155 But hark! the chiming Clocks to dinner call; A hundred footsteps scrape the marble Hall: The rich Buffet well-colour'd Serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. Is this a dinner? this a Genial room? No, 'tis a Temple, and a Hecatomb. A solemn Sacrifice, perform'd in state, You drink by measure, and to minutes eat. So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear Sancho's dread Doctor and his Wand were there. NOTES. churches; and yet suffering epitaphs (that is to say, flatteries and false history) to be a burden to church-walls, and the shame as well as derision of all honest men." This is a sentiment, it may be said, of a papistical poet; and yet it appears to be founded on good sense, and religion well understood. Notwithstanding the many just and well-founded arguments against popery, yet 1 hope we may still, one day, see our places of worship beautified with proper ornaments, and the generosity and talents of our living artists perpetuated on the naked walls of St. Paul's. Ver. 146. Verrio or Laguerre,] Verrio (Antonio) painted many cielings, &c. at Windsor, Hampton Court, &c. and Laguerre at Blenheim-castle, and other places. P. Ver. 150. Who never mentions Hell to cars polite.] This is a fact: a reverend Dean, preaching at Court, threatened the sinner with punishment in "a place which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly." P. Ver. 153. Taxes the incongruity of Ornaments (though sometimes practised by the ancients), where an open mouth ejects the water into a fountain, or where the shocking images of serpents, &c. are introduced into Grottos or Buffets. P. Ver. 155. Is this a dinner? &c.] The proud Festivals of some men are here set forth to ridicule, where pride destroys the ease, and formal regularity all the pleasurable enjoyment, of the entertainment. P. Ver. 156. a Hecatomb.] Alluding to the hundred footsteps before. W.-This observation is very ridiculously strained. Ver. 160. Sancho's dread Doctor,] See Don Quixote, chap. xlvii. P. 161 Between each Act the trembling salvers ring, I curse such lavish cost, and little skill, 165 170 Yet hence the Poor are cloth'd, the hungry fed; Health to himself, and to his Infants bread The Lab'rer bears: What his hard heart denies, His charitable Vanity supplies. Another Age shall see the golden Ear Imbrown the Slope, and nod on the Parterre, NOTES. Ver. 169. Yet hence the Poor, &c.] This is the Moral of the whole; where PROVIDENCE is justified in giving Riches to those who squander them in this manner. A bad Taste employs more hands, and diffuses wealth more usefully, than a good one. This recurs to what is laid down in Book I. Ep. ii. Ver. 230—7, and in the Epistle preceding this, Ver. 161, &c. P. This reflection is very different from the flagitious principle of Mandeville, that private vices are public benefits. Of whom, says Hume very shrewdly, "Is it not very inconsistent for an author to assert in one page, that moral distinctions are inventions of politicians for public interest; and in the next page maintain, that vice is advantageous to the public?" Ver. 173. Another Age, &c.] Had the Poet lived but three years longer, he had seen his general prophecy against all illjudged magnificence fulfilled in a very particular instance. W. In the edition of 1751, this note ran thus: "Had the Poet lived three years longer he had seen this prophecy fulfilled :" which so plainly pointed at what had happened at Canons, that it was altered as it here stands. Ver. 176. And laughing Ceres reassume the land.] The great Who then shall grace, or who improve the Soil? Who plants like BATHURST, or who builds like BOYLE. "Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expense, And Splendour borrows all her rays from Sense. 180 Or makes his Neighbours glad, if he increase : NOTES. beauty of this line is an instance of the art peculiar to our Poet; by which he has so disposed a trite classical figure, as not only to make it do its vulgar office, of representing a very plentiful harvest, but also to assume the personage of Nature, re-establishing herself in her rights, and mocking the vain efforts of magnificence, which would keep her out of them. W. Ver. 179, 180. 'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expense, And Splendour borrows all her rays from Sense.] Here the Poet, to make the examples of good Taste the better understood, introduces them with a summary of his Precepts, in these two sublime lines; for, the consulting Use is beginning with Sense, and the making Splendour or Taste borrow all its rays from thence, is going on with Sense, after she has led us up to Taste. The art of this disposition of the thought can never be sufficiently admired. But the Expression is equal to the Thought. This sanctifying of expense gives us the idea of something consecrated and set apart for sacred uses; and indeed it is the idea under which it may be properly considered: for wealth employed according to the intention of Providence is its true consecration; and the real uses of humanity were certainly first in its intention. W. Lord Chesterfield wrote the following lines, intending to shew that Lord Burlington did not always attend to this rule of our Poet: Possest of one great hall for state, Ver. 182. if he increase:] Badly expressed. 185 Whose ample Lawns are not asham'd to feed NOTES. Ver. 185. not asham'd to feed] Cattle, and not deer. Ver. 191. You too proceed!] This is not fulsome adulation, but only such honest praise as the noble Lord, whom he addressed, strictly deserved; who inherited all that love of science and useful knowledge for which his family has been so famous. The name of Boyle is indeed auspicious to literature. That sublime genius and good man, Bishop Berkeley, owed his preferment chiefly to this accomplished peer: for it was he that recommended him to the Duke of Grafton, in the year 1721, who took him over with him to Ireland when he was Lord-Lieutenant, and promoted him to the deanery of Derry in the year 1724. Berkeley gained the patronage and friendship of Lord Burlington, not only by his true politeness, and the peculiar charms of his conversation, which was exquisite, but by his profound and perfect skill in architecture; an art which he had very particularly and accurately studied in Italy, when he went and continued abroad four years with Mr. Ashe, son of the Bishop of Clogher. With an insatiable and philosophic attention, Berkeley surveyed and examined every object of curiosity. He not only made the usual tour, but went over Apulia and Calabria, and even travelled on foot through Sicily, and drew up an account of that very classical ground; which was lost in a voyage to Naples, and cannot be sufficiently regretted. His generous project for erecting a university at Bermudas, the effort of a mind truly active, benevolent, and patriotic, is sufficiently known. Ver. 193. Jones] See an accurate and judicious account of his Works in Walpole's Anecdotes, vol. ii. from page 261 to page Till Kings call forth th' Ideas of your mind (Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd), Bid Harbours open, public Ways extend, Bid Temples, worthier of the God, ascend; 195 Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring Main ; 200 NOTES. 280, full of curious particulars. Dr. Clarke, of All Souls College, Oxford, had Jones's Palladio, with his own notes and observations in Italian, which the Doctor bequeathed to Worcester College. Ver. 195, 197, &c. Till Kings-Bid Harbours open, &c.] The Poet, after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expense, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and public works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is satirically alluded to in our Author's imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. 2. "Shall half the new-built Churches round thee fall"). Others were vilely executed, through fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham-breach had done very great mischiefs; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrance of London itself. The proposal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petitioned against and rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a Bridge passed through both Houses. After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above mentioned, who would have made it a wooden one; to which our Author alludes in these lines, "Who builds a Bridge that never drove a pile? Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile." See the notes on that place P. Ver. 197. Bid Harbours open,] No country has been enriched and adorned, within a period of thirty or forty years, with so many works of public spirit, as Great Britain has been; witness |