To ****: About to Publish a Volume of Miscellanies

Since now, all scruples cast away,
Your works are rising into day,
Forgive, though I presume to send
This honest counsel of a friend.

Let not your verse, as verse now goes,
Be a strange kind of measur'd prose;
Nor let your prose, which sure is worse,
Want nought but measure to be verse.
Write from your own imagination,
Nor curb your Muse by Imitation:
For copies shew, howe'er exprest,
A barren genius at the best.
—But Imitation's all the mode—
Yet where one hits, ten miss the road.

The mimic bard with pleasure sees
Mat. Prior's unaffected ease:
Assumes his style, affects a story,
Sets every circumstance before ye,
The day, the hour, the name, the dwelling,
And mars a curious tale in telling:
Observes how easy Prior flows,
Then runs his numbers down to prose.

Others have sought the filthy stews
To find a dirty slip-shod Muse.
Their groping genius, while it rakes
The bogs, the common-few'rs, and jakes,
Ordure and filth in rhyme exposes,
Disgustful to our eyes and noses;
With many a dash—that must offend us,
And much* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * Hiatus non deflendus.
O Swift! how wouldst thou blush to see,
Such are the bards who copy Thee?

This Milton for his plan will chuse:
Wherein resembling Milton's Muse?
Milton, like thunder, rolls along
In all the majesty of song;
While his low mimics meanly creep,
Not quite awake, nor quite asleep:
Or, if their thunder chance to roll,
'Tis thunder of the mustard bowl.
The stiff expression, phrases strange,
The epithet's preposterous change,
Forc'd numbers, rough and unpolite,
Such as the judging ear affright,
Stop in mid verse. Ye mimics vile!
Is't thus ye copy Milton's style?
His faults religiously you trace,
But borrow not a single grace.

How few, (say, whence can it proceed?)
Who copy Milton, e'er succeed!
But all their labours are in vain:
And wherefore so?—The reason's plain.
Take it for granted, 'tis by those
Milton's the model mostly chose,
Who can't write verse, and won't write prose.

Others, who aim at fancy, chuse
To wooe the gentle Spenser's Muse.
This poet fixes for his theme
An allegory, or a dream;
Fiction and truth together joins
Through a long waste of flimsy lines;
Fondly believes his fancy glows,
And image upon image grows;
Thinks his strong Muse takes wond'rous flights,
Whene'er she sings of peerless wights,
Of dens, of palfreys, spells and knights:
'Till allegory, Spenser's veil
T' instruct and please in moral tale,
With him's no veil the truth to shroud,
But one impenetrable cloud.

Others, more daring, fix their hope
On rivaling the fame of Pope.
Satyr's the word, against the times—
These catch the cadence of his rhymes,
And borne from earth by Pope's strong wings,
Their Muse aspires, and boldly flings
Her dirt up in the face of kings.
In these the spleen of Pope we find;
But where the greatness of his mind?
His numbers are their whole pretence,
Mere strangers to his manly sense.

Some few, the sav'rites of the Muse,
Whom with her kindest eye she views;
Round whom Apollo's brightest rays
Shine forth with undiminish'd blaze;
Some few, my friend, have sweetly trod
In Imitation's dangerous road.
Long as Tobacco's mild perfume
Shall scent each happy curate's room,
Oft as in elbow-chair he smokes,
And quaffs his ale, and cracks his jokes,
So long, O Brown, shall last thy praise,
Crown'd with Tobacco-leaf for bays;
And whosoe'er thy verse shall see,
Shall fill another Pipe to thee.