University of Virginia Library

REMARKS ON A PAMPHLET ENTITLED EPISTLES TO THE GREAT, FROM ARISTIPPUS IN RETIREMENT

In a Letter to Dr. S---.

Doctor , this new poetic Species
Semel may do, but never decies:
For a Chapelle, or a Chaulieu,
The new-devis'd Conceit may do;
In rambling Rimes La Farre and Gresset,
And easy Diction, may express it;
Or Madam's Muse, Deshoulières,
Improve it farther still than theirs;
But, in the Name of all the Nine,
Will an epistolary Line
In English Verse and English Sense
Admit, to give them both Offence,
The Gaul-bred Insipiditee
Of this new fangl'd Melodee?
Indeed, it won't.—If Gallic Phrase
Can bear with such enervate Lays,
Nor “Pleasure,” nor “Pain-pinion'd Hours”
Can ever suffer them in ours,
Or, “Ivy-crown'd,” endure a Theme
“Silver'd with Moonshine's Maiden Gleam;”
Not tho' so “garlanded,” and “flow'ry,”
So “soft,” so “sweet,” so “Myrtle-bow'ry,”
So “balmy,” “palmy,”—and so on,—
As is the Theme here writ upon;
Writ in a Species that, if taking,
Portends sad future Verse-unmaking.
Brown's “Estimate of Times and Manners,”
That paints Effeminacy's Banners,
Has not a Proof in its Detail
More plain than this, if this prevail.
Forbid it sense, forbid it Rime,
Whether familiar, or sublime;
Whether ye guide the Poet's Hand
To easy Diction or to grand;
Forbid the Gallic Namby-Pamby
Here to repeat its crazy Crambe!
One Instance of such special Stuff,
To see the Way on't, is enough,—
Excus'd for once; if Aristippus
Has any more within his Cippus,
Let him suppress, or sing 'em, He,
With “gentle Muse, sweet Euterpee;”
Free to salute her, while they chirp,
For easier Riming “sweet Euterp.”
It is allow'd, that Verse, to please,
Should move along with perfect Ease;
But this coxcombically mingling
Of Rimes unriming, interjingling,
For Numbers genuinely British,
Is quite too finical and skittish,
But for the masculiner Belles,
And the polite He Me'moiselles;
Whom “Dryads,” “Naiads,” “Nymphs,” and “Fauns,”
“Meads,” “Woods,” and “Groves,” and “Lakes,” and “Lawns,”
And “Loves,” and “Doves,”—and fifty more
Such jaded Terms, besprinkl'd o'er
With compound Epithets uncouth,
Prompt to pronounce 'em Verse, forsooth!
Verse let 'em be; tho', I suppose,
Some Verse as well might have been Prose,
That “England's common Courtesy
Politely calls good Poetry.”
For, if the Poetry be good,
Accent at least is understood:
Number of Syllables alone,
Without the proper Stress of Tone,
Will make our Metre flat and bare,
As Hebrew Verse of Bishop Hare.
Add, that Regard to Rime is gone,
And Verse and Prose will be all one;
Or, what is worse, create a Pother,
By Species neither one nor t'other;
A Case, which there is Room to fear
From Dupes of Aristippus here.
The fancied Sage, in feign'd Retreat,
Laughs at the Follies of the Great,
With Wit, Invention, Fancy, Humour
Enough to gain the Thing a Rumour.
But if he writes, resolv'd to shine
In unconfin'd and motley Line,
Let him pindaric it away,
And quit the lazy labour'd Lay;
Leave to La Farre, and to La France,
The warbling, soothing Nonchalance!—
When will our Bards unlearn, at last,
The puny Stile, and the Bombast;
Nor let the pitiful Extremes
Disgrace the Verse of English Themes;
Matter no more in Manner paint
Foppish, affected, queer, and quaint;
Nor bounce above Parnassian Ground,
To drop the Sense, and catch the Sound,—
Except in writing for the Stage,
Where Sound is best for buskin'd Rage;
Except in Operas, where Sense
Is but superfluous Expense?
Be then the Bards of sounding Pitch
Consign'd to Garrick and to Rich;
To Tweedledums and Tweedledees
The singy-songing “Euterpees!”