But if he found yoù fond and obstinate
(And apter to defend than mend your faults),
With filence leave you to admire yourself,
And without rival hug your darling book.
The prudent care of an impartial friend
Will give you notice of each idle line,

Shew what founds harfh, and what wants ornament,
Or where it is too lavishly bestow'd ;

Make you explain all that he finds obscure,
And with a strict enquiry mark your faults;
Nor for thefe trifles fear to lofe your love :
Those things which now seem frivolous and flight,
Will be of a moft ferious confequence,
When they have made you once ridiculous.

A poetafter, in his raging fit,

(Follow'd and pointed at by fools and boys)
Is dreaded and profcrib'd by men of sense
They make a lane for the polluted thing,
And fly as from th' infection of the plague,
Or from a man whom, for a just revenge,
Fanatic phrenzy fent by heaven pursues.
If (in the raving of a frantic Mufe).
And minding more his verses than his way,
Any of thefe fhould drop into a well,
Though he might burft his lungs to call for help,
No creature would affift or pity him,
But feem to think he fell on purpose in.
Hear how an old Sicilian poet dy'd;
Empedocles, mad to be thought a god,
In a cold fit leap'd into Etna's flames.

Give poets leave to make themselves away,
Why should it be a greater fin to kill,
Than to keep men alive against their will?
Nor was this chance, but a deliberate choice;
For if Empedocles were now reviv'd,
He would be at his frolic once again,
And his pretenfions to divinity:
'Tis hard to fay whether for facrilege,
Or inceft, or some more unheard-of crime,
The rhyming fiend is fent into these men;
But they are all most visibly poffeft,

And, like a baited bear when he breaks loose,
Without diftinction seize on all they meet;
None ever fcap'd that came within their reach,
Sticking like leeches, till they burst with blood,
Without remorse insatiably they read,

And never leave till they have read men dead.

Lord RoscoMMON's verfes on the "Religio "Laici" are printed in the first volume of DRYDEN'S Poems.

Prologue spoken to his Royal Highness the Duke of York, at Edinburgh

231

Song on a young Lady who fung finely, and was afraid of a Cold

Virgil's Sixth Eclogue, tranflated
Ode upon Solitude

232

233

238

The Twenty-fecond Ode of the First Book of Horace 240 The fame imitated, addreffed to Mrs. Cath. Philips 241 Part of the Fifth Scene in the Second A&t of Guarini's Paftor Fido tranflated

The Dream

242

244

The Ghoft of the old House of Commons to the New

One, appointed to meet at Oxford

On the Death of a Lady's Dog

245

247

Epilogue to Alexander the Great, when acted at the Theatre in Dublin

On the Day of Judgment

248

249

Prologue to Pompey, a Tragedy, tranflated by Mrs. Cath. Philips from the French of Monfieur Corneille,

and acted at the Theatre in Dublin

Rofs's Ghoft

The Sixth Ode of the Third Book of Horace

Horace's Art of Poetry

252

254

255

258

POEMS