C

"Pity! to build, without a fon or wife:
"Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life."
Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one,
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon?
What's Property? dear Swift! you fee it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter;
Or, in a mortgage, prove a Lawyer's share;
Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir;
Or, in pure equity, (the cafe not clear,)
The Chanc'ry takes your rents for twenty year:
At beft, it falls to fome ungracious fon,
Who cries, "My father's damn'd, and all's my
h Shades, that to BACON could retreat afford,
Become the portion of a booby Lord;
And Hemfley, once proud Buckingham's delight,
Slides to a Scriv'ner or a city Knight.

B

i Let lands and houses have what Lords they will, Let Us be fix'd, and our own masters still. 180

d

165

170

own."

175

NOTES.

VER. 175. That to BACON could] Gorhambury, near St. Alban's, a fine and venerable old mansion. Some anecdotes have lately told us that Bacon was much acquainted with, and had a regard for, Hobbes.

VER. 177. Proud Buckingham's, &c.] Villiers Duke of Buckingham. P.

VER. 180. Let Us be fix'd,] The majeftic plainnefs of the original is weakened and impaired by the addition of an antithefis, and a turn of wit in this last line. Whenever I have ventured to cenfure Pope, I have never forgotten that fine and candid reflection of Quintilian; " Neque id ftatim legenti perfuafum fit, omnia, quæ magni Auctores dixerint, effe perfecta."

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

EPISTOLA I.

с

PRIMA dicte mihi, fumma dicende camena,

b

Spectatum fatis, et donatum jam rude, quæris, Mæcenas, iterum antiquo me includere ludo. Non eadem eft ætas, non mens. Veianius, armis "Herculis ad poftem fixis, latet abditus agro; Ne populum extrema toties exoret arena.

NOTES.

VER. 1. Whofe love] Equal to the affection which Horace in the original profeffes for Mecenas. It has been fufpected that his affection to his friend was fo ftrong, as to make him refolve not to outlive him; and that he actually put into execution his promife of ibimus, ibimus. Od. xvii. lib. 3. Both died in the end of the year 746; Horace only three weeks after Mecænas, November 27. Nothing can be so different as the plain and manly ftyle of the former, in comparifon of what Quintilian calls the calamiftros of the latter, for which Sactorius and Macrobius, cap. 86. fay Auguftus frequently ridiculed him, though Auguftus himself was guilty of the fame fault: as when he faid, vapidè fe habere for male. The learned C. G. Heyne, in his excellent edition of Virgil, after obferving that the well-known verses usually afcribed to Auguftus, on Virgil's ordering his Æneid to be burnt, are the work of fome bungling grammarian, and not of that emperor, adds, "Videas tamen Voltairium, horridos hos et ineptos verfus non modo Augufto tribuere, verum etiam magnopere probare; ils font beaux et femblent partir du cœur. Effai fur le Poefie Epique, cap. 3. Ita vides, ad verum pulchrarum fententiarum fenfum et judicium, fermonis intelligentiam aliquam effe neceffariam."

P. V. Maronis Opera, tom. i. p. 131. Lipfiæ, 1767. VER. 3. Sabbath of my days?] i. e. The 49th year, the the Author.

age W.

of

e

EPISTLE I.

TO LORD BOLINGBROKE.

C

laft!

ST. JOHN, whofe love indulg'd my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my
Why will you break the Sabbath of my days?
Now fick alike of Envy and of Praise.
Public too long, ah let me hide my Age!
See modeft Cibber now has left the Stage:
Our Gen'rals now, retir'd to their Estates,
Hang their old Trophies o'er the Garden gates,
In Life's cool Ev'ning fatiate of Applause,

5

Nor fond of bleeding, e'en in BRUNSWICK's cause.

A Voice

NOTES.

VER. 8. Hang their old Trophies o'er the Garden gates,] An occafional ftroke of Satire on ill-placed ornaments. He has more openly ridiculed them in his Epifle on Tafle:

"Load fome vain Church with old theatric ftate,
"Turn Arcs of Triumph to a Garden gate."

W.

He is faid to have alluded to the entrance of Lord Peterborough's Lawn at Bevifmount, near Southampton.

There is more pleasantry and humour in Horace's comparing himself to an old gladiator, worn out in the service of the public, from which he had often begged his life, and has now at laft been dismissed with the ufual ceremonies, than for Pope to compare himself to an old actor or retired general. Pope was in his forty-ninth year, and Horace probably in his forty-feventh, when he wrote this Epiftle. Bentley has arranged the writings of Horace in the following order. He compofed the first book of his Satires between the twenty-fixth and twenty-eighth year of his age; the

fecond