ABSTRACT
This verse be thine, my friend, nor thou refuse This, from no venal or ungrateful Muse. Whether thy hand strike out some free design, Where life awakes, and dawns at ev'ry line; Or blend in beauteous tints the colour'd mass, S And from the canvas call the mimic face: Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire Fresnoy's close art, and Dryden's native fire: And reading wish, like theirs, our fate and fame, So mix'd our studies, and so join'd our name, 10 Like them to shine thro' long succeeding age, So just thy skill, so regular my rage.
