Let the two Curlls of town and court, abuse Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne. The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. Budgell, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. P In some of Curll's and other pamphlets, Mr. Pope's father was said to be a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt. But, what is stranger, a nobleman (if such a reflection could be thought to come from a nobleman) had dropt an allusion to that pitiful untruth, in a paper called An Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity; and the following line, "Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure," had fallen from a like courtly pen, in certain verses to the imitator of Horace. Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsay.-His mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family.-Mr. Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few weeks after this poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middlesex : D. O. M. ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO. ET. EDITHÆ. CONIVGI. INCVLPABILI. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. ET SIBI. His life, though long, to sickness past unknown, Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I. With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, A. Whether that blessing be denied or given, SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.-Hok. 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. P. THERE are, (I scarce 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. I come to counsel learned in the law: F. I'd write no more. P. Not write? but then I think, And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink. I nod in company, I wake at night, Fools rush into my head, and so I write. F. You could not do a worse thing for your life. Lettuce and cowslip wine; Probatum est. P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear; F. Better be Cibber, I'll maintain it still, P. What should ail 'em? q P. Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny Scarsdale his bottle, Darty a his ham-pie ; Ridotta sips and dances, till she see The doubling lustres dance as fast as she; F- loves the senate, Hockley-hole his brother, I love to pour out all myself, as plain Darteneuf, a notorious epicure, whom Lord Lyttelton in his Dialogues of the Dead has introduced lamenting to Apicius his ill-fortune in having lived before turtle-feasts were known in England. Dodsley, knew Darteneuf, and, as he stated, had waited on him at dinner. As downright SHIPPEN, or as old Montaigne : : Like good Erasmus in an honest mean, M.P. for Newton, Lancashire; a Jacobite. • Cardinal Fleury, minister of France. A Miss Mackenzie died about this time, poisoned, it was suspected, from jealousy. The person alluded to was Lady D-ne. |