Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink,
The diet he prescribes himself to think;

Rhyme next his heart he takes at the morn peep,
Some love epistles at the hour of sleep ;-
So, betwixt elegy and ode, we see
Strephon is in a course of poetry.

This is the man ordained to do thee good,
The pelican to feed thee with his blood;
Thy wit, thy poet, nay thy friend, for he
Is fit to be a friend to none but thee.

Make sure of him, and of his muse betimes,
For all his study is hung round with rhymes.
Laugh at him, jostle him, yet still he writes,
In rhyme he challenges, in rhyme he fights.
Charged with the last, and basest infamy,
His business is to think what rhymes to lie;
Which found, in fury he retorts again,
Strephon's a very dragon at his pen;

His brother murdered, * and his mother's whored,
His mistress lost, and yet his pen's his sword.

* Probably the Mr Scrope whom Langbaine saw stabbed in the theatre, by Sir Thomas Armstrong, during the representation of "Macbeth." Wood mentions a satire of Sir Car Scrope's, in which Sir Thomas Armstrong is reflected upon. The author of the epistle seems to allude to some such circumstance.

THE

ART OF POETRY.

229

THE ART OF POETRY.

THIS piece was inserted among Dryden's Works, upon authority of the following advertisement by his publisher Jacob Tonson.

"This translation of Monsieur Boileau's Art of Poetry' was made in the year 1680, by Sir William Soame of Suffolk, Baronet; who, being very intimately acquainted with Mr Dryden, desired his revisal of it. I saw the manuscript lie in Mr Dryden's hands for above six months, who made very considerable alterations in it, particularly the beginning of the Fourth Canto; and it being his opinion, that it would be better to apply the poem to English writers, than keep to the French names, as it was first translated, Sir William desired he would take the pains to make that alteration; and accordingly that was entirely done by Mr Dryden.

"The poem was first published in the year 1683. Sir William was after sent ambassador to Constantinople, in the reign of King James, but died in the voyage."—J. T.

To give weight to Tonson's authority, it may be added, that great part of the poem bears marks of Dryden's polishing hand; and that some entire passages show at once his taste in criticism, principles, and prejudices.