Delighted little, though it might astound;
The restless crowd impatient turn'd away,
And sought a shorter, shriller, lighter lay.

Yet Dryden nobly earn'd the poet's name,
And won new honours from the gift of fame.
His life was long, and when his head was grey,
His fortune broken, and usurp'd his bay,
His dauntless genius own'd no cold dismay;
Nor in repining notes of vain regret

He made his crack'd pipe pitifully fret.
But when cashier'd and laid upon the shelf,

To shame the court excell'd his former self,

Who meant to clip, but imp'd his moulted wings, And cured him of his ancient itch of praising kings.

He sat gigantic on the shore of time,

And watch'd the ingress of encroaching slime,
Nor dream'd how much of evil or of good

Might work amid the far unfathom'd flood.

DRYDEN'S SUCCESSORS.

SAD were the times in Dryden's latter day,
He saw all genius but his own decay;

Poor Otway starved, and Lee in misery dead,
The laurel torn from his own hoary head,
Like a frail father, he was doom'd to trace
His vices only in his spurious race;

For many a rhymer claim'd him for a sire,
With all his soot and less than half his fire.
Their boast to reconcile-a vain pretence-
The old antipathy of wit and sense.

To write in rhyme as men might write in prose,
And win the frigid praise of critic beaux.
But though their general theme was worldly man,
Small was their skill the living heart to scan;
Their fancy little and their wisdom less,

No inward truth their flippant lines express;
No image to the inward eye convey,

Reveal no secret impulse to the day.

Action or passion there were seldom found,

Or the sweet magic of heart-stirring sound.

Smooth was their verse indeed; their turns were nice,
Quick, neat, exact, as if they moved on ice;

They skimm'd the surface of the chilling town,
And sought from courts and clubs a brief renown.

PARNELL.

A GENTLE wit was pure, polite PARNELL,
By many praised, for many loved him well.

His muse glides on "with gentle swimming walk,"
And e'en while singing only seems to talk.

In fact she is an English gentlewoman,

Whom no one would believe a thing uncommon,

Till by experience taught, we find how rare
Such truly English gentlewomen are.

SWIFT.

FIRST in the list behold the caustic Dean,
Whose muse was like himself compact of spleen ;
Whose sport was ireful, and whose laugh severe,
His very kindness cutting, cold, austere.

YOUNG AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

"TIS sad to think, of all the names that strive For immortality, how few survive;

How many leave preferment's open ways,

Smit by the love of hard-earn'd, barren praise,
Defying poverty, and worldly blame,

And self-reproach, to win the puff of fame;
Unhappy breathe, and unregarded rot,

First starved to death, and soon as dead forgot.

Eternal laurels shall the bust entwine

Of YOUNG at once a poet and divine.

And GRAY, while Windsor's antique towers shall stand,
Or spring revisit Britain's favour'd strand;

While those old bards whose praise he sung so well
Shall keep their place in memory's haunted cell;
While the green churchyard and the hallow'd tower
Attract your steps at eve's soft, solemn hour;
As long as men can read, or boys recite,
As long as critics sneer, and bards endite,
And lavish lords shall print their jingling stuff,
'Mid ample margin, leaving verge enough;
So long shall GRAY, and all he said and sung,
Tang the shrill accents of the school-girl's tongue;
So long his Ode, his Elegy, his Bard,

By lisping prodigies be drawl'd and marr'd.

For LITTELTON, he gain'd the name of poet;

But, made a lord, might easily forego it.

WEST tried to soar on Pindar's ample pinion, And bring his strains beneath our king's dominion. All praise to him for what he well intended; Of his success least said the soonest mended.