Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
  Why then, I say, the public is a fool. 
  But let them own, that greater faults than we
  They had, and greater virtues, I’ll agree. 
  Spenser himself affects the obsolete,
  And Sidney’s verse halts ill on Roman feet: 
  Milton’s strong pinion now not heaven can bound,
  Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,
  In quibbles angel and archangel join,
  And God the Father turns a school-divine. 
  Not that I’d lop the beauties from his book,
  Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook,
  Or damn all Shakespeare, like th’ affected fool
  At court, who hates whate’er he read at school. 
  But for the wits of either Charles’s days,
  The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
  Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,
  (Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o’er,)
  One simile, that solitary shines
  In the dry desert of a thousand lines,
  Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page,
  Has sanctified whole poems for an age. 
  I lose my patience, and I owe it too,
  When works are censured, not as bad but new;
  While if our elders break all reason’s laws,
  These fools demand not pardon, but applause. 
  On Avon’s bank, where flowers eternal blow,
  If I but ask, if any weed can grow;
  One tragic sentence if I dare deride
  Which Betterton’s grave action dignified,
  Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims,
  (Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names,)
  How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
  And swear all shame is lost in George’s age! 
  You’d think no fools disgraced the former reign,
  Did not some grave examples yet remain,
  Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,
  And, having once been wrong, will be so still. 
  He, who to seem more deep than you or I,
  Extols old bards, or Merlin’s prophecy,
  Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,
  And to debase the sons, exalts the sires. 
  Had ancient times conspired to disallow
  What then was new, what had been ancient now? 
  Or what remained, so worthy to be read
  By learned critics, of the mighty dead?

* * * * *

Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o’clock,
Instruct his family in every rule,
And send his wife to church, his son to school. 
To worship like his fathers, was his care;
To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;
To prove that luxury could never hold;
And place, on good security, his gold. 
Now times are changed, and one poetic itch
Has seized the court and city, poor and rich: 
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,
Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,
To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,
And all our grace at table is a song. 
I, who so oft renounce the muses, lie,