The meanest felons who through Holborn go,
More eyes and looks than twenty poets draw.
If this be all, go, have thy posted name
Fixed up with bills of quack, and public shame,
To be the stop of gaping 'prentices,
And read by reeling drunkards, when they pass;
Or else to lie exposed on trading stall,
While the bilked owner hires Gazettes to tell,
'Mongst spaniels lost, that author does not sell.
’Perhaps, fond fool, thou soothest thyself in dream,
With hopes of purchasing a lasting name?
Thou think'st, perhaps, thy trifles shall remain,
Like sacred Cowley, or immortal Ben;
But who of all the bold adventurers,
Who now drive on the trade of fame in verse,
Can be ensured in this unfaithful sea,
Where there so many lost and shipwrecked be?
How many poems writ in ancient time,
Which thy forefathers had in great esteem,
Which in the crowded shops bore any rate,
And sold like news-books, and affairs of state,
Have grown contemptible, and slighted since,
As Pordage,[1] Flecknoe,[2] or the British Prince?[3]
Quarles, Chapman, Heywood, Wither had applause,
And Wild, and Ogilby in former days;
But now are damned to wrapping drugs and wares,
And cursed by all their broken stationers.[4]
And so mayst thou, perchance, pass up and down,
And please awhile the admiring court and town,
Who after shalt in Duck-lane[5] shops be thrown,
- ↑ Samuel Pordage, a writer of wretched doggrel, and one of the swarm of verse-mongers that attacked the Absalom and Achitophel of Dryden. —See ante, p. 183.
- ↑ The Irish priest immortalized by Dryden in his Satire on Shadwell.
- ↑ An epic poem by the Hon. Edward Howard.
- ↑ The term by which booksellers and publishers were designated.
- ↑ Duck-lane, lying between Little Britain and Smithfield, and now called Duke-street, was as celebrated for book-stalls and second-hand book shops as Grub-street for starving authors.
