DORSET, the grace of Courts, the Muses' pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.

The scourge
of pride, tho' sanctify'd or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state:
Yet soft his nature, tho' severe his lay;'
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.

Blest satirist! who touch'd the mean so true,
As show'd, Vice had his hate and pity too.

Blest courtier! who could king and country please,'
Yet sacred keep his friendships, and his ease.

1 Born, 1638; died, 1706.

2 In the quarto of 1735, where the epitaph first appears, this part of the inscription was :

"In the Church of Knolle in Kent."

This line was probably suggested by Rochester's description of him : "For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose

The best good man with the worstnatured Muse."

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Though a favourite with James II. he appeared at the trial of the Seven Bishops and gave them his counten. ance and support, and he afterwards concurred in the Revolution, and was made Lord Chamberlain by William III., the day after his accession, besides receiving the Garter subsequently.

Blest peer! his great forefathers' ev'ry grace
Reflecting, and reflected in his race;

Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And patriots still, or poets, deck the line.'

II.

ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBAL,

ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE TO KING WILLIAM III., WHO HAVING RESIGNED HIS PLACE, DIED IN HIS RETIREMENT AT EASTHAMSTED IN BERKSHIRE, 1716.

A PLEASING form; a firm, yet cautious mind;
Sincere, tho' prudent; constant, yet resign'd:
Honour unchang'd, a principle profest,
Fix'd to one side, but mod'rate to the rest:
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true:
Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;

A gen'rous faith, from superstition free;

A love to peace, and hate of tyranny;

Such this man was; who now, from earth remov'd,
At length enjoys that liberty he lov'd.

1 Particularly the first Earl, of whom he said to Spence: "Mr. Sackville (afterwards the first Earl of Dorset of that name) was the best English poet between Chaucer's and Spenser's time."-Anecdotes, p. 21.

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2 This epitaph was written in the first place for John, Lord Caryll. It first appears as an epitaph on Trum bal, in the quarto edition of Pope's poems in 1735.

III.

ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT,'

ONLY SON OF THE LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT; AT THE CHURCH OF
STANTON-HARCOURT IN OXFORDSHIRE, 1720.

To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art! draw near;
Here lies the friend most lov'd,' the son most dear;
Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide,
Or3 gave his father grief but when he died."

How vain is reason, eloquence how weak!
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak.
Oh let thy once-lov'd friend inscribe thy stone,
And, with a father's sorrows, mix his own!'

1 He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Evelyn, and left one son, who became Earl of Harcourt, and is alluded to in Dunciad, iv., 545. The St. James's Evening Post of July 7th, 1720, announces: "The Hon. Simon Harcourt, only son of Lord Harcourt, died lately in France." A copy of the epitaph appeared in Hill's Plain-Dealer, Nov. 13th, 1724. 2 In the Plain-Dealer: "wept." 3 In the Plain-Dealer: "Nor."

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And on a stone in St. Mary Magdalen's, Bermondsey, 1694 :

"Complete in all but days resigned her breath,

Who never disobeyed but in her death." -WAKEFIELD.

The same thought is also found in an epitaph at Stoneland, near Tonbridge, to the memory of Thomas Sackville, one of the thirteen children of Richard, Earl of Dorset :

"He scarce knew sin but what curs'd nature gave,

And yet grim death hath snatched him
to the grave.

He never to his parents was unkind,
But in his early leaving them behind."

5 In the Plain-Dealer: "When."
6 In the Plain-Dealer: "Yet."
7 In the Plain-Dealer, the epitaph
ends with the following additional
couplet:

"Ah no! 'tis vain to strive, it will not be, No grief that can be told is felt for thee."

IV.

ON JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ.

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

JACOBUS CRAGGS1

REGI MAGNE BRITANNIE A SECRETIS

ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBUS

PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPULI AMOR ET DELICIE:

VIXIT TITULIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR

ANNOS, HEU PAUCOS, XXXV.

OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.

STATESMAN, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear!
Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end;
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approv'd;

Prais'd, wept, and honour'd by the Muse he lov'd.'

INTENDED FOR MR. ROWE,

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THY relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred, place by Dryden's awful dust:
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide enquiring eyes.

1 This epitaph first appears in Dodsley's edition of Pope's Works, 1738, among the Addenda to Epitaphs.

2 These lines are inserted at the end of the Epistle to Addison as an inscription for a supposed medal in

honour of Craggs. But the last line is there different:

"And praised, unenvied, by the Muse he loved."

See the note on the passage, p. 206 of Vol. VI. of this edition.

Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blessed in thy genius, in thy love, too, blest!
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies,
What a whole thankless land to his denies.'

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VI.

ON MRS. CORBET,'

WHO DIED OF A CANCER IN HER BREAST.

HERE rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason, and with sober sense:
No conquests she, but o'er herself, desir'd,
No arts essay'd, but not to be admir'd.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinc'd that virtue only is our own.

The epitaph in Westminster Abbey is as follows:

Thy reliques, Rowe, to this sad shrine we trust,

And near thy Shakespeare place thy honoured bust.

Oh! next him, skilled to draw the tender tear,

For never heart felt passion more sin

cere;

To nobler sentiment to fire the brave,
For never Briton more disdained a slave.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless
rest,

Blest in thy genius, in thy love, too,
blest!

And blest that timely from our scene removed,

Thy soul enjoys the liberty it loved.

To these, so mourned in death, so loved in life,

The childless parent and the widowed wife,

With tears inscribes this monumental stone,

That holds their ashes and expects her own."

There is no positive external evidence that the amended epitaph was written

VOL. IV. POETRY.

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by Pope. The style of the verses, however, is almost conclusive as to their authorship. Rowe's widow married for her second husband, Colonel Deane hence, as Lord Hailes tells us, the sarcastic reference to her in Epilogue to Satires, ii. 108. (See Vol. iii. 480.) By this (his second) wife, Rowe had a daughter, who, Johnson says, married Mr. Fane, and who, according to Mr. Cunningham, died in 1739. This latter statement, however, seems inconsistent with what Lord Hailes says about the verse in the Epilogue, for the epitaph must clearly have been written first, and the Epilogue was published in 1738.

2 This epitaph first appeared in Lewis's Miscellany, 1730, with the heading, "Epitaph on Mrs. Elizabeth Corbet." The monument is now in St. Margaret's, Westminster.

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