TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE*.

IN beauty or wit,

No mortal as yet,

To question your empire has dar'd;
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 curst)

In knowledge that tasted delight,

And sages agree

The laws should decree

To the first of possessors the right.

Then bravely, fair dame,

Resume the old claim,

Which to your whole sex does belong;
And let men receive,

From a second bright Eve,

The knowledge of right and of wrong.

* 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,
P.-'d by her love, or libel'd by her hate.

But if the first Eve

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?

THE FOURTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE'S EPISTLES*.

SAY,

A modern Imitation.

St. John, who alone peruse
With candid eye, the mimic muse,
What schemes of politics, or laws,
In Gallic lands the patriot draws!
Is then a greater work in hand,
Than all the tomes of Haines's band?
'Or shoots he folly as it flies?
Or catches manners as they rise?"
Or, urg'd by unquench'd native heat,

Does St. John Greenwich sports repeat?

* This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise bestowed 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.

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 tacitam silvas inter reptare salubres?

Where (emulous of Chartres' fame)
Ev'n Chartres' self is scarce a name.

* To you (th' all-envy'd gift of heaven) Th' indulgent gods, unask'd, have given A form complete in ev'ry part,

And, to enjoy that gift, the art.
+ What could a tender mother's care
Wish better to her favourite heir,
Than wit, and fame, and lucky hours,
A stock of health, and golden showers,
And graceful fluency of speech,
Precepts before unknown to teach?

Amidst thy various ebbs of fear,
And gleaming hope, and black despair:
Yet let thy friend this truth impart ;
A truth I tell with bleeding heart
(In justice for your labours past),
§ That ev'ry day shall be your last;
That ev'ry hour you life renew
Is to your injur'd country due.

In spite of fears, of mercy spite,
My genius still must rail, and write.
Haste to thy Twickenham's safe retreat,
And mingle with the grumbling great:
There, half devour'd by spleen, you'll find
The rhyming bubbler of mankind;
There (objects of our mutual hate)
We'll ridicule both church and state.

Di tibi formam

Di tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi.

+ Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Quam sapere, et fari posset quæ sentiat, et cui Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde,

non deficiente crumena?

Inter spem, curamque, timores inter et iras. § Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. Me pinguem, et nitidum bene curata cute vises, Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum.

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,

As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus

along;

But such is thy avarice, and such is thy pride, That the beasts must have starv'd, and the poet have died.

FR

EPIGRAM,

On one who made long Epitaphst.

RIEND, for your epitaphs I'm griev'd,
Where still so much is said;

One half will never be believ'd,

The other never read.

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 introduction of the opera into this kingdom, and sung in company with Nicolini; but, being ignorant of Italian, chanted 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 Freind, head master of Westminster-school.

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER,

On his painting for me the Statues of Apollo, Venus, and Hercules.

WHAT god, what genius, did the pencil move

When Kneller painted these?

'Twas friendship-warm as Phoebus, kind as love, And strong as Hercules.

A FAREWEL TO LONDON,
In the Year 1715.

DEAR, damn'd, distracting town, farewel!

Thy fools no more I'll tease:

This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,
Ye harlots sleep at ease!

Soft B*** and rough C*****, adieu!
Earl Warwick make your moan,

The lively H*****k and you

May knock up whores alone.

To drink and droll be Rowe allow'd
Till the third watchman toll;
Let Jervis gratis paint, and Frowde
Save three-pence and his soul.
Farewel Arbuthnot's raillery

On every learned sot,

And Garth, the best good Christian he,
Although he knows it not.

Lintot, farewel! thy bard must go;

Farewel, unhappy Tonson!

Heaven gives thee, for thy loss of Rowe,
Lean Philips, and fat Johnson,