Discourses on Satire Epic Poetry | Page 7

enough to have
repelled force by force if I could imagine that any of them had ever
reached me: but they either shot at rovers, and therefore missed; or their
powder was so weak that I might safely stand them at the nearest
distance. I answered not the "Rehearsal" because I knew the author sat
to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own
farce; because also I knew that my betters were more concerned than I
was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the
main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their
conversation that I could liken them to nothing but to their own
relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the
town. The like considerations have hindered me from dealing with the
lamentable companions of their prose and doggerel. I am so far from
defending my poetry against them that I will not so much as expose
theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let
me be thought by posterity what those authors would be thought if any
memory of them or of their writings could endure so long as to another
age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been
to me, are yet of dangerous example to the public. Some witty men
may perhaps succeed to their designs, and, mixing sense with malice,
blast the reputation of the most innocent amongst men, and the most
virtuous amongst women.
Heaven be praised, our common libellers are as free from the
imputation of wit as of morality, and therefore whatever mischief they
have designed they have performed but little of it. Yet these ill writers,
in all justice, ought themselves to be exposed, as Persius has given us a
fair example in his first Satire, which is levelled particularly at them;
and none is so fit to correct their faults as he who is not only clear from
any in his own writings, but is also so just that he will never defame the
good, and is armed with the power of verse to punish and make
examples of the bad. But of this I shall have occasion to speak further

when I come to give the definition and character of true satires.
In the meantime, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the
municipal and statute laws may honestly inform a just prince how far
his prerogative extends, so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who
by an undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power
you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant
scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute
by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of
the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and
restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things
that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under
the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to
your office, I speak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your
person; what is produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and
commanding genius over all writers: whereby you are empowered,
when you please, to give the final decision of wit, to put your stamp on
all that ought to pass for current and set a brand of reprobation on
clipped poetry and false coin. A shilling dipped in the bath may go for
gold amongst the ignorant, but the sceptres on the guineas show the
difference. That your lordship is formed by nature for this supremacy I
could easily prove (were it not already granted by the world) from the
distinguishing character of your writing, which is so visible to me that I
never could be imposed on to receive for yours what was written by
any others, or to mistake your genuine poetry for their spurious
productions. I can farther add with truth, though not without some
vanity in saying it, that in the same paper written by divers hands,
whereof your lordship's was only part, I could separate your gold from
their copper; and though I could not give back to every author his own
brass (for there is not the same rule for distinguishing betwixt bad and
bad as betwixt ill and excellently good), yet I never failed of knowing
what was yours and what was not, and was absolutely certain that this
or the other part was positively yours, and could not possibly be written
by any other.
True it is that some bad poems, though not all, carry