In South-sea days not happier, when surmised
The lord of thousands, than if now excised; 6
In forest planted by a father's hand,
Than in five acres now of rented land.

135

Content with little, I can piddle here,
On brocoli and mutton, round the year;

But ancient friends (though poor, or out of play,)
That touch my bell, I cannot turn away.
'Tis true, no turbots dignify my boards,

140

But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords :
To Hounslow Heath I point, and Bansted Down,

Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own:
From yon old walnut-tree a shower shall fall ;
And grapes, long lingering on my only wall,

145

And figs from standard and espalier join;

The devil is in you if you cannot dine:

Then cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place),
And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace.

150

Fortune not much of humbling me can boast: Though double taxed, how little have I lost!7 My life's amusements have been just the same, Before and after standing armies came.

My lands are sold; my father's house is gone;
I'll hire another's; is not that my own,

155

And yours, my friends? through whose free opening gate
None comes too early, none departs too late;

(For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best,
Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.)
"Pray heaven it last! (cries Swift!) as you go on;
I wish to God this house had been your own:
Pity! to build without a son or wife;
Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life."

160

6 [Warburton states that Pope had South-Sea stock, which he did not sell out, that was valued at between £20,000 and £30,000 when it fell. This must have been a nominal-literally a South-Sea valuation. He could not have invested more than two or three thousand pounds, if so much, in the South Sea stock, and its depreciation deprived him of none of the comforts or elegancies of life to which he had been accustomed. For an account of Walpole's Excise Bill, here alluded to, see extract from Lord Hervey's Memoirs. Notes to Moral Essays, Ep. III.]

7 [Roman Catholics and Nonjurors had at that time to pay additional taxes.]

Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one,
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon ?8
What's property? dear Swift! you see it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter;
Or, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer's share;
Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir;
Or, in pure equity (the case not clear)

The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year:

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170

At best, it falls to some ungracious son,

Who cries, "My father's damn'd, and all 's my own."
Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford,
Become the portion of a booby lord ;9

175

8 [Mrs. Vernon, from whom he had a lease for life of his house and garden at Twickenham. She died about a year before Pope. He had then some idea of purchasing the property (valued at about £1000), if any of his "particular friends" wished to have it as a residence. No such arrangement was made, and, after the poet's death, the house was bought by Sir William Stanhope. See Life of Pope.]

9 [William, the first Lord Grimston, then occupant of Gorhambury, near St. Alban's.]

And Helmsley,10 once proud Buckingham's delight,
Slides to a scrivener or a city knight:

Let lands and houses have what loads they will,
Let us be fix'd, and our own masters still.

180

10 [Helmsley, in Yorkshire, which had belonged to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was purchased by Sir Charles Duncombe, Knight, Lord Mayor of London in 1709, and M.P. for Downton, Wilts. The City Knight changed the name of the place to Duncombe Park.]

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

TO LORD BOLINGBROKE.

[Written in 1738, when Pope was in his forty-ninth year. Hence the allusion in the opening lines to the Sabbath of his days. Bolingbroke was then sixty, and it is curious to find the younger friend gently reproach his older philosophical associate for breaking the sacred calm of his poetic retirement. The restless peer was then in France. Unable to procure a restoration to his seat in the House of Lords, he had for ten years waged a war of pamphlets and newspaper essays against the Walpole administration, till, tired of the fruitless contest, and quarrelling with his own party, he again retired to France, and remained there from 1735 to 1742.]

ST. JOHN, whose love indulged my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my last!
Why will you break the Sabbath of my days?
Now sick alike of envy and of praise.
Public too long, ah, let me hide my age!
See modest Cibber now has left the stage:
Our generals now, retired to their estates,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gates;
In life's cool evening satiate of applause,
Nor fond of bleeding, even in Brunswick's cause.
A voice there is, that whispers in my ear,

("Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear)
"Friend Pope! be prudent, let your Muse take breath,
And never gallop Pegasus to death;

10

5

Lest stiff, and stately, void of fire or force,

15

You limp, like Blackmore on a Lord Mayor's horse." l

1 [Sir Richard Blackmore, also conspicuous in the Dunciad; a good man, but a heavy, pompous, and unreadable poet. His epics were a fair subject for ridicule, but the satirist might have stopped at the grave: Blackmore had been nine years dead when this Epistle was written.]

Farewell, then, verse, and love, and every toy,
The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;
What right, what true, what fit we justly call,
Let this be all my care, for this is all:
To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste,
What every day will want, and most, the last.
But ask not, to what doctors I apply?

Sworn to no master, of no sect am I:

As drives the storm, at any door I knock:

20

25

And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke;
Sometimes a patriot, active in debate,

Mix with the world, and battle for the state,
Free as young Lyttelton,2 her cause pursue,
Still true to virtue, and as warm as true;
Sometimes with Aristippus, or St. Paul,
Indulge my candour, and grow all to all;
Back to my native moderation slide,
And win my way by yielding to the tide.

Long, as to him who works for debt, the day,
Long as the night to her whose love 's away,
Long as the year's dull circle seems to run,
When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one ;
So slow the unprofitable moments roll,
That lock up all the functions of my soul;
That keep me from myself; and still delay
Life's instant business to a future day:
That task, which as we follow or despise,
The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise:
Which done, the poorest can no wants endure;
And which, not done, the richest must be poor.

2 [George, first Lord Lyttelton, then Secretary to the Prince of Wales, in which capacity he was highly serviceable to Thomson, Mallet, and other men of letters. His Poems, Dialogues of the Dead, History of Henry II., and Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul, have given him a respectable rank in literature. It appears from Lyttelton's Correspondence, published in 1845, that he wrote his treatise on St. Paul's conversion chiefly with a view to meet the case of Thomson, who, in that sceptical age, was troubled with sceptical doubts. Lyttelton was anxious that the amiable poet should unite the faith to the heart of a Christian, "for the latter he always had." The circumstance is highly honourable to Lyttelton, and is another instance of that warmth of friendship which Thomson inspired.]