If some Drawcansir [14] you aspire to draw, Present him raving, and above all law: If female furies in your scheme are planned, Macbeth's fierce dame is ready to your hand; For tears and treachery, for good and evil, Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil! But if a new design you dare essay, And freely wander from the beaten way, 180 True to your characters, till all be past, Preserve consistency from first to last. Tis hard [15] to venture where our betters fail, [xxx] Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale; And yet, perchance,'tis wiser to prefer A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err; Yet copy not too closely, but record, More justly, thought for thought than word for word; Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways, But only follow where he merits praise. 190 For you, young Bard! whom luckless fate may lead [16] To tremble on the nod of all who read, Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls, [xxxi] Beware--for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles! "Awake a louder and a loftier strain," [17]-- And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?-- He sinks to Southey's level in a trice, Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice! Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire The tempered warblings of his master-lyre; 200 Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute, "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit" He speaks, but, as his subject swells along, Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song."[xxxii] Still to the "midst of things" he hastens on, As if we witnessed all already done; [xxxiii] Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean To raise the subject, or adorn the scene; Gives, as each page improves upon the sight, Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness--light; 210 And truth and fiction with such art compounds, We know not where to fix their several bounds. If you would please the Public, deign to hear What soothes the many-headed monster's ear: [xxxiv] If your heart triumph when the hands of all Applaud in thunder at the curtain's fall, Deserve those plaudits--study Nature's page, And sketch the striking traits of every age; While varying Man and varying years unfold Life's little tale, so oft, so vainly told; 220 Observe his simple childhood's dawning days, His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays: Till time at length the mannish tyro weans, And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens! [xxxv]