_How widely different, Goldsmith, are the ways
Of doctors now, and those of ancient days!
Theirs taught the truth in academic shades,
Ours haunt lewd hops, and midnight masquerades!
So chang'd the times! say philosophic sage,
Whose genius suits so well this tasteful age,
Is the Pantheon, late a sink obscene,
Become the fountain of chaste Hippocrene?
Or do thy moral numbers quaintly flow
Inspir'd by th' Aganippe of Soho?_
For who like him will patch and pilfer plays,
Yielding to me the profit and the praise?
Tho' cheap in French translations MURPHY deals;
For cheap he well may vend the goods he steals;
Tho' modest CRADDOC scorns to sell his play,
But gives the good-for-nothing thing away;
What tho' the courtly CUMBERLAND succeeds
In writing stuff no man of letters reads;
Tho' sense and language are expell'd the stage;
For nonsense pleases best a senseless age;
What tho' the author of the New Bath Guide
Up to the skies my talents late hath cried;[19]