Home

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.

Copyright information:

The text is in the public domain.

Fair use statement:

This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.

EPISTLE IV

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS

ARGUMENT

I. False notions of Happiness, philosophical and popular, answered, from verses 19 to 26. II. It is the end of all men, and attainable by all. God intends Happiness to be equal; and, to be so, it must be social, since all particular Happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, and since he governs by general, not particular laws. As it is necessary for order, and the peace and welfare of Society, that external goods should be unequal, Happiness is not made to consist in these. But notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of Happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two passions of Hope and Fear, verse 29, etc. III. What the Happiness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good man has here the advantage. The error of imputing to virtue what are only