To please his mistress, one aspersed his life; That harmless mother thought no wife a whore: If there be force in virtue, or in song. sioned 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 what soever. Budgell, 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. 2 Alluding to Tindal's will; by which, and other indirect practices, Budgell, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. 3 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 dropped 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 Turner, 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: M* D. O. M. ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. ET. SIBI. 1 Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne. The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. His life, though long, to sickness past unknown, O grant me thus to live, and thus to die! Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I. With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, A. Whether that blessing be denied or given, SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.-HOR. 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 více 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 æquus virtuti atque ejus amicis 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: Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough. You'll give me, like a friend both sage and free, F. I'd write no more. P. Not write? but then I think, And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink. F. You could not do a worse thing for your life. Lettuce and cowslip-wine; probatum est. Hartshorn, or something that shall close your eyes. P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, With ARMS, and GEORGE, and BRUNSWICK, crowd the verse, Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder, With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder? P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear; F. Better be Cibber, I'll maintain it still, P. What should ail 'em? F. A hundred smart in Timon and in Balaam: The fewer still you name, you wound the more; Bond is but one, but Harpax is a score. P. Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny I love to pour out all myself as plain As downright SHIPPEN, or as old Montaigne: The soul stood forth, nor kept a thought within; Thieves, supercargoes, sharpers, and directors. Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage, Ther, learned Sir! (to cut the matter short) Whate'er my fate, or well or ill at court, Whether old age, with faint but cheerful ray, Attends to gild the evening of my day, |