V EPISTLES.

breathe soft, ye winds, ye waves in silence sleep }

( Let prosp’rous breezes wanton o’er the deep,

‘ Swell the white fails, and with the streamers play,‘ To waft her gently o’er the watry way.

Here I to Keptune form’d a pompous pray’r,

To rein the winds, and guard the royal fair;

Bid the blue Tritons found their twisted (hells,And call the Kereids from their pearly cells.

Thus my warm zeal had drawn the muse along,Yet knew no method to conduct her song:

I then refolv’d some model to pursue,

Perus’d French critics, and began anew.

Long open panegyric drags at best,

And praise is only praise when well addrefs’d.

Straight Horace for some lucky ode I sought,And all along I trae’d him thought by thought:This new performance to a friend I (how’d ;

For (hame, fays he, what, imitate anode!

I’d rather ballads write, and Grubstreet lays,Than pillage Caesar for my patron’s praise:

One common fate all imitators (hare,

To save mince-pies, and cap the grocer’s ware.Yex’d at the charge, I to the flames commitRhymes, similes, Lords’ names, and ends of wit;In blotted stanza’s scraps of odes expire,

And fustian mounts in pyramids of fire.

Ladies, to you (next inferib’d my lay,

And writ a letter in familiar way:

For still impatient till the princess came,

You from description wifli’d to know the dame.Each day my pleasing labour larger grew,

For still new graces open’d to my view.

Twelve lines ran on to introduce the theme,And then I thus purfu’d the growing scheme.