As they who wash an Ethiop's face, or his. What fate unhappy Strephon does attend, Never to get a mistress, nor a friend! Strephon alike both wits and fools detest, 'Cause he's like Esop's bat, half bird half beast; For fools to poetry have no pretence, And common wit supposes common sense; Not quite so low as fool, nor quite a top, He hangs between them both, and is a fop. His morals, like his wit, are motley too; He keeps from arrant knave with much ado. But vanity and lying so prevail, That one grain more of each would turn the scale; He would be more a villain had he time, But he's so wholly taken up with rhyme, That he mistakes his talent; all his care Is to be thought a poet fine and fair. Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink, The diet he prescribes himself to think; Rhyme next his heart he takes at the morn peep, Some love epistles at the hour of sleep;-- So, betwixt elegy and ode, we see Strephon is in a course of poetry. This is the man ordained to do thee good, The pelican to feed thee with his blood; Thy wit, thy poet, nay thy friend, for he Is fit to be a friend to none but thee. Make sure of him, and of his muse betimes, For all his study is hung round with rhymes. Laugh at him, jostle him, yet still he writes, In rhyme he challenges, in rhyme he fights. Charged with the last, and basest infamy, His business is to think what rhymes to lie; Which found, in fury he retorts again. Strephon's a very dragon at his pen; His brother murdered,[59] and his mother's whored, His mistress lost, and yet his pen's his sword. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 54: Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, was created Earl of Middlesex in 1675. He is better known as the Earl of Dorset.] [Footnote 55: Probably the person mentioned in the "Essay on Satire."] [Footnote 56: Sir George Etherege.] [Footnote 57: Sir Car Scrope.] [Footnote 58: Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.] [Footnote 59: Probably the Mr Scrope whom Langbaine saw stabbed in the theatre, by Sir Thomas Armstrong, during the representation of "Macbeth." Wood mentions a satire of Sir Car Scrope's, in which Sir Thomas Armstrong is reflected upon. The author of the epistle seems to allude to some such circumstance.] THE ART OF POETRY. THE ART OF POETRY. This piece was inserted among Dryden's Works, upon authority of the following advertisement by his publisher Jacob Tonson.