Boastful and rough, your first Son is a Squire;
The next a Tradesman, meek, and much a liar;
Tom struts a Soldier, open, bold, and brave;
Will sneaks a Scriv'ner, an exceeding knave:
Is he a Churchman? then he's fond of pow'r:
A Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour:
A smart Free-thinker? all things in an hour.
Ask men's Opinions: Scoto1 now shall tell
How Trade increases, and the World goes well;
Strike off his Pension, by the setting sun,
And Britain, if not Europe, is undone.

That gay Free-thinker, a fine talker once,
What turns him now a stupid silent dunce?
Some God, or Spirit he has lately found:
Or chanc'd to meet a Minister that frown'd.
Judge we by Nature? Habit can efface,
Int'rest o'ercome, or Policy take place:
By Actions? those Uncertainty divides:
By Passions? these Dissimulation hides:

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Opinions? they still take a wider range:

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Find, if you can, in what you cannot change.

Manners with Fortunes, Humours turn with Climes,
Tenets with Books, and Principles with Times.

Search then the RULING PASSION2: there, alone,
The Wild are constant, and the Cunning known;
The Fool consistent, and the False sincere;
Priests, Princes, Women, no dissemblers here.
This clue once found, unravels all the rest,
The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest 3.
Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling Passion was the Lust of Praise:
Born with whate'er could win it from the Wise,
Women and Fools must like him or he dies;
Tho' wond'ring Senates hung on all he spoke,
The Club must hail him master of the joke.
Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?
He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too *.
Then turns repentant, and his God adores

With the same spirit that he drinks and whores 5;
Enough if all around him but admire,

And now the Punk applaud, and now the Friar.

1 In the first edition: 'J-n now shall tell;' meaning perhaps Johnston, the Scottish Secretary... a neighbour of Pope's at Twickenham. Carruthers.

2 Search then the Ruling Passion:] See Essay on Man, Ep. II. v. 133. & seq. Warburton. 3 [Philip Duke of Wharton, the notorious son of an only less notorious father (Addison's patron), after a life of mad dissipation and adventure, died

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in the year 1731 in a Spanish convent in the habit of the monks who had given him a last refuge. His career is described in Vol. II. of Lord Stanhope's Hist. of Engl.]

4 John Wilmot, E. of Rochester, famous for his Wit and Extravagancies in the time of Charles the Second. P. [See note p. 181.]

5 With the same spirit] Spirit, for principle, not passion. Warburton.

Thus with each gift of nature and of art,
And wanting nothing but an honest heart;
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt;
And most contemptible, to shun contempt:
His Passion still, to covet gen'ral praise,
His Life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;

A constant Bounty which no friend has made;
An angel Tongue, which no man can persuade;
A Fool, with more of Wit than half mankind,
Too rash for Thought, for Action too refin'd:
A Tyrant to the wife his heart approves;
A Rebel to the very king he loves;

He dies, sad outcast of each church and state,
And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great.

'Twas all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool1.

Ask you why Wharton broke thro' ev'ry rule?

If second qualities for first they take.
When Catiline by rapine swell'd his store;
When Cæsar made a noble dame3 a whore;
In this the Lust, in that the Avarice

Were means, not ends; Ambition was the vice.
That very Cæsar, born in Scipio's days,
Had aim'd, like him, by Chastity at praise.
Lucullus, when Frugality could charm,
Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm 5.

In vain th' observer eyes the builder's toil,
But quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile.
In this one Passion man can strength enjoy,
As Fits give vigour, just when they destroy.
Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand,
Yet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand.
Consistent in our follies and our sins,
Here honest Nature ends as she begins.
Old Politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in bus'ness to the last;
As weak, as earnest; and as gravely out,
As sober Lanesb'row dancing in the gout.
Behold a rev'rend sire, whom want of grace
Has made the father of a nameless race,

[Goethe makes Werther as the supposed author of the Letters from Switzerland express a similar idea: 'one would always rather appear vicious than ridiculous to anyone else.]

2 In the former Editions, v. 208, 'Nature well known, no Miracles remain.' Alter'd as above, for very obvious reasons. Warburton.

3 [Servilia, the sister of Cato and the mother of Brutus. According to Sueton. Julius, c. 51.] 4 [Alluding to the famous story of Scipio the elder and Sophonisba.]

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5 [L. Licinius Lucullus, who after his Eastern campaigns introduced many luxuries into Roman life.]

