An EPISTLE to Mr. GARRICK.
HANKS to much industry and pains,
Much twisting of the wit and brains,
Tranflation has unlock'd the store,
And spread abroad the Grecian lore,
While Sophocles his scenes are grown
E'en as familiar as our own.
No more shall Taste presume to speak
From its enclosures in the Greek ;
But, all its fences broken down,
Lie at the mercy of the town.
Critic, I hear thy torrent rage, " 'Tis blafphemy against that stage, "Which Æfchylus his warmth defign'd, "Euripides his taste refin'd,
"And Sophocles his last direction,
"Stamp'd with the fignet of perfection."
Perfection! 'tis but a word ideal, That bears about it nothing real :
For excellence was never hit
In the first effays of man's wit.
Shall ancient worth, or ancient fame
Preclude the Moderns from their claim?
Must they be blockheads, dolts, and fools,
Who write not up to Grecian rules?
Who tread in bufkins or in focks.
Muft they be damn'd as Heterodox,
Nor merit of good works prevail,
Except within the claffic pale?
'Tis stuff that bears the name of knowlege,
Not current half a mile from college;
Where half their lectures yield no more
(Befure I speak of times of yore)
Than just a niggard light, to mark
How much we all are in the dark.
As rushlights, in a spacious room,
Juft burn enough to form a gloom.
When Shakespeare leads the mind a dance,
From France to England, hence to France,
Talk not to me of time and place;
I own I'm happy in the chace.
Whether the drama's here or there,
'Tis nature, Shakespeare, every where.
The poet's fancy can create,
Contract, enlarge, annihilate,
Bring past and prefent close together,
In fpite of distance, feas, or weather;
And shut up in a single action,
What coft whole years in its transaction.
So, ladies at a play, or rout,
Can flirt the universe about,
Whofe geographical account
Is drawn and pictur'd on the mount.
Yet, when they please, contract the plan,
And shut the world up in a fan.
True Genius, like Armida's wand,
Can raise the spring from barren land.
While all the art of Imitation,
Is pilf'ring from the first creation;
Transplanting flowers, with useless toil,
Which wither in a foreign foil.
As confcience often fets us right
By its interior active light,
Without th' affistance of the laws
To combat in the moral cause;
So Genius, of itself difcerning,
Without the mystic rules of learning,
Can, from its present intuition,
Strike at the truth of compofition.
Yet those who breathe the claffic vein,
Enlifted in the mimic train,
Who ride their fteed with double bit,
Ne'er run away with by their wit,
Delighted with the pomp of rules,
The specious pedantry of schools,
(Which rules, like crutches, ne'er became Of any use but to the lame)
Pursue the method fet before 'em ;
Talk much of order, and decorum,
Of probability of fiction,
Of manners, ornament, and diction,
And with a jargon of hard names,
(A privilege which dulnefs claims,
And merely us'd by way of fence,
To keep out plain and common sense)
Extol the wit of antient days,
The fimple fabric of their plays;
Then from the fable, all fo chaste,
Trick'd up in antient-modern taste,
So mighty gentle all the while,
In fuch a sweet descriptive stile,
While Chorus marks the fervile mode
With fine reflection, in an ode,
Present you with a perfect piece,
Form'd on the model of old Greece.
|