Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,'

Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,'
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.'
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,'
And he himself one vile antithesis.'
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,"
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.'

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:
That flattery, ev'n to king's, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same;
That not in Fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to Truth, and moralised his song :'
That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;"
The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,"
The imputed trash, and dulness not his own;"

ture, as it now is, ἀλλὰ προσηνὴς καὶ
μepos, but mild and gentle: not crawl-
ing about in a terrible manner upon
the ground, ἀλλ ̓ ὑψηλὸς ἐπὶ πόδων
βεβηκώς, but lofty and going upright
on its feet. Several of the Jews have
been of this opinion."

335

340

345

350

upon Pope, which the poet believed to have been written by Lady M. W. Montagu.

3 In the folio:

The tales of vengeance, lies so oft o'erthrown.

As that he received subscriptions for

1 So in the translation of the Iliad, Shakespeare, that he set his name 7, 140:

He stooped to reason and his rage resigned. The metaphor is taken from falconry.

Wakefield finds the original in
Denham's Preface to the Progress of
Learning:

My early mistress now my ancient muse,
That strong Circæan liquor cease to infuse,
Wherewith thou didst intoxicate my youth,
Now stoop with disenchanted wings to
Truth.

2 It was reported that he had been beaten in Ham Walks, and that he shed tears from the pain. The story was told in a pamphlet called A Pop

to Mr. Broome's verses, etc., which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epistle. POPE. The note to the quarto edition begins: "Such as those in relation to Mr. A-, that Mr. P

writ his chaThe truth as

racter after his death."
to Broome's verses is explained in a
note to the Letter of Broome to Fenton,
26 August, 1726. Vol. iii. (Letters)
of this edition, p. 125.

4 Such as profane Psalms, Court Poems, and other scandalous things,

The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libelled person, and the pictured shape;'
Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,*
A friend in exile, or a father dead;

The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps yet vibrates on his Sovereign's ear-
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome e'en the last!

A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state;
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,

Sporus at court,' or Japhet in a jail," printed in his name by Curll and others.-WARBURTON.

This note appeared in the quarto and later editions as Pope's; "many libellous things," standing instead of "other scandalous things."

The person libelled in the Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and the shape pictured in many caricatures of the day, as in that by Hogarth, where the poet as a hunchback is represented daubing Burlington House with whitewash.

Warton says that Hay, in his Essay on Deformity, has remarked that Pope was so hurt by the caricature of his figure, as to rank it among the most atrocious injuries he received from his enemies.

2 Namely, on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Gay, his friends, his parent, and his very nurse aspersed in printed papers by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons.--POPE.

This line is a characteristic example of the grammatical incorrectness into which Pope was sometimes betrayed by his efforts after terseness.

3 So in his versification of Donne's Satires, iv. 178:

355

360

Not Fannius self more impudently near When half his nose is in his prince's ear. Warburton quotes from Timon of Athens:

Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear.

In the first edition: "Glencus at Court."

Mr. Croker says, "Glencus was obviously a Scot, and I have no doubt old Secretary Johnstone (who was very naturally an object of Pope's dislike), and almost as little as to the reason for which Pope gave him this In 1695 an enquiry peculiar name. was moved in the Parliament of Scotland into the atrocious massacre of Glencoe in 1691, for which King William III. and his Secretary Dalrymple of Stair were responsible. The King was exculpated, but Dalrymple was censured though not punished. Smollet says: "This motion is said to have been privately influenced by Secretary Johnstone for the disgrace of Dalrymple, who was his rival in power and interest.'

Pope satirises Johnstone in the First Moral Epistle, under the name of "Scoto." Perhaps he thought that the name of Glencus was, under the circumstances, too complimentary.

5 Alias Sir Peter Stranger. See Moral Epistles, iii. 86. Epilogue to

A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt,' or of the shire;
If on a pillory, or near a throne,

He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,"
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit: 3
This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:"
So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhymed for Moore."
Full ten years slandered, did he once reply?"
Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie;'

Satires, Dialogue i. 120, ii. 185

189.

1 So Hudibras :

Like Knights o' the Post, and falsely charge
Upon themselves what others forge.
The so-called "Knights of the Post"
stood about the sheriff's pillars near
the Courts in readiness to swear any-
thing for pay.-WARD. (Globe Edi-
tion.)

2 In the MS. :

Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,

And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit:

Safe, as he thought, though all the prudent
chid;

He writ no libels, but my Lady did :
Great odds in amorous or poetic game,
Where woman's is the sin, and man's the

same.

3 This allusion, with the verses in the MS., ought to be a sufficient answer to those who contend that Pope did not intend Lady Mary by Sappho. The turn of this couplet and the following verses was probably suggested by Boileau, Epistle x. 81:

Deposez bardiment qu'au fond cet homme horrible,

Ce censeur qu'ils ont peint si noir et si terrible,

Fut un esprit, doux, simple, ami de l'équité.

Alluding to his Prologue written for Dennis's benefit night in 1733.

5 Cibber in his Letter to Pope, and

365

370

375

with reference to the allusion in v. 97, gives an account of a dinner at which he and the poet were both present. The phrase "rhymed for Moore" shows that the latter had not plagiarised the verses in the Rival Modes, but that Pope had written them for him. See note to Moral Essay ii. 248 and note.

6 It was so long, after many libels, before the author of the Dunciad published that poem; till when he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him.-POPE.

7 This man had the impudence to tell in print that Mr. P. had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of. He also published that he libelled the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds; the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr. P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from any great man whatsoever.-POPE.

In the folio, after "his Grace" occur the words, "whom Mr. Pope had never the honour to see but twice." Pope refers, in the text and in his note, to the libellous One Epistle

To please a mistress one aspersed his life;
He lashed him not, but let her be his wife: '
Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill,"
And write whate'er he pleased, except his will; '