Be Master of your Subject, Thoughts will flow:  300 The newer ’tis, the choicer Fruit ’twill yield, More Room you have to work if large your Field; The Sponge you oftner than the Pen will want, And rather Reason see to prune than plant; Yet where the Thoughts are barren, weak and thin, New Cyons should be neatly grafted in. [Sidenote:  A Judge.] If you with Friend or Enemy are blest, Your Fancy’s Offspring ne’er can want a Test, Tho Both, perhaps may overshoot the Mark:  First Spite with Envy charges in the Dark; 310 Unread they damn, and into Passion fall, ’Tis Stuff, ’tis Blasphemy ’tis Nonsense all; They sleep (when doz’d before) at every Line, } While your more dang’rous Friend exclaims,—­’Tis fine, } ’Tis furiously Delightful, ’tis Divine; } Th’ inspiring God’s in ev’ry Page confess’d; A COWLEY or a DRYDEN at the least!  Yet you’ll from both an equal Judgment frame And stand the nearest Candidate for Fame:  What Envy praises, or what Friends dislike, 320 This bears the Test, and that the Sponge should strike.  Chuse to be absent when your Cause is try’d, Lest Favour should the partial Judge misguide; Not others Thoughts implicitly prefer, Your Friend’s a Mortal, and like you, may err.  Upon the last Appeal let Reason sit, And here, let all Authority submit.  Divest your self of self whate’er you can, And think the Author now some other Man.  A thousand trivial Lumber-Thoughts will come, 330 A thousand Fagot-Lines will crowd for room; Reform your Troops, and no Exemption grant, You’ll gain in Strength, what you in Numbers want.  Nor yet Infallibility pretend; He still errs on who thinks he ne’er can mend:  Reject that hasty, that presumptuous Thought!  None e’er but VIRGIL wrote without a Fault; (Or none he has, or none that I can find, Who, dazzled with his Beauties, to his Moles am blind.) Who has the least is happiest, he the best, 340 Who owns and mends where he has once transgrest.  Nor will good Writers smaller Blots despise, Lest those neglected should to Crimes arise; Such Venial Sins indulg’d will mortal prove, At least they from Perfection far remove.  Nor Critical Exactness here deride, It looks like Sloth or Ignorance, or Pride; Good Sense is spoild in Words unapt exprest,