The Race By Mercurius Spur, Esq [i.e. Cuthbert Shaw]. With notes. By Faustinus Scriblerus. The second edition. With large Additions and Alterations |
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ADDRESS TO THE CRITICS.
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 | The Race |  |
ADDRESS TO THE CRITICS.
The sov'reign arbiters of monthly wit,
Who gnatling-like your stings around dispense,
And feed on excrements of sickly sense;
Ye gentle critics, whom by fancy led,
My Pegasus has kick'd upon the head,
Who, zealous to decry th'injurious strain,
While common sense has bled at ev'ry vein,
Bewilder'd wander on, with ideot-Pride,
Without or Wit or Grammar for your guide,
Behold! again I blot th'invenom'd page,
Come, whet your tiny stings, exhaust your rage:
Let blust'ring K*n***k draw his raven's quill;
My claims to genius let each dunce disown,
And damn all strains more favour'd than their own.
No longer sporting on the rural green,
Rampant breaks forth; now flies the peaceful plains,
And bounds, impetuous, heedless of the reins,
O'er earth's vast surface, madly scours along,
Nor spares a critic gaping in the throng:
Truth rides behind, and prompts the wild career,
And truth, my Guardian, what have I to fear?
Whom yet I love far dearer than the muse,
Teach me myself in ev'ry sense to know,
Proof 'gainst th'injurious shafts of friend or foe.
When smooth tongu'd flatterers my ears assail,
May my firm soul disdain the fulsome tale;
And ah! from pride thy votive bard defend,
Tho' C**n**y smile, or C---d commend:
Unmov'd by squibs from all the scribling throng,
Whom thou proclaim'st the refuse of my song;
Still may I safe between the danger steer,
Of Scylla-flatt'ry, and Charybdis-fear.
Those foes to Genius' (should'st thou grant my claim!)
Those wrecks alike of reason and of fame.
In Justification of the author's severity, the reader is desired to attend to the Critical Review on the first edition of this Poem, where he will find comprised in a very narrow compass, a most wonderful variety of nonsense, both literal and metaphorical; where the Race is ingeniously discovered to be an imitation of Pope's Dunciad—Now the only circumstance, which has the least reference to that poem, is the hero's tumbling into a bog, which is, (as it is there acknowledged) an exact imitation of a passage in Homer', and was designed at the same time as a stroke of raillery on one of the instances where that immortal bard has nodded—This, the set of Gentlemen had not eyes to see, and are therefore excuseable. Dr. South reply'd to a gentleman who remonstrated to him from his bishop, that his sermons were too witty, “Pray present my humble duty to his lordship, and let him consider, if God Almighty had made him a wit he could not help it” these gentlemen certainly can't help their having neither genius nor literature; but blockheads may help commencing critics. F. SCRIBLERUS.
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