GOLDSMITH TO THE AUTHOR.

You're in love with the Muses? Well, grant it be true,

When, good Sir, were the Muses enamour'd of you?

Read first — if my lectures your fancy delight —

Your taste is diseased, can your cure be to write?

You suppose you're a genius, that ought to engage

The attention of wits and the smiles of the age:

Would the wits of the age their opinion make known,

Why — every man thinks just the same of his own.

You imagine that Pope — but yourself you beguile —

Would have wrote the same things, had he chose the same style.

Delude not yourself with so fruitless a hope —

Had he chose the same style, he had never been Pope.

You think of my muse with a friendly regard,

And rejoice in her author's esteem and reward:

But let not his glory your spirits elate,

When pleased with his honours, remember his fate.