And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear1,
And sees at Canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction, Lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus tremble A. What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad,

Half froth5, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.

His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile Antithesis1.

Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;

}

325

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not Fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile;-be one Poet's praise,.
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways:
That Flatt'ry, ev'n to Kings, he held a shame,
And thought a Lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to Truth2, and moraliz'd his song3:
That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown*,
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own5;
The morals blacken'd when the writings scape,
The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his SOV'REIGN's ear:-
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?

The only trait perhaps of the whole [character of Sporus] that is not either false or overcharged, is Hervey's love for antithesis, which Pulteney had already ridiculed.... His parliamentary speeches were, as Warton says, very far above florid impotence; but they were in favour of the Ministry, and that was sufficiently offensive to Pope.' Croker, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, Biogr. Notice.

But stoop'd to Truth,] The term is from falconry; and the allusion to one of those untamed birds of spirit, which sometimes wantons at large in airy circles before it regards, or stoops to, its prey. Warburton.

3 [i.e. made his poetry Moral, in both senses of the term.]

the lie so oft o'erthrown] As, that he re

330

335

340

345

350

355

360

ceived subscriptions for Shakespear, that he set his name to Mr Broome's verses, &c. which, tho' publicly disproved were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epistle. P.

5 Th' imputed trash,] Such as profane Psalms, Court-Poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his Name by Curll and others. P.

6 Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,] Namely on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr Swift, Dr Arbuthnot, Mr Gay, his Friends, his Parents, and his very Nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons. P.

P. A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state:
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,

A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post1 corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a Pillory, or near a Throne,

He gain his Prince's ear, or lose his own.

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit3,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;
This dreaded Sat'rist Dennis will confess
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress3:
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhym'd for Moore.
Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply 4?
Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie 5.
To please a Mistress one aspers'd his life;
He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife.
Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill",
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his Will";
Let the two Curlls of Town and Court, abuse
His father, mother, body, soul, and museR.
Yet why? that Father held it for a rule,
It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:

1['Like Knights o' th' Post, and falsely charge Upon themselves what others forge.' Hudibras, Part I. Canto 1. The so-called 'Knights of the Post' stood about the sheriff's pillars near the courts, in readiness to swear anything for pay. See R. Bell's note ad loc.]

Ver. 368 in the MS.

'Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And lik'd that dang'rous thing, a female wit:
Safe as he thought, tho' all the prudent chid;
He writ no Libels, but my Lady did:
Great odds in am'rous or poetic game,

355

370

375

380

the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Dr Tindal, in the Grub-street Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Author. P. [He reappears in the Dunciad, II. v. 397-]

7 except his Will;] Alluding to Tindal's Will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgell, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. P. [Budgel was believed to have forged a will purporting to be by Dr Matthew Tindal, the author of Christianity

Where Woman's is the sin, and Man's the as old as the Creation.] shame.'

[Again alluding to Lady Mary.]

[V. ante, note to v. 48.]

4 ten years] It was so long after many libels before the Author of the Dunciad published that poem, till when, he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him. P.

Welsted's lie.] This man had the impudence to tell in print, that Mr P. had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of He also publish'd that he libell'd the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from Any great Man whatsoever. P. [Compare Dunciad, II. vv. 207-210.]

6 Let Budgel Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in

8 His father, mother, &c.] In some of Curll's and other pamphlets, Mr Pope's father was said to be a Mechanic, a Hatter, a Farmer, nay a Bankrupt. But, what is stranger, a Nobleman (if such a Reflection could be thought to come from a Nobleman) had dropt an allusion to that pitiful untruth, in a paper called an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity: And the following line,

Hard as thy Heart, and as thy Birth obscure, had fallen from a like Courtly pen, in certain Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Mr Pope's Father was of a Gentleman's Family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole Heiress married the Earl of Lindsey. His mother was the daughter of William Turnor, Esq. of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family-Mr Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few

That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore:
Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names, and memorable long

1

If there be force in Virtue, or in Song.

385

Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause,

While yet in Britain Honour had applause)

Each parent sprung1- A. What fortune, pray?- P. Their own,

And better got, than Bestia's from the throne2.

391

Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife,

Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife 3,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walk'd innoxious thro' his age.
Nor Courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lie1.
Un-learn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
By Nature honest, by Experience wise,
Healthy by temp'rance, and by exercise;
His life, tho' long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!

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400

Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than 15.
O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!

405

Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine:

To rock the cradle of reposing Age,

Me, let the tender office long engage,

With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,

410

Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,

May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he serv'd a QUEEN®.
A. Whether that blessing be deny'd or giv'n,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav'n.

weeks after this poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their Monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middlesex.

D. O. M.

ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO.
QVI. VIXIT. ANNOS. LXXV. OB. MDCCXVII.
ET.EDITHAE. CONIVGI. INCVLPABILI.

PIENTISSIMAE. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS.

XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. ET. SIBI. P.

1 [See Introductory Memoir, p. viii.] 2 [L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha into a dishonourable peace.]

3 Alluding to Addison's marriage with the

415

Countess of Warwick, and Dryden's with Lady
Elizabeth Howard. Carruthers.

4 He was a nonjuror, and would not take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, or the oath against the Pope. Bowles.

5 After v. 405 in the MS.

'And of myself, too, something must I say?
Take then this verse, the trifle of a day.
And if it live, it lives but to commend
The man whose heart has ne'er forgot a Friend,
Or head, an Author: Critic, yet polite
And friend to Learning, yet too wise to write.'
6 And just as rich as when he serv'd a
Queen.] An honest compliment to his Friend's
real and unaffected disinterestedness, when he
was the favourite Physician of Queen Anne.

Warburton.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE

IMITATED.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on some of my Epistles. An Answer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the Example of much greater Freedom in so eminent à Divine as Dr Donne, seem'd a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat Vice or Folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a Station. Both these Authors were acceptable to the Princes and Ministers under whom they lived. The Satires of Dr Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State; neither of whom look'd upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they serv'd in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which Fools are so apt to fall into, and Knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a Satirist for a Libeller; whereas to a true Satirist nothing is so odious as a Libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a Hypocrite.

Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis. P.

['Whoever,' says Warburton, 'expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing in these Imitations, will be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his own, without scruple or ceremony.' 'He deemed it more modest,' felicitously adds the same authority, 'to give the name of Imitations to his Satires, than, like Despreaux' [Boileau], 'to give the name of Satires to Imitations.' 'In two large columns,' wrote a less kindly critic, from whom impartiality could hardly be expected, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (alluding to the juxtaposition of the Latin and English texts),

'In two large columns, on thy motley page
Where Roman wit is strip'd with English rage;
Where ribaldry to satire makes pretence,
And modern scandal rolls with ancient sense:
Whilst on one side we see how Horace thought
And on the other how he never wrote:

Who can believe, who views the bad and good,

That the dull copyist better understood

That spirit he pretends to imitate,

Than heretofore the Greek he did translate;'

proceeded, from this pleasant allusion to Pope's Homer, to explain the moral obliquities of her detractor by his defects of person, birth and nature.

It was not