Fly this excess; and let Italians be Vain authors of false glittering poetry. All ought to aim at sense; but most in vain Strive the hard pass and slippery path to gain; You drown, if to the right or left you stray; Reason to go has often but one way. Sometimes an author, fond of his own thought, Pursues its object till it's over wrought: If he describes a house, he shews the face, And after walks you round from place to place; Here is a vista, there the doors unfold, Balconies here are ballustred with gold; Then counts the rounds and ovals in the halls, "The festoons, freezes, and the astragals:" Tired with his tedious pomp, away I run, And skip o'er twenty pages, to be gone. Of such descriptions the vain folly see, And shun their barren superfluity. All that is needless carefully avoid; The mind once satisfied is quickly cloyed: He cannot write, who knows not to give o'er; To mend one fault, he makes a hundred more: A verse was weak, you turn it much too strong, And grow obscure for fear you should be long. Some are not gaudy, but are flat and dry; Not to be low, another soars too high. Would you of every one deserve the praise? In writing vary your discourse and phrase; A frozen style, that neither ebbs nor flows, Instead of pleasing, makes us gape and dose. Those tedious authors are esteemed by none Who tire us, humming the same heavy tone. Happy who in his verse can gently steer, From grave to light; from pleasant to severe: His works will be admired wherever found, And oft with buyers will be compassed round. In all you write, be neither low nor vile; The meanest theme may have a proper style. The dull burlesque appeared with impudence, And pleased by novelty in spite of sense. All, except trivial points, grew out of date; Parnassus spoke the cant of Billingsgate; Boundless and mad, disordered rhyme was seen; Disguised Apollo changed to Harlequin. This plague, which first in country towns began, Cities and kingdoms quickly over-ran; The dullest scribblers some admirers found, And the "Mock Tempest"[61] was a while renowned. But this low stuff the town at last despised, And scorned the folly that they once had prized; Distinguished dull from natural and plain, And left the villages to Flecknoe's reign. Let not so mean a style your muse debase, But learn from Butler the buffooning grace; And let burlesque in ballads be employed, Yet noisy bombast carefully avoid; Nor think to raise, though on Pharsalia's plain, "Millions of mourning mountains of the slain:"[62] Nor with Dubartas bridle up the floods, And periwig with wool the baldpate woods.[63] Chuse a just style; be grave without constraint, Great without pride, and lovely without paint: Write what your reader may be pleased to hear,