and choice of subjects, I cannot take upon me to be your director; but I will venture to give you some short hints, which you may enlarge upon at your leisure. Let me entreat you then, by no means to lay aside that notion peculiar to our modern refiners in poetry, which is, that a poet must never write or discourse as the ordinary part of mankind do, but in number and verse, as an oracle; which I mention the rather, because, upon this principle, I have known heroes brought into the pulpit, and a whole sermon composed and delivered in blank verse, to the vast credit of the preacher, no less than the real entertainment and great edification of the audience; the secret of which I take to be this: when the matter of such discourses is but mere clay, or as we usually call it, sad stuff, the preacher who can afford no better, wisely moulds, and polishes, and dries, and washes this piece of earthenware, and then bakes it with poetic fire; after which it will ring like any pancroc, and is a good dish to set before common guests, as every congregation is, that comes so often for entertainment to one place. There was a good old custom in use, which our ancestors had, of invoking the muses at the entrance of their poems; I suppose, by way of craving a blessing: this the graceless moderns have in a great measure laid aside, but are not to be followed in that poetical impiety; for, although to nice ears such invocations may sound harsh and disagreeable (as tuning instruments is before a concert) they are equally necessary. Again, you must not fail to dress your muse in a forehead cloth of Greek or Latin, I mean, you are always to make use of a quaint motto to all your compositions; for, beside that this artifice bespeaks the reader's opinion of the writer's learning, it is otherwise useful and commendable. A bright passage in the front of a poem is a good mark, like a star in a horse's face; and the piece will certainly go off the better for it. The os magna sonaturum, which, if I remember right, Horace makes one qualification of a good poet, may teach you not to gag your muse, or stint yourself in words and epithets which cost you nothing, contrary to the practice of some few out-of-the-way writers, who use a natural and concise expression, and affect a style like unto a Shrewsbury cake, short and sweet upon the palate; they will not afford you a word more than is necessary to make them intelligible, which is as poor and niggardly, as it would be to set down no more meat than your company will be sure to eat up. Words are but lackeys to sense, and will dance attendance without wages or compulsion; Verba non invita sequentur. Farthermore, when you set about composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides, that I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree, (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surface of the earth. As for your choice of subjects, I have only to give you this caution: that as a handsome way of praising is certainly the most difficult point in writing or speaking, I would by no means advise any young man to make his first essay in panegyric, beside the danger of it: for a particular encomium is ever attended with more ill-will than any general invective, for which I need give no reasons; wherefore my counsel is, that you use the point of your pen, not the feather: let your first attempt be a coup d'éclat in the way of libel, lampoon, or satire. Knock down half a score reputations, and you will infallibly raise your own; and so it be with wit, no matter with how little justice; for fiction is your trade. Every great genius seems to ride upon mankind, like Pyrrhus on his elephant: and the way to have the absolute ascendant of your resty nag, and to keep your seat, is, at your first mounting, to afford him the whip and spurs plentifully; after which, you may travel the rest of the day with great alacrity. Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonable good understanding. You camot but know that those of your profession have been called genus ir ritabile vatum; and you will find it necessary to qualify yourself for that waspish society, by exerting your talent of satire upon the first occasion, and to abandon good nature, only to prove yourself a true poet, which you will allow to be a valuable consideration: in a word, a young robber is usually entered by a murder: a young bound is blooded when he comes first into the field: a young bully begins with killing his man: and a young poet must show his wit, as the other his courage, by cutting, and slashing, and laying about him, and banging mankind. Lastly, It will be your wisdom to look out betimes for a good service for your muse, according to her skill and qualifications, whether in the nature of a dairymaid, a cook, or chairwoman: I mean to hire out your pen to a party, which will afford you both pay and pro tection; and when you have to do with the press (as you will long to be there) take care to bespeak an im portunate friend, to extort your productions with an agreeable violence; and which, according to the cue between you, you must surrender digito male pertinaci : there is a decency in this; for it no more becomes an author, in modesty, to have a hand in publishing his own works, than a woman in labour to lay herself. I would be very loath to give the least umbrage of offence by what I have here said, as I may do, if I should be thought to insinuate that these circumstances of good writing have been unknown to, or not observed by, the poets of this kingdom: I will do my countrymen the justice to say, they have written by the foregoing rules with great exactness, and so far as hardly to come behind those of their profession in England, in perfection of low writing. The sublime indeed is not so common with us; but ample amends is made for that want, in great abundance of the admirable and amazing, which appears in all our compositions. Our very good friend (the knight aforesaid) speaking of the force of poetry, mentions "rhyming to death, which (adds he) is said to be done in Ireland ;" and truly, to our honour be it spoken, that power, in a great measure, continues with us to this day. I would now offer some poor thoughts of mine for the encouragement of poetry in this kingdom, if I could hope they would be agreeable. I have had many an aching heart for the ill plight of that noble profession here; and it has been my late and early study, how to bring it into better circumstances. And surely, considering what monstrous wits, in the poetic way, do almost daily start up and surprise us in this town; what prodigious geniuses we have here, (of which I could give instances without number) and withal of what great benefit it may be to our trade to encourage that science here, for it is plain our linen manufacture is advanced by the great waste of paper made by our present set of poets; not to mention other necessary uses of the same to shopkeepers, especially grocers, apothecaries, and pastry cooks, and I might add, but for our writers, the nation would in a little time be utterly destitute of bumfodder, and must of necessity import the same from England and Holland, where they have it in great abundance by the indefatigable labour of their own wits: I say, these things considered, I am humbly of opinion, it would be worth the care of our governors to cherish gentlemen of the quill, and give them all proper encouragements here. And since I am upon the subject, I shall speak my mind very freely, and if I add saucily, it is no more than my birthright as a Briton. Seriously then, I have many years lamented the want of a Grub street in this our large and polite city, unless the whole may be called one. And this I have accounted an unpardonable defect in our constitution, ever since I had any opinions I could call my own. Every one knows Grub street is a market for small ware in wit, and as necessary, considering the usual purgings of the human brain, as the nose is upon a man's face and for the same reason, we have here a court, a college, a playhouse, and beautiful ladies, and fine gentlemen, and good claret, and abundance of pens, ink, and paper, clear of taxes, and every other circumstance to provoke wit; and yet those, whose province it is, have not thought fit to appoint a place for evacuations of it, which is a very hard case, as may be judged by comparisons. : And truly this defect has been attended with unspeakable inconveniences; for, not to mention the prejudice done to the commonwealth of letters, I am of opinion we suffer in our health by it: I believe our corrupted air, and frequent thick fogs, are in a great, measure owing to the common exposal of our wit: and * |