And mark that point where sense and dul ness meet. Nature to all things fixed the limits fit, And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. As on the land while here the ocean gains, 60 Those rules of old discovered, not devised, Are Nature still, but Nature methodized; Nature, like liberty, is but restrained 90 How far your genius, taste, and learning By the same laws which first herself orgo; dained. 50 Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites, Launch not beyond your depth, but be dis creet, These leave the sense, their learning to display, And those explain the meaning quite away. You, then, whose judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ancient's proper character; His fable, subject, scope in every page; 120 Religion, country, genius of his age: Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring, 126 And trace the Muses upward to their spring. Still with itself compared, his text peruse; And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse. When first young Maro in his boundless mind 130 If, where the rules not far enough extend, (Since rules were made but to promote their end) 150 Some lucky license answer to the full And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, Which without passing through the judgment, gains 154 The heart, and all its end at once attains. Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear, Considered singly, or beheld too near, Which, but proportioned to their light or place, Due distance reconciles to form and grace. A prudent chief not always must display 175 His powers in equal ranks, and fair array, But with the occasion and the place comply, Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 181 The manners, passions, unities, what not? All which, exact to rule, were brought about, Were but a combat in the lists left out. 'What! leave the combat out?' exclaims the knight; Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite. 280 'Not so, by Heaven' (he answers in a rage), 'Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage.' So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. 'Then build a new, or act it in a plain.' Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice, 285 Curious not knowing, not exact but nice, Such labored nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze the unlearned, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, In the next line, it 'whispers through the trees'; li crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep,' The reader's threatened (not in vain) with 'sleep': Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 355 A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line, 360 Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, 366 And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; Eat when loud surges lash the sounding shore, As things seem large which we through mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify. Some foreign writers, some our own despise; 394 |