Judicious Rymer oft review,

Wife Dennis, and profound Boffu.
Read all the prefaces of Dryden,

For these our critics much confide in,
(Though merely writ, at first, for filling,
To raise the volume's price a fhilling).
A forward critic often dupes us
With fham quotations, peri hupfous:
And, if we have not read Longinus,
Will magifterially out-fhine us.

Then, left with Greek he over-run ye,
Procure the book for love or money,
Tranflated from Boileau's translation,
And quote quotation on quotation.
At Will's you hear a poem read,
Where Battus, from the table-head,
Reclining on his elbow-chair,
Gives judgement with decifive air;
To whom the tribe of circling wits,
As to an oracle, fubmits.

He gives directions to the town
Το cry it up, or run it down;
Like courtiers, when they fend a note,
Inftructing members how to vote.
He fets the ftamp of bad and good,
Though not a word be understood.
Your leffon learnt, you'll be fecure
To get the name of connoiffeur:
And, when your merits once are known,
Procure difciples of your own.

For

For poets (you can never want 'em)
Spread through* Augusta Trinobantum,
Computing by their pecks of coals,
Amount to juft nine thousand fouls:
Thefe o'er their proper diftri&ts govern,
Of wit and humour judges fov'reign.
In ev'ry street a city-bard

Rules, like an alderman, his ward;
His indifputed rights extend

Through all the lane, from end to end;
The neighbours round admire his fhrewdnefs
For fongs of loyalty and lewdness;
Out-done by none in rhiming well,
Although he never learnt to spell.
Two bordering wits contend for glory,
And one is Whig, and one is Tory:
And this for epics claims the bays,
And that for elegiac lays :

Some fam'd for numbers soft and smooth,

By lovers spoke in Punch's booth:
And fome as juftly fame extols
For lofty lines in Smithfield drolls.
Bavius in Wapping gains renown,
And Mævius reigns o'er Kentifh-town:
Tigellius, plac'd in Phoebus' car,
From Ludgate fhines to Temple-bar:
Harmonious Cibber entertains

The court, with annual birth-day strains;

*The ancient name of London.

Whence

Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face;
Where Y-
-g muft torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lofe his penfion.
But these are not a thousandth part
Of jobbers in the poet's art,
Attending each his proper ftation,
And all in due fubordination,
Through ev'ry alley to be found,
In garrets high, or under ground;
And when they join their pericranies,
Out skips a book of mifcellanies.
Hobbes clearly proves, that ev'ry creature
Lives in a state of war, by nature.
The greater for the fmalleft watch,
But meddle feldom with their match.
A whale, of mod'rate fize, will draw
A fhoal of herrings down his maw.
A fox with geese his belly crams,
A wolf destroys a thousand lambs.
But, fearch among the rhiming race,
The brave are worried by the base.
If on Parnaffus' top you fit,
You rarely bite, are always bit.
Each poet of inferior fize

On you shall rail and criticife;
And ftrive to tear you limb from limb,
While others do as much for him.
The vermin only teaze and pinch

Their foes fuperior by an inch.

Se,

So, natʼralifts obferve, a flea

Hath fmaller fleas that on him prey,

And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And fo proceed ad infinitum.

Thus ev'ry poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind;
Who, though too little to be feen,
Can teafe, and gall, and give the spleen;
Call dunces fools, and fons of whores,
Lay Grub-street at each other's doors;
Extol the Greek and Roman mafters,
And curfe our modern poetafters.
Complain, as many an ancient bard did,
How genius is no more rewarded;
How wrong a taste prevails among us;
How much our ancestors out-fung us;
Can perfonate an aukward fcorn
For those who are not poets born;
And all their brother dunces lash,
Who croud the prefs with hourly trash.
Oh Grub-street! how do I bemoan thee,
Whofe graceless children scorn to own thee!
Their filial piety forgot,

Deny their country, like a Scot;

Though, by their idiom and grimace,
They foon betray their native place:
Yet thou haft greater cause to be
Asham'd of them, than they of thee,
Degenerate from their ancient brood,
Since first the court allow'd them food.

Remains

Remains a difficulty ftill,

To purchase fame by writing ill ?
From Flecknoe down to Howard's time,
How few have reach'd the low fublime?
For, when our high-born Howard died,
Blackmore, alone, his place fupplied:
And left a chafm fhould intervene,

When death had finish'd Blackmore's reign,
The leaden crown devolv'd to thee,
Great *

poet of the Hollow-tree.

But ah! how unfecure thy throne!
A thousand bards thy right difown :
They plot to turn, in factious zeal,
Duncinea to a common-weal;
And, with rebellious arms, pretend,
An equal priv❜lege to defcend.

In bulk there are not more degrees,
From elephants to mites in cheese,
Than what a curicus eye may trace,
In creatures of the rhiming race.
From bad to worfe, and worse they fall;
But who can reach the worst of all?

For though, in nature, depth and height
Are equally held infinite,

In poetry the height we know;

'Tis only infinite below.

For inftance when you rafhly think,

No rhimer can like Welfted fink,

* Lord Grimstone, author of a play called Love in an Hollow Tree,

His