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THE EARL OF HALIFAX.

Ver. 232. Full-blown Bufo puff'd by every quill.] Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, the celebrated statesman and once popular poet, seems to be the original of Bufo. He was ambitious to be considered the Mecenas of his age, and his patronage of Addison, though not munificent, was well-timed and important in its results. Addison's "Letter from Italy to Charles, Lord Halifax," 1701, is the finest of his poems. Congreve, Steele, Rowe, and a host of minor authors, dedicated works to Halifax. Pope twice complimented him-first, in the preface to his Iliad, where he says, "The Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me, of whom it is hard to say, whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing to his generosity or his example." In the Epilogue to the Satires he again eulogizes him for his love of letters, and his abilities in Parliament. Pope stated to Spence that Halifax at one time, in the beginning of George the First's reign, proposed to settle a pension upon him; that he had taken time to consider the proposition, and about three months afterwards had written to the effect that all the difference he could find in having or not having a pension was, that if he had one he might live more at large in town, and that if he had not he might live happily enough in the country. Halifax does not seem to have pressed the matter; it dropped, and Pope said, "I had my liberty without a coach." Swift was probably not aware of this design of pensioning his friend, for he has remarked that Halifax's encouragements were only good words and good dinners. The death of this fortunate nobleman took place in 1715; and as Pope's satire was not published till 1734, it has been represented as highly improbable that the poet should have stigmatized him under the name of Bufo nineteen years after his death, and after having twice flattered him in his own name. The improbability is held to be greater when it is found that Pope alluded to Halifax in terms of respect and regard in a poem written four years later than the date of this character of Bufo. The objection is plausible, but it is overthrown by the evidence on the other side. All the circumstances in the character of Bufo apply to Halifax, and they will apply to no other.

"Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,
Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:
But still the great have kindness in reserve;
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve."

Bufo, then, must have been living and dispensing patronage in the time of Dryden, though the poet "came not nigh." The reason is obvious: Halifax, in conjunction with Prior, had written the City Mouse and Country Mouse in ridicule of Dryden's Hind and Panther, and the success of this travesty for a time clouded Dryden's popularity, and it is said affected him even to the shedding of tears. Halifax was a minister of the Crown six years before Dryden's death, but he wholly overlooked his claims as the first poet of the age. Dryden died in the year 1700, when Halifax, Lord Jefferies, and other men of quality made a subscription for a public funeral, and the poet was interred with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. Thus Halifax "helped

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to bury" him whom if he had not "helped to starve," he had at least seriously injured. Pope's real sentiments regarding Halifax may be seen from his conversations with Spence. He considered him to be rather a pretender to taste than possessed of it, and he illustrates this with an anecdote respecting his Homer. The poet read part of his translation to the peer, in presence of Addison, Congreve, and Garth. His lordship objected to certain passages, which he wished to be revised. Pope was distressed at the loose and general nature of the observations made by Halifax, when Garth, on their way home, suggested an easy remedy. All you need do (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." Pope followed the advice, and found the result as predicted. The passages were read exactly as they were at first. "Ay, now, Mr. Pope," cried the peer, "they are perfectly right: nothing can be better." Mr. Roscoe disbelieves this anecdote, because Lord Halifax had at one time the manuscript of the two first books of Homer in his hands, "where they had certainly been placed by Pope for the purpose of obtaining his remarks upon them, in a more deliberate form than he could expect to receive them on a cursory reading." The reading scene, however, may have taken place at an earlier period. The anecdote is distinctly and circumstantially told by Pope; Spence could not have invented it; and Mr. Roscoe's argument leaves the morality of the case pretty much the same. To fabricate the anecdote in depreciation of Halifax was as bad as to satirise him at one time and praise him at another.

Tickell dedicated his translation of the First Book of the Iliad to the memory of Lord Halifax, lamenting the misfortune which had befallen the learned world by the death of so generous and universal a patron; adding, that he was prompted to make the dedication by gratitude for the protection with which Halifax had begun to honour him. This must have piqued Pope. We ought to mention that the lines on Dryden are not in the first edition of the poem. They seem to have been introduced by Pope for the express purpose of identifying Bufo with Halifax.

LORD HERVEY.

Ver. 305. Let Sporus tremble.] John Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol. He was early attached to the Court of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Richmond, and in 1720 he married the "fair Lepell," one of the Princess's maids of honour. In the free language of that age, Pulteney and Lord Chesterfield signalized the event by a ballad in honour of both bride and bridegroom :

"For Venus had never seen bedded

So perfect a beau and a belle,

As when Hervey the handsome was wedded

To the beautiful Molly Lepell."

Pulteney some years afterwards wrote of the "handsome Hervey" in a very different strain, as "half man, half woman," and showered on him every epithet of contempt. Another lampoon of the day describes him as"Ne'er made for use, just fit for show,

Half wit, half fool, half man, half beau."

His manliness was in one respect vindicated by a duel with Pulteney. Lord Hervey had written several defences of Walpole, in answer to attacks in the Craftsman; and to one of these Pulteney published A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel. The reply was grossly personal; Hervey challenged his rival politician, and they fought with swords in St. James's Park. No serious result ensued, and Lord Hervey was left to the vengeance of Pope.

The germ of Pope's Sporus will be found in these party pasquinades; but the truth of the intellectual portrait was not fully disclosed till a very late period, 1848, when Mr. Croker published the long-hoarded Memoirs of the Reign of George II., by Lord Hervey. In this work the noble Vice-Chamberlain is seen more in the character of a malignant gossip than in that of an historian. He literally whispers at the ear of Eve-i. e. Queen Caroline, "half froth, half venom;" flatters all her prejudices, writes Court verses and lampoons for her gratification, evinces the grossest indelicacy in many of his communications, sneers at every high and sacred feeling; and throughout the whole work is seen to be destitute of all proper spirit and independence of character. As a politician Hervey was inconsistent, but evinced greater power in debate and more persevering application both in speaking and writing than would be surmised from Pope's satire. He never rose higher than Privy Seal, and this subordinate office he relinquished with great reluctance when Walpole's Administration was driven from power in 1742. His quarrel with the Prince, and secession from his party, had no ground of principle, but sprung originally from a desire for office, and, secondly, from jealousy as to a mistress.

"And Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring."

Lord Hervey's effeminacy arose partly from ill-health, but was carried to an extreme. Having been threatened with epileptic fits, he adopted a regimen fit for an anchorite. He took no wine or malt liquor, breakfasted on green tea unsweetened by sugar, and biscuits without butter; at dinner, he ate no meat but a little chicken; and once a week he indulged in a Scotch pill and took thirty grains of Indian root when his stomach was loaded. To soften his ghastly appearance, he used rouge. Another account represents him as drinking ass's milk; and when once asked at dinner whether he would have some beef, he answered: "Beef? Oh, no! Faugh! Don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things!" This is equal to Brummell's having once tried vegetables, and ate one pea: but both stories are no doubt mere dinner-table pleasantries. Lord Hervey died on the 8th of August, 1743.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE

IMITATED.

"Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur."-HOR.

["He seems with freedom, what with pain he proves,
And now a Satyr, now a Cyclops moves."-FRANCIS.]

[THE first of these satires was published in 1733, and is addressed to Mr. Fortescue, then a barrister, and afterwards a Judge and Master of the Rolls. In one of his conversations with Spence, Pope said that when confined to his room one winter in London, with a slight attack of fever, Lord Bolingbroke called upon him, and taking up a Horace which lay on the table, dipped into the first satire of the second book. 'He observed, how well that would suit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone, I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to press in a week or a fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my imitating some other of the Satires and Epistles." They are among the happiest of his works, and, compared with other translations and imitations of Horace, realise Denham's lines,

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They but preserve the ashes; he the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame."

The legal friend to whom Pope applies for advice, as Horace applied to the Roman lawyer, C. Trevatius Testa, had previously given him proofs both of his wit and his judgment. Fortescue was the author of the humorous report in Scriblerus, "Stradling versus Stiles," in which this nice point is discussed with professional phraseology and due gravity: "Sir John Swale, of Swale Hall, in Swale-dale, by the river Swale, Knight, made his last will and testament, in which, among other bequests was this, viz.: Out of the kind love and respect that I bear unto my much honoured and good friend, Mr. Matthew Stradling, gent., I do bequeath unto the said Matthew Stradling, gent., all my black and white horses.' The testator had six black horses, six white horses, and six pied horses. The debate, therefore, was whether or no the said Matthew Stradling should have the said pied horses by virtue of the said bequest." The case is ably debated, though not at such length as legal cases usually are, when it is suddenly terminated by a motion in arrest of udgment that the pied horses were mares; and thereupon an inspection

was prayed!" Fortescue would have been a valuable member of the Scriblerus Club, if their extensive scheme had proceeded, but he found ample employ. ment in his profession. Having been called to the bar in 1715, he soon gained extensive practice; was promoted to the bench of the Exchequer in 1735; from thence to the Common Pleas in 1738; and in 1741 he was made Master of the Rolls. He died in 1749. Fortescue was consulted by Pope about all his affairs, as well as those of Martha Blount, and, as may be gathered from the ninth and tenth lines in this satire, he gave his advice without a fee. The intercourse between the poet and his "learned counsel" was cordial and sincere, and of the letters that passed between them, sixtyeight have been published, ranging from 1714 to the last year of Pope's life. They are short, unaffected letters-more truly letters than any others in the series.

On publishing the second volume of his Poetical Works in 1735, the poet prefixed to the Satires the following

"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 vice 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 scare 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.
The lines are weak, another's pleased to say,
Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.
Tim'rous by nature, of the rich in awe,
'I come to Counsel learned in the law:

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