Health to himself, and to his infants bread, 170 The labourer bears: what his hard heart denies, His charitable vanity supplies. Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvest bury all his pride has planned, 175 And laughing Ceres reassume the land.1 Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil ? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle. 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. 181 His father's acres who enjoys in peace, Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase: Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil; Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed 185 The milky heifer and deserving steed; Whose rising forests, not for pride or show, But future buildings, future navies, grow: Let his plantations stretch from down to down, First shade a country, and then raise a town. You too proceed! make falling arts your care, 191 justified in giving wealth to those who squander it in this manner. A bad taste employs more hands, and diffuses expense more than a good one. This recurs· to what is laid down in Book I. Ep. II. ver. 230-7, and in the Epistle preceding this, ver. 161, &c.-P. 1 Had the Poet lived but three years longer, he had seen his general prophecy against all ill-judged magnificence fulfilled in a very particular instance. Warburton. In the edition of 1751, the note ran thus: "Had the poet lived but three years longer, he had seen this prophecy fulfilled": which so plainly pointed at what had happened at Canons, that it was altered as it here stands.-Warton. Canons was pulled down in 1747. 2 Erect new wonders, and the old repair; Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,1 And be whate'er Vitruvius was before: Till kings call forth the ideas of your mind,3 (Proud to accomplish what such hands designed,) 196 Bid harbours open, public ways extend, The mole projected break the roaring main; 200 1 See notes on lines 23 and 46. 2 M. Vitruvius Pollio, author of a celebrated treatise, De Architecturâ. He flourished in the reign of Augustus. 3 The poet, after having touched upon the proper objects of magnificence and expense, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and public works which become a prince. This poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is satirically alluded to in our author's imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. 2: "Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall"); others very vilely executed, through fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c.-P. |