ROSCOMMON.

FROM AN ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.

EACH poet with a different talent writes;
One praises, one instructs, another bites.
Horace did ne'er aspire to Epic bays,
Nor lofty Maro stoop to Lyric lays.
Examine how your humour is inclin❜d,
And which the ruling passion of your mind;
Then seek a poet who your way does bend,
And choose an author as you choose a friend.
United by this sympathetic bond,

You grow familiar, intimate, and fond:

Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls agree
No longer his interpreter, but he.

With how much ease is a young Muse betray'd!
How nice the reputation of the maid!
Your early, kind, paternal care appears,
By chaste instruction of her tender years.
The first impression in her infant breast
Will be the deepest, and should be the best.
Let not austerity breed servile fear;
No wanton sound offend her virgin ear.
Secure from foolish pride's affected state,
And spacious flattery's more pernicious bait,
Habitual innocence adorns her thoughts;
But your neglect must answer for her faults.
Immodest words admit of no defence;
For want of decency is want of sense.

What moderate fop would rake the park or stews,
Who among troops of faultless nymphs may choose?
Variety of such is to be found:

Take then a subject proper to expound;

But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice;
For men of sense despise a trivial choice:
And such applause it must expect to meet,
As would some painter busy in a street,
To copy bulls and bears, and every sign
That calls the staring sots to nasty wine.

What I have instanc'd only in the best,
Is, in proportion, true of all the rest.
Take pains the genuine meaning to explore;
There sweat, there strain; tug the laborious oar;
Search every comment that your care can find;
Some here, some there, may hit the poet's mind:
Yet be not blindly guided by the throng:
The multitude is always in the wrong.
When things appear unnatural or hard,
Consult your author, with himself compar'd.

Who knows what blessing Phoebus may bestow,
And future ages to your labour owe?
Such secrets are not easily found out;

But, once discover'd, leave no room for doubt.

I pity, from my soul, unhappy men,
Compell'd by want to prostitute their pen;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead,
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead!
But you, Pompilian, wealthy, pamper'd heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares,
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse,

'Tis very dangerous, tampering with the Muse,
The profit's small, and you have much to lose;
For though true wit adorns your birth or place,
Degenerate lines degrade th' attainted race.
No poet any passion can excite,

But what they feel transport them when they write.
Have you been led through the Cumæan cave,
And heard th' impatient maid divinely rave?
I hear her now; I see her rolling eyes:

And panting, Lo! the God, the God, she cries;

With words not her's, and more than human sound

She makes th' obedient ghosts peep trembling through the ground.

But, though we must obey when heaven commands,
And man in vain the sacred call withstands,
Beware what spirit rages in your breast;
For ten inspir'd, ten thousand are possest.
Thus make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
As when the cheerful hours too freely pass,
And sparkling wine smiles in the tempting glass,
Your pulse advises, and begins to beat
Through every swelling vein a loud retreat:
So when a Muse propitiously invites,
Improve her favours, and indulge her flights;
But when you find that vigorous heat abate,
Leave off, and for another summons wait.
Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp,
Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp,
Appear not meaner than mere human lines,
Compar'd with those whose inspiration shines:
These nervous, bold; those languid and remiss;
There cold salutes; but here a lover's kiss.

to the author of "an incomprehensible Poem."

"Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay,

His anger moral and his wisdom gay."

It is recorded of "the satirist" that when in a passion, his servants were sure to put themselves in his way, knowing that he who had the good fortune to be chid during the wrath of their master, was sure to be rewarded for it, when his naturally kind and amiable temper was restored.

His song "to all ye ladies now on land," is perhaps one of the happiest in the language. It is an easy and graceful piece of gallantry; and although written in the very midst of personal peril, manifests a perfect self-possession and a "heedlesse indifference to danger."

If it be condemned as exhibiting a degree of levity unbecoming the occasion, it should be considered as the production of a young man, naturally gay and careless of consequences, who sees only the chance of honour and the certainty of excitement in the coming conflict. Dr. Johnson contradicts, on the authority of the Earl of Orrery, the generally credited assertion that this poem was composed on the eve before the battle, and states that Dorset had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. "But even this," adds the doctor, "whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage."

To all you ladies now at land,
We men, at sea, indite;

But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write;

The Muses now, and Neptune too,

We must implore to write to you.
With a fa, la, la, la, la.

For though the Muses should

And fill our empty brain;

prove kind,