6 Lanesb'row.] An ancient Nobleman, who continued this practice long after his legs were disabled by the gout. Upon the death of Prince George of Denmark, he demanded an audience of the Queen, to advise her to preserve her health and dispel her grief by Dancing. P. [Viscount Lanesborough died at Dublin in 1736. He is often alluded to as the dancing peer in Irish pasquinades of the day. Carruthers.]

Shov'd from the wall perhaps, or rudely press'd
By his own son, that passes by unbless'd:
Still to his wench he crawls on knocking knees,
And envies ev'ry sparrow that he sees.

A salmon's belly, Helluo', was thy fate;
The doctor call'd, declares all help too late:
"Mercy!" cries Helluo, "mercy on my soul!"
"Is there no hope?-Alas!-then bring the jowl"."
The frugal Crone, whom praying priests attend,
Still tries to save the hallow'd taper's end,
Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires,
For one puff more, and in that puff expires 3.
"Odious! in woollen! 'twould à Saint provoke,"
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke)4
"No, let a charming Chintz, and Brussels lace

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Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face: "One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead"And-Betty-give this Cheek a little Red "."

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The Courtier smooth, who forty years had shin'd

An humble servant to all human kind,

Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir,

"If-where I'm going-I could serve you, Sir?"

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"I give and I devise (old Euclio said,
And sigh'd) "my lands and tenements to Ned."
"Your money, Sir;" "My money, Sir, what all?
"Why, if I must—(then wept) I give it Paul."
"The Manor, Sir?"-"The Manor! hold," he cry'd,
"Not that, I cannot part with that"-and died.

And you! brave COBHAM, to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death:
Such in those moments as in all the past,

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'Oh, save my Country, Heav'n!" shall be your last 6.

1 [A Latin word signifying a glutton.]

2 [Warton traces this story to Athenæus, Bk. VIII., where it is told of the poet Philoxenus; but thinks Pope derived it from La Fontaine.]

3 A fact told him by Lady Bolingbroke, of an old Countess at Paris. Warburton. [It is rather an odd circumstance that, although the professed subject of this Epistle is 'the Characters of Men,' Pope has taken two of the examples to illustrate his theory from Women, the 'frugal crone' and 'poor Narcissa,' and yet he says, in the next Epistle, on Women,

In Men, we various Ruling Passions find; In Women, two almost divide the kind, The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway.' Neither of these Passions belonged to the Women, whose examples he has introduced to illustrate the Character and Ruling Passion of Men.

Bowles.]

-the last words that poor Narcissa spoke)] This story, as well as the others, is founded on fact, tho' the author had the goodness not to

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mention the names.
particular to a very celebrated Actress, who, in
detestation of the thought of being buried in
woollen, gave these her last orders with her dy-
ing breath. P. [According to Warton the
actress in question was the famous Mrs Oldfield,
and Betty, her friend and confidante, Mrs Saun-
ders.]

Several attribute this in

5 [No reader of Dickens will fail to remember the last words of Cleopatra in Dombey and Son, just as the next illustration but one will remind many of Tennyson's Northern Farmer. Euclio's very words are said by Warton to have been used by Sir William Bateman on his deathbed. But Wakefield states Euclio to have been designed for Sir Charles Duncombe of Helmsley; which is probable from Imit. of Horace, Sat. II. v. 183.]

[Whatever were the precise last words of William Pitt, this was the spirit which dictated them. Compare the Epitaph (x111.) on Atterbury.]

NOT

EPISTLE II.1

To a LADY 2.

Of the Characters of WOMEN.

TOTHING so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,

And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
How many pictures of one Nymph we view,
All how unlike each other, all how true!
Arcadia's Countess 3, here, in ermin'd pride,
Is, there, Pastora by a fountain side.

Here Fannia, leering on her own good man,
And there, a naked Leda with a Swan.
Let then the Fair one beautifully cry,
In Magdalen's loose hair, and lifted eye,
Or drest in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine*,

With simp'ring Angels, Palms, and Harps divine;
Whether the Charmer sinner it, or saint it,
If Folly grow romantic, I must paint it.

Come then, the colours and the ground prepare!
Dip in the Rainbow, trick her off in Air;
Choose a firm Cloud, before it fall, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute 5.
Rufa, whose eye quick-glancing o'er the Park 6,
Attracts each light gay meteor of a Spark,

