A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL AND Progress of APPENDIX A (A SHORT HISTORY OF CRITICISM, BY THE . 313 315 317 THESE Miscellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim, from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before some of them were yet in being. The rest are derived from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in Poetry, and 5 the candour of your nature, easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, though these are your equitable claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your par- 10 ticular liking of my verses. 'Tis a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own productions; and 'tis better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? why am 15 I grown old, in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. No Government has 5 ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are only changed, but the same jugglings in State, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement, will remain for ever. Blood and money 10 will be lavished in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces, with old consciences. There is too often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they see not those whom they raise in the same colours with other men. All whom they affect look golden to them, when the 15 gilding is only in their own distempered sight. These considerations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have risen by unworthy ways. I am not ashamed to be little, when I see them so infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet should 20 be dishonourable to me, if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do anything that shall dishonour it. The notions of morality are known to all men ; none can pretend ignorance of those ideas which are inborn in mankind; and if I see one thing, and practise 25 the contrary, I must be disingenuous not to acknowledge a clear truth, and base to act against the light of my own conscience. For the reputation of my honesty, no man can question it, who has any of his own; for that of my poetry, it shall either stand by its own 30 merit, or fall for want of it. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, as the best poet and the best patron said, When in the full perfection of decay, Turn vinegar, and come again in play. 35 Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of |