As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are try'd, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. But most by numbers judge a poet's song, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; Who haunt Parnassus{10} but to please their ear, Not mend{11} their minds, as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;{12} While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes; Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze," In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":{13} If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep," The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep": Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song,{14} That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.{15} Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line, Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers{17} flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21} Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The power of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now. Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, Who still are pleas'd too little or too much. At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense: Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,