Arbuthnot: Prologue to the Satires_. A. POPE.
And so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be.
For length and breadth, the highness which you see.
_Pilgrim's Progress: Apology for his Book_. J. BUNYAN.
None but an author knows an author's cares,
Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears.
_The Progress of Error_. W. COWPER.
Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,
If folly grow romantic. I must paint it.
_Moral Essays, Epistle II_. A. POPE.
"You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading."
_Olio's Protest_. R.B. SHERIDAN.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'T is not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore.
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
* * * * *
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song.
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