And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain;
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar--
All, all must perish. But, surviving last,
The love of letters half preserves the past:
True,--some decay, yet not a few survive,
Though those shall sink which now appear to thrive,
As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey."

I quote what follows chiefly for the sake of the note attached to it:--

"Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt?--See Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean.[8]

"Blank verse is now with one consent allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side;
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song hero rants in modern plays;--
While modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point because they wrote in verse;
But so Thalia pleases to appear,--
Poor virgin!--damn'd some twenty times a year!"