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Those things, which now seem frivolous, & slight,
Will be of serious consequence to you,
When they have made you once Ridiculous.
A Mad Dogs foam, the infection of the Plague,
And all the Judgments of the angry Gods,
We are not all more heedfully to shun,
Then Poetasters in their raging fits,
Follow'd and pointed at by Fools and Boys;
But dreaded and proscrib'd by Men of sense:
If (in the Raving of a frantick Muse)
And minding more his Verses than his Way,
Any of these should drop into a Well,
Tho he might burst his lungs to call for help,
No Creature would assist or pitty him,
But seem to think he fell on purpose in.
Hear how an old Sicilian Poet died;
Empedocles, mad to be thought a God,
In a cold fit leap'd into Ætna's flames.
Will be of serious consequence to you,
When they have made you once Ridiculous.
A Mad Dogs foam, the infection of the Plague,
And all the Judgments of the angry Gods,
We are not all more heedfully to shun,
Then Poetasters in their raging fits,
Follow'd and pointed at by Fools and Boys;
But dreaded and proscrib'd by Men of sense:
If (in the Raving of a frantick Muse)
And minding more his Verses than his Way,
Any of these should drop into a Well,
Tho he might burst his lungs to call for help,
No Creature would assist or pitty him,
But seem to think he fell on purpose in.
Hear how an old Sicilian Poet died;
Empedocles, mad to be thought a God,
In a cold fit leap'd into Ætna's flames.
Give
