B. What Nature wants, commodious Gold bestows, 'Tis thus we eat the bread another sows. NOTES. and capital, into a new capital, and seizing to a minute when the payments became due; in a word, by a constant attention to the vices, wants, and follies, of mankind, he acquired an immense fortune. His house was a perpetual bawdy-house. He was twice condemned for rapes, and pardoned; but the last time not without imprisonment in Newgate, and large confiscations. He died in Scotland in 1731, aged 62. The populace at his funeral raised a great riot, almost tore the body out of the coffin, and cast dead dogs, &c. into the grave along with it. The following Epitaph contains his character very justly drawn by Dr. Arbuthnot: HERE continueth to rot The Body of FRANCIS CHARTRES, PERSISTED, In spite of AGE and INFIRMITIES, in the undeviating Pravity of his Manners, in Accumulating WEALTH; For, without TRADE or PROFESSION, He was the only Person of his Time, When possessed of TEN THOUSAND a Year, Think not his Life useless to Mankind! P. But how unequal it bestows, observe, 'Tis thus we riot, while, who sow it, starve: NOTES. PROVIDENCE COnnived at his execrable Designs, A conspicuous PROOF and EXAMPLE, Of how small Estimation is EXORBITANT WEALTH By his bestowing it on the most UNWORTHY of ALL MORTALS. This fine reflection has been much admired; it is also found in La Bruyere but he evidently borrowed it from Seneca: "Non sunt divitiæ bonum; nullo modo magis potest Deus concupita traducere, quam si ille ad perpessimos defert, ab optimis abigit." Cur Bonis Viris mala fiunt, cap. v. This passage was pointed out to me by an amiable friend, equally skilled in all parts of useful and ornamental learning in matters both of taste and philosophy, Dr. Heberden. The figure of Chartres is introduced by Hogarth in the first plate of his Rake's Progress, and behind him stands a man whom he always had about him, and was his pimp. This Gentleman, it was said, was worth seven thousand pounds a year estate in Land, and about one hundred thousand in Money. Mr. WATERS, the third of these worthies, was a man no way resembling the former in his military, but extremely so in his civil capacity; his great fortune having been raised by the like diligent attendance on the necessities of others. But this gentleman's history must be deferred till his death, when his worth may be known more certainly. P. Ver. 20. Chartres and the Devil.] Alluding to the vulgar opinion, that all mines of metal and subterraneous treasures are in the guard of the Devil: which seems to have taken its rise from the Pagan fable of Plutus the God of Riches. W.— -No such allusion was intended! Ver. 21. What Nature wants, commodious Gold bestows,] The epithet commodious gives us the very proper idea of a Bawd or Pander; and this thought produced the two following lines, which were in all the former editions, but, for their bad reasoning, omitted, "And if we count amongst the needs of life W. What Nature wants (a phrase I must distrust) B. Trade it may help, Society extend. 25 P. But lures the Pirate, and corrupts the Friend. B. It raises Armies in a Nation's aid. 31 P. But bribes a Senate, and the Land's betray'd. In vain may Heroes fight, and Patriots rave; If secret Gold sap on from knave to knave. Once, we confess, beneath the Patriot's cloak, From the crack'd bag the dropping Guinea spoke, NOTES. 35 Ver. 29. Trade it may help,] What is here put into the mouth of Bathurst, might be, with equal propriety, transferred to Pope; and so, indeed, may many other lines. Ver. 33. and Patriots rave;] The character of modern patriots was, in the opinion of our Poet, very equivocal; as the name was undistinguishingly bestowed on every one who was in opposition to the court; of this he gives a hint in Ver. 139 of this Epistle. And agreeable to these sentiments is the equivocal turn of his expression here, "In vain-may Patriots rave;" which they may do either in earnest or in jest; and, in the opinion of Sempronius in the Play, it is best done in jest. W. Ver. 34. If secret Gold sap on from knave to knave.] The expression is fine, and gives us the image of a Place invested; where the approaches are made by communications, which support one another: just as the connexions amongst knaves, after they have been taken in by a state-engineer, serve to screen and encourage each other's private corruptions. W. Ver. 35. beneath the Patriot's cloak,] This is a true story, which happened in the reign of William III. to an unsuspected old Patriot, who coming out at the back-door from having been closeted by the King, where he had received a large bag of Guineas, the bursting of the bag discovered his business there. P. "Sir Christopher Musgrave, the wisest man of the party (the And gingling down the back-stairs, told the crew, NOTES. 40 Tories), died before the last Session; and, by their conduct after his death, it appeared that they wanted his direction: he had been at the head of the opposition that was made in the last reign, from the beginning to the end; but he gave up many points of great importance in the critical minute; for which I have good reason to believe that he had twelve thousand pounds from the late King, at different times." Burnet under the year 1705. Ver. 39. Blest paper-credit !] " None of my Works," said Pope to Mr. Spence," was more laboured than my Epistle on the Use of Riches." It does indeed abound in knowledge of life, and in the justest satire. The lines above quoted have also the additional merit of touching on a subject that never occurred to former satirists. And though it was difficult to say any thing new about avarice," a vice that has been so pelted," says Cowley," with good sentences," yet has our Author done it so successfully, that this Epistle, together with Lord Bacon's thirty-third Essay, contains almost all that can be said on the use and abuse of Riches, and the absurd extremes of avarice and profusion. But our Poet has enlivened his precepts with so many various characters, pictures, and images, as may entitle him to claim the preference over all that have treated on this tempting subject, down from the time of the Plutus of Aristophanes. That very lively and amiable old nobleman, the late Lord Bathurst, told me, "that he was much surprised to see, what he had with repeated pleasure so often read as an epistle addressed to himself, in this edition converted into a dialogue, in which,” said he, “I perceive I make but a shabby and indifferent figure, and contribute very little to the spirit of the dialogue, if it must be a dialogue; and I hope I had generally more to say for myself in the many charming conversations I used to hold with Pope and Swift, and my old poetical friends." In truth we may make the same objection that Perrault is said to have done to the tenth satire of Boileau; "l'auteur oublie quelquefois que c'est un dialogue qu'il compose." I cannot forbear adding, that Cicero gives to his friend Atticus a very small share in those dialogues in which he himself is represented as a speaker. Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things, Or ship off Senates to a distant shore; Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow : Oh! that such bulky Bribes as all might see, 45 50 VARIATIONS. After Ver. 50 in the MS. To break a trust were Peter brib'd with wine, NOTES. Ver. 42. fetch or carry Kings;] In our Author's time, many Princes had been sent about the world, and great changes of Kings projected in Europe. The partition treaty had disposed of Spain; France had set up a King for England, who was sent to Scotland, and back again; King Stanislaus was sent to Poland, and back again; the Duke of Anjou was sent to Spain, and Don Carlos to Italy. P. Ver. 44. Or ship off Senates to a distant shore ;] Alludes to several Ministers, Counsellors, and Patriots, banished in our times to Siberia, and to that MORE GLORIOUS FATE of the PARLIAMENT OF PARIS, banished to Pontoise in the year 1720. P. Ver. 47. Pregnant with thousands flits the Scrap unseen,] The imagery is very sublime, and alludes to the course of a destroying pestilence. The Psalmist, in his expression of the Pestilence that walketh in darkness, supplied him with the grandeur of his idea. W. Ver. 48. buys a Queen.] A sly stroke of satire on a character he frequently satirized; but not so severely as Swift in verses on his own Death. |