But praise ought not to be the only end,
For which our morals or our lives we mend,
For which our virtue struggles to excel,
And seeks pre-eminence in doing well.
Besides, do all obtaining men's applause,
Deserve the admiration which it draws?
Does drunken Accius glow with Homer's fire, Though courts extol him, and though fools admire ? From noble pens do no crude numbers flow,
No cant of elegy, no whine of woe?
Have no quaint verses issued from the heads
Of princes, lolling on their citron beds?
The winning art is not to you unknown,
By which the venal crowd becomes your own.
Rich banquets crown your hospitable board;
Your wardrobe too cast garments can afford.
But
you will have the truth. Shall I be plain?
Then, dotard, learn, that all your toil is vain.
Nor now, when swoln and bloated with excess,
Trick your old Muse in meretricious dress.
O! two-faced Janus, whom the people pass,
Nor lift the mimic hands to show the ass !
No tongue lolls out, no finger points at thee,
None laughs, or nods, or winks, but thou must see.
Ye chiefs of Rome, who have not eyes behind,
Prevent all insults on the side that's blind.
What say the people? "What," the flatterer cries,
"But that your verse the critic's spleen defies;
"That taste and judgment mark each flowing line,
"The sound harmonious, and the sense divine :
Sive
opus
in mores, in luxum, in prandia regum,
Dicere res grandes nostro dat Musa poëtæ.
Ecce modo heroas sensus afferre docemus
Nugari solitos Græcè, nec ponere lucum
Artifices, nec rus saturum laudare, ubi corbes,
Et focus, et porci, et fumosa Palilia fœno:
Unde Remus, sulcoque terens dentalia, Quinti,
Quum trepida ante boves Dictatorem induit uxor :
Et tua aratra domum lictor tulit: euge poëta.
Est nunc Brisæi quem venosus liber Acci,
Sunt quos Pacuviusque, et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, ærumnis cor luctificabile fulta.
Hos pueris monitus patres infundere lippos
Cum videas, quærisne unde hæc sartago loquendi
Venerit in linguas ? unde istud dedecus, in quo
Trossulus exultat tibi per subsellia lêvis ?
Nilne pudet, capiti non posse pericula cano
Pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire? DECENTER!
"That whether feasts or battles be the theme, "A hero's glory, or a lover's dream,
"Thy golden numbers by the Muse inspired,
"By art are polish'd, and by genius fired."
Heroic verse unletter'd dunces write,
And scribbling schoolboys dictate and indite-
Some praise the fields; yet wanting skill to sing,
Confound the tints of autumn and of spring;
Forgetting nature, paint a garish scene,
Of cloudless skies, and groves for ever green:
Or with rude pencil rustic manners draw,
Where swarms the village round the kindling straw,
Where pigs and panniers crowd the bustling street,
And merry hinds to honour Pales meet;
Or show the spot whence Rome's great founders sprung:
Nor, gallant Quintus, dost thou rest unsung,
When the dictator's laurel graced thy brow,
And thine own lictors bore away thy plough.
Are there not some who love the turgid strain,
Of drunken Accius, in his moody vein ?
For whom a tragic rant can yield delight,
Nor even Pacuvius is too dull to write?
Do you demand, whence the disease has sprung?
What stains, corrupts, contaminates our tongue ?
False taste through all our books and writings runs,
And in the evil sires confirm their sons.
Pale Affectation quits her sickly bed,
Opes her dull eye, and lifts her languid head;
Ascends the rostrum, the tribunal seeks,
Rants on the stage, and in the senate speaks.
Fur es, ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis
Librat in antithetis, doctas posuisse figuras
Laudatur, bellum hoc, hoc bellum? an Romule ceves ?
Men' moveat quippe, et cantet si naufragus, assem
Protulerim? cantas cum fracta te in trabe pictum
Ex humero portes? verum, nec nocte paratum
Plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela.
Sed numeris decor est, et junctura addita crudis.
Claudere sic versum didicit, Berecynthius Attin,
Et qui cæruleum dirimebat Nerea delphin,
Sic costam longo subduximus Apennino.
ARMA VIRUM, nonne hoc spumosum et cortice pingui?
Ut ramale vetus prægrandi subere coctum.
Quidnam igitur tenerum, et laxa cervice legendum?
Torva Mimalloneis implerunt cornua bombis,
Et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo
Bassaris, et lyncem Mænas flexura corymbis
Evion ingeminat: reparabilis adsonat Echo.
Hæc fierent, si testiculi vena ulla paterni
Is Pedius charged? his own vile cause he pleads!
For pardon sues, and skill'd in tropes, succeeds;
Vices with figures weighs in well-poised scales,
And shines in metaphor, where logic fails.
What should we give? what alms? if on the shore,
While round his neck the pictured storm he wore,
The shipwreck'd sailor, destitute of aid,
Sung as he begg'd, and jested as he pray'd?
'Tis not enough that wit and skill be proved;
Who means to move me, must himself be moved.
1 Poet. But if you blame what orators compose,
Their flowery diction, and their measured prose,
You must at least confess that song divine,
Where Berecynthian Atyn swells the line;
Where famed Arion swims on glassy waves,
And daring dolphin azure Nereus cleaves;
Where from the broad-back'd mountain's monstrous chine
The hero carves a rib of Apennine.
P. Compared with this, what could poor Virgil write }
His style is turgid, and his sense is trite:
His wither'd laurel, faded, shrivell'd, shrunk,
Stands on the blasted wild a leafless trunk.
But when descending from this lofty strain,
How sing our poets in their tender vein?
2 Poet. To Mimallonean measures blow the horn ;
The victim's head let Bassaris adorn;
Let Manas lead the lynx with ivy bound,
Evoe cry, while echo helps the sound.
P. Enough, enough. I can no more endure
This pompous stuff, affected and obscure.
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