Pope was now ready both in prose and verse. The former was a Letter to a Noble Lord, on occasion of some Libels written and propagated at Court in the Year 1732-3. The letter was shown to some friends, but not published. The poetical reply was contained in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, and included that most tremendous of all his invectives, the character of Sporus, in which Lord Hervey's appearance, character, tastes, and habits are so unmercifully, yet, in many points, so truly, satirized and delineated.

The year preceding his death, Lord Hervey published a poetical Essayan attempt at ethics-on "The Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue, exemplified in some Instances, both Ancient and Modern." Pope is the modern instance, and he is charged with all manner of crimes-as lost to decency and honour, libelling the living, and aspersing the dead. The conclusion of this sketch is forcible and poetical:

Such is th' injustice of his daily theme,

And such the lust that breaks his nightly dream,

That vestal fire of undecaying hate,

Which Time's cold tide itself can ne'er abate."

But, was Hervey's resentment less durable or less vindictive?

Lady Mary wisely withdrew from the contest: there were poisoned arrows on both sides, but Pope's were unerring and irresistible. She went abroad in 1739. Spence and Walpole met her next year in Rome. The goodnatured Spence reported pretty favourably. "She is one of the most shining characters in the world, but shines like a comet; she is all irregularity, and always wandering; the most wise, most imprudent; loveliest, most disagreeable; best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; 'all things by turns and nothing long!"" Walpole had as strong an aversion to Lady Mary as Pope himself, being from certain family connexions biassed from his birth against her. He mentions the wandering lady's eccentricities. "Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence, must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled, an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side, partly covered with a plaster, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought coarse," &c. A libellous caricature! Lady Mary did not return till she was past seventy-a worn-out wanderer, and a victim to cancer. The scene was soon closed; but she has two imperishable claims on the world's gratitude-her courageous perseverance in introducing the art of inoculation, which she had learned in Turkey, and her Letters from Abroad, so full of fine description and novel facts, of intelligence and animation.

THE SECOND SATIRE

OF THE

SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

TO MR. BETHEL.

[Hugh Bethel, Esq., to whom this Epistle is addressed, is the same gentleman alluded to by Pope in graceful and complimentary terms in his Essay on Man. He possessed landed property in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and appears to have been an amiable and excellent country gentleman. In a letter to Allen, Pope says "I have known and esteemed him (Mr. Bethel) for every moral virtue these twenty years and more. He has all the charity, without any of the weakness of —; and, I firmly believe, never said a thing he did not think, nor did a thing he could not tell." One of the last acts of the poet's life seems to have been dictating a letter to Mr. Bethel. Little is known of the poet's friend, "blameless Bethel." They were early acquainted, for a copy of the first edition of his poems, 1717, was presented by Pope to Mr. Bethel, with a highly complimentary Latin inscription. The Gentleman's Magazine thus announces the death of Mr. Bethel :"Died at Ealing, Middlesex, on January 16th, 1748, Hugh Bethel, Esq. His estate of £2000 per annum goes to his brother, Slingsby Bethel, Esq., for London.]

WHAT, and how great, the virtue and the art

To live on little with a cheerful heart;

M.P.

(A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine)
Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine.
Not when a gilt buffet's reflected pride
Turns you from sound philosophy aside;
Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll,
And the brain dances to the mantling bowl.

5

Hear Bethel's sermon, one not versed in schools,
But strong in sense, and wise without the rules.

Go, work, hunt, exercise! (he thus began)
Then scorn a homely dinner, if you can.
Your wine lock'd up, your butler stroll'd abroad,
Or fish denied (the river yet unthaw'd),

If then plain bread and milk will do the feat,
The pleasure lies in you and not the meat.

10

15

Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men
Will choose a pheasant still before a hen;
Yet hens of Guinea full as good I hold,
Except you eat the feathers green and gold.
Of carps and mullets why prefer the great,
(Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat,)
Yet for small turbots such esteem profess?
Because God made these large, the other less.
Oldfield with more than harpy throat endued,1
Cries, "Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued!" 2
Oh, blast it, south-winds! till a stench exhale
Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit's tail.
By what criterion do you eat, d'ye think,

If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?
When the tired glutton labours through a treat,
He finds no relish in the sweetest meat;
He calls for something bitter, something sour,
And the rich feast concludes extremely poor:
Cheap eggs, and herbs, and olives still we see;
Thus much is left of old simplicity!
The robin red-breast till of late had rest,
And children sacred held a martin's nest,
Till beccaficos sold so devilish dear

To one that was, or would have been, a peer.

40

Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed,

I'll have a party at the Bedford-head ;3

Or e'en to crack live crawfish recommend;

I'd never doubt at court to make a friend.

'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother

45

About one vice, and fall into the other:
Between excess and famine lies a mean;
Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean.
Avidien, or his wife (no matter which,

For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch,) 4

50

1 [Warburton says a glutton of the name of Oldfield ran through a fortune of £1500 a year in the simple luxury of good eating.]

2 A West-Indian term of gluttony; a hog roasted whole, stuffed with spice, and basted with Madeira wine.

8 A famous eating-house.

4 [Avidien was Edward Wortley Montagu; his wife, the never-forgotten and never-forgiven Lady Mary. See Additional Notes.]

Sell their presented partridges and fruits,
And humbly live on rabbits and on roots:
One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine,
And is at once their vinegar and wine.

But on some lucky day (as when they found

55

A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drown'd),
At such a feast, old vinegar to spare,

Is what two souls so generous cannot bear :
Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart,
But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart.

60

He knows to live, who keeps the middle state,
And neither leans on this side nor on that;
Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler's pay,
Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away;
Nor lets, like Nævius, every error pass,
The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.

Now hear what blessings temperance can bring:
(Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing :)
First health: the stomach (cramm'd from every dish,
A tomb of boil'd and roast, and flesh and fish,
Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar,
And all the man is one intestine war,)
Remembers oft the school-boy's simple fare,
The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

How pale each worshipful and reverend guest
Rise from a clergy, or a city feast!
What life in all that ample body, say?
What heavenly particle inspires the clay?
The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines

To seem but mortal, even in sound divines.

80

On morning wings how active springs the mind
That leaves the load of yesterday behind!
How easy every labour it pursues!

How coming to the poet every Muse!
Not but we may exceed, some holy time,

85

Or tired in search of truth, or search of rhyme;
Ill health some just indulgence may engage;
And more the sickness of long life, old age:
For fainting age what cordial drop remains,
If our intemperate youth the vessel drains?
Our fathers praised rank venison.
Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose.

You suppose,

90

Not so:

a buck was then a week's repast,

And 'twas their point, I ween, to make it last;

More pleased to keep it till their friends could come,
Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home.
Why had not I in those good times my birth,
Ere coxcomb-pies or coxcombs were on earth?
Unworthy he, the voice of fame to hear,
That sweetest music to an honest ear;
(For 'faith, Lord Fanny! you are in the wrong,
The world's good word is better than a song,)
Who has not learn'd fresh sturgeon and ham-pie
Are no rewards for want and infamy!
When luxury has licked up all thy pelf,
Cursed by thy neighbours, thy trustees, thyself,
To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame,
Think how posterity will treat thy name;
And buy a rope, that future times may tell
Thou hast at least bestowed one penny well.

66

To have a taste is insolence indeed:

95

100

105

110

'Right,” cries his Lordship, "for a rogue in need

In me 'tis noble, suits my birth and state,

My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great."

Then, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray,
And shine that superfluity away.

115

Oh impudence of wealth! with all thy store,
How darest thou let one worthy man be poor?
Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall?

Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall:

120

Or to thy country let that heap be lent,

As M**o's was, but not at five per cent.5

Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind,

Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.

And who stands safest? tell me, is it he

125

That spreads and swells in puff'd prosperity;

Or, blest with little, whose preventing care

In peace provides fit arms against a war?

Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought,

And always thinks the very thing he ought:

130

His equal mind I copy what I can,

And, as I love, would imitate the man.

5 [The Duke of Marlborough.]