[Footnote 46: Welsted, "howe'er insulted by the spleen of Pope," was a poet of merit. His fate is an instance, among a thousand, of the disadvantage sustained by an inferior genius, who enters into collision with one of supereminent talents. It is the combat of a gun-boat with a frigate; and many an author has been run down in such an encounter, who, had he avoided it, might have still enjoyed a fair portion of literary reputation. The apologue of the iron and earthen pot contains a moral applicable to such circumstances.] EPISTLE THE TENTH. Sure there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain To write, while these malignant planets reign. Some very foolish influence rules the pit, Not always kind to sense, or just to wit; And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed, To make us laugh, for never was more need. Farce, in itself, is of a nasty scent; But the gain smells not of the excrement. The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too, With all her charms, bore but a single show; But let a monster Muscovite appear, He draws a crowded audience round the year. May be thou hast not pleased the box and pit; } Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit: } So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ. } Like his, thy thoughts are true, thy language clean; Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene.[47] The hearers may for want of Nokes[48] repine; But rest secure, the readers will be thine. Nor was thy laboured drama damned or hissed, But with a kind civility dismissed; With such good manners as the Wife[49] did use, Who, not accepting, did but just refuse. There was a glance at parting; such a look, As bids thee not give o'er for one rebuke. But if thou wouldst be seen, as well as read, Copy one living author, and one dead. The standard of thy style let Etherege be; For wit, the immortal spring of Wycherly. Learn, after both, to draw some just design, And the next age will learn to copy thine. [Footnote 47: The moral of the "Wives' Excuse" is as bad as possible; but the language of the play is free from that broad licence which disgraces the dramatic taste of the age.]