THE ART OF PAINTING, OF CHARLES ALPHONSE DU FRESNOY; TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE. BY WILLIAM MASON, M.A. WITH ANNOTATIONS BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. EPISTLE ΤΟ SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. When Dryden, worn with sickness, bow'd with years, For ill-placed loyalty, and courtly zeal, To see that laurel which his brows o'erspread, Yet still he pleas'd, for DRYDEN still must please, Whether with artless elegance and ease He glides in prose, or from its tinkling chime, By varied pauses, purifies his rhyme, And mounts on Maro's plumes, and soars his heights sublime. This artless elegance, this native fire How oft, on that fair shrine when Poets bind Which now, if praise like his my Muse could coin, Let friendship, as she caus'd, excuse the deed; With thee, and such as thee, she must succeed. But what, if fashion tempted Pope astray? The witch has spells, and Jervas knew a day When mode - struck Belles and Beaux were proud to come And buy of him a thousand years of bloom.† Ev'n then I deem it but a venial crime: Perish alone that selfish sordid rhyme, Which flatters lawless sway, or tinsel pride; Let black Oblivion plunge it in her tide. * Mr. Pope, in his Epistle to Jervas, has these lines : Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire Fresnoy's close art with Dryden's native fire. † Alluding to another couplet in the same Epistle :Beauty, frail flower, that every season fears, Blooms in thy colours for a thousand years. From fate like this my truth-supported lays, Would flow secure: but humbler aims are mine; 'Tis but to thank thy genius for the ray Give her in Albion as in Greece to rule, And guide (what thou hast form'd) a British School. And, O, if aught thy Poet can pretend Oct. 10. 1782. VOL. II. R W. MASON. |