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Like him that shoots up high, looks for the shaft The college sloven, or embroider'd spark;
And finds it in his forehead.
The purple prelate or the parish clerk;
Middleton. The quiet quidnunc, or demanding prig;

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The plaintiff tory, or defendant whig;
Rich, poor, male, female, young, old, gay, or sad;
Whether extremely witty, or quite mad;
Profoundly dull, or shallowly polite;
Men that read well or men that only write;
Whether peers, porters, tailors, tune the reeds,
And measuring words to measuring shapes suc
ceeds;

For bankrupts write when ruin'd shops are shut;
As maggots crawl from out a perish'd nut:
His hammer this, and that his trowel quits,
And wanting sense for tradesmen, serve for wits
Young.

What ambitious fools are more to blame
Than those who thunder in the critic's name?
Good authors damn'd have their revenge in this,
To see what wretches gain the praise they miss.

Young.

Critics on verse, as squibs on triumphs wait,
Proclaim the glory, and augment the state;
Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry
Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, ink, and die.

Sir W. Davenant's Albovine. Cold-blooded critics, by enervate sires,

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Young.

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A critic was of old a glorious name,
Whose sanction handed merit up to fame;
Beauties as well as faults he brought to view:
His judgment great, and great his candour too.
No servile rules drew sickly taste aside;
Secure he walked, for nature was his guide.
But now, O strange reverse! our critics bawl
In praise of candour with a heart of gall.
Conscious of guilt, and fearful of the light;
They lurk enshrouded in the veil of night:
Safe from destruction, seize th' unwary prey,
And stab, like bravoes, all who come that way.
Churchill.

Critics I saw, that other names deface,
And fix their own, with labour, in their place.
Pope's Temple of Fame.
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Pope's Essay on Man.
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

Commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
Young's Love of Fame.

A man must serve his time to 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 find or forge a fault,
A turn for punning, call it Attic salt;
To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
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.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,

A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman, or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics who themselves are sorc.
Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

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For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed my grandmother's review-the British.
Byron.

His "bravo" was decisive, for that sound
Hushed "academic" sighed in silent awe;
The fiddlers trembled as he looked around,
For fear of some false note's detected flow.
Byron's Beppo.
Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults
O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults;
Who soon detect and mark where'er we fail,
And prove our marble with too nice a nail!
Democritus himself was not so bad;
He only thought, but you would make us mad.

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Do but think,

How severe a thing it is to wear a crown;
Within whose circuit is elysium,
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.

Was this a face

To be expos'd against the warring winds?

To stand against the deep dread bottled thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Shaks. Henry IV. Part III. Of quick cross lightning? mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Empires to-day are upside down,
'The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,

A brickbat's range;
Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change

CRUELTY.

Against my fire.

Shaks. King Lear.

Spare not the babe,

Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;

Halleck. Think it a bastard, whom the oracle

Oft those whose cruelty makes many mourn,
Do by the fires which they first kindle burn.
Earl of Sterline.
No council from our cruel wills can win us,
But ills once done, we bear our guilt within us.
John Ford's Love's Sacrifice.

I must be cruel only to be kind:
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Shaks. Hamlet.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural;

I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

Shaks. Hamlet. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,

Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth!
How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex

To triumph, like an Amazonian trull,
Upon their woes, whom fortune captivates.

Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

O tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide!
How could'st thou drain the life blood of the child?
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

That face of his the hungry cannibals
Would not have touch'd, would not have stain'd
with blood;

But you are more inhuman, more inexorable,— O ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania.

Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

Thou art come to answer

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
Incapable of pity void and empty
From ev'ry drachm of mercy.

Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Neither bended knees, pure hands held up,
ad sighs, deep groans, nor silver shedding tears,
Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire.
Shaks Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse

Shake. Timon.

My lord of Winchester, you are a little,
By your good favour, too sharp; men so noble,
However faulty, yet should find respect
For what they have been: 'tis a cruelty
To load a falling man.

Shaks. Henry VIII.

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.
Daniel's Philotas.

O barbarous men! your cruel breasts assuage,
Why vent ye on the generous steed your rage?
Does not his service earn your daily bread?
Your wives, your children, by his labours fed!
If, as the Samian taught, the soul revives,
And shifting seats in other bodies lives;
Severe shall be the brutal coachman's change,
Doom'd in a hackney horse the town to range;
Car-men transformed, the groaning load shall

draw,

Whom other tyrants with the lash shall awe.
Gay's Trivia

O breasts of pity void! t' oppress the weak,
To point your vengeance at the friendless head,
And with one mutual cry insult the fallen!
Emblem too just of man's degenerate race.
Somerville's Chase.

Villain, abhorred villain!
Hath he not push'd me to extremity?

Are these wild limbs, these scarr'd and scathed

limbs,

This wasted frame, a mark for human malice? There have been those who from the high bark's

side

Have whelm'd their enemy in the flashing deep; But who have watch'd to see his struggling hands, To hear the sob of death?

