The cat comes bouncing on the floor. Oh for the heart of Homer's mice, Or gods to save them in a trice! (It was by Providence they think, For your dd stucco has no chink.) "An't please your honour," quoth the peasant, "This same desert is not so pleasant: Give me again my hollow tree, A crust of bread, and liberty!" BOOK IV. ODE I. TO VENUS. AGAIN! new tumults in my breast? As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne. Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms. Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires; [loves; There spread round MURRAY' all your blooming To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend. Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind: Make but his riches equal to his wit. 1 Afterwards Lord Mansfield. See previous note, p. 292, Thither, the silver sounding lyres Shall call the smiling Loves, and young Desires; For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more. The still-believing, still-renewed desire; And all the kind deceivers of the soul! Steals down my cheek, the involuntary tear? Absent I follow through the extended dream; And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms. And swiftly shoot along the Mall, Or softly glide by the canal; Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray, And now on rolling waters snatched away. PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK. A FRAGMENT. LEST you should think that verse shall die, Above the reach of vulgar song; Though daring Milton sits sublime, Sages and chiefs long since had birth And these, new heavens and systems framed. Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! THE FOURTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE'S EPISTLES.1 A MODERN IMITATION. 2 SAY, St. John, who alone peruse To you (the all-envied gift of heaven) " 5 1 This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise bestowed on him in a letter to Mr. Richardson, where Mr. Pope says, The sons shall blush their fathers were his foes: being so contradictory, probably occasioned the former to be suppressed. Note in Johnson's Edition. 2 Ad Albium Tibullum. Albi, nostrorum seromonum, candide judex, Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedanâ? Scribere, quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat The lines here quoted occur in the "Essay on Man." The indulgent gods, unasked, have given 3 In spite of tears, of mercy spite, My genius still must rail, and write. Haste to thy Twickenham's safe retreat, And mingle with the grumbling great: There, half devour'd by spleen, you'll find The rhyming bubbler of mankind; There (objects of our mutual hate) We'll ridicule both church and state. 1 Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Qui sapere, et fari possit quæ sentiat, et cui Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde, ..... non deficiente crumena? 2 Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras. 3 Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. Me pinguem et nitidum bene curatà cute vises, Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum. Johnson. APPENDIX. A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER, OCCASIONED BY THE FIRST CORRECT EDITION OF THE DUNCIAD.1 It is with pleasure I hear, that you have procured a correct copy of the Dunciad, which the many surreptitious ones have rendered so necessary; and it is yet with more, that I am informed it will be attended with a commentary: a work so requisite, that I cannot think the author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance of this poem. Such notes as have occured to me, I herewith send you: you will oblige me by inserting them amongst those which are, or will be, transmitted to you by others; since not only the author's friends, but even strangers, appear engaged by humanity, to take some care of an orphan of so much genius and spirit, which its parent seems to have abandoned from the very beginning, and suffered to step into the world unguarded, and unattended. It was upon reading some of the abusive papers lately published, that my great regard to a person, whose friendship I esteem as one of the chief honours of my life, and a much greater respect to truth, than to him or any man living, engaged me in inquiries, of which the enclosed notes are the fruit. I perceived, that most of these authors had beca (doubtless very wisely) the first aggressors. They had tried, till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: Nobody was either concerned or surprised, if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce. But every one was curious to read what could be said to prove Mr. Pope one, and was ready to pay something for such a discovery: A stratagem, which would they fairly own, it might not only reconcile them to me, but screen them from the resentment of their lawful superiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them. I found this was not all: Ill success in that had transported them to personal abuse, either of himself, or (what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men 1 This letter was supposed to have been written by Pope himself. |