There oft are heard the notes of Infant Woe, The short thick Sob, loud Scream, and shriller Squall: Some play, some eat, some cack against the wall, II. And on the broken pavement, here and there, And hens, and dogs, and hogs are feeding by; Now singing shrill, and scolding eft between; 10 15 III. The snappish cur (the passengers' annoy) 20 25 And her full pipes those shrilling cries confound; To her full pipes the grunting hog replies; The grunting hogs alarm the neighbours round, And curs, girls, boys, and scolds, in the deep bass are drown'd.' burlesque. Pope meant to turn the style of Spenser upside down; and as the Elizabethan poet excelled in describing abstractions with so much "circumstantial imagery" as to make them resemble paintings, so the eighteenth century satirist gives a mock elevation to the basest realities of life by gravely associating them with allegorical figures, drawn with all the breadth and vigour of Hogarth, and exhibiting their deformity the more plainly under the transparently antique disguise in which they are presented. 1 A parody of "Faery Queen," Book ii., Canto 12, St. 71: IV. Hard by a Sty, beneath a roof of thatch, Dwelt Obloquy, who in her early days Cod, whiting, oyster, mackrel, sprat, or plaice : With Envy (spitting Cat), dread foe to peace; Like a curs'd Cur, Malice before her clatters, 30 35 V. Her dugs were mark'd by ev'ry Collier's hand, 40 45 Slander, Envy, and Malice are not marked with any distinct attributes; they are not those living figures, whose attitudes and behaviour Spenser has minutely drawn with so much clearness and truth, that we behold them with our eyes as plainly as we do on the ceiling of the banqueting-house. -WARTON. But it was not Pope's intention really to describe allegorical figures. He meant to paint, in Hogarth's manner, four fish-wives, and to give them the mock dignity of allegorical names. VI. Such place hath Deptford, navy-building town, All up the silver Thames, or all adown; 50 Ne Richmond's self, from whose tall front are ey'd Vales, spires, meandring streams, and Windsor's tow'ry pride. 1 It was long before I could understand what this hemistich could mean, nor did I ever meet anyone who could make even a guess, till at last I recollected Secretary Johnston's villa, and it then occurred to me that it was probable that it had a terrace towards the river, the terminating buttresses of which might have been ornamented by two statues which Pope would be glad of an opportunity of deriding. On this conjecture I set about enquiring and examining whether there were any remains of such a terrace or such statues. Nothing of the kind was to be found. Old prints of the time, and old people whose memory went back for three score years, were consulted in vain. All that could be seen was within about a hundred yards east of the mansion, a high brick wall, which enclosed one side of the fruit garden, which Mr. Johnston cultivated with great care and success, and with the produce of which, Lord Hervey tells us, he used to supply Queen Caroline's breakfast-table; but this old wall and its ivy-clad buttresses afforded no trace of either Dog or Bitch. I was, however, reluc tant to be forced to resign so plausible a solution of the difficulty, and lo! on a further and more minute examination, it was found that the ivy had overgrown each end of the wall, and had clustered itself round two miserable little leaden figures of a dog and a bitch of small size and no beauty; but which pleased us more than better works would have done, for they not only unexpectedly elucidated Pope's meaning, but were sufficiently mean and ridiculous to justify his sneer at the old gentleman's taste. There, however, they are, and there, I hope, they may be preserved as evidence of Pope's minute accuracy, even in such a trifle as 'Johnston's dog and bitch.'--CROKER. For Secretary Johnston, the then proprietor of Orleans House, see Moral Essay i. III. WALLER. OF A LADY SINGING TO HER LUTE.1 FAIR Charmer, cease, nor make your voice's prize, This vocal wood had drawn the Poet too. 5 10 ON A FAN OF THE AUTHOR'S DESIGN, IN WHICH WAS PAINTED THE STORY OF CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS, WITH THE MOTTO, "AURA VENI." "COME, gentle Air!" th' Æolian shepherd said, While Procris panted in the secret shade: "Come, gentle Air," the fairer Delia cries, While at her feet her swain expiring lies. Lo the glad gales o'er all her beauties stray, Nor could that fabled dart more surely wound : Alike both lovers fall by those they love. At random wounds, nor knows the wound she gives: And pities Procris, while her lover dies.' 10 IV. COWLEY. THE GARDEN." FAIN would my Muse the flow'ry Treasures sing, Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow; 1 This Imitation is extremely happy. The verses are themselves an admirable reproduction of Waller's 'smoothness'; and the idea of complimenting Delia' - whoever she may have been-by making the fan which he had designed for her the subject of a courtly conceit in an oldfashioned style, shows all the fine tact and artful delicacy which made 10 Pope pre-eminently the poet of "good society." 2 I presume that this Imitation was suggested by Cowley's Latin poems on Plants and Trees, which are full of the same kind of ingenious conceits as his English verses. 3 He seems to have been pleased with this verse, as he afterwards transferred it to Moral Essay iv. 84. 5 |