FullReads

Each other Satire humbler arts has known,
Content with meaner Beauties, tho’ its own:
Enough for that, if rugged in its course
The Verse but rolls with Vehemence and Force;
Or nicely pointed in th’ Horatian way
Wounds keen, like Syrens mischievously gay.
Here, All has Wit, yet must that Wit be strong,
Beyond the Turns of Epigram, or Song.
The Thought must rise exactly from the vice,
Sudden, yet finish’d, clear, and yet concise.
One Harmony must first with last unite;
As all true Paintings have their Place and Light.
Transitions must be quick, and yet design’d,
Not made to fill, but just retain the mind:
And Similies, like meteors of the night,
Just give one flash of momentary Light.

As thinking makes the Soul, low things exprest
In high-rais’d terms, define a Dunciad best.
Books and the Man demands as much, or more,
Than He who wander’d to the Latian Shore :
For here (eternal Grief to Duns‘s soul,
And B —-‘s thin Ghost!) the Part contains the Whole :
Since in Mock-Epic none succeeds, but he
Who tastes the Whole of Epic Poesy.

The Moral must be clear and understood;
But finer still, if negatively good:
Blaspheming Capaneus obliquely shows
T’ adore those Gods Aeneas fears and knows.
A Fool’s the Heroe ; but the Poet’s end
Is, to be candid, modest, and a Friend.

Let Classic Learning sanctify each Part,
Not only show your Reading, but your Art.

The charms of Parody, like those of Wit,
If well contrasted, never fail to hit;
One half in light, and one in darkness drest,
(For contraries oppos’d still shine the best.)
When a cold Page half breaks the Writer’s heart,
By this it warms, and brightens into Art.
When Rhet’ric glitters with too pompous pride,
By this, like Circe, ’tis un-deify’d.
So Berecynthia, while her off-spring vye
In homage to the Mother of the sky,
(Deck’d in rich robes, of trees, and plants, and flow’rs,
And crown’d illustrious with an hundred tow’rs)
O’er all Parnassus casts her eyes at once,
And sees an hundred Sons– and each a Dunce.

The Language next: from hence new pleasure springs;
For Styles are dignify’d, as well as Things.
Tho’ Sense subsists, distinct from phrase or sound,
Yet Gravity conveys a surer wound.
The chymic secret which your pains wou’d find,
Breaks out, unsought for, in Cervantes’ mind;
And Quixot‘s wildness, like that King’s of old,
Turns all he touches, into Pomp and Gold.
Yet in this Pomp discretion must be had;
Tho’ grave
, not stiff ; tho’ whimsical, not mad :
In Works like these if Fustian might appear,
Mock-Epics, Blackmore, would not cost thee dear.