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be your Lordship's relations,) I might have lived and died in glory.

What would I not do to be well with your Lordship? Though, you observe, I am a mere imitator of Homer, Horace, Boileau, Garth, &c. (which I have the less cause to be ashamed of, since they were imitators of one another), yet what if I should solemnly engage never to imitate your Lordship? May it not be one step towards an accommodation, that while you remark my ignorance in Greek, you are so good as to say, you have forgot your own? What if I should confess I translated from Dacier? That surely could not but oblige your Lordship, who are known to prefer French to all the learned languages. But allowing that in the space of twelve years' acquaintance with Homer, I might unhappily contract as much Greek as your Lordship did in two at the university, why may not I forget it again as happily?

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Till such a reconciliation take effect, I have but one thing to entreat of your Lordship. It is, that you will not decide of my principles on the same grounds as you have done of my learning; nor give the same account of my want of grace, after have lost all acquaintance with my person, as you do of my want of Greek, after you have confessedly lost all acquaintance with the language. You are too generous, my Lord, to follow the gentlemen of the Dunciad quite so far, as to seck my utter perdition; as Nero once did Lucan's, merely for presuming to be a poet, while one of so much greater quality was a writer. I therefore make this humble request to your Lordship, that the next time you please to write to me, speak of me, or even whisper of me," you will recollect it is full eight years since I had the honour of any conversation or correspondence with your Lordship, except just half an hour in a lady's lodgings at court, and then I had the happiness of her being present all the time. It would therefore be difficult even for your Lordship's penetration to tell, to what, or from

"In glory then he might have liv'd and died."

Ibid.-WARBURTON. 2 "The whisper, that to greatness

still too near,

Perhaps yet vibrates on his
sovereign's ear."

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
WARBURTON,

what principles, parties, or sentiments, moral, political, or theological, I may have been converted, or perverted in all that time. I beseech your Lordship to consider the injury a man of your high rank and credit may do to a private person, under penal laws and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience, but merely perhaps for having too weak a head, or too tender a heart.' It is by these alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all posts of profit or trust: as I can interfere with the views of no man, do not deny me, my Lord, all that is left, a little praise, or the common encouragement due, if not to my genius, at least to my industry.

2

Above all, your Lordship will be careful not to wrong my moral character with THOSE under whose protection I live, and through whose lenity alone I can live with comfort. Your Lordship, I am confident, upon consideration will think, you inadvertently went a little too far when you recommended to THEIR perusal, and strengthened by the weight of your approbation, a libel, mean in its reflections upon my poor figure, and scandalous in those on my honour and integrity: wherein I was represented as enemy to the human race, a murderer of reputations, and a monster marked by God like Cain, deserving to wander accursed through the world."

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A strange picture of a man, who had the good fortune to enjoy many friends, who will be always remembered as the first ornaments of their age and country; and no enemies that ever contrived to be heard of, except Mr. John Dennis, and your Lordship: a man, who never wrote a line in which the religion or government of his country, the royal family, or their ministry, were disrespectfully mentioned; the animosity of any one party gratified at the expense of another; or any censure passed, but upon known vice, acknowledged folly, or aggressive impertinance. It is with infinite pleasure he finds, that some men, who seem ashamed and afraid of nothing else, are so very sensible of his ridicule: and it is for that very

1 See Letters to Bishop Atterbury, Lett. iv.-WARBURTON,

2 The K. and Q.-WARBURTON,

reason he resolves (by the grace of God, and your Lordship's good leave)

That, while he breathes, no rich or noble knave
Shall walk the world in credit to his grave.

This, he thinks, is rendering the best service he can to the public, and even to the good government of his country; and for this at least, he may deserve some countenance, even from the GREATEST PERSONS in it. Your Lordship knows of WHOM I speak. Their NAMES I shall be as sorry, and as much ashamed to place near yours, on such an occasion, as I should be to see you, my Lord, placed so near their PERSONS, if you could ever make so ill an use of their ear as to asperse or misrepresent any innocent man.

1

This is all I shall ever ask of your Lordship, except your pardon for this tedious letter. I have the honour to be, with equal respect and concern,

My Lord,

Your truly devoted servant,

A. POPE.

1 "Close at the ear of Eve." Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. —WARBURTON.

APPENDIX IV.

THE CHARACTER

OF

KATHERINE,

LATE DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE AND

NORMANBY.

BY THE LATE MR. POPE.

SHE was the daughter of James the Second, and of the Countess of Dorchester, who inherited the integrity and virtue of her father with happier fortune. She was married first to James, Earl of Anglesey; and secondly, to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire and Normanby; with the former she exercised the virtues of patience and suffering, as long as there were any hopes of doing good by either; with the latter all other conjugal virtues. The man of finest sense and sharpest discernment she had the happiness to please, and in that found her only pleasure. When he died, it seemed as if his spirit was only breathed into her, to fulfil what he had begun, to perform what he had concerted, and to preserve and watch over what he had left, his only son; in the care of whose health, the forming of whose mind, and the improvement of whose fortune, she acted with the conduct and sense of the father, softened, but not overcome, with the tenderness of the mother. Her understanding was such as must have made a figure, had it been in a man; but the modesty of her

sex threw a veil over its lustre, which nevertheless suppressed only the expression, not the exertion of it; for her sense was not superior to her resolution, which, when once she was in the right, preserved her from making it only a transition to the wrong, the frequent weakness even of the best women. She often followed wise counsel, but sometimes went before it, always with success. She was possessed of a spirit, which assisted her to get the better of those accidents which admitted of any redress, and enabled her to support outwardly, with decency and dignity, those which admitted of none; yet melted inwardly, through almost her whole life, at a succession of melancholy and affecting objects, the loss of all her children, the misfortunes of relations and friends, public and private, and the death of those who were dearest to her. Her heart was as compassionate as it was great: her affections warm even to solicitude: her friendship not violent or jealous, but rational and persevering: her gratitude equal and constant to the living; to the dead boundless and heroical. What person soever she found worthy of her esteem, she would not give up for any power on earth; and the greatest on earth whom she could not esteem, obtained from her no farther tribute than decency. Her good will was wholly directed by merit, not by accident; not measured by the regard they professed for her own desert, but by her idea of theirs and as there was no merit which she was not able to imitate, there was none which she could envy: therefore her conversation was as free from detraction as her opinions from prejudice or prepossession. As her thoughts were her own, so were her words; and she was as sincere in uttering her judgment, as impartial in forming it. She was a safe companion; many were served, none ever suffered by her acquaintance: inoffensive, when unprovoked; when provoked, not stupid: but the moment her enemy ceased to be hurtful, she could cease to act as an enemy. She was therefore not a bitter but consistent enemy (though indeed, when forced to be so, the more a finished one for having been long a making). And her proceeding with ill people was more in a calm and steady ɔurse, like justice, than in quick and passionate onsets, like enge. As for those of whom she only thought ill, she

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