This hopeful sect, now it begins to see
How little, very little, do prevail
      Their first and chiefest force
    To censure, to cry down, and rail,
Not knowing what, or where, or who you be,
    Will quickly take another course: 
      And, by their never-failing ways
    Of solving all appearances they please,
We soon shall see them to their ancient methods fall,
And straight deny you to be men, or anything at all. 
  I laugh at the grave answer they will make,
Which they have always ready, general, and cheap: 
  ’Tis but to say, that what we daily meet,
    And by a fond mistake
Perhaps imagine to be wondrous wit,
And think, alas! to be by mortals writ,
Is but a crowd of atoms justling in a heap: 
      Which, from eternal seeds begun,
Justling some thousand years, till ripen’d by the sun: 
  They’re now, just now, as naturally born,
  As from the womb of earth a field of corn.

VI

    But as for poor contented me,
Who must my weakness and my ignorance confess,
That I believe in much I ne’er can hope to see;
    Methinks I’m satisfied to guess,
  That this new, noble, and delightful scene,
Is wonderfully moved by some exalted men,
Who have well studied in the world’s disease,
(That epidemic error and depravity,
    Or in our judgment or our eye,)
That what surprises us can only please. 
We often search contentedly the whole world round,
  To make some great discovery,
    And scorn it when ’tis found. 
Just so the mighty Nile has suffer’d in its fame,
  Because ’tis said (and perhaps only said)
We’ve found a little inconsiderable head,
    That feeds the huge unequal stream. 
Consider human folly, and you’ll quickly own,
    That all the praises it can give,
By which some fondly boast they shall for ever live,
  Won’t pay th’impertinence of being known: 
    Else why should the famed Lydian king,[4]
(Whom all the charms of an usurped wife and state,
With all that power unfelt, courts mankind to be great,
  Did with new unexperienced glories wait,)
Still wear, still dote on his invisible ring?

VII

  Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
  Which is, perhaps, as hard t’imagine right,
    As to paint Echo to the sight,
I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
    Because, alas! when we all die,
  Careless and ignorant posterity,
  Although they praise the learning and the wit,
    And though the title seems to show
  The name and man by whom the book was writ,
    Yet how shall they be brought to know,
Whether that very name was he, or you, or I? 
Less should I daub it o’er with transitory praise,
    And water-colours of these days: 
These days! where e’en th’extravagance