A prating sir, with voice acute,
Cried, "I'm the judge of each dispute,
I argue, contradict and prate,
What others like I'm sure to hate."
Then Criticism appearing, cried,
"Your merit is by none denied;
But since Taste's godhead you reject,
Do not to enter here expect."
Bardou then cried out, "The world's in an error, and will always continue so; there's no God of Taste, and I'll prove it thus." Then he laid down a proposition, divided and subdivided it; but nobody listened, and a greater multitude than ever crowded to the gate.
Amidst the various coxcombs chased
By judgment from the shrine of Taste,
La Motte Houdart amongst the rest
Approached, and words like these addressed:
Receive my Œdipus in prose;
Roughly, 'tis true, I verse compose;
I must with Boileau hold converse,
And rail against all sorts of verse.
Criticism knew him by his gentle deportment and the roughness of the two last lines, and she left him awhile between Perrault and Chapelain, who had laid a fifty years siege to the temple, and constantly exclaimed against Virgil.
At that very moment there arrived another versifier supported by two little satires, and crowned with laurels and thistles.
"I come hither to laugh, to sport, and to play,
And make merry," said he, "till the dawn of the day."
