"Secure the radiant weapons wield;

'This golden lance shall guard Desert, "And if a vice dares keep the field,

"This steel shall stab it to the heart."

Aw'd, on my bended knees I fell,

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Receiv'd the weapons of the sky;

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And dipt them in the sable well,
The fount of fame or infamy.

"What well? what weapons?" (Flavia cries,)
"A standish, steel and golden pen!
"It came from Bertrand's,' not the skies;
"I gave it you to write again.

"But friend, take heed whom you attack;
"You'll bring a House (I mean of Peers)
"Red, blue, and green, nay white and black,
"L.... and all about your ears."

"You'd write as smooth again on glass,
"And run, on ivory, so glib,
"As not to stick at fool or ass,
"Nor stop at flattery or fib.

"Athenian Queen! and sober charms!

"I tell ye, fool, there's nothing in't: "'Tis Venus, Venus gives these arms;

"In Dryden's Virgil see the print.

1 A well-known toy-shop at Bath. Compare Horace Walpole's Letter to George Montagu, 18 May, 1749.

2 Mr. Carruthers suggests "Lambeth," and thinks that the allusion is to ver. 121 of Epilogue to Satires,

Dialogue 1. But Wake, the Archbishop of Canterbury there referred to, died in 1737, and Potter, his successor, was scarcely a man who would have undertaken the defence of his reputation.

"Come, if you'll be a quiet soul,
"That dares tell neither truth nor lies,
"I'll lift you in the harmless roll

"Of those that sing of these poor eyes.'

"1

30

IMITATION OF MARTIAL.'

Ar length, my friend, (while Time, with still career,
Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year,)
Sees his past days safe out of Fortune's pow'r,
Nor dreads approaching Fate's uncertain hour;
Reviews his life, and in the strict survey
Finds not one moment he could wish away,
Pleas'd with the series of each happy day.

Such, such a man extends his life's short space,
And from the goal again renews the race;
For he lives twice, who can at once employ
The present well, and ev'n the past enjoy.

1 Lady Frances Shirley was the fourth daughter of Earl Ferrers, and a celebrated beauty of the day. Sir C. H. Williams' lines on the "eternal whisper," that was constantly passing between her and Lord Chesterfield, are well known. She died unmarried, however, in 1778, having previously joined the Methodists. Walpole writes to Mason on 16th July in that year: 666 'Fanny blooming fair" died here yesterday of a stroke of palsy. She had lost her memory for some years, and remembered nothing but her beauty and not her Methodism. Being confined with only servants,

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she was continually lamenting, 'I to be abandoned that all the world used to adore.' She was seventy-two."

2 Sir W. Trumbal writes to Pope, 19th Jan., 1716: "On occasion of my being obliged to congratulate the birthday of a friend of mine, finding I had no materials of my own, I very frankly sent him your imitation of Martial's epigram on Antonius Pri

mus:

"Jam numerat placido felix Antonius ævo."

The epigram referred to is the twenty third of the tenth book.

IMITATION OF TIBULLUS.'

HERE, stopt by hasty death, Alexis lies,
Who crossed half Europe, led by Wortley's eyes.'

THE TRANSLATOR.'

OZELL, at Sanger's call,' invoked his muse-
For who to sing for Sanger could refuse?
His numbers such as Sanger's self might use.
Reviving Perrault, murdering Boileau,' he
Slander'd the ancients first, then Wycherley;
Which yet not much that old bard's anger raised,
Since those were slander'd most, whom Ozell praised.
Nor had the gentle satire caus'd complaining,
Had not sage Rowe pronounced it entertaining:
How great must be the judgment of that writer
Who the Plain-dealer damns, and prints the Biter !

6

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ticeship with Jacob Tonson, and succeeded Bernard Lintot in his shop at the Middle Temple Gate, Fleet Street.

5 Lintot printed Ozell's translation of Perrault's Characters, and Sanger his translation of Boileau's Lutrin, which was recommended by Rowe, in 1709.

6 The "Plain-Dealer" of Wycherley, and the " Biter," an unsuccessful comedy of Rowe's.

THE THREE GENTLE SHEPHERDS.'

Or gentle Philips will I ever sing,

With gentle Philips shall the valleys ring.
My numbers too for ever will I vary,

With gentle Budgell and with gentle Carey.'
Or if in ranging of the names I judge ill,
With gentle Carey and with gentle Budgell:
Oh! may all gentle bards together place ye,
Men of good hearts, and men of delicacy.
May satire ne'er befool ye, or beknave ye,

And from all wits that have a knack, God save ye.

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VERBATIM FROM BOILEAU.3

"Un Jour dit un Auteur," etc.

ONCE (says an author; where, I need not say)
Two trav❜lers found an oyster in their way;
Both fierce, both hungry; the dispute grew strong,
While scale in hand Dame Justice past along.
Before her each with clamour pleads the laws,
Explain'd the matter, and would win the cause.
Dame Justice, weighing long the doubtful right,
Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight.
The cause of strife remov'd so rarely well,
"There take" (says Justice) "take ye each a shell.
We thrive at Westminster on fools like you:
'Twas a fat oyster-live in peace-Adieu."

1 First published in Curll's Miscellanies, 1727.

2 The person here satirised has been generally supposed to be Henry Carey, author of "Sally in our Alley." But it appears that by his character of "Umbra," Pope meant Walter Carey, who is represented in those lines as a hanger-on of Addison. And Spence

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says in his Anecdotes, that Budgell, Philips, Carey, and Davenant, were Addison's chief companions.

Pope

may therefore have meant to satirise the Little Senate of his rival in these lines.

3 First published by Warburton in his edition of 1751.