Was doom'd (my friend, let pity warm thy tears,) For ill-placed loyalty, and courtly zeal, And he, whose fancy, copious as his phrase, Yet still he pleas'd, for Dryden still must please, Whether with artless elegance and ease He glides in prose, or from its tinckling chime, By varied pauses, purifies his rhyme, And mounts on Maro's plumes, and soars his heights sublime. This artless elegance, this native fire Provok'd his tuneful heir to strike the lyre, Who, proud his numbers with that prose to join, Wove an illustrious wreath for friendship's shrine. How oft, on that fair shrine when Poets bind The flowers of song, does partial passion blind Their judgement's eye! How oft does truth disclaim The deed, and scorn to call it genuine fame! * Mr. Pope, in his Epistle to Jervas, has these lines : Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire How did she here, when Jervas was the theme, Current through ages, she would stamp for thine! Let friendship, as she caus'd, excuse the deed; With thee, and such as thee, she must succeed. But what, if fashion tempted Pope astray? The witch has spells, and Jervas knew a day When mode-struck Belles and Beaux were proud to come And buy of him a thousand years of bloom*. Ev'n then I deem it but a venal crime: " Perish alone that selfish sordid rhyme, Which flatters lawless sway, or tinsel pride; Let black Oblivion plunge it in her tide. * Alluding to another couplet in the same Epistle : Beauty, frail flower, that every season fears, Blooms in thy colours for a thousand year, |