Alexander Pope 16881744
from The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer
Wives
If poor (you say) she drains her husband's purse; If rich, she keeps her priest, or something worse; If highly born, intolerably vain; Vapours and pride by turns possess her brain; Now gaily mad, now sourly splenetick, Freakish when well, and fretful when she's sick.
If fair, then chaste she cannot long abide, By pressing youth attacked on ev'ry side. If foul, her wealth the lusty lover lures, Or else her wit some fool-gallant procures, Or else she dances with becoming grace, Or shape excuses the defects of face. There swims no goose so gray, but, soon or late, She finds some honest gander for her mate.
Horses (thou say'st), and asses, men may try, And ring suspected vessels ere they buy, But wives, a random choice, untried they take; They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake. Then, nor till then, the veil's removed away, And all the woman glares in open day.
from The Rape of the Lock Hampton Court
Close by those meads for ever crowned with flow'rs, Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, There stands a structure of majestic frame, Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home; Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, To taste awhile the pleasures of a court; In various talk th'instructive hours they passed, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last: One speaks the glory of the British Queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At ev'ry word a reputation dies. Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
Meanwhile declining from the noon of day, The Sun obliquely shoots his burning ray; The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine; The merchant from th'Exchange returns in peace, And the long labours of the toilette cease.
from An Essay on Criticism (i)
Plain Fools
Some are bewildered in the maze of Schools,
And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools.
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side:
If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite,
There are, who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets passed, Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last; Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile; Unfinished things one knows not what to call, Their generation's so equivocal: To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require, Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.
The Servile Herd
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dullness joins with quality, A constant critic at the Great Man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me?
But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! How the style refines! Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
The vulgar thus through imitation err; As oft the learned by being singular; So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong; So schismatics the plain believers quit, And are but damned for having too much wit.
Some praise at morning what they blame at night; But always think the last opinion right. A Muse by these is like a mistress used, This hour she's idolized, the next abused, While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, 'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
The Bookful Blockhead
Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandoned critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails, From Dryden's fables down to Durfey's tales, With him, most authors steal their works, or buy; Garth did not write his own Dispensary. Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, Nay showed his faults—but when would poets mend? No place so sacred from such fops is barred, Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard: Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead; For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
(St.) Paul's Churchyard] traditional centre of the London trade in books from An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
Atticus
The bard whom pilf'red pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year: He, who still wanting though he lives on theft, Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left: And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad: All these my modest satire bad translate, And owned that nine such poets made a Tate. How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe! And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise. Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he!
Atticus] Addison 168
(ii) The Patron
Proud, as Apollo on his forked hill, Sate full-blown Bufo, puffed by ev'ry quill; Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song. His library (where busts of poets dead And a true Pindar stood without a head) Received of wits an undistinguished race, Who first his judgment asked, and then a place: Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat, And flattered ev'ry day, and some days eat: Till grown more frugal in his riper days, He paid some bards with port, and some with praise, To some a dry rehearsal was assigned, And others (harder still) he paid in kind. Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, Dryden alone escaped this judging eye: But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.
Sporus
Let Sporus tremble—'What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk? Satire or sense alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?' Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys, So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
(iii) Sporus] Lord Hervey
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart!
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have expressed,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
from Epistle to a Lady: Of the Characters of Women
Cloe
'Yet Cloe sure was formed without a spot—' Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. 'With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part, Say, what can Cloe want?'—she wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But never, never, reached one gen'rous thought. Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, Content to dwell in decencies for ever. So very reasonable, so unmoved, As never yet to love, or to be loved. She, while her lover pants upon her breast, Can mark the figures on an Indian chest; And when she sees her friend in deep despair, Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair. Forbid it Heav'n, a favour or a debt She e'er should cancel—but she may forget. Safe is your secret still in Cloe's ear; But none of Cloe's shall you ever hear.
Of all her dears she never slandered one, But cares not if a thousand are undone. Would Cloe know if you're alive or dead? She bids her footman put it in her head. Cloe is prudent—would you too be wise?
Then never break your heart when Cloe dies. («)
The Ghosts of Beauty
Men, some to bus'ness, some to pleasure take; But ev'ry woman is at heart a rake: Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; But ev'ry lady would be queen for life.
Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens! Pow'r all their end, but beauty all the means. In youth they conquer, with so wild a rage, As leaves them scarce a subject in their age: For foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam; No thought of peace or happiness at home. But wisdom's triumph is well-timed retreat, As hard a science to the Fair as Great! Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown, Yet hate to rest, and dread to be alone, Worn out in public, weary ev'ry eye, Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die.
Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue, Still out of reach, yet never out of view, Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most, To covet flying, and regret when lost: At last, to follies youth could scarce defend, 'Tis half their age's prudence to pretend; Ashamed to own they gave delight before, Reduce to feign it, when they give no more: As hags hold sabbaths, less for joy than spite, So these their merry, miserable night; Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide, And haunt the places where their honour died.
(ii) night] night-time party
See how the world its veterans rewards! A youth of frolics, an old age of cards, Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, Youth without lovers, old without a friend, A fop their passion, but their prize a sot, Alive, ridiculous, and dead, forgot!
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