False steps but help them to renew the race,
As after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Even to the dregs and squeezing of the brain;
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence!

Such shameless bards we have, and yet, 'tis true,
There are as mad abandoned critics, too
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always listening to himself appears
All books he reads and all he reads assails
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales [617]
With him most authors steal their works or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary [619]
Name a new play, and he's the poets friend
Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard: [623]
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead,
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And, never shocked, and never turned aside.
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide,