162

CRITICISM-STYLE-TASTE.

3. Lest men suspect your tale untrue, Keep probability in view.

4. For when we risk no contradiction,
It tempts the tongue to deal in fiction;
Those things that startle me or you,
I grant, are strange, yet may be true.

5. Or, indolent, to each extreme they fall, To trust in everything, or doubt of all.

GAY'S Fables.

GAY'S Fables.

POPE'S Essay on Man.

6. A daring infidel, (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought,)

Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

7. Your noblest natures are most credulous.

8. Security's blind nurse, the dream of fools,
The drunkard's ape, that, feeling for his way,
Even when he thinks in his deluded sense
To snatch at safety, falls without defence.

CHAPMAN.

No; as soon

9. And shall we own such judgment?
Seek roses in December, ice in June,
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman, or an epitaph.

MASON.

1. Who shall dispute what the Reviewers say! Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason, In such a state as theirs, is downright treason.

CHURCHILL.

2. Critics to plays for the same end resort

That surgeons wait on trials in a court:
For innocence condemn'd they've no respect,
Provided they've a body to dissect.

3. On me, when dunces are satiric,
I take it for a panegyric;
Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.

CONGREVE.

DEAN SWIFt.

4. Hot, noisy, envious, proud, the scribbling fry Burn, hiss and bounce, waste paper, ink, and die.

5. Let such teach others, who themselves excel, And censure freely, who have written well.

YOUNG.

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

6. Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd;
Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

7. A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ;
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find,
Where nature moves, and rapture charms the mind.
POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

8. Neglect the rule each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some trifles is a praise;
And men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors, must the less commit.

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

9. Some to conceit alone their taste confine,

And curious thoughts struck out at ev'ry line-
Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit,
One glaring chaos, and wild heap of wit.

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

10. Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress;
Their praise is still-"The style is excellent,"
The sense they humbly take upon content.

POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

11. True ease, in writing, comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

12. Talk as you will of taste, my friend, you'll find Two of a face, as soon as of a mind.

POPE'S Imitations.

13. Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

14. A man must serve his time at ev'ry trade,
Save censure; critics all are ready-made :
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A mind well skill'd to forge or find a fault,
A turn for punning-call it Attic salt-
Fear not to lie-'t will seem a lucky hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy-'t will pass for wit;
Care not for feeling, pass your project jest,— ·
And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.

COWPER.

BYRON'S English Bards, &c.

15. Applauds to-day what yesterday he curst,
Lampoons the wisest, and extols the worst ;
While, hard to tell, so coarse a daub he lays,
Which sullies most, the slander or the praise.

SPRAGUE'S Curiosity.

CRITICS. (See CRITICISM.)

From every drachm of mercy.

2.

CRUELTY-TORTURE.

1. A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,

Incapable of pity, void and empty

The poor beetle, that we tread upon,

SHAKSPEARE.

In corporal suffering feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

SHAKSPEARE.

3.

Do not insult calamity;

It is a barbarous grossness to lay on

The weight of scorn, where heavy misery
Too much already weighs men's fortunes down.

4. Thou shalt behold him stretch'd in all the agonies
Of a tormenting and a shameful death!
His bleeding bowels, and his broken limbs,
Insulted o'er by a vile butchering villain.

5.

DANIEL.

OTWAY'S Venice Preserved.

Bring forth the rack:

Fetch hither cords, and knives, and sulphurous flames;

He shall be bound and gash'd, his skin fleec'd, burnt alive;
He shall be hours, days, years, a-dying!

NAT. LEE.

6. Wire-draw his skin, spin all his nerves like hair, And work his tortur'd flesh as thin as flame.

7. I reverence the coachman who cries "Gee,"
And spares the lash. When I behold a spider
Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm,

Or view a butcher, with horn-handled knife,
Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton-
Indeed, indeed, I'm very, very sick!

NAT. LEE.

Rejected Addresses.

166

CRUELTY - TORTURE.

8. The savage brute, that haunts in woods remote, And deserts wild, tears not the fearful traveller, If hunger, or some injury, provoke not.

9. Oh! rather fail this ardent breath,

And palsied sink this hand in death,
Ere with keen taunt and lingering blow
I hover o'er a fallen foe!

Rowe.

MRS. HOLFORD's Margaret of Anjou.

10. His was the sternest, hardest breast That ever burnish'd cuirass press'd.

MRS. HOLFORD'S Margaret of Anjou.

11. Thy suing to these men were as the bleating Of the lamb to the butcher, or the cry

Of seamen to the surge.

12.

13.

BYRON'S Marino Faliero.

And ponder still

BYRON'S Corsair.

On pangs that longest rack, and latest kill.

A saint had cried out,

Even with the crown of glory in his eyes,
At such inhuman artifice of pain

As was forc'd on him.

BYRON'S Two Foscari.

14. Nurtur'd in blood betimes, his heart delights In vengeance gloating on another's pain.

15. Humanity is policy in war,

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

And cruelty's a prodigal, that heaps
A suicidal burthen on itself.

DAWES' Athenia of Damascus.