TO MRS. M. B. ON HER BIRTH-DAY. OH, be thou bless'd with all that Heaven can send, Let joy or ease, let affluence or content, TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN, RESIGN'D to live, prepared to die, This day Tom's fair account has run Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout, TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.* IN beauty or wit, No mortal as yet, To question your empire has dared; But men of discerning Have thought that in learning, To yield to a lady was hard. Impertinent schools, With musty dull rules, Have reading to females denied: So papists refuse The Bible to use, Lest flocks should be wise as their guide. "Twas a woman at first (Indeed she was cursed) In knowledge that tasted delight, And sages agree That laws should decree To the first of possessors the right. This panegyric on Lady Mary Wortley Montague might have been suppressed by Mr. Pope, on account of her having satirized him in her verses to the imitator of Horace; which abuse he returned in the first satire of the second book of Horace. From furious Sappho, scarce a milder fate, Then bravely, fair dame, Resume the old claim, Which to your whole sex does belong; From a second bright Eve, The knowledge of right and of wrong. Hard doom did receive, When only one apple had she, What a punishment new Shall be found out for you, Who tasting, have robb'd the whole tree! EPISTLE IV, OF BOOK I, OF HORACE'S EPISTLES.* A modern Imitation. SAY,† St. John, who alone peruse 'Or shoots he folly as it flies? Or catches manners as they rise?'t Or, urged by unquench'd native heat, This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise be stowed on him in a letter to Mr. Richardson, where Mr. Pope says, The sons shall blush their fathers were his foes: being so contradictory, probably occasioned the former to be suppressed. S. t Ad Albium Tibullum. Albi, nostrorum sermonum, candide judex, Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana? Scribere, quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat. The lines here quoted occur in the Essay on Man. § An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres? Where (emulous of Chartres' fame) * To you (the all-envied gift of heaven) The indulgent gods, unask'd, have given A form complete in every part, And, to enjoy that gift, the art. 1 What could a tender mother's care In spite of tears, of mercy spite, Di tibi formam Di tibi divitias dederunt, artemque fruendi. 1 Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras. EPIGRAM ON MRS. TOFTS, A handsome Woman with a fine Voice, but very covetous and proud.* So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song, EPIGRAM, On one who made long Epitaphs.† One half will never be believed, The other never read. TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER, WHAT god, what genius, did the pencil move 'Twas Friendship-warm as Phœbus, kind as Love, And strong as Hercules. *This epigram, first printed anonymously in Steele's Collection, and copied in the Miscellanies of Swift and Pope, is ascribed to Pope by sir John Hawkins, in his History of Music-Mrs. Tofts, who was the daughter of a person in the family of Bishop Burnet, is celebrated as a singer little inferior, either for her voice or manner to the best Italian women. She lived at the introduc tion of the opera into this kingdom, and sung in compa. ny with Nicolini; but, being ignorant of Italian, chant ed her recitative in English, in answer to his Italian; yet the charms of their voices overcame the absurdity. It is not generally known that the person here meant was Dr. Robert Friend, head master of West minster-school |