E'en copious Dryden wanted or forgot

The last and greatest art,—the art to blot.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Epistle i. Book ii. Line 280.

That man may last, but never lives,

Who much receives, but nothing gives;

Whom none can love, whom none can thank,—

Creation's blot, creation's blank.

Thomas Gibbons (1720-1785): When Jesus dwelt.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,

Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

Edmund Waller (1605-1687): Upon Roscommon's Translation of Horace, De Arte Poetica.

For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire,

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,

One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.

Lord Lyttleton (1709-1773): Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus.

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field and his feet to the foe,

And leaving in battle no blot on his name,

Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Lochiel's Warning.