At best, it falls to some ungracious son, Who cries, "My father's damned, and all's my own." Become the portion of a booby lord; 1 1 And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight, Let lands and houses have what lords they will, 1 Gorhambury, near St. Alban's, a fine and venerable old mansion.— WARTON. The "booby lord" was William Grimston, born 1692, created May 29, 1719, Baron of Dunboyne in the county of Meath, and Viscount Grimston. He wrote when 13 years old, a play called "The Lawyer's Fortune, or, Love in a Hollow Tree," which was printed in 1705, and reprinted, years afterwards, by the old Duchess of Marlborough, with the frontispiece of an elephant dancing on a tight-rope, to bring ridicule on Grimston, who was a candidate for the representation of the borough of St. Albans in Parliament, in the opposite interest to the Duchess. Swift says of him, in reference to this play, The leaden crown devolved to thee, One of the lines in the play was "There let us rest our weary limbs till they more weary be." Grimston represented St. Albans in five Parliaments, and died 15th of October, 1756. Pope's sneer at his stupidity does not seem to have had any better foundation than party feeling and the bad play published in his boyhood. 2 Evelyn in his Diary, June 11, 1696, speaks of "Duncombe, not long since a mean goldsmith, having made a purchase of the late Duke of Buckingham's estate at near £90,000, and reputed to have near as much in cash." Murray's Handbook of Yorkshire says: "In 1695 the trustees of the Duke of Buckingham sold Helms 175 180 ley for £90,000 to Sir C. Duncombe, Secretary to the Treasury, temp. James II. He left it to his nephew Thomas Brown, who took his name, and built the present house (a), Duncombe Park, in 1718. His great great grandson was created Baron Feversham in 1826." Duncombe was prosecuted in 1701 for frauds on the Exchequer. "He had been ordered by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay ten thousand pounds into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in his hands, as cashier, more than double that sum in good milled silver. With some of this money he bought Exchequer Bills, which were then at a considerable discount: he paid those bills in; and he pocketed the discount, which amounted to about four hundred pounds. Nor was this all. In order to make it appear that the depreciated paper, which he had fraudulently substituted for silver, had been received by him in payment of taxes, he had employed a knavish Jew to forge indorsements of names, some real and some imaginary."MACAULAY. Hist. of England, chap. xxiii. In consequence of a discussion between the two Houses of Parlia ment, he seems to have escaped the penalty imposed on him by the Bill passed by the Commons, which provided that two-thirds of his real and personal property should be confiscated for the public service. (a) This house was burned down in 1880. "THIS piece is the most finished of all his Imitations, and executed in the high manner the Italian painters call con amore. By which they mean, the exertion of that principle, which puts the faculties on the stretch, and produces the supreme degree of excellence. For the Poet had all the warmth of affection for the great Lawyer to whom it is addressed: and, indeed, no man ever more deserved to have a Poet for his friend. In the obtaining of which, as neither vanity, party, nor fear had any share, (which gave birth to the attachments of many of his noble acquaintance,) so he supported his title to it by all the good offices of a generous and true friendship."-WARBURTON. Warburton's expressions seem exaggerated. It is difficult to understand how he can have preferred this piece to the splendid Imitation of the First Epistle of the Second Book, or to the First Satire. Like the next Epistle, it is indeed highly finished, but like that it labours under the disadvantage of being a reproduction of Roman sentiment and philosophy which neither Pope nor any modern writer could treat con amore. "Nil Admirari" was a text on which an easy man of the world in the Court of Augustus could expatiate, in a spirit quite unlike that of the modern cynic who contents himself with the belief that "there's nothing new, nothing true, and it don't signify." What Horace seems to say is that, as everything in the external world appears mutable and uncertain, men should steadily pursue whatever they choose as their end in life, without turning to the right or the left. Whether you prefer to philosophise, he says, to lead a life of active virtue, to make money, to succeed in politics, to indulge in dissipation, or to treat existence as a jest, in any case be "thorough"; adapt your means to your end; above all preserve your equanimity. He does not attempt to set up any standard of right or wrong; as his principles are those of a sceptic his tone is ironic; all these pursuits, so runs his argument, are vanity, but if you only immerse yourself sufficiently in action, you may contrive to keep the unpleasant reflection out of your mind. Such sentiments were as different as possible from Pope's. Though Pope's own standard of morality cannot be said to be definitely Christian, yet he was affected by the established doctrines of religion, and his many solemn protestations of his zeal for virtue, his denunciations of the public corruption, and his praises in other places of such characters as Barnard and the Man of Ross, show the feeling that separated him from the light-headed unconcern of Horace. There is a solemnity of tone in many parts of this Epistle, and though he follows closely the line of Horace's argument, yet when he comes to the passages on gluttony and debauchery, he feels himself obliged to modify the conclusions of the original. The address to Murray is full of fine and poetic feeling. This Imitation was published by Gilliver in 1737. It was registered at Stationers' Hall, 14th Jan., 1737, as follows: "The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, Imitated by Mr. Pope;" the owner of the copyright being Alexander Pope. |