The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts.
Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more;
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides :
In some fair body thus the informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in the effects, remains.

60

70

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse, 80 Want as much more, to turn it to its use;

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed; Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;

The winged courser, like a generous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodized;

Nature, like liberty, is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.

90

Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
The generous critic fanned the poet's fire,

And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,

To dress her charms, and make her more beloved :
But following wits from that intention strayed,
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid;
Against the poets their own. arms they turned,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned.
So modern 'Pothecaries, taught the art
By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled so much as they.
Some drily plain, without invention's aid,

Write dull receipts how poems may be made.

These leave the sense, their learning to display,

And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then whose judgment the right course would

steer,

Know well each Ancient's proper character;
His fable, subject, scope in every page;

Religion, country, genius of his age:

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Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.1

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,

And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind2 130
A work to outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,

And but from nature's fountains scorned to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,
As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry, in each

140

1 The author after this verse originally inserted the following, which he has, however, omitted in all the editions :

Zoilus, had these been known without a name,
Had died, and Perault ne'er been damned to fame ;

The sense of sound antiquity had reigned,

And sacred Homer yet been unprofaned.

None e'er had thought his comprehensive mind
To modern customs, modern rules confined;
Who for all age writ, and all mankind.

2 It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs; which he found above his years, and descended first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, and afterwards to copy Homer in heroic poetry.

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end)
Some lucky licence answer to the full

150

The intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
in prospects thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend.
But though the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compelled by need;
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

160

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts Those freer beauties, even in them, seem faults. 170 Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear, Considered singly, cr beheld too near,

Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks, and fair array.

But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which error seem,

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

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Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.

See, from each clime the learned their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting pæans ring!

In praise so just let every voice be joined,
And fill the general chorus of mankind.
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,

190

(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights; Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes) To teach vain wits a science little known,

To admire superior sense, and doubt their own! 200

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing voice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind :