A critic was of old a glorious name,
Whose sanction handed merit up to fame;
Beauties as well as faults he brought to view:
His judgment great, and great his candour too.
No servile rules drew sickly taste aside;
Secure he walked, for nature was his guide.
But now, O strange reverse! our critics bawl
In praise of candour with a heart of gall.
Conscious of guilt, and fearful of the light;
They lurk enshrouded in the veil of night:
Safe from destruction, seize th' unwary prey,
And stab, like bravoes, all who come that way.
Churchill.

Critics I saw, that other names deface,
And fix their own, with labour, in their place.
Pope's Temple of Fame.
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Pope's Essay on Man.
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

Commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
Young's Love of Fame.

A man must serve his time to ev'ry trade,
Save censure; critics all are ready made,
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault,
A turn for punning, call it Attic salt;
To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
Fear not to lie, 't will seem a lucky hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, 't will pass for wit;
Care not for feeling, pass your project jest,
And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,

A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman, or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics who themselves are sore.
Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

Laugh when I laugh, I scek no other fame,
The cry is up and scribblers are my game.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
Thou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose:
This is true criticism, and you may kiss
Exactly as you please, or not, the rod.

Byron.

For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed my grandmother's review-the British.
Byron.

His "bravo" was decisive, for that sound
Hushed" academic" sighed in silent awe;
The fiddlers trembled as he looked around,
For fear of some false note's detected flow.
Byron's Beppo.

Lords of the quill, whose critical assaults
O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults;
Who soon detect and mark where'er we fail,
And prove our marble with too nice a nail!
Democritus himself was not so bad;
He only thought, but you would make us mad.
Byron.

A modern critic is a thing who runs
All ways, all risks, to evitiate his duns;
Let but an author ask him home to dine,
And lend him money while he gave him wine;
However dull the trash the man might write,
Its praise the grateful guest would still endite.

Do but think,

How severe a thing it is to wear a crown;
Within whose circuit is elysium,
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.

Was this a face

Empires to-day are upside down,
'The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brickbat's range;

Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change

CRUELTY.

Against my fire.

Shaks. King Lear.

Spare not the babe,

Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their

mercy;

I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

Shaks. Hamlet. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,

Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth!
How ill-besecming is it in thy sex

To triumph, like an Amazonian trull,
Upon their woes, whom fortune captivates.

Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

O tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide!
How could'st thou drain the life blood of the child?
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.
That face of his the hungry cannibals
Would not have touch'd, would not have stain'd
with blood;

But you are more inhuman, more inexorable,-
O ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania.
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

Thou art come to answer

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch

Incapable of pity void and empty
From ev'ry drachm of mercy.

Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Neither bended knees, pure hands held up,
Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver shedding tears,
Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire.
Shaks Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse

Shaks. Timon.

My lord of Winchester, you are a little,
By your good favour, too sharp; men so noble,
However faulty, yet should find respect
For what they have been: 'tis a cruelty
To load a falling man.

Shaks. Henry VIII.

Do not insult calamity;

It is a barbarous grossness to lay on
The weight of scorn, where heavy misery
Too much already weighs men's fortunes down.
Daniel's Philotas.

O barbarous men! your cruel breasts assuage,
Why vent ye on the generous steed your rage?
Does not his service earn your daily bread?
Your wives, your children, by his labours fed!
If, as the Samian taught, the soul revives,
And shifting seats in other bodies lives;
Severe shall be the brutal coachman's change,
Doom'd in a hackney horse the town to range;
Car-men transformed, the groaning load shall

draw,

Whom other tyrants with the lash shall awe.
Gay's Trivia

O breasts of pity void! t' oppress the weak,
To point your vengeance at the friendless head,
And with one mutual cry insult the fallen!
Emblem too just of man's degenerate race.
Somerville's Chase.

Villain, abhorred villain!

Hath he not push'd me to extremity?

Are these wild limbs, these scarr'd and scathed

limbs,

This wasted frame, a mark for human malice? There have been those who from the high bark's

side

Have whelm'd their enemy in the flashing deep; But who have watch'd to see his struggling hands, To hear the sob of death?

Maturin's Bertram.

I would not enter on my list of friends

sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path,
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside and let the reptile live.

Sprague.

Cowper's Task.

CURSES.

But curses are like arrows shot upright,
That oftentimes on our own heads do light;
And many
times ourselves in rage prove worst;
The fox ne'er better thrives, but when accurst.
Valiant Welshman.

I do not wish them Egypt's plagues, but e'en
As bad as they: I'll add unto them seven.

I wish not grasshoppers, frogs, and lice come down,
But clouds of moths in ev'ry shop i' th' town.
Then, honest devil to their ink convey
Some aqua fortis, that may eat away
Their books.

Randolph.

The over curious are not over wise.

I could