How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does Astraea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed! And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause! But fill their purse, our poet's work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun. * * * * * Yet lest you think I rally more than teach, Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach, Let me for once presume t' instruct the times To know the poet from the man of rhymes: 'Tis he who gives my breast a thousand pains, Can make me feel each passion that he feigns; Enrage, compose, with more than magic art, With pity, and with terror, tear my heart; And snatch me, o'er the earth, or through the air, To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where. FROM THE EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES [THE POWER OF THE SATIRIST] Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me: Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. O sacred weapon! left for truth's defense, Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence! To all but Heaven-directed hands denied, The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide: Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal, To rouse the watchmen of the public weal; To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall, And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall, Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains, That counts your beauties only by your stains, Spin all your cobwebs, o'er the eye of day! The Muse's wing shall brush you all away. FROM THE DUNCIAD [THE COLLEGE OF DULNESS]