Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 36.djvu/86

68  You the great painter of our nation, Have drawn each character and station; Our cits with maggots in their brain, Our marquises as pert as vain, Our formal gentry of the law, All by your art their likeness saw; And you would have reformed each fault, If sense and virtue could be taught. "Ah," said he, "why was I ever under a necessity of writing for the people? Why was I not always master of my time? I should have invented much more happy intrigues; I should have seldom descended to low comedy."

'Twas thus these masters, in their several arts, showed their superiority, by owning those errors to which human nature is subject, and from which the greatest geniuses are not exempt.

I then found that the God of Taste is very hard to be pleased, but that he is never pleased by halves. I perceived that the works which he criticises the most are those which he likes best.  The God takes every author's part Of pleasing, if he has the art: No anger he in censuring shows, With transport in applauding glows. The muse displayed her charms divine, And brought her heroes to his shrine; The power benign can scarce forbear, Seeing their faults to drop a tear. That wretch should be to woe consigned, Who's not to tenderness inclined: