And my confession doubles my offence. 
  Here is no lie, no gall, no art, no force;
  Mean are the words, and such as come of course,
  The subject not less simple than the lay;
  A plain, unlabour’d Journey of a day. 
    Far from me now be ev’ry tuneful Maid,
  I neither ask, nor can receive their aid. 
  Pegasus turn’d into a common hack,
  Alone I jog, and keep the beaten track,
  Nor would I have the Sisters of the Hill
  Behold their bard in such a dishabille. 
  Absent, but only absent for a time,
  Let them caress some dearer son of rhyme;
  Let them, as far as decency permits,
  Without suspicion, play the fool with wits,
  ’Gainst fools be guarded; ’tis a certain rule,
  Wits are false things, there’s danger in a fool. 
    Let them, tho’ modest, Gray more modest woo;
  Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo;
  Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek,
  Make Sophocles disguis’d, in English speak;
  Let them with Glover o’er Medea doze;
  Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone’s woes,
  Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears,
  Melts, as they melt, and weeps with weeping peers;
  Let them with simple Whitehead, taught to creep
  Silent and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep;[214]
  Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick,
  To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215]
  Let them in charity to Murphy give
  Some old French piece, that he may steal and live;
  Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get,
  And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. 
    Thus, or in any better way they please,
  With these great men, or with great men like these,
  Let them their appetite for laughter feed;
  I on my Journey all alone proceed. 
    If fashionable grown, and fond of pow’r,
  With hum’rous Scots let them disport their hour: 
  Let them dance, fairy-like, round Ossian’s tomb;
  Let them forge lies, and histories for Hume;
  Let them with Home, the very prince of verse,
  Make something like a Tragedy in Erse;
  Under dark Allegory’s flimsy veil
  Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale
  Of rueful length; Let them plain things obscure,
  Debase what’s truly rich, and what is poor
  Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth;
  With ev’ry pert, prim prettiness of youth
  Born of false Taste, with Fancy (like a child
  Not knowing what it cries for) running wild,
  With bloated style, by affectation taught,
  With much false colouring, and little thought,
  With phrases strange, and dialect decreed
  By reason never to have pass’d the Tweed,
  With words which Nature meant each other’s foe,
  Forc’d to compound whether they will or no;
  With such materials let them, if they will,
  To prove at once their pleasantry and skill,
  Build up a bard to war ’gainst Common-Sense,
  By way of compliment to Providence;