And thought perfection was to huff and fight. } Wise nature by variety does please; Clothe differing passions in a differing dress. Bold anger, in rough haughty words appears; Sorrow is humble, and dissolves in tears. Make not your Hecuba with fury rage, And show a ranting grief upon the stage; Or tell in vain how the rough Tanaïs bore His sevenfold waters to the Euxine shore: These swoln expressions, this affected noise, Shows like some pedant that declaims to boys. In sorrow you must softer methods keep; And, to excite our tears, yourself must weep. Those noisy words with which ill plays abound, Come not from hearts that are in sadness drowned. The theatre for a young poet's rhymes Is a bold venture in our knowing times: An author cannot easily purchase fame; Critics are always apt to hiss, and blame: You may be judged by every ass in town, The privilege is bought for half-a-crown. To please, you must a hundred changes try; Sometimes be humble, then must soar on high; In noble thoughts must everywhere abound, Be easy, pleasant, solid, and profound; To these you must surprising touches join, And show us a new wonder in each line; That all, in a just method well-designed, May leave a strong impression in the mind. These are the arts that tragedy maintain: THE EPIC. But the Heroic claims a loftier strain. In the narration of some great design, Invention, art, and fable, all must join: Here fiction must employ its utmost grace; All must assume a body, mind, and face: Each virtue a divinity is seen; Prudence is Pallas, Beauty, Paphos' queen. 'Tis not a cloud from whence swift lightnings fly, But Jupiter, that thunders from the sky; Nor a rough storm that gives the sailor pain, But angry Neptune plowing up the main; Echo's no more an empty airy sound, But a fair nymph that weeps her lover drowned. Thus in the endless treasure of his mind, The poet does a thousand figures find; Around the work his ornaments he pours, And strows with lavish hand his opening flowers. 'Tis not a wonder if a tempest bore The Trojan fleet against the Libyan shore; From faithless fortune this is no surprise, For every day 'tis common to our eyes: But angry Juno, that she might destroy, And overwhelm the rest of ruined Troy; That Æolus, with the fierce goddess joined, Opened the hollow prisons of the wind; Till angry Neptune, looking o'er the main, Rebukes the tempest, calms the waves again, Their vessels from the dangerous quicksands steers. These are the springs that move our hopes and fears: Without these ornaments before our eyes, The unsinewed poem languishes and dies: Your poet in his art will always fail, And tell you but a dull insipid tale. In vain have our mistaken authors tried