Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/60

54 need he has to have it plentifully bestowed: especially those good qualities, of which the world generally believes he hath none at all: for who will thank a man for giving him that which he has?

The reverse of these precepts will serve for satire; wherein we are ever to remark, that whoso loses his place, or becomes out of favour with the government, hath forfeited his share in publick praise and honour. Therefore the truly publick spirited writer ought in duty to strip him, whom the government hath stripped; which is the real poetical justice of this age. For a full collection of topicks and epithets to be used in the praise and dispraise of ministerial and unministerial persons, I refer to our rhetorical cabinet; concluding with an earnest exhortation to all my brethren, to observe the precepts here laid down, the neglect of which hath cost some of them their ears in a pillory.

N epick poem, the criticks agree, is the greatest work human nature is capable of. They have already laid down many mechanical rules for compositions of this sort, but at the same time they cut off almost all undertakers from the possibility of ever performing them; for the first qualification they unanimously require in a poet, is a genius. I shall here endeavour (for the benefit of my countrymen) to make it manifest, that epick poems may be made without