Selected Poems Read Online Free PDF Page B

attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive. An author’s works are public property: he who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors I have endeavoured to commemorate may do by me as I have done by them. I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings, than in mending their own. But my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better.
    As the poem has met with far more success than I expected, I have endeavoured in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusal.
    In the first edition of this satire, published anonymously, fourteen lines on the subject of Bowles’s Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend ofmine, 1 who has now in the press a volume of poetry. In the present edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead; my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner, – a determination not to publish with my name any production, which was not entirely and exclusively my own composition.
    With regard to the real talents of many of the poetical persons whose performances are mentioned or alluded to in the following pages, it is presumed by the author that there can be little difference of opinion in the public at large; though, like other sectaries, each has his separate tabernacle of proselytes, by whom his abilities are over-rated, his faults overlooked, and his metrical canons received without scruple and without consideration. But the unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. No one can wish more than the author that some known and able writer had undertaken their exposure; but Mr Gifford has devoted himself to Massinger, and, in the absence of the regular physician, a country practitioner may, in cases of absolute necessity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided there be no quackery in his treatment of the malady. A caustic is here offered; as it is to be feared nothing short of actual cautery can recover the numerous patients afflicted with the present prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming. – As to the Edinburgh Reviewers, it would indeed require an Hercules to crush the Hydra; but if the author succeeds in merely ‘bruising one of the heads of the serpent,’ though his own hand should suffer in the encounter, he will be amply satisfied.
Still must I hear? 1 – shall hoarse Fitzgerald 2 bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall, 3
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch reviews
Should dub me scribbler and denounce my muse?
5
Prepare for rhyme – I’ll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
Oh! nature’s noblest gift – my grey goose-quill!
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
10
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen! foredoom’d to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labour, big with verse or prose,
Though nymphs forsake, and critics may deride,
The lover’s solace, and the author’s pride.
15
What wits! what poets dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemn’d at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which ’twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen!
20
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamlet’s shall be free;
Though spurn’d by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No eastern vision, no distemper’d dream 4
25
Inspires – our path, though full of thorns, is plain;
Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain.
When Vice triumphant