ing fancy quite aground.[6] }
But wit and judgment join at once in you,
Sprightly as youth, as age consummate too:
Your strains are regularly bold, and please } 20
With unforced care, and unaffected ease, }
With proper thoughts, and lively images: }
Such as by nature to the ancients shown,
Fancy improves, and judgment makes your own:
For great men's fashions to be followed are, 25
Although disgraceful 'tis their clothes to wear.
Some in a polished style write pastoral,
Arcadia speaks the language of the Mall;
Like some fair shepherdess, the sylvan muse,[7]
Decked in those flow'rs her native fields produce, 30
With modest charms would in plain neatness please, }
But seems a dowdy in the courtly dress, }
Whose awkward finery allures us less.[8] }
But the true measure of the shepherd's wit
Should, like his garb, be for the country fit: 35
Yet must his pure and unaffected thought
More nicely than the common swain's be wrought.
So, with becoming art, the players dress
In silks the shepherd and the shepherdess;
Yet still unchanged the form and mode remain, 40
Shaped like the homely russet of the swain.
Your rural muse appears to justify
The long lost graces of simplicity:
So rural beauties captivate our sense
With virgin charms, and native excellence. 45
Yet long her modesty those charms concealed,
'Till by men's envy to the world revealed;
For wits industrious to their trouble seem,
And needs will envy what they must esteem.
Live and enjoy their spite! nor mourn that fate, 50
Which would, if Virgil lived, on Virgil wait;
Whose muse did once, like thine, in plains delight;
Thine shall, like his, soon take a higher flight;
So larks, which first from lowly fields arise,
Mount by degrees, and reach at last the skies. 55

FR. KNAPP.[9]

TO MR. POPE, ON HIS WINDSOR FOREST.[10]

_Killala, in the county of Mayo, in Ireland, June 7, 1715._

Hail, sacred bard! a muse unknown before
Salutes thee from the bleak Atlantic shore.
To our dark world thy shining page is shown,
And Windsor's gay retreat becomes our own.
The Eastern pomp had just