You're in love with the Muses? Well, grant it be true,
When, good Sir, were the Muses enamour'd of you?
Read first — if my lectures your fancy delight —
Your taste is diseased, can your cure be to write?
You suppose you're a genius, that ought to engage
The attention of wits and the smiles of the age:
Would the wits of the age their opinion make known,
Why — every man thinks just the same of his own.
You imagine that Pope — but yourself you beguile —
Would have wrote the same things, had he chose the same style.
Delude not yourself with so fruitless a hope —
Had he chose the same style, he had never been Pope.
You think of my muse with a friendly regard,
And rejoice in her author's esteem and reward:
But let not his glory your spirits elate,
When pleased with his honours, remember his fate.