[Of this Epistle, which was published in 1735, parts had been long before written and even printed. As originally published, it wanted the portraits of Philomede, Chloe and Atossa. According to Warburton's statement, Pope communicated the character of Atossa to the Duchess of Marlborough as intended for the Duchess of Buckingham; according to Walpole he repeated the experiment vice versa. Immediately on the death of Pope, the Duchess of Marlborough applied to one of his executors, Lord Marchmont, with the view of ascertaining whether the poet had left behind him any satire on the Duke or himself. Marchmont consulted Bolingbroke; and it was found that in the edition of the Moral Essays prepared for the press by Pope just before his death, and printed off ready for publication, the character of Atossa was inserted. If Lord Marchmont made the statement attributed to him by the editor of his papers (Rose), Pope had received from the Duchess £1000, the acceptance of which implied forbearance towards the house of Marlborough. If this be so, it is probable that the motive which prompted Pope to the acceptance of this 'favour' was the desire to settle Martha Blount in independent circumstances for life. See the account of this transaction in Carruthers' Life of Pope, pp. 392-6. On

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ΤΟ

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the general subject of the Epistle, compare the 6th Satire of Juvenal, the 10th Satire of Boileau, and Young's two Satires On Women.]

2 [Generally supposed to be Martha Blount, concerning whom see Introductory Memoir, p. xxx.]

3 [The Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney was inscribed to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke.] 4 Arcadia's Countess,-Pastora by a fountain-Leda with a swan-Magdalen-Cecilia--] Attitudes in which several ladies affected to be drawn, and sometimes one lady in them all. The poet's politeness and complaisance to the sex is observable in this instance, amongst others, that, where, as in the Characters of Men he has sometimes made use of real names, in the Characters of Women always fictitious. P. [The reader must remember the portraits by Kneller and his contemporaries to appreciate the aptness of the illustration.]

5 Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.] Alluding to the precept of Fresnoy: 'formæ veneres captando fugaces.' Warburton.

6 Instances of contrarieties, given even from such Characters as are most strongly mark'd and seemingly therefore most consistent; as I.: In the Affected, v. 21, and P.

Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke1,

As Sappho's di'monds with her dirty smock 2;
Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task,

With Sappho fragrant at an ev'ning Masque:
So morning Insects that in muck begun,
Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting-sun.
How soft is Silia! fearful to offend 3;

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The Frail one's advocate, the Weak one's friend:
To her, Calista prov'd her conduct nice;
And good Simplicius asks of her advice.

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But spare your censure; Silia does not drink.

Sudden, she storms! she raves! You tip the wink,

All eyes may see-a Pimple on her nose.
Papillia, wedded to her am'rous spark 3,

All eyes may see from what the change arose,

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Sighs for the shades-"How charming is a Park!"

All bath'd in tears-"Oh odious, odious Trees!"
Ladies, like variegated Tulips, show;

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A Park is purchas'd, but the Fair he sees

'Tis to their Changes half their charms we owe;
Fine by defect, and delicately weak,
Their happy Spots the nice admirer take',
'Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarm'd 5,
Aw'd without Virtue, without Beauty charm'd;
Her Tongue bewitch'd as oddly as her Eyes,
Less Wit than Mimic, more a Wit than wise;
Strange graces still, and stranger flights she had,
Was just not ugly, and was just not mad;
Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create,
As when she touch'd the brink of all we hate.
Narcissa's nature, tolerably mild 7,

To make a wash, would hardly stew a child;
Has ev'n been prov'd to grant a Lover's pray'r,
And paid a Tradesman once to make him stare;
Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim,
And made a Widow happy, for a whim.
Why then declare Good-nature is her scorn,
When 'tis by that alone she can be borne?

1 [Warburton compares the first stanza of Pope's first Imitation of Dorset. See p. 183. The person referred to is supposed to be Queen Caroline; but this seems unlikely, as the Queen appears v. 181.]

[Sappho is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, as to whose relations with Pope see Introductory Memoir, p. xxxi, where the different passages in which she is attacked by him are enumerated. He had first addressed her as Sappho in some panegyrical lines written in 1722, and afterwards transferred to Martha Blount. Lady Mary Pierrepoint was born at Thoresby in Notts. about 1690; in 1712 married Edward Wortley Montagu, whom she accompanied to Constantinople on his appointment to that embassy in 1716. Shortly after her return in 1718 she fixed her summer residence at Twickenham. In the year 1739 declining

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health determined her to quit England for Italy and the South of France, where she remained till shortly before her death in 1762. Her letters from Constantinople were first published in the following year.]

3 II. Contrarieties in the Soft-natur'd. P. 4 [Alluding to the 'beauty-spots' or 'mouches' then in fashion.]

5 III. Contrarieties in the Cunning and Artful. P.

6 I have been informed, on good authority, that this character was designed for the then Duchess of Hamilton. Warton. [These lines were originally published, in a somewhat different form, under the title of Sylvia, a Fragment, in the Miscellanies of 1727.]

7 IV. In the Whimsical.

P.