SAVAGE: On Pope.

While we do admire

This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks,
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.

SHAKSPEARE.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.
SHEFFIELD: Essay on Poetry.

How many a rustic Milton has pass'd by,
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart
In unremitting drudgery and care.
How many a vulgar Cato has compell'd
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.

SWIFT.

Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks:
Thus envy pleads a natural claim
To persecute the muse's fame:

On poets, in all times, abusive;
From Homer down to Pope, inclusive.

SWIFT.

Wit, like wine, from happier climates brought, Dash'd by these rogues, turns English common draught.

They pall Molière's and Lopez's sprightly strain.
SWIFT.

In Pope I cannot read a line,
But with a sigh I wish it mine;
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six.

SWIFT.

Pope's filial piety excels

Whatever Grecian story tells.

SWIFT.

SHELLEY: Queen Mab.

Send those to paper-sparing Pope;

And, when he sits to write,

In Raleigh mark their ev'ry glory mix'd; Raleigh, the scourge of Spain, whose breast

with all

The sage, the patriot, and the hero burn'd.

THOMSON.

The patient show'd us the wise course to steer,
A candid censor and a friend sincere;
He taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
The price of knowledge!) taught us how to die.
TICKELL: on the Death of Addison.

Though slaves, like birds that sing not in a cage,
They lost their genius, and poetic rage;
Homers again and Pindars may be found,
And his great actions with their numbers

crown'd.

WALLER.

A great deal, my dear liege, depends
On having clever bards for friends.
What had Achilles been without his Homer,-
A tailor, woollen-draper, or a comber?

DR. WOLCOTT.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride;
Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain side.
WORDSWORTH.

Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source,
The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth;
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanish'd from his lonely hearth.
WORDSWORTH.
That mighty orb of song,

The divine Milton.

WORDSWORTH.

And when a damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,-alas! too few.
WORDSWORTH.

The sightless Milton, with his hair
Around his placid temples curl'd;
And Shakspeare at his side,-a freight,"
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world.

WORDSWORTH.

For Plato's lore sublime, And all the wisdom of the Stagyrite, Enrich'd and beautified his studious mind. WORDSWORTH: from the Italian.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakspeare spake, the faith and morals

hold

Which Milton held.

WORDSWORTH.

Meek Walton's heavenly memory.

WORDSWORTH: Walton's Book of Lives.

The feather whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good

men,

Dropp'd from an angel's wing.

WORDSWORTH: Walton's Book of Lives.

As thou these ashes, little brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accursed
An emblem yields to friends and enemies,
How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dis-
persed.

WORDSWORTH: to Wickliffe.

Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train,
Nor hears that virtue which he loves complain?
YOUNG.

But what in oddness can be more sublime
Than S [loane] the foremost toyman of his time?
YOUNG.

AUTHORSHIP.

Each wit may praise it for his own dear sake,
And hint he writ it, if the thing should take.
ADDISON.

Much thou hast said which I know when
And where thou stol'st from other men;
Whereby 'tis plain thy light and gifts
Are all but plagiary shifts.

BUTLER: Hudibras.

'Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print; A book's a book although there's nothing in't. BYRON.

One hates an author that's all author, fellows In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink, So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,

One don't know what to say to them, or think, Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows; Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs, e'en the pink Are preferable to these shreds of paper, These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight

taper.

BYRON.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.
PRIOR.

The privilege that ancient poets claim,
Now turn'd to license by too just a name.
ROSCOMMON.
None have been with admiration read,
But who, besides their learning, were well bred.
ROSCOMMON.

Make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
ROSCOMMON.

Every busy little scribbler now
Swells with the praises which he gives himself,
And, taking sanctuary in the crowd,
Brags of his impudence, and scorns to mend.
ROSCOMMON.

Your author always will the best advise:
Fall when he falls, and when he rises, rise.
ROSCOMMON.

Chaste moral writing we may learn from hence,
Neglect of which no wit can recompense;
The fountain which from Helicon proceeds,
That sacred stream, should never water weeds.
WALLER.

Not content to see
That others write as carelessly as he.

WALLER. So must the writer whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould.