The truest notions in the easiest way.
He, who supreme in judgement, as in wit,
Might boldly censure as he boldly writ,
Yet judged with coolness, though he sung with fire;
660 His precepts teach but what his works inspire.
Our critics take a contrary extreme,
They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.
See Dionysius Homer’s thoughts refine,
And call new beauties forth from ev’ry line!
Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,
The scholar’s learning, with the courtier’s ease.
In grave Quintilian’s copious work we find
670 The justest rules and clearest method joined.
Thus useful arms in magazines we place,
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace;
But less to please the eye than arm the hand,
Still fit for use, and ready at command.
Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet’s fire:
An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;
Whose own example strengthens all his laws,
680 And is himself that great sublime he draws.
Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,
Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained:
Learning and Rome alike in empire grew,
And arts still followed where her eagles flew;
From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom,
And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.
With tyranny, then superstition joined,
As that the body, this enslaved the mind;
Much was believed, but little understood,
690 And to be dull was construed to be good:
A second deluge learning thus o’errun,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun.
At length Erasmus, that great injured name
(The glory of the priesthood, and the shame!)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb’rous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.
But see! each Muse, in Leo’s golden days,
Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays;
Rome’s ancient genius, o’er its ruins spread,
700 Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev’rend head.
Then sculpture and her sister arts revive;
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung;
Immortal Vida! on whose honoured brow
The poet’s bays and critic’s ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!
But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
710 Their ancient bounds the banish’d Muses passed;
Thence arts o’er all the northern world advance,
But critic learning flourished most in France;
The rules a nation born to serve obeys,
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
720 Of those who less presumed, and better knew,
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restored wit’s fundamental laws.
Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell,
‘Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.’
Such was Roscommon, not more learn’d than good,
With manners gen’rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev’ry author’s merit but his own.
Such late was Walsh – the Muse’s judge and friend,
730 Who justly knew to blame or to commend;
To failings mild, but zealous for desert,
The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive;
This praise at least a grateful Muse may give:
The Muse whose early voice you taught to sing,
Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries;
Content, if hence th’ unlearn’d their wants may view,
740 The learn’d reflect on what before they knew:
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;
Averse alike to flatter or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.
Windsor Forest
Non injussa cano: Te nostrae, Vare, myricae,
Te Nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est
Quam sibi quae Vari praescripsit pagina nomen.
VIRGIL
Thy forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats,
At once the monarch’s and the Muse’s seats,
Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids!
Unlock your springs, and open all your shades.
Granville commands: your aid, O Muses, bring!
What muse for Granville can refuse to sing?
The groves of Eden, vanished now so long,
Live in description, and look green in song:
These, were my breast inspired with equal flame,
10 Like them in beauty, should be like in fame.
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again,
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But as the world, harmoniously confused:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a chequered scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day,
As some coy nymph her lover’s warm address
20 Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
There, interspersed in lawns and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other’s shades.
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There wrapped in clouds the bluish hills ascend.
Ev’n the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And ’midst the desert fruitful fields arise,
That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
Let India boast her plants, nor envy we
30 The weeping amber or the balmy tree,
While by our oaks the precious loads are borne,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn.
Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
Than what more humble mountains offer here,
Where, in their blessings, all those gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
Here blushing Flora paints the enamelled ground,
Here Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect stand,
40 And nodding tempt the joyful reaper’s hand;
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns.
Not thus the land appeared in ages past,
A dreary desert, and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And kings more furious and severe than they,
Who claimed the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
>
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:
Cities laid waste, they stormed the dens and caves
50 (For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves).
What could be free, when lawless beasts obeyed,
And ev’n the elements a tyrant swayed?
In vain kind seasons swelled the teeming grain,
Soft showers distilled, and suns grew warm in vain;
The swain with tears his frustrate labour yields,
And famished dies amidst his ripened fields.
What wonder then, a beast or subject slain
Were equal crimes in a despotic reign?
Both doomed alike, for sportive tyrants bled,
60 But while the subject starved, the beast was fed.
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man;
Our haughty Norman boasts that barbarous name,
And makes his trembling slaves the royal game.
The fields are ravished from th’ industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from gods their fanes;
The levelled towns with weeds lie covered o’er;
The hollow winds through naked temples roar;
Round broken columns clasping ivy twined;
70 O’er heaps of ruin stalked the stately hind;
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred choirs.
Awed by his nobles, by his commons cursed,
Th’ oppressor ruled tyrannic where he durst,
Stretch’d o’er the poor and church his iron rod,
And served alike his vassals and his God.
Whom ev’n the Saxon spared, and bloody Dane,
The wanton victims of his sport remain.
But see, the man who spacious regions gave
80 A waste for beasts, himself denied a grave!
Stretched on the lawn his second hope survey,
At once the chaser, and at once the prey!
Lo Rufus, tugging at the deadly dart,
Bleeds in the forest like a wounded hart!
Succeeding monarchs heard the subjects’ cries,
Nor saw displeased the peaceful cottage rise;
Then gath’ring flocks on unknown mountains fed,
O’er sandy wilds were yellow harvests spread,
The forests wondered at th’ unusual grain,
90 And secret transport touched the conscious swain.
Fair Liberty, Britannia’s goddess, rears
Her cheerful head, and leads the golden years.
Ye vigorous swains! while youth ferments your blood,
And purer spirits swell the sprightly flood,
Now range the hills, the gameful woods beset,
Wind the shrill horn, or spread the waving net.
When milder autumn summer’s heat succeeds,
And in the new-shorn field the partridge feeds,
Before his lord the ready spaniel bounds,
100 Panting with hope, he tries the furrowed grounds;
But when the tainted gales the game betray,
Couched close he lies, and meditates the prey;
Secure they trust th’ unfaithful field, beset,
Till hovering o’er ’em sweeps the swelling net.
Thus (if small things we may with great compare)
When Albion sends her eager sons to war,
Some thoughtless town, with ease and plenty blest,
Near, and more near, the closing lines invest;
Sudden they seize th’ amazed, defenceless prize,
110 And high in air Britannia’s standard flies.
See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings:
Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold?
Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky,
120 The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny.
To plains with well breathed beagles we repair,
And trace the mazes of the circling hare
(Beasts, urged by us, their fellow beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo).
With slaught’ring guns th’ unwearied fowler roves,
When frosts have whitened all the naked groves,
Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o’ershade,
And lonely woodcocks haunt the wat’ry glade.
He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye;
130 Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky.
Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath,
The clam’rous lapwings feel the leaden death;
Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare,
They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed,
140 And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
The silver eel, in shining volumes rolled,
The yellow carp, in scales bedropped with gold,
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And pikes, the tyrants of the watery plains.
Now Cancer glows with Phoebus’ fiery car:
The youth rush eager to the sylvan war,
Swarm o’er the lawns, the forest walks surround,
150 Rouse the fleet hart, and cheer the opening hound.
Th’ impatient courser pants in every vein,
And, pawing, seems to beat the distant plain:
Hills, vales, and floods appear already crossed,
And ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost.
See the bold youth strain up the threat’ning steep,
Rush through the thickets, down the valleys sweep,
Hang o’er their coursers’ heads with eager speed,
And earth rolls back beneath the flying steed.
Let old Arcadia boast her ample plain,
160 Th’ immortal huntress, and her virgin train;
Nor envy, Windsor! since thy shades have seen
As bright a goddess, and as chaste a queen;
Whose care, like hers, protects the sylvan reign,
The earth’s fair light, and empress of the main.
Here too, ’tis sung, of old Diana strayed,
And Cynthus’ top forsook for Windsor shade;
Here was she seen o’er airy wastes to rove,
Seek the clear spring, or haunt the pathless grove;
Here armed with silver bows, in early dawn,
170 Her buskined virgins traced the dewy lawn.
Above the rest a rural nymph was famed,
Thy offspring, Thames! the fair Lodona named.
(Lodona’s fate, in long oblivion cast,
The Muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last.)
Scarce could the goddess from her nymph be known,
But by the crescent and the golden zone.
She scorned the praise of beauty, and the care;
A belt her waist, a fillet binds her hair;
A painted quiver on her shoulder sounds,
180 And with her dart the flying deer she wounds.
It chanced, as eager of the chase, the maid
Beyond the forest’s verdant limits strayed,
Pan saw and loved, and, burning with desire
Pursued her flight; her flight increased his fire.
Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly,
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,
When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves,
As from the god she flew with furious pace,
190 Or as the god, more furious, urged the chase.
Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;
Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears;
And now his shadow reached her as she run
(His shadow lengthened by the setting sun),
And now his shorter breath, with sultry air
Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.
In vain on father Thames she calls for aid,
Nor could Diana help her injured maid.
Faint, breathless, thus she prayed, nor prayed in vain;
200 ‘Ah, Cynthia! ah – though banished from thy train,
Let me, O let me, to the shades repair,
My native shades – there weep, and murmur there.’
She said, and melting as in tears she lay,
In a soft, silver stream dissolved away.
The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps,
For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;
Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore,
And bathes the forest where she ranged before.
In her chaste current oft the goddess laves,
210 And with celestial tears augments the waves.
Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies
The headlong mountains and the downward skies,
The wat’ry landscape of the pendent woods,
And absent trees that tremble in the floods;
In the clear azure gleam the flocks are seen,
And floating forests paint the waves with green.
Through the fair scene roll slow the ling’ring streams,
Then foaming pour along, and rush into the Thames.
Thou, too, great father of the British floods!
220 With joyful pride survey’st our lofty woods,
Where towering oaks their growing honours rear,
And future navies on thy shores appear.
Not Neptune’s self from all his streams receives
A wealthier tribute, than to thine he gives.
No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,
No lake so gentle, and no spring so clear.
Nor Po so swells the fabling poet’s lays,
While led along the skies his current strays,
As thine, which visits Windsor’s famed abodes,
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings Page 6