unvanquish'd pride That looks with scorn on half mankind beside; A pride that well suspends poor mortals' fate, Gets between them and my resentment's weight, Stands in the gap 'twixt me and wretched men, T'avert th'impending judgments of my pen. Thus I look down with mercy on the age, By hopes my Congreve will reform the stage:      For never did poetic mind before Produce a richer vein, or cleaner ore; The bullion stamp'd in your refining mind Serves by retail to furnish half mankind. With indignation I behold your wit Forced on me, crack'd, and clipp'd, and counterfeit, By vile pretenders, who a stock maintain From broken scraps and filings of your brain. Through native dross your share is hardly known, And by short views mistook for all their own; So small the gains those from your wit do reap, Who blend it into folly's larger heap, Like the sun's scatter'd beams which loosely pass, When some rough hand breaks the assembling glass. Yet want your critics no just cause to rail, Since knaves are ne'er obliged for what they steal. These pad on wit's high road, and suits maintain With those they rob, by what their trade does gain. Thus censure seems that fiery froth which breeds O'er the sun's face, and from his heat proceeds, Crusts o'er the day, shadowing its partent beam, As ancient nature's modern masters dream; This bids some curious praters here below Call Titan sick, because their sight is so; And well, methinks, does this allusion fit To scribblers, and the god of light and wit; Those who by wild delusions entertain A lust of rhyming for a poet's vein, Raise envy's clouds to leave themselves in night, But can no more obscure my Congreve's light, Than swarms of gnats, that wanton in a ray Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day. What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit? Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit? How would you blush the shameful birth to hear Of those you so ignobly stoop to fear; For, ill to them, long have I travell'd since, Round all the circles of impertinence, Search'd in the nest where every worm did lie Before it grew a city butterfly; I'm sure I found them other kind of things Than those with backs of silk and golden wings; A search, no doubt, as curious and as wise As virtuosoes' in dissecting flies:      For, could you think? the fiercest foes you dread, And court in prologues, all are country bred; Bred in my scene, and for the poet's sins Adjourn'd from tops and grammar to the inns; Those beds of dung, where schoolboys sprout up 

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