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I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, even in them, seem faults
Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply.
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. [180]

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,
Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage, [183]
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See, from each clime the learned their incense bring;
Hear, in all tongues consenting Paeans ring!
In praise so just let every voice be joined,
And fill the general chorus of mankind.
Hail! bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honors with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, [193]
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That, on weak wings, from far pursues your flights,
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes),
To teach vain wits a science little known,
To admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

* * * * *

PART II.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride where wit fails steps in to our defense,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know,
Make use of every friend–and every foe.

A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring [216]
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Tired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take nor see the lengths behind
But more advanced behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales and seem to tread the sky,
The eternal snows appear already passed
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last.
But those attained we tremble to survey
The growing labors of the lengthened way
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills and Alps on Alps arise!

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ
Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves and rapture warms the mind,
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight
The generous pleasure to be charmed with wit
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold and regularly low
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;
We cannot blame indeed–but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts,
‘Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus, when we view some well proportioned dome
(The worlds just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!), [248]
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to the admiring eyes;
No monstrous height or breadth, or length, appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular.