i k But if to Pow'r and Place your paffion lie, If in the Pomp of Life confift the joy ; Then hire a Slave, or (if you will) a Lord To do the Honours, and to give the Word; 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 100 "May'r." Inftructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest, 120 t I 10 115 124 If "Si, Mimnermus uti cenfet, finé amore jocifque Nil eft jucundum; vivas in amore jocifque. W w Vive, vale. fi quid novifti rectius iftis, Candidus imperti: fi non, his utere mecum. NOTES. VER. 126. Wilmot] Earl of Rochester. WARBURTON. VER. 128. And SWIFT cry wifely, "Vive la Bagatelle !"] Our Poet, fpeaking in one place of the purpose of his Satire, fays, "In this impartial glass, my Muse intends Fair to expofe myself, my foes, my friends;" and, in another, he makes his Court-Advifer fay, "Laugh at your Friends, and if your Friends be fore, because their impatience under reproof would fhew, they had a great deal amifs, which wanted to be fet right. On this principle, Swift falls under his correction. He could not bear to see a Friend he fo much valued, live in the miferable abuse of one of Nature's best gifts, unadmonished of his folly. Swift, as we may fee by fome pofthumous volumes, lately publifhed, fo difhonourable and injurious to his memory, trifled away his old age in a diffipation that women and boys might be asham'd of. For when men have given into a long habit of employing their wit only to fhew their parts, to edge their fpleen, to pander to a faction; or, in fhort, to any thing but that for which Nature bestowed it, namely to recommend Virtue, and set off Truth; old age, which abates the paffions, will never rectify the abuses they occafioned. But the remains of wit, instead of seeking and recovering their proper channel, will run into that miferable depravity of tafte here condemned and in which Dr. Swift feems to have placed no inconfiderable part of his wifdom. "I chufe," fays he, in a letter to Mr. Pope, "my Companions amongst those of the least confequence, and most compliance: I read the most trifling books I can find: and whenever I write, it is upon the most trifling fubjects." And again," I love La Bagatelle better than ever. I am always writing bad Profe or worse Verses, either of RAGE OF RAILLERY," &c. And again in a Letter to Mr. Gay, "My rule is, Vive la Bagatelle 1" WARBURTON. In If, after all, we must with " Wilmot own, The cordial Drop of Life is Love alone; And SWIFT cry wifely, "Vive la Bagatelle !" The Man that loves and laughs, must fure do well, Adieu-if this Advice appear the worst, 130 E'en take the Counsel which I gave you first: W Or better Precepts if you can impart, NOTES. heart. In this note, Dr. Warburton makes fome fevere ftrictures on the manner in which Swift employed his wit, in his latter days. And indeed, in many of his remarks, it appears that Warburton was not partial to the character of Swift; whom he had attacked in one of his earliest productions, on portents and prodigies; in which he fays, page 32: "The religious Author of the Tale of a Tub will tell you, religion is but a reservoir of fools and madmen; and the virtuous Lemuel Gulliver will anfwer for the ftate, that it is a den of favages and cut-throats." Edition 12mo. 1727. "Mifanthropy," fays a true philofopher, "is fo dangerous a thing, and goes fo far in fapping the very foundation of morality and religion, that I efteem the last part of Swift's Gulliver (that I mean relative to his Houyhnhnms and Yahoos) to be a worse book to perufe, than those which we forbid as the most flagitious and obfcene. One abfurdity in this author (a wretched philofopher, though a great wit) is well worth remarking; in order to render the nature of men odious, and the nature of beafts amiable, he is compelled to give human characters to his beasts, and beastly characters to his men; fo that we are to admire the beafts, not for being beasts, but amiable men; and to deteft the men, not for being men, but deteftable beasts. "Whoever has been reading this unnatural filth, let him turn for a moment to a Spectator of Addison, and observe the philanthropy of that claffical Writer; I may add, the fuperior purity of his diction, and his wit." HARRIS's Philological Enquiries, page 538. WARTON. WITH the exception of a few unequal lines, this is the most pleafing and finished of all his Imitations. Murray, to whom it was addreffed, and who afterwards became fo much more eminent, having highly distinguished himself by his elegant claffical attainments at Chrift-church, Oxford, was admitted a ftudent at Lincoln's Inn, April 1724,-his fubfequent history is well known. Lord Cornbury, to whom Pope pays fo elegant a compliment, was in all refpects a most amiable man. He refided for fome time at Spa, on account of his health. In a letter from Pope to Mrs. Price, (which I have been favoured with, by her grandson, Uvedale Price,) he is thus mentioned: "Pray, Madam, tell my Lord Cornbury I am not worse than "he left me, though I have endured fome uneafinefs fince, befide what his indifpofition, when I parted, gave me. "I earneftly with his return, but not till he can bring himself "whole to us, who want honeft and able men too much to part with him, &c." Henry Viscount Cornbury was great grandfon of the celebrated Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and only fon of Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochefter. Lord Cornbury acted with the greatest moderation and uprightnefs in political affairs; though a Tory, and violent in oppofition to Sir Robert Walpole, he yet opposed the unconftitutional motion of Sandys, for the removal of that minifter, in a manly and fenfible fpeech. See Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, ch. 55. This amiable nobleman died before his father in 1753, without issue, and the title afterwards became extinct. |