When Dryden, worn with sickness, bowed with years,
Was doomed (my friend, let pity warm thy tears,)
The galling pang of penury to feel,
For ill-placed loyalty, and courtly zeal;
To see that laurel which his brows o’erspread,
Transplanted droop on Shadwell’s barren head,
The bard oppressed, yet not subdued by fate,
For very bread descended to translate;
And he, whose fancy, copious as his phrase,
Could light at will expression’s brightest blaze,
On Fresnoy’s lay employed his studious hour;
But niggard there of that melodious power,
His pen in haste the hireling task to close,
Transformed the studied strain to careless prose,
Which, fondly lending faith to French pretence,
Mistook its meaning, or obscured its sense.
Yet still he pleased, for Dryden still must please,
Whether with artless elegance and ease
He glides in prose, or from its tinkling chime, }
By varied pauses, purifies his rhyme, }
And mounts on Maro’s plumes, and soars his heights sublime. }
This artless elegance, this native fire,
Provoked his tuneful heir to strike the lyre,
Who, proud his numbers with that prose to join,
Wove an illustrious wreath for friendship’s shrine.
How oft, on that fair shrine when poets bind
The flowers of song, does partial passion blind
Their judgment’s eye! How oft does truth disclaim
The deed, and scorn to call it genuine fame!
How did she here, when Jervas was the theme,
Waft through the ivory gate the poet’s dream!
How view, indignant, error’s base alloy
The sterling lustre of his praise destroy,
Which now, if praise like his my muse could coin,
Current through ages, she would stamp for thine!
Let friendship, as she caused, excuse the deed;
With thee, and such as thee, she must succeed.
But what if fashion tempted Pope astray?
The witch has spells, and Jervas knew a day,
When mode-struck belles and beaux were proud to come,
And buy of him a thousand years of bloom.
Even then I deem it but a venal crime;
Perish alone that selfish sordid rhyme,
Which flatters lawless sway, or tinsel pride;
Let black oblivion plunge it in her tide.
From fate like this my truth-supported lays,
Even if aspiring to thy pencil’s praise,
Would flow secure; but humbler aims are mine;
Know, when to thee I consecrate the line,
’Tis but to thank thy genius for the ray,
Which pours on Fresnoy’s rules a fuller day;
Those candid strictures, those reflections new,
Refined by taste, yet still as nature true,
Which, blended here with his instructive strains,
Shall bid thy art inherit new domains;
Give her in Albion as in Greece to rule,
And guide (what thou hast formed) a British school.
And O, if aught thy poet can pretend
Beyond his favourite wish to call thee friend,
Be it that here his tuneful toil has drest
The muse of Fresnoy in a modern vest;
And, with what skill his fancy could bestow,
Taught the close folds to take an easier flow;
Be it, that here thy partial smile approved,
The pains he lavished on the art he loved.