Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile;-be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:
That flatt'ry, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to truth, and moralized his song:
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He 'stood' the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,*
The imputed trash, and dulness not his own;3
The morals blackened when the writings scape,
The libelled person, and the pictured shape:*
Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,"
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;

The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sov'reign's ear:-
Welcome for thee, fair virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state:
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,
A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a pillory, or near a throne,

He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.

1 Stood is here put for withstood.-Bowles.

2 As, that he received subscriptions for Shakespeare, that he set his name to Mr. Broome's verses, &c., which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the libels, and even in that called "The Nobleman's Epistle."-Pope.

3 Such as profane psalms, court poems, and other scandulous things, printed in his name by Curll and others.- Warburton.

4 Caricatures published of him.-Bowles,

5 Namely, on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthot, Mr. Gay, his friends, his parents, and his very nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bently, and other obscure persons.-Pope,

• Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit; This dreadful satirist Dennis will confess Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress; So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald's door, Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore. Full ten years slandered, did he once reply? Three thousand suns, went down on Welsted's lie.' To please a mistress one aspersed his life; He lashed him not, but let her be his wife. Let Budgel charge low Grub Street on his quill,' And write whate'er he pleased, except his will;* Let the two Curlls of town and court, abuse His father, mother, body, soul, and muse." Yet why? that father held it for a rule,

1 It was so long after many libels before the author of the "Dunciad" published that poem, till when, he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him.Pope.

This man had the impudence to tell in print that Mr. P. had occassioned a lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of. He also published that he libelled the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr. P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from any great man whatsoever.— Pope.

Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the "Bee," bestowed much abuse on him, in the imagination that he writ some things about the "Last Will" of Dr. Tindal, in the "Grub Street Journal;" a paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its author.-Pope.

4 Alluding to Tindal's will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgel, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him.-Pope. The Rev Nicholas Tindal author of "The Continuation of Rapin,' declared his suspicion that this will was forged This was generally credited, and Budgel, in 1737, drowned himself. He wrote several of the "Spectators."

5 In some of Curll's and other pamphlets, Mr. Pope's father was said to be a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay, a bankrupt. But, what is stranger, a nobleman (if such a reflection could be thought to come from a nobleman) had dropt an allusion to that pitiful untruth, in a paper called an "Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity:" and the following line

Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure,

had fallen from a like courtly pen, in certain "Verses to the Imitator of Horace." Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsay. His mother was the daughter of William Turnor, Esq., of York; she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of king Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family-Mr. Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few weeks after this poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middlesex :

It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:
That harmless mother thought no wife a
Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names, and memorable long!

If there be force in virtue, or in song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, While yet in Britain honour had applause)

Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray?-P. their own,

And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,

Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walked innoxious through his age.
Nor courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dared an oath,1 nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearned, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant, and without a groan.

O, grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than L
O, friend! may each domestic bliss be thine'
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:

Me, let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age,

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,"
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,

D. O. M.

ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO.
PROBO. PIO.

QVI. VIXIT. ANNOS. LXXV. OB.
MDCCXVII.

ET. EDITHAE. CONIVGI. INCVLPABILI.
PIENTISSIMÆ. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS.
XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII.
PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS.
FILIVS. FECIT. ET. SIBI.

-Pope.

1 He was a nonjuror, and would not take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, or the oath against the Pope.-Bowles.

2 Pope's filial piety and tender indulgence towards his mother were unrivalled.

May heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a queen.1

A. Whether that blessing be denied or giv'n,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to heav'n.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF. HORACE
IMITATED.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on some of my Epistles. An answer from Horace was both more full and of more dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the example of much greater freedom in so eminent a divine as Dr. Donne, seemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat vice or folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a station. Both these authors were acceptable to the princes and ministers under whom they lived. The satires of Dr. Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State; neither of whom looked upon a satire on vicious courts as any reflection on those they served in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which fools are so apt to fall into, and knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a satirist for a libeller; whereas to a true satirist nothing is so odious as a libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a hypocrite.

Uni aequus virtuti atque ejus amicis.

THE FIRST SATIRE OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

SATIRE I.

TO MR. FORTESCUE.

P. THERE are, (I scarce can think it, but am told,) There are, to whom my satire seems too bold:

1 Queen Annie.

d in company, I wake at night,

s rush into my head, and so I write. You could not do a worse thing for your life. ́, if the nights seem tedious,-take a wife: ather truly, if your point be rest,

uce and cowslip-wine; probatum est.

talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise

tshorn, or something that will close your eyes.
f you needs must write, write Cæsar's praise,
'll gain at least a knighthood, or the bays.

. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough and fierce,

5

[verse, h "Arms, and George, and Brunswick " crowd the d with tremendous sound your ears asunder, h gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder? obly wild, with Budgel's fire and force, at angels trembling round his falling horse?" Then all your muses softer art display, Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,

with Amelia's' liquid name the Nine, I sweetly flow through all the royal line. P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear; y scarce can bear their laureate twice a year; I justly Cæsar scorns the poet's lays:

s to history he trusts for praise.

7. Better be Cibber, I'll maintain it still,

Peter Walters, a noted miser..
See previous note, p. 240.

See previous note, p. 245. 3 Lord Hervey.

rbuthnot. 5 Sir Richard Blackmore.

The horse on which George II. charged at the battle of Oudenard, absurdly described.

Queen Caroline, the wife, and Princess Amelia, the daughter of

ge II.

The poet laureate.