Like him unnoticed, I, and such as I,

Spread little wings, and rather skip than fly:
Perched on the meager produce of the land,
An ell or two of prospect we command;
But never peep beyond the thorny bound,
Or oaken fence that hems the paddock round.
In Eden, ere yet innocence of heart

Had faded, poetry was not an art;
Language, above all teaching, or if taught
Only by gratitude and glowing thought,
Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As ecstacy, unmanacled by form,

Not prompted as in our degenerate days,
By low ambition and the thirst of praise,
Was natural as is the flowing stream,

And yet magnificent-A God the theme;

That theme on earth exhausted, though above

'Tis found as everlasting as his love,

Man lavished all his thoughts on human things

The feats of heroes, and the wrath of kings:

But still, while virtue kindled his delight,

The song was moral, and so far was right.

'Twas thus till luxury seduced the mind To joys less innocent, as less refined;

Then genius danced a bacchanal; he crowned The brimming goblet, seized the thyrsus, bound His brows with ivy, rushed into the field

Of wild imagination, and there reeled,

The victim of his own lascivious fires,

And dizzy with delight, profaned the sacred

wires.

Anacreon, Horace played in Greece and Rome

This bedlam part; and others nearer home.

When Cromwell fought for power, and while he

reigned

The proud protector of the power he gained,

Religion harsh, intolerant, austere,

Parent of manners like herself severe,

Drew a rough copy of the Christian face

Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace;

The dark and sullen humour of the time

Judged every effort of the muse a crime;

Verse, in the finest mould of fancy cast,

Was lumber in an age so void of taste;

But, when the second Charles assumed the
And arts revived beneath a softer day,

Then, like a bow long forced into a curve,

sway,

The mind, released from too constrained a nerve,
Flew to its first position with a spring,

That made the vaulted roofs of pleasure ring.
His court, the dissolute and hateful school

Of wantonness, where vice was taught by rule,
Swarmed with a scribbling herd, as deep inlaid
With brutal lust as ever Circe made.

From these a long succession, in the

rage

Of rank obscenity, debauched their age;
Nor ceased, till, ever anxious to redress
The abuses of her sacred charge, the press,
The muse instructed a well nurtured train

Of abler votaries to cleanse the stain,

And claim the palm for purity of song,

That lewdness had usurped and worn so long.

Then decent pleasantry and sterling sense,

That neither gave nor would endure offence, Whipped out of sight, with satire just and keen, The puppy pack that had defiled the scene.

In front of these came Addison.

Humour in holiday and sightly trim,
Sublimity and attic taste, combined,

In him

To polish, furnish, and delight, the mind.
Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,

In verse well disciplined, complete, compact,
Gave virtue and morality a grace,

That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face,
Levied a tax of wonder and applause,

Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.
But he (his musical finesse was such,

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)

Made poetry a mere mechanic art;

And every warbler has his tune by heart.

Nature imparting her satiric gift,

Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift,
With droll sobriety they raised a smile
At folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while.
That constellation set, the world in vain

Must hope to look upon their like again.

A. Are we then left-B. Not wholly in the dark; Wit now and then struck smartly shows a spark, Sufficient to redeem the modern race

From total night and absolute disgrace.
While servile trick and imitative knack

Confine the million in the beaten track,
Perhaps some courser who disdains the road,
Snuffs up the wind, and flings himself abroad.
Contemporaries all surpassed, see one;

Short his career, indeed, but ably run;
Churchill, himself unconscious of his powers,
In penury consumed his idle hours;

And, like a scattered seed at random sown,

Was left to spring by vigour of his own.