Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/189

You'd fill the temple Phœbus holds so dear,
And give poor bards the stimulus of hope
To aid their progress up Parnassus' slope.
Poor bards! much harm to our own cause we do
(It tells against myself, but yet 'tis true),
When, wanting you to read us, we intrude
On times of business or of lassitude,
When we lose temper if a friend thinks fit
To find a fault or two with what we've writ,
When, unrequested, we again go o'er
A passage we recited once, before,
When we complain, forsooth, our laboured strokes,
Our dexterous turns, are lost on careless folks,
When we expect, so soon as you're informed
That ours are hearts by would-be genius warmed,
You'll send for us instanter, end our woes
With a high hand, and make us all compose.
Yet greatness, proved in war and peace divine,
Had best be jealous who should keep its shrine:
The sacred functions of the temple-ward
Were ill conferred on an inferior bard.
A blunderer was Chœrilus; and yet
This blunderer was Alexander's pet,
And for the ill-stamped lines that left his mint
Received good money with the royal print.
Ink spoils what touches it: indifferent lays
Blot out the exploits they pretend to praise.
Yet the same king who bought bad verse so dear
In other walks of art saw true and clear;
None but Lysippus, so he willed by law,