Great but ill-omen'd monument of fame,
Nor he furviv'd to give nor thou to claim:
Swift after him thy social spirit flies,
And close to his, how foon! thy coffin lies.
Blefs'd pair! whofe union future bards fhall tell
In future tongues; each others' boast! farewell:
Farewell! whom join'd in fame, in friendship try'd,"
No chance could fever, nor the grave divide.
114

THO. TICKELL

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

TO MR. DRYDEN.

THE AUTHOR'S AGE TWENTY-rwo.

How long, great Poet! fhall thy facred lays
Provoke our wonder and tranfcend our praife?
Can neither injuries of time or age

Damp thy poetic heat and quench thy rage?
Not fo thy Ovid in his exile wrote,

5

Grief chill'd his breast,and check'd his rifing thought; Penfive and fad, his drooping Muse betrays

The Roman genius in its last decays.

Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And fecond youth is kindled in thy breaft;
Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boasts of riches not her own;
Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty,
And Horace,wonders at himself in thee:
Thou teachest Perfius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers and a clearer style;
And Juvenal, inftructed in thy page,
Edges his fatire and improves his rage.
Thy copy cafts a fairer light on all,
And still outshines the bright original.

Now Ovid boasts th' advantage of thy song,

And tells his story in the British tongue;

20

Thy charming verse, and fair translations, show
How thy own laurel first began to grow;

How wild Lycaon, chang'd by angry gods,

25

And frighted at himself, ran howling thro' the woods. O! may'st thou still the noble task prolong,

Nor age nor fickness interrupt thy fong!

Then may we, wond'ring, read how human limbs
Have water'd kingdoms and dissolv'd in streams; 30
Of thofe rich fruits that on the fertile mould
Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold,
How fome in feathers, or a ragged hide,

Have liv'd a fecond life, and diff'rent natures try'd.
Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal

A nobler change than he himself can tell.

Magd. College, Oxon.

June 2. 1693.

36

AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREATEST

ENGLISH POETS.

TO MR. HENRY SACHEVERELL.

April 3. 1694.

SINCE, dearest Harry! you will needs request

A short account of all the Muse possest,

That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes,
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,

* Afterwards Dr. Sacheverell,

I'll try to make their sev'ral beauties known,
And show their verfes' worth, tho' not my own.

Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine,
Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and profe;
But age has rufted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit;
In vain he jefts in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenfer next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age;
An age that, yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, purfu'd
Thro' pathless fields and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale that pleas'd of yore
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-fpun allegories fulfome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well pleas'd at distance all the fights
Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
And damfels in diftrefs, and courteous knights;
But when we look too near the fhades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius!) wrote,
O'er-run with, wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader prefs;
He more had pleas'd us had he pleas'd us less :

One glittering thought no fooner strikes our eyes
With filent wonder, but new wonders rife;
As in the Milky-way a thining white

O'erflows the heav'ns with one continued light,
That not a fingle star can fhew his rays,

Whilft jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great Poet! that I dare to name

Th' unnumber'd beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excefs;

But wit like thine in any shape will please.

What Mufe but thine can equal hints inspire,
And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre?
Pindar! whom others, in a labour'd strain,
And forc'd expression, imitate in vain ?

40

45

Well pleas'd in thee he foars with new delight, 50 And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler flight.

1

Blefs'd man! whofe fpotlefs life and charming lays Employ'd the tuneful prelate in thy praise;

Blefs'd man! who now fhall be for ever known

In Sprat's fuccefsful labours and thy own.

55

But Milton next, with high and haughty stalks, › Unfetter'd in majestic numbers, walks:

No vulgar hero can his Mufe engage,

Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage.
See! fee! he upward fprings, and, tow'ring high, 60
Spurns the dull province of mortality;