Next shou’d appear great Dryden’s lofty muse,
    For who would Dryden’s polish’d verse refuse? 
    His lips were moisten’d in Parnassus’ spring,
    And Phoebus taught his laureat son to sing. 
    How long did Virgil untranslated moan,
    His beauties fading, and his flights unknown;
    Till Dryden rose, and, in exalted strain,
    Re-sang the fortune of the god-like man? 
    Again the Trojan prince with dire delight,
    Dreadful in arms, demands the ling’ring fight: 
    Again Camilla glows with martial fire,
    Drives armies back, and makes all Troy retire. 
    With more than native lustre Virgil shines,
    And gains sublimer heights in Dryden’s lines.

    The gentle Watts, who strings his silver lyre
    To sacred odes, and heav’n’s all-ruling fire;
    Who scorns th’ applause of the licentious stage,
    And mounts yon sparkling worlds with hallow’d rage,
    Compels my thoughts to wing the heav’nly road,
    And wafts my soul, exulting, to my God;
    No fabled Nine harmonious bard! inspire
    Thy raptur’d breast with such seraphic fire;
    But prompting Angels warm thy boundless rage,
    Direct thy thoughts, and animate thy page. 
    Blest man! for spotless sanctity rever’d,
    Lov’d by the good, and by the guilty fear’d;
    Blest man! from gay delusive scenes remov’d,
    Thy Maker loving, by thy Maker lov’d;
    To God thou tun’st thy consecrated lays,
    Nor meanly blush to sing Jehovah’s praise. 
    Oh! did, like thee, each laurel’d bard delight,
    To paint Religion in her native light,
    Not then with Plays the lab’ring’ press would groan,
    Nor Vice defy the Pulpit and the Throne;
    No impious rhymer charm a vicious age,
    Nor prostrate Virtue groan beneath their rage: 
    But themes divine in lofty numbers rise,
    Fill the wide earth, and echo through the skies.

These for Delight;—­for Profit I would read, The labour’d volumes of the learned dead:  Sagacious Locke, by Providence design’d T’ exalt, instruct, and rectify the mind.  Th’ unconquerable Sage,[A] whom virtue fir’d, And from the tyrant’s lawless rage retir’d, When victor Caesar freed unhappy Rome, From Pompey’s chains, to substitute his own. Longinius, Livy, fam’d Thucydides, Quintillian, Plato and Demosthenes, Persuasive Tully, and Corduba’s Sage,[B] Who fell by Nero’s unrelenting rage; Him[C] whom ungrateful Athens doom’d to bleed, Despis’d when living, and deplor’d when dead. Raleigh I’d read with ever fresh delight, While ages past rise present to my fight:  Ah man unblest! he foreign realms explor’d, Then fell a