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"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 essays 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 buskins or in focks.
Must 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 fpeak of times of yore)

Than just a niggard light, to mark
How much we all are in the dark.

As

As rushlights, in a spacious room,
Just 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 paft and present close together,
In spite 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 pleafe, contract the plan,
And shut the world up in a fan.

True

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' affiftance of the laws
To combat in the moral caufe;
So Genius, of itself difcerning,
Without the myftic rules of learning,
Can, from its present intuition,
Strike at the truth of composition.

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 dulness 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,

Prefent you with a perfect piece,

Form'd on the model of old Greece.

Come,

Come, pr'ythee Critic, fet before us,
The use and office of a chorus.

What! filent! why then, I'll produce
Its fervices from antient use.

'Tis to be ever on the stage,
Attendants upon grief or rage,
To be an arrant go-between,
Chief-mourner at each difmal fcene;
Shewing its forrow, or delight,

By shifting dances, left and right,

Not much unlike our modern notions,

Adagio or Allegro motions;

To watch upon the deep distress,
And plaints of royal wretchedness;

And when, with tears, and execration,
They've pour'd out all their lamentation,
And wept whole cataracts from their eyes,
To call on rivers for fupplies,

And with their Hais, and Hees, and Hoes,
To make a symphony of woes.

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