Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. 335 340 350 1 As, that he received subscriptions for Shakespeare, that he set his name to Mr. Broome's verses, &c., which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the libels, and even in that called The Nobleman's Epistle. 2 Such as profane psalms, court poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his name by Curll and others. 3 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 A friend in exile, or a father, dead; For thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last! A. But why insult the poor, affront the great? 360 P. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state: Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail, Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail, A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own. Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore. To please a mistress one aspersed his life; He lashed him not, but let her be his wife. 370 nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons. 1 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. 2 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 published that he libelled 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. Compare Dunciad ii. ver. 207-210. Let Budgel charge low Grub Street on his quill,1 380 'Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in 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. He reappears in the Dunciad ii., ver. 397. 2 Alluding to Tindal's will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgel, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. 3 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 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. PIENTISSIMAE. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS. XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII. PIO. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. That harmless mother thought no wife a whore : If there be force in virtue, or in song. Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, While yet in Britain honour had applause) Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray?-P. Their own, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.1 The good man walked innoxious through his age. O, grant me, thus to live, and thus to die! Be no unpleasing melancholy mine: Me, let the tender office long engage, 390 400 To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, 410 L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha. 2 He was a nonjuror, and would not take the oath of allegiance >r supremacy, or the oath against the Pope.-Bowles. Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, A. Whether that blessing be denied or given, SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE 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 a divine as Dr. Donne, seemed 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 looked upon a satire on vicious courts as any reflection on those they served 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 satirest 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. |