Analysis of Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book

Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
      (Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
     While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
    The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
    Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
    At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
    How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
    An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
        Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
    And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
    After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,
   The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
   Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
   Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
   Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find
   Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
   All human virtue, to its latest breath
   Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death.
   The great Alcides, ev'ry labour past,
   Had still this monster to subdue at last.
   Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray
   Each star of meaner merit fades away!
   Oppress'd we feel the beam directly beat,
   Those suns of glory please not till they set.

To thee the world its present homage pays,
   The harvest early, but mature the praise:
   Great friend of liberty! in  kings a name
   Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:
   Whose word is truth, as sacred and rever'd,
   As Heav'n's own oracles from altars heard.
   Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes
   None e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.

Just in one instance, be it yet confest
   Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:
   Foes to all living worth except your own,
   And advocates for folly dead and gone.
   Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
   It is the rust we value, not the gold.
   Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
   And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:
   One likes no language but the  Faery Queen ;
   A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:
   And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
   He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.

Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
   Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
   In ev'ry public virtue we excel:
   We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
   And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
   Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.

If time improve our wit as well as wine,
   Say at what age a poet grows divine?
   Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,
   Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago?
   End all dispute; and fix the year precise
   When British bards begin t'immortalize?

"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
   I hold that wit a classic, good in law."

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
   And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,
   Or damn to all eternity at once,
    At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
   By courtesy of England, he may do."

Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,
   I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
   And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
   While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
   And estimating authors by the year,
   Bestow a garland only on a bier.

Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill
   Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
   For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
   And grew immortal in his own despite.
   Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd to heed
   The life to come, in ev'ry poet's creed.
   Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
   His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
   Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,
   But still I love the language of his heart.

"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!
   What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?
   In all debates where critics bear a part,
   Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,
   Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;
   How Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ;
   How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;
   But, for the passions, Southerne sure and Rowe.
   These, only these, support the crowded stage,
   From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age."

All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
   It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
   To  Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
   And yet deny the  Careless Husband praise,
   Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
   Why then, I say, the public is a fool.
   But let them own, that greater faults