What Greece, when learning flourished, only knew, Athenian judges, you this day renew. Here too are annual rites to Pallas done, And here poetic prizes lost or won. Methinks I see you, crowned with olives, sit, 5 And strike a sacred horror from the pit. A day of doom is this of your decree, Where even the best are but by mercy free: A day, which none but Jonson durst have wished to see, Here they, who long have known the useful stage, 10 Come to be taught themselves to teach the age. As your commissioners our poets go, To cultivate the virtue which you sow; In your Lycæum first themselves refined, And delegated thence to human-kind. 15 But as ambassadors, when long from home, For new instructions to their princes come, So poets, who your precepts have forgot, Return, and beg they may be better taught: Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown, 20 But by your manners they correct their own. The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies To minds diseased, unsafe, chance remedies: The learned in schools, where knowledge first began, Studies with care the anatomy of man; 25 Sees virtue, vice, and passions, in their cause, And fame from science, not from fortune, draws. So poetry, which is in Oxford made An art, in London only is a trade. There haughty dunces, whose unlearnèd pen 30 Could ne’er spell grammar, would be reading men. Such build their poems the Lucretian way; So many huddled atoms make a play; And if they hit in order by some chance, They call that nature which is ignorance. 35 To such a fame let mere town-wits aspire, And their gay nonsense their own cits admire. Our poet, could he find forgiveness here, Would wish it rather than a plaudit there. He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands, 40 But knows that right is in the senate’s hands, Not impudent enough to hope your praise, Low at the Muses’ feet his wreath he lays, And, where he took it up, resigns his bays. 45 Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit, But ’tis your suffrage makes authentic wit. _John Dryden._ XC _PROLOGUE._ TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.