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Here be your language lofty, there more light,
Your rhetoric with your poetry unite,
For elegance fake, fometimes allay the force
Of epithets, 'twill foften the difcourfe :
A jeft in fcorn points out and hits the thing
More home, than the remotest satire's sting.
Shakespeare and Jonfon did in this excel,
And might herein be imitated well,
Whom refin'd Etherege copies not at all,
But is himself a fheer original.

Nor that flow drudge in fwift Pindaric strains,
Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains,
And rides a jaded Muse, whipt, with loose reins.
When Lee makes temperate Scipio fret and rave,
And Hannibal a whining amorous flave,

I laugh, and wifh the hot-brain'd fuftian fool
In Bufby's hands, to be well lafh'd at fchool.
Of all our modern wits, none seem to me
Once to have touch'd upon true comedy,
But hafty Shadwell, and flow Wycherley.
Shadwell's unfinish'd works do yet impart
Great proofs of force of nature, none of art;
With juft bold ftrokes he dashes here and there,
Showing great maftery with little care,

Scorning to varnish his good touches o'er,

To make the fools and women praise them more.
But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains,
He wants no judgment, and he fpares no pains
He frequently excels, and, at the leaft,
Makes fewer faults than any of the rest.

Waller,

Waller, by Nature for the Bays defign'd,
With force and fire, and fancy unconfin'd,
In panegyric does excel mankind.

He beft can turn, enforce, and foften things,
To praise great conquerors, and flatter kings,
For pointed fatire I would Buckhurst choose,
The best good man, with the worst-natur'd Muse.
For fongs and verfes mannerly obscene,

That can ftir Nature up by fprings unseen,
And, without forcing blushes, warm the queen;
Sedley has that prevailing gentle art,
That can with a refiftlefs power impart
The loofeft wishes to the chastest heart,
Raife fuch a conflict, kindle fuch a fire,
Betwixt declining virtue and defire,

Till the poor vanquish'd maid diffolves away,
In dreams all night, in fighs and tears all day.
Dryden in vain try'd this nice way of wit;
For he, to be a tearing blade, thought fit
To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob,
And thus he got the name of poet Squab.
But to be juft, t will to his praise be found,
His excellences more than faults abound:
Nor dare I from his facred temples tear
The laurel, which he best deserves to wear.
But does not Dryden find even Jonson dull?
Beaumont and Fletcher uncorrect, and full

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Of lewd lines, as he calls them? Shakespeare's ftyle Stiff and affected? To his own the while

Allowing

Allowing all the juftice that his pride
So arrogantly had to these deny'd ?
And may not I have leave impartially

To fearch and cenfure Dryden's works, and try
If those grofs faults his choice pen doth commit
Proceed from want of judgment, or of wit?
Or if his lumpish fancy does refuse
Spirit and grace to his loose flattern Muse?
Five hundred verses every morning writ,
Prove him no more a poet than a wit:
Such fcribbling authors have been seen before ;
Mustapha, the Island Princess, forty more,
Were things perhaps compos'd in half an hour.
To write what may securely stand the test
Of being well read over thrice at least ;
Compare each phrase, examine every line,'
Weigh every word, and every thought refine;
Scorn all applause the vile rout can bestow,
And be content to please thofe few who know.
Canft thou be fuch a vain mistaken thing,
To with thy works might make a play-house ring
With the unthinking laughter and poor praise
Of fops and ladies, factious for thy plays?
Then fend a cunning friend to learn thy doom
From the fhrewd judges in the drawing-room.
I've no ambition on that idle fcore,
But fay with Betty Morice heretofore,
When a court lady call'd her Buckley's whore ;
I please one man of wit, am proud on't too,
Let all the coxcombs dance to bed to you.

Z 2

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Should

Should I be troubled when the Purblind Knight,

Who fquints more in his judgment than his sight,
Picks filly faults, and cenfures what I write ?
Or when the poor-fed poets of the town
For fcabs and coach-room cry my verfes down?
I loath the rabble; 'tis enough for me
If Sedley, Shadwell, Shephard, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,
And fome few more, whom I omit to name,
Approve my fenfe: I count their cenfure fame.

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Sir CAR SCROPE, who thought himself reflected on at the latter End of the preceding Poem, published a Poem "In Defence of Satire,” which occafioned the following Reply.

T

To Sir CAR SCROPE.

O rack and torture thy unmeaning brain,
In Satire's praife, to a low untun'd strain,
In thee was most impertinent and vain.
When in thy perfon we more clearly fee
That fatire's of divine authority,

For God made one on man when he made thee;
To fhew there were fome men, as there are apes,
Fram'd for meer sport, who differ but in fhapes:
In thee are all thefe contradictions join'd,
That make an afs prodigious and refin'd.

A lump

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A lump deform'd and shapeless wert thou born,
Begot in Love's defpight and Nature's fcorn;
And art grown up the most ungrateful wight,
Harsh to the ear, and hideous to the fight;
Yet Love's thy bufinefs, Beauty, thy delight.
Curfe on that filly hour that first infpir'd
Thy madness, to pretend to be admir'd;
To paint thy grifly face, to dance, to dress,
And all thofe aukward follies that exprefs
Thy loathsome love, and filthy daintiness.
Who needs wilt be an ugly Beau-Garçon,
Spit at, and fhunn'd by every girl in town;
Where dreadfully Love's feare-crow thou art plac'd
To fright the tender flock that long to taste :
While every coming maid, when you appear,
Starts back for fhame, and straight turns chafte for fear;
For none fo poor or prostitute have prov'd,
Where you made love, t' endure to be belov'd.
'T were labour loft, or elfe I would advise;
But thy half-wit will ne'er let thee be wife.

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Half witty, and half mad, and scarce half brave,
Half honeft (which is very much a knave)
Made up of all these halves, thou canst not pafs
For any thing intirely, but an Afs.

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