Maturin's Bertram.

CURIOSITY – CURSES.

109:

Faith we may boast, undarken'd by a doubt,

I would not enter on my list of friends (Though grac'd with polish'd manners and fine We thirst to find each awful secret out.

sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path,
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside and let the reptile live.

Cowper's Task.

Thou fairest flower, Why didst thou fling thyself across my path? My tiger spring must crush thee in its way, But cannot pause to pity thee.

Maturin's Bertram.

Cruel of heart, and strong of arm,
Loud in his sport, and keen for spoil,
He little reck'd of good or harm,

Fierce both in mirth and toil;

Yet like a dog could fawn, if need there were; Speak mildly, when he would, or look in fear.

Dana's Buccaneer.

Sprague.

Sprague

The enquiring spirit will not be controll'd, We would make certain all, and all behold.

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But curses are like arrows shot upright,
That oftentimes on our own heads do light;
And many times ourselves in rage prove worst;
The fox ne'er better thrives, but when accurst.
Valiant Welshman.

I do not wish them Egypt's plagues, but c'en
As bad as they: I'll add unto them seven.

I wish not grasshoppers, frogs, and lice come down,
But clouds of moths in ev'ry shop i' th' town.
Then, honest devil to their ink convey
Some aqua fortis, that may eat away
Their books.

CURIOSITY.

The over curious are not over wise.

I could

Randolph.

Massinger.

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Accuse my unkind destiny; declaim
Against the pow'r of love; rail at the charms
Of language and proportion, that betray us
To hasty sorrow and too late repentance;
But breath is this way lost.

Shirley's Love's Cruelty.

All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make

him

By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,
And yet I needs must curse him.

Shaks. Tempest.
As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven feathers from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye,
And blister you all o'er!
Shaks. Tempest.

If heaven have any grievous plagues in store,
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the trouble of the poor world's peace!
Shaks. Richard III.

If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect

May fright the hopeful mother at the view;
And that be heir to his unhappiness.

Shaks. Richard II.

Take with thee thy most heavy curse;
Which in the day of battle tire thee more,
Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st!
Shaks. Richard III.

The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!

Let this pernicious hour Stand aye accursed in the calendar!

A plague upon them! wherefore should I curse
them?

Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms,
As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,
Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
With full as many signs of deadly hate,
As lean-fac'd Envy in her loathsome cave.
My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,
Mine eyes
should sparkle like the beaten flint,
Mine hair be fixed on end like one distract -

Shaks. Richard II. Ay, ev'ry joint should seem to curse and ban,
And even now my burden'd heart would break,
Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!
Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest meat they taste!
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!
Their choicest prospects murd'ring basilisks!
Their softest touch, as smart as lizards' stings!
Their music frightful as the serpents' hiss!
And boding screech-owls make the concert full!
Shaks. Henry VI. Part II.
Oh! I will curse thee till thy frighted soul
Runs mad with horror.
Lee's Cæsar Borgia.
May sorrow, shame, and sickness overtake her,
And all her beauties, like my hopes, be blasted.
Rowe's Royal Convert.

Shaks. Macbeth.
May never glorious sun reflex his beams
Upon the country where you make abode!
But darkness and the gloomy shade of death
Environ you till mischief and despair
Drive you to break your necks, or hang yourselves.
Shaks. Henry VI. Part I.
Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,
And occupations perish!

Shaks. Coriolanus.
All the contagion of the south light on you,
You shames of Rome! you herd of Boils and

plagues

Plaster you o'er; that you may be abhorred
Further than seen, and one infect another
Against the wind a mile!

Shaks. Coriolanus.

If he say so, may his pernicious soul
Rot half a grain a day!- he lies to the heart.
Shaks. Othello.
You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames
Into her scornful eyes! - Infect her beauty,
You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun,
To fall and blast her pride!

Shaks. King Lear.

Feed not thy sovereign's foe, thou gentle earth,
Nor with thy sweets comfort his rav'nous sense:
But let thy spiders that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited coads, lie in their way.

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Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait, Though fann'd by conquest's crimson wing They mock the air with idle state. Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail, Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears. Gray's Bard. Shaks. Richard II. May curses blast thy arm! may Ætna's fires Piety and fear, Convulse the land; to its foundation shake Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, The groaning isle. May civil discord bear Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood, Her flaming brand thro' all the realms of Greece: Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades, And the whole race expire in pangs like mine. Degrees, observances, customs and laws, Murphy's Grecian Daughter. Decline to your confounding contraries, But no, I will not curse them: thro' the world

And yet confusion live!-Plagues incident to men A curse will follow them, like the black plague,

Your potent and infectious fevers heap

On Athens ripe for stroke!

Shaks. Timon.

Tracking their footsteps ever,-day and night,
Morning and eve, summer and winter-ever.
Proctor's Mirandola.

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