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P. What! arm'd for Virtue, when I point the pen,
Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men;
Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car;
Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star;
Can there be wanting, to defend her cause,
Lights of the Church, or guardians of the laws?
Could pension'd Boileau lash, in honest strain,
Flatterers and bigots even in Louis' reign?
Could laureate Dryden pimp and friar engage,
Yet neither Charles nor James be in a rage?
And I not strip the gilding off a knave,

Unplaced, unpension'd, no man's heir, or slave?
I will, or perish in the generous cause.

Hear this and tremble! you, who 'scape the laws :
Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave
Shall walk the world, in credit, to his grave.
TO VIRTUE ONLY, AND HER FRIENDS, A FRIEND:
The world beside may murmur, or commend.
Know, all the distant din that world can keep,
Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.
There, my retreat the best companions grace,
Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place.
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul:
And he, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines,

110

115

120

125

Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain,

130

Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain.12

Envy must own, I live among the great,

No pimp of pleasure, and no spy of state,

With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne'er repeats,

135

Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats;
To help who want, to forward who excel;—
This, all who know me, know; who love me, tell:

And who unknown defame me, let them be

Scribblers or peers, alike are mob to me.

140

This is my plea, on this I rest my cause-
What saith my counsel, learned in the laws?

12 Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, who, in the year 1705, took Barcelona, and, in the winter following, with only 280 horse and 900 foot, enterprising and accomplished the conquest of Valencia.

F. Your plea is good; but still I say, beware!
Laws are explain'd by men-so have a care.
It stands on record, that in Richard's times
A man was hanged for very honest rhymes;
Consult the statute, quart. I think it is,
Edwardi sext. or prim. et quint. Eliz.
See Libels, Satires-here you have it—read.

P. Libels and Satires! lawless things indeed!
But grave epistles, bringing vice to light,
Such as a king might read, a bishop write;
Such as Sir Robert would approve-

F. Indeed!

The case is alter'd-you may then proceed;
In such a cause the plaintiff will be hiss'd,
My lords the judges laugh, and you're dismiss'd.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

145

150

155

Ver. 46. Darty his ham pie.]

DARTINEUF.

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Charles Dartineuf, or Dartiquenave, was Paymaster of the Board of Works, and Surveyor of the Royal Gardens, in 1736. He was, as Swift describes him, a 'true epicure," and a man "that knows everything, and everybody; where a knot of rabble are going on a holiday, and where they were last." His partiality for ham pie has been confirmed by Warburton and Dodsley. Pope, he said, had done justice to his taste; if he had given him sweet pie he never could have pardoned him. Lord Lyttelton, in his Dialogues of the Dead, has introduced Dartineuf discoursing with Apicius on the subject of good eating, ancient and modern. His favourite dish, ham pie, is there commemorated; but Dartineuf is made to lament his ill-fortune in having lived before turtle-feasts were known in England. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, mentions dining with Dartineuf one day at James's. "James," he says, "is Clerk of the Kitchen to the 'Queen, and has a snug little house at St. James's, and we had the Queen's wine, and such fine victuals that I could not eat it." The masculine tastes of Swift made him reject the epicurism of his friend, as Sir Walter Scott preferred his simple Scotch fare-sheep's head and whisky punch-to French wines and French cookery. Pope and Gay would have had more sympathy with the accomplished epicure. But Dartineuf had higher tastes than those which the Clerk of the Kitchen gratified. He was a well

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educated, well-informed man, and a peculiarly agreeable companion. He was a writer in the Tatler, though only one of his papers has been ascer tained. This is on a congenial subject-the cheerful use of wine, which he considers to be designed for a "loftier indulgence of nature than merely satisfying thirst. He describes the beneficial effects of wine in the case of one of his friends, and this friend is supposed to have been Addison :

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"I have the good fortune," he says, "to be intimate with a gentleman who has an inexhaustible source of wit to entertain the curious, the grave, the humorous, and the frolic. He can transform himself into different shapes, and adapt himself to every company; yet, in a coffee-house, or in the ordinary course of affairs, appears rather dull than sprightly. You can seldom get him to the tavern, but, when once he is arrived to his pint, and begins to look about, and like his company, you admire a thousand things in him which before lay buried. Then you discover the brightness of his mind and the strength of his judgment, accompanied with the most graceful mirth. In a word, by this enlivening aid, he is whatever is polite, instructive, and diverting. What makes him still more agreeable is, that he tells a story, serious or comical, with as much delicacy of humour as Cervantes himself. And for all this, at other times, even after a long knowledge of him, you shall scarce discern in this incomparable person a whit more than what might be expected from one of a common capacity. Doubtless there are men of great parts that are guilty of downright bashfulness, that, by a strange hesitation, and reluctance to speak, murder the finest and most elegant thoughts, and render the most lively conceptions flat and heavy. In this case, a certain quantity of my white or red cordial-which you will-is an easy, but an infallible remedy. It awakens the judgment, quickens memory, ripens understanding, disperses melancholy, cheers the heart; in a word, restores the whole man to himself and his friends, without the least pain or indisposition to the patient."-Tatler, No. 252.

Dartineuf's fine dishes and wines could not have much shortened his life. This paper in the Tatler was written in 1710, and he did not die till 1737. In some of the accounts of this gentleman, he is said to have been the elève of a refugee French family whose name he took; while others represent him as an illegitimate son of Charles II.

WILL SHIPPEN.

Ver. 52. As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne.] Of the French essayist, Michael de Montaigne, it is useless here to speak. His delightful volumes, whether in the original or in the racy homespun English of Charles Cotton, are as popular and as likely to be lasting as the Poetical Essays of Pope. William Shippen, or 'Honest Will Shippen," as he was called, resembled Montaigne only in his plain speaking; and had it not been for this line of Pope, his name would long since have dropped from all but the bye-corners of history. He was, however, a noted Tory and Jacobite leader in the reigns

of George I. and George II. He was sent to the Tower for saying in the House of Commons, and refusing to retract the expression, that part of the King's speech (George I.) "seemed rather to be calculated for the meridian of Germany than Great Britain; and that 'twas a great misfortune that the King was a stranger to our language and constitution." Shippen was above thirty years in Parliament. He openly avowed his desire to have the Stuarts restored: and when asked how he would vote on certain occasions, he used jocularly to answer, "I cannot tell until I hear from Rome." Notwithstanding his Jacobitism, Shippen had a personal regard for Walpole, and would occasionally remark, “Robin and I are honest men; he is for King George and I for King James; but as for these fellows with the long cravats (Sandys, Rushout, and others), they only desire places either under King George or King James." Various efforts were made to silence or to soften Shippen, but he was incorruptible. At this time he had only about £400 ayear, and, though bred to the law, had no professional practice. He afterwards married the daughter of Sir Richard Stote, of Northumberland, with whom he had a fortune of £70,000. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, has also commemorated old Shippen. In his verses on the election of a poet laureate, he says,—

"To Shippen, Apollo was cold with respect,

But said in a greater assembly he shined,
As places are things he had ever declined."

This was as early as 1719, when Eusden was appointed laureate. Shippen was fully as well qualified for the office, for he had written "Faction Displayed," and some other political verses. Considering the strong Jacobite predilection of this politician, it is surprising that he could take the oaths to the reigning sovereign. Walpole is said on one occasion to have charged him-no doubt as a mere piece of humour-with kissing his thumb instead of the New Testament, upon which the other exclaimed, “Ah, Robin, that's not fair." Shippen's speeches are described as "generally containing some pointed period, which he uttered with great animation; he usually spoke in a low tone of voice, with too great rapidity, and held his glove before his mouth." He died in 1743, aged seventy-one.

COUNTESS OF DELORAINE.

Ver. 81. Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage.] Mary Howard, Countess of Deloraine, bears the "sad burden" of this imputation. She was the young widow of Henry Scott, second son of the Duke of Monmouth and Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch, and who had been created Earl of Deloraine in 1706. Delia was governess-apparently a very unfit one-to the young princesses, daughters of George II., and was a favourite with the king, with whom she generally played cards in the evenings in the princesses' apartments. Sir Robert Walpole considered Lady Deloraine as a dangerous person about the court, for she possessed, according to the shrewd minister, a weak head, a pretty face, a lying tongue, and a false heart. Lord Hervey, in his Court Ballad

written in 1742, sarcastically styles her "virtuous, and sober, and wise Delo raine;" and in his Memoirs, under date of 1735, he describes her as "one of the vainest as well as one of the simplest women that ever lived; but to this wretched head," he adds, "there was certainly joined one of the prettiest faces that ever was formed; which, though she was now five-and-thirty, had a bloom upon it, too, that not one woman in ten thousand has at fifteen." Horace Walpole, the unrivalled court gossip and scandal-monger, gives a ludicrous anecdote illustrating the manners of the court circle. "There has been a great fracas at Kensington (1742). One of the mesdames (the princesses) pulled the chair from under Countess Deloraine at cards, who, being provoked that her monarch was diverted with her disgrace, with the malice of a hobby-horse gave him just such another fall. But, alas! the monarch, like Louis XIV., is mortal in the part that touched the ground, and was so hurt and so angry, that the countess is disgraced, and her German rival remains in the sole and quiet possession of her royal master's favour." The story of the poisoning to which Pope alludes, was a common rumour at the time, the alleged victim being a Miss Mackenzie, a beauty, who died suddenly, and was said to have been poisoned in a fit of jealousy by Lady Deloraine. It was probably a mere piece of scandal at the expense of a worthless though no doubt envied court favourite. No proceedings appear to have followed upon the report; it did not affect the countess's position at court; nor did it prevent her getting a second husband in the person of a country squire, W. Wyndham, Esq., of Carsham. She died in 1744, when she could only have been about forty-two years of age.

In a contemporary rhyming Epistle to Pope, in the Scots Magazine for April, 1740, the poisoning case is alluded to in the following passage, but the writer appears to make Lord Deloraine (who died in 1730) the victim, and to hint at the recovery of Miss Mackenzie:

"When that of late you lash'd the poisoning dame,

Did you

do right to screen her guilty name?

D***'s fatal skill who has not heard?

A h-b-d victim the whole town has scared;

Escupalius' aid almost too late

To make M*** void the chocolate.

How is a secret rival to be fear'd,

When lust prevails and reason is debarr'd!"

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

Ver. 82. From furious Sappho scarce a milder fate.] Pope denied that this abominable couplet applied to Lady Mary, but it contains the same gross imputation which he had undoubtedly made against her five years before in the Dunciad (book ii. v. 136). The town seems also to have entertained the conviction that Lady Mary was aimed at, and Lord Marchmont, the poet's friend, concurred in the general belief. The lady herself (we must think

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