A labour'd, long exordium sometimes tends

(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends; And nonsense in a lofty note goes down, As pertness passes with a legal gown. Thus many a bard describes in pompous strain

The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain;

The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls, King's Coll., Cam's stream, stain'd windows, and old walls;

Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims To paint a rainbow, or— the river Thames.

You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine

31

What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

But lucid Order and Wit's siren voice
Await the poet, skilful in his choice;
With native eloquence he soars along,
Grace in his thoughts, and music in his song.

Let judgment teach him wisely to combine

With future parts the now omitted line: This shall the author choose, or that re

ject,

70

Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting word.
Then fear not, if 't is needful, to produce
Some term unknown or obsolete in use
(As Pitt has furnish'd us a word or two,
Which lexicographers declined to do);
So you indeed, with care (but be content
To take this license rarely), - may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase;
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce re-
fuse

80

To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott?
Since they, by force of rhyme and force of
lungs,

Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues;
'Tis then and shall be
lawful to pre-

sent

Reform in writing, as in parliament.

As forests shed their foliage by degrees, So fade expressions which in season please;

And we and ours, alas! are due to fate, 91 And works and words but dwindle to a date.

Though as a monarch nods, and commerce calls,

Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd, sustain

The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,

And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar, All, all must perish; but, surviving last, The love of letters half preserves the past. True, some decay, yet not a few revive; 101 Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,

As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway Our life and language must alike obey.

The immortal wars which gods and angels wage,

Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?

His strain will teach what numbers best belong

To themes celestial told in epic song.

But so Thalia pleases to appear, Poor virgin! damn'd some twenty times a year!

Whate'er the scene, let this advice have weight:

Adapt your language to your hero's state.
At times Melpomene forgets to groan,
And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone; 130
Nor unregarded will the act pass by
Where angry Townly lifts his voice on
high.'

Again, our Shakspeare limits verse to kings, When common prose will serve for common things;

And lively Hal resigns heroic ire, To hollowing Hotspur' and his sceptred sire.

'Tis not enough, ye bards, with all your

art,

To polish poems; they must touch the heart:

Where'er the scene be laid, whate'er the

song,

Still let it bear the hearer's soul along; 140 Command your audience or to smile or

'Awake a louder and a loftier strain,' -
And pray, what follows from his boiling
brain?

He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
Whose epic mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire 199
The temper'd warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit'
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, heaven, and Hades echo with the
song.

Still to the midst of things' he hastens on,
As if we witness'd all already done;
Leaves on his path whatever seems too