Goldsmith to the Author

You're in love with the Muses? Well, grant it be true,
When, good Sir, were the Muses enamour'd of you?
Read first--if my lectures your fancy delight--
Your taste is diseased, can your cure be to write?

You suppose you're a genius, that ought to engage
The attention of wits and the smiles of the age:
Would the wits of the age their opinion make known,
Why--every man thinks just the same of his own.

You imagine that Pope--but yourself you beguile--
Would have wrote the same things, had he chose the same style.
Delude not yourself with so fruitless a hope--
Had he chose the same style, he had never been Pope.

You think of my muse with a friendly regard,
And rejoice in her author's esteem and reward:
But let not his glory your spirits elate,
When pleased with his honours, remember his fate.