the Muse, he says,

I feel her now.--Th'invader fires my breast:
And my soul swells, to suit the heav'nly guest.
Hear her, O Pope!--She sounds th'inspir'd decree,
Thou great Arch-Angel of wit's heav'n! for thee!
Let vulgar genii, sour'd by sharp disdain,
Piqu'd and malignant, words low war maintain,
While every meaner art exerts her aim,
O'er rival arts, to list her question'd fame;
Let half-soul'd poets still on poets fall,
And teach the willing world to scorn them all.
But, let no Muse, pre-eminent as thine,
Of voice melodious, and of force divine,
Stung by wits, wasps, all rights of rank forego,
And turn, and snarl, and bite, at every foe.
No--like thy own Ulysses, make no stay
Shun monsters--and pursue thy streamy way.

In 1731 he brought his Tragedy of Athelwold upon the stage in
Drury-Lane; which, as he says in his preface to it, was written on the
same subject as his Elfrid or the Fair Inconstant, which he there calls,
'An unprun'd wilderness of fancy, with here and there a flower among the
leaves; but without any fruit of judgment.'--

He likewise mentions it as a folly, having began and finished Elfrid in
a week; and both the difference of time and judgment are visible in
favour of the last of those performances.

That year he met the greatest shock that affliction ever gave him; in