The Poetical Works of Robert Lloyd :: :: University of Virginia Library

Let not your verse, as verse now goes,
Be a strange kind of measur'd prose;
Nor let your prose, which sure is worse,
Want nought but measure to be verse.
Write from your own imagination,
Nor curb your Muse by Imitation:
For copies shew, howe'er exprest,
A barren genius at the best.
—But Imitation's all the mode—
Yet where one hits, ten miss the road.

The mimic bard with pleasure sees
Mat. Prior's unaffected ease:

105

Assumes his style, affects a story,
Sets every circumstance before ye,
The day, the hour, the name, the dwelling,
And mars a curious tale in telling:
Observes how easy Prior flows,
Then runs his numbers down to prose.

Others have sought the filthy stews
To sind a dirty slip-shod Muse.
Their groping genius, while it rakes
The bogs, the common-sew'rs, and jakes,
Ordure and filth in rhyme exposes,
Disgustful to our eyes and noses;
With many a dash—that must offend us,
And much[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]Hiatus non deflendus.
O Swift! how wouldst thou blush to see,
Such are the bards who copy Thee?

This Milton for his plan will chuse:
Wherein resembling Milton's Muse?
Milton, like thunder, rolls along
In all the majesty of song;
While his low mimics meanly creep,
Not quite awake, nor quite asleep:

108

Some few, my friend, have sweetly trod
In Imitation's dang'rous road.
Long as Tobacco's mild perfume
Shall scent each happy curate's room,
Oft as in elbow-chair he smokes,
And quaffs his ale, and cracks his jokes,
So long, O Brown, shall last thy praise,
Crown'd with Tobacco-leaf for bays;
And whosoe'er thy verse shall see,
Shall fill another Pipe to thee.

Isaac Hawkins Brown, Esq. author of a piece call'd the Pipe of Tobacco, a most excellent imitation of six different authors.