Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are very fatal to the ordinary people, who are so used to be dazzled with riches that they pay as much deference to the understanding of a man of an estate as of a man of learning, and are very hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them when they know there are several men of five hundred a year who do not believe it.

EDWARD YOUNG.

(1681-1765.)

XXXIII.  TO THE RIGHT HON.  MR. DODINGTON.

This is justly regarded as one of the finest satires in the English language.  It is taken from Dr. Young’s Series of Satires published in collected form in 1750.  Dodington was the famous “Bubb Dodington”, satirized as Bubo by Pope in the “Prologue to the Satires”.

  Long, Dodington, in debt, I long have sought
  To ease the burden of my graceful thought: 
  And now a poet’s gratitude you see: 
  Grant him two favours, and he’ll ask for three: 
  For whose the present glory, or the gain? 
  You give protection, I a worthless strain. 
  You love and feel the poet’s sacred flame,
  And know the basis of a solid fame;
  Though prone to like, yet cautious to commend,
  You read with all the malice of a friend;
  Nor favour my attempts that way alone,
  But, more to raise my verse, conceal your own. 
    An ill-tim’d modesty! turn ages o’er,
  When wanted Britain bright examples more? 
  Her learning, and her genius too, decays;
  And dark and cold are her declining days;
  As if men now were of another cast,
  They meanly live on alms of ages past,
  Men still are men; and they who boldly dare,
  Shall triumph o’er the sons of cold despair;
  Or, if they fail, they justly still take place
  Of such who run in debt for their disgrace;
  Who borrow much, then fairly make it known,
  And damn it with improvements of their own. 
  We bring some new materials, and what’s old
  New cast with care, and in no borrow’d mould;
  Late times the verse may read, if these refuse;
  And from sour critics vindicate the Muse. 
  “Your work is long”, the critics cry.  ’Tis true,
  And lengthens still, to take in fools like you: 
  Shorten my labour, if its length you blame: 
  For, grow but wise, you rob me of my game;
  As haunted hags, who, while the dogs pursue,
  Renounce their four legs, and start up on two.

    Like the bold bird upon the banks of Nile
  That picks the teeth of the dire crocodile,
  Will I enjoy (dread feast!) the critic’s rage,
  And with the fell destroyer feed my page. 
  For what ambitious fools are more to blame,
  Than those who thunder in the critic’s name? 
  Good authors damn’d, have their revenge in this,
  To see what wretches gain the praise they miss.