66

Pray Heaven it last! (cries SWIFT) as you go on; I wish to God this house had been your own: Pity! to build, without a son or wife:

Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life.'

Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, 165
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon ?
What's property? dear Swift! you see 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 case not clear,)
The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year;
At best, it falls to some 'ungracious son,

170

Who cries: "My father's damn'd, and all's my own."

b

Shades, that to BACON could retreat afford,

Become the portion of a booby lord;

175

And Hemsley, once proud Buckingham's delight, Slides to a scrivener or a city knight.

Let lands and houses have what lords they will,

Let us be fix'd, and our own masters still.

180

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

VOL. VI.

L

In this imitation Pope evidently dwells, con amore, as usual, on his own virtues, opulence, &c. Bowles.

This supercilious observation can only be intended to apply to the lines towards the close, in which, however, the poet is so far from priding himself on his own virtues or opulence, that his only wish is to obtain consistency of character and independence of mind; so that he may be blessed without fortune, and rich even when plundered; nor does he presume to say that he has attained this enviable pre-eminence, or that he is in fact

“That man divine that wisdom calls her own.”

He only supposes that it was in the power of his friend to whom the poem is addressed, or no one, to make him so; an expression which, instead of exalting his own virtues, evidently admits that he had not attained such perfection of character, and implies a doubt whether it was in the power of any one to enable him to attain it.