Satire or Senfe, alas! can Sporus feel? P. Yet NOTES. Turks, and of which many are addreffed to Pope; are well known, and justly celebrated. With both noble perfonages had Pope lived in a state of intimacy. And justice obligeth us to confess that he was the aggreffor in the quarrel with them: as he first affaulted and affronted Lord H. by these two lines in his Imitation of the first Satire of Horace's fecond Book: The lines are weak, another's pleas'd to fay, Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day. And Lady M. W. M. by the eighty-third line of the fame piece, too grofs to be here repeated. It is a fingular circumstance, that our Author's indignation was fo vehement and inexhauftible, that it furnished him with another invective, of equal power, in profe, which is to be found at the end of the eighth volume, containing his Letters. The reader that turns to it, page 253, (for it is too long to be here inserted, and too full of matter to be abridged,) will find, that it abounds in so many new strokes of sarcasm, in so many sudden and repeated blows, that he does not allow the poor devoted peer a moment's breathing-time: Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille finiftrâ ; Creber utrâque manû pulfat, verfatque. It is indeed a master-piece of invective, and perhaps excels the character of Sporus itself, capital as that is, above quoted: who, however, would wish to be the author of fuch a cutting invective? But can this be the nobleman (we are apt to ask) whom Middleton, in his Dedication to the History of the Life of Tully, has fo feriously, and fo earneftly praised, for his ftrong good fenfe, his confummate politenefs, his real patriotifm, his rigid temperance, his thorough knowledge and defence of the laws of his country, his accurate skill in history, his unexampled and unremitted diligence in literary pursuits, who added credit to this very history, as P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; 310 Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys: In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 315 As fhallow ftreams run dimpling all the way. And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad, Half froth, half venom, fpits himself abroad, 320 In NOTES. as Scipio and Lælius did to that of Polybius, by revising and correcting it; and brightening it, as he expreffes it, by the strokes of his pencil? The man that had written this fplendid encomium on Lord H. could not, we may imagine, be very well affected to the bard who had painted Lord Fanny in fo ridiculous a light. We find him writing thus to Dr. Warburton, January 7, 1740: "You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles; but, like the old commentators on his Homer, will be thought perhaps, in fome places, to have found a meaning for him, that he himself never dreamt of. However, if you did not find him a philofopher, you will make him one; for he will be wife enough to take the benefit of your reading, and make his future Essays more clear and confiftent." VER. 306. White curd] Methinks this was too perfonal. Lord Hervey, to prevent the attacks of an epilepfy, perfifted in a strict regimen of daily food, which was a fmall quantity of affes milk and a flour bifcuit, with an apple once a week; and he used a little paint to foften his ghaftly appearance. VER. 308. Upon a wheel?] It ought to be the wheel. The indefinite article is used for the definite. VER. 319. See Milton, Book iv. P. In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or fpite, or fmut, or rhymes, or blafphemies. Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart, } Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board, 330 Beauty that fhocks you, parts that none will trust, NOTES. 335 340 That VER. 322. Or blafphemies.] In former editions these two lines followed immediately: Did ever Smock-face act fo vile a part, A trifling head, and a corrupted heart. VER. 340. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,] His merit in this will appear very great, if we confider, that in this walk he had all the advantages which the most poetic Imagination could give to a great Genius. M. Voltaire, in a MS. letter now before me, writes thus from England to a friend in Paris: "I in tend. That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end, NOTES. 345 The tend to fend you two or three poems of Mr. Pope, the best Poet of England, and at prefent of all the world. I hope you are acquainted enough with the English tongue, to be fenfible of all the charms of his works. For my part, I look upon his poem called the Effay on Criticism as superior to the Art of Poetry of Horace; and his Rape of the Lock is, in my opinion, above the Lutrin of Defpreaux. I never saw so amiable an imagination, fo gentle graces, fo great variety, fo much wit, and fo refined knowledge of the world, as in this little performance." MS. Lett. Od. 15, 1726. W. VER. 341. But ftoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his fong:] This may be faid no lefs in commendation of his literary, than of his moral character. And his fuperior excellence in poetry is owing to it. He foon discovered in what his force lay; and he made the beft of that advantage, by a fedulous cultivation of his proper talent. For having read Quintilian early, this precept did not escape him, Sunt hæc duo vitanda prorfus: unum ne tentes quod effici non poffit; alterum, ne ab eo, quod quis optime facit, in aliud, cui minus eft idoneus, transferas. It was in this knowledge and cultivation of his genius that he had principally the advantage of his great mafter, Dryden; who, by his Mac-Flecno, his Abfolom and Achitophel, but chiefly by his Prologues and Epilogues, appears to have had great talents for this fpecies of moral poetry; but, unluckily, he seemed neither to understand nor attend to it. W. Ibid. But ftoop'd to Truth,] The term is from falconry; and the allufion to one of thofe untam'd birds of spirit, which fometimes wantons at large in airy circles before it regards, or stoops to, its prey. W. VER. 343. He flood the furious foe,] Stood, improperly used for withstood. The distant threats of vengeance on his head, 350 355 The NOTES. VER. 350. The tale reviv'd,] Formerly, "The tales of ven geance." VER. 350. The lie fo oft o'erthrown,] As, that he received fubscriptions for Shakespeare, that he fet his name to Mr. Broome's verfes, &c. which, though publicly difproved, were nevertheless fhamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epiftle. P. VER. 351. Th' imputed trafb,] Such as profane Pfalms, Court Poems, and other fcandalous things, printed in his name by Curl and others. W. VER. 353. The pictur'd shape;] Hay, in his effay on Deformity, has remarked, that Pope was fo hurt by the caricatura of his figure, as to rank it among the moft atrocious injuries he received from his enemies. Hay, with much pleasantry, jefting on his own deformity, has added, " In perfon I resemble Esop, the Prince of Orange, Marshal Luxemburg, Lord Treasurer Salif bury, Scarron, and Mr. Pope; not to mention Therfites and Richard the Third, whom I do not claim as members of our fociety; the first being a child of the poet's fancy; the last, mifre presented by historians. Let me not be unthankful that I was not born in Sparta! where I had no fooner seen the light but I should have been deprived of it, and have been thrown, as an useless thing, into a cavern by Mount Taygetus." VER. 354. Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,] Namely, on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurft, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Gay, his Friends, his Parents, and his very VOL. IV. E Nurse, |