The greater portion of the rhyming tribe (Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)Īre led astray by some peculiar lure. In fine, to whatsoever you aspire, Let it at least be simple and entire. You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine - But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign You plan a vase-it dwindles to a pot Then glide down Grub-street-fasting and forgot: Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review, Whose wit is never troublesome till-true. A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends (Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends And nonsense in a lofty note goes down, As Pertness passes with a legal gown: Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain: The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls, King's Coll-Cam's stream-stained windows, and old walls: Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames. Poets and painters, as all artists know, May shoot a little with a lengthened bow We claim this mutual mercy for our task, And grant in turn the pardon which we ask But make not monsters spring from gentle dams- Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs. Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams, Displays a crowd of figures incomplete, Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.
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