitated by
stronger resentment than bad poetry can
excite.”]
