How wretched is the fate of those who write! Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite; Where, like Tom Dove[63], they stand the common foe, Lugged by the critic, baited by the beau. Yet, worse, their brother poets damn the play, And roar the loudest, though they never pay. The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry, At every lewd, low character,--That's I. He, who writes letters to himself, would swear, The world forgot him, if he was not there. What should a poet do? 'Tis hard for one } To pleasure all the fools that would be shown; } And yet not two in ten will pass the town. } Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind; More goes to make a fop, than fops can find. Quack Maurus[64], though he never took degrees In either of our universities[65], Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks, Because he played the fool, and writ three books. But if he would be worth a poet's pen, He must be more a fool, and write again: For all the former fustian stuff he wrote Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot; His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe, Is just the proverb, and "As poor as Job." One would have thought he could no longer jog; But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog. There though he crept, yet still he kept in sight; But here he founders in, and sinks downright. Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule, Tobit had first been turned to ridicule; But our bold Briton, without fear or awe, O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha; Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come. But when, if, after all, this godly gear Is not so senseless as it would appear, Our mountebank has laid a deeper train; } His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein, } Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again. } At leisure hours in Epic Song he deals, Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels[66]; Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool and stool. Well, let him go,--'tis yet too early day To get himself a place in farce or play; We know not by what name we should arraign him, For no one category can contain him. A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack, Are load enough to break an ass's back. At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write, } Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite; } One made the Doctor, and one dubbed the Knight.[67] } FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 63: The savage amusement of bear-baiting was much in fashion in England during the seventeenth century. Tom Dove, although equipped with a name not very expressive of his properties, seems to have been a bear of great celebrity. Dryden honours him by another notice in the second Prologue on the Union of the Companies: