In South-sea days not happier, when surmised 135 Content with little, I can piddle here, But ancient friends (though poor, or out of play,) 140 But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords : Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own: 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), 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; 155 And yours, my friends? through whose free opening gate (For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best, 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, The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year: 165 170 At best, it falls to some ungracious son, Who cries, "My father's damn'd, and all 's my own." 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, Let lands and houses have what loads they will, 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, ("Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear) 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, 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; Mix with the world, and battle for the state, Long, as to him who works for debt, the day, 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.] |