Admire whate'er the maddest can admire.

Is wealth thy passion? Hence! from pole to pole,

71

76

Where winds can carry, or where waves can roll,
For Indian spices, for Peruvian gold,
Prevent the greedy, and outbid the bold:
Advance thy golden mountain to the skies;
On the broad base of fifty thousand rise,
Add one round hundred, and (if that's not fair)
Add fifty more, and bring it to a square.
For, mark the advantage; just so many score
Will gain a wife with half as many more,
Procure her beauty, make that beauty chaste,.
And then such friends-as cannot fail to last.
A man of wealth is dubbed a man of worth, 81
Venus shall give him form, and Anstis birth.'
(Believe me, many a German prince is worse,
Who, proud of pedigree, is poor of purse).
His wealth brave Timon gloriously confounds;
Asked for a groat, he gives a hundred pounds; 86
Or if three ladies like a luckless play,

Take the whole house upon the poet's day.
Now, in such exigencies not to need,
Upon my word, you must be rich indeed;
A noble superfluity it craves,

90

Not for yourself, but for your fools and knaves: Something, which for your honour they may cheat,

And which it much becomes you to forget. 94 If wealth alone then make and keep us blest, Still, still be getting, never, never rest.

But if to power and place your passion lie, If in the pomp of life consist the joy; Then hire a slave, or (if you will) a lord To do the honours, and to give the word;

1 Anstis, the Garter King at Arms.

100

Tell at your levee, as the crowds approach, To whom to nod, whom take into your coach, Whom honour with your hand: to make remarks, Who rules in Cornwall, or who rules in Berks : "This may be troublesome, is near the chair: 105 That makes three members, this can choose a mayor."

Instructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest,
Adopt his son, or cousin at the least,
Then turn about, and laugh at your own jest.
Or if your life be one continued treat,
If to live well means nothing but to eat;
Up, up! cries Gluttony, 'tis break of day,
Go drive the deer, and drag the finny prey;
With hounds and horns go hunt an appetite-
So Russel1 did, but could not eat at night, 115
Called, happy dog! the beggar at his door,
And envied thirst and hunger to the poor.
Or shall we every decency confound,
Through taverns, stews, and bagnios take our
round,

Go dine with Chartres, in each vice outdo 120
K-l's lewd cargo, or Ty-y's crew,2
From Latian syrens, French Circæan feasts,
Return well travelled, and transformed to beasts;
Or for a titled punk, or foreign flame, 124
Renounce our country, and degrade our name?

If, after all, we must with Wilmot own,3
The cordial drop of life is love alone,
And Swift cry wisely, "Vive la Bagatelle!"

1 This was a Lord Russel who, by living too luxuriously, had quite spoilt his constitution.-P. (in Spence's Anecdotes).

2 Lords Kinnoul and Tyrawley, two ambassadors noted for wild immorality.-Carruthers.

3 Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. The allusion is to a line in his "Letter from Artemisia in Town to Chloe in the Country."-Carruthers.

The man that loves and laughs, must sure do well.

Adieu-if this advice appear the worst, 130 E'en take the counsel which I gave you first: Or better precepts if you can impart, Why do, I'll follow them with all my heart.

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.1

ADVERTISEMENT.

The reflections of Horace, and the judgments passed in his Epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his Prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the increase of an Absolute Empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours.

This Epistle will show the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate : Admonebat prætores, ne paterentur nomen suum obsolefieri, &c. The other, that this piece was only a general Discourse of Poetry; whereas it was an Apology for the Poets, in order to render Augustus more their patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his contemporaries, first, against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly, against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the

1 Published in 1737.

theatre; and lastly, against the Emperor himself, who had conceived them of little use to the Government. He shows (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste among the Romans) that the introduction of the polite arts of Greece had given the writers of his time great advantages over their predecessors; that their morals were much improved, and the licence of those ancient poets restrained: that Satire and Comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagances were left on the stage were owing to the ill taste of the nobility; that poets, under due regulations, were in many respects useful to the State; and concludes, that it was upon them the Emperor himself must depend for his fame with posterity.

We may further learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his court to this great Prince by writing with a decent freedom towards him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character.-P.

TO AUGUSTUS.1

HILE you, great patron of mankind!

sustain

The balanced world, and open all
the main;2

Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch,

steal

An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,

1 George II.'s name was George Augustus.

5

2 It should be remembered that irony is the leading feature of this epistle. It was written at a time when the Spanish depredations at sea were such that there was a universal cry that the British flag had been insulted and the English braved on their own eleOpening all the main" means, therefore, that the King was so liberal as to leave it open to the Spaniards.-Bowles.

ment. 66