The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 7/To Dr. Sheridan

by Jonathan Swift

TO DR. SHERIDAN. 1718.

WHATE'ER your predecessors taught us,
I have a great esteem for Plautus;
And think your boys may gather there-hence
More wit and humour than from Terence;
But as to comic Aristophanes,
The rogue too vicious and too prophane is.
I went in vain to look for Eupolis
Down in the Strand^[1], just where the New Pole is;
For I can tell you one thing, that I can,
You will not find it in the Vatican.
He and Cratinus us'd, as Horace says,
To take his greatest grandees for asses.
Poets, in those days, us'd to venture high;
But these are lost full many a century.
Thus you may see, dear fpiend, ex pede hence,
My judgment of the old comedians.
⁠Proceed to tragicks: first, Euripides
(An author where I sometimes dip a-days)
Is rightly censur'd by the Stagirite,
Who says, his numbers do not fadge aright.

A friend of mine that author despises	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$
So much, he swears the very best piece is,⁠
For aught he knows, as bad as Thespis's;

And that a woman, in these tragedies,

Commonly speaking, but a sad jade is.
At least, I'm well assur'd, that no folk lays
The weight on him they do on Sophocles.
But, above all, I prefer Æschylus,
Whose moving touches, when they please kill us.
⁠And now I find my Muse but ill able,
To hold out longer in trissyllable.
I chose those rhymes out for their difficulty;
Will you return as hard ones if I call t' ye?

1. The fact may not be true; but the rhyme cost me some trouble. Swift.