Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/70

Or, mouthed by well-graced actors, be the rage
Of mobs, and hold possession of the stage.
No hand can match Fundanius at a piece
Where slave and mistress clip an old man's fleece:
Pollio in buskins chants the deeds of kings:
Varius outsoars us all on Homer's wings:
The Muse that loves the woodland and the farm
To Virgil lends her gayest, tenderest charm.
For me, this walk of satire, vainly tried
By Atacinus and some few beside,
Best suits my gait: yet readily I yield
To him who first set footstep on that field,
Nor meanly seek to rob him of the bay
That shows so comely on his locks of grey.
Well, but I called him muddy, said you'd find
More sand than gold in what he leaves behind.
And you, sir Critic, does your finer sense
In Homer mark no matter for offence?
Or e'en Lucilius, our good-natured friend,
Sees he in Accius nought he fain would mend?
Does he not laugh at Ennius' halting verse,
Yet own himself no better, if not worse?
And what should hinder me, as I peruse
Lucilius' works, from asking, if I choose,
If fate or chance forbade him to attain
A smoother measure, a more finished strain,
Than he (you'll let me fancy such a man)
Who, anxious only to make sense and scan,
Pours forth two hundred verses ere he sups,