very friends whose death they
celebrated. In another place he says, such is their infatuation for
their productions, that they prefer giving to the public their
panegyrics of persons whom afterwards they satirized, rather than
suppress the verses which contain those panegyrics. We have many
examples of this in the poems, and even in the epistolary correspondence
of modern writers. It is customary with most authors, when they quarrel
with a person after the first edition of their work, to cancel his
eulogies in the next. But poets and letter-writers frequently do not do
this; because they are so charmed with the happy turn of their
expressions, and other elegancies of composition, that they perfer the
praise which they may acquire for their style to the censure which may
follow from their inconsistency.

After having given a hint to _young_ poets, I shall offer one to
_veterans_. It is a common defect with them that they do not know when
to quit the muses in their advanced age. Bayle says, "Poets and orators
should be mindful to retire from their occupations, which so peculiarly
require the fire of imagination; yet it is but too common to see them in
their career, even in the decline of life. It seems as if they would
condemn the public to drink even the lees of their nectar." Afer and
Daurat were both poets who had acquired considerable reputation, but
which they overturned when they persisted to write in their old age
without vigour and without fancy.

What crowds of these impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
They run on poets, in a raging rein,
E'en to the dregs and squeezings of the brain:
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.

POPE.

It is probable he had Wycherley in his eye when he wrote this. The
veteran bard latterly scribbled much indifferent verse; and Pope had
freely given his opinion, by which he lost his friendship!

It is still worse when aged poets devote their exhausted talents to
_divine poems_, as did Waller; and Milton in his second epic. Such
poems, observes Voltaire, are frequently entitled "_sacred poems_;" and
_sacred_ they are, for no one touches them. From a soil so arid what can
be expected but insipid fruits? Corneille told Chevreau several years
before his death, that he had taken leave of the theatre, for he had
lost his poetical powers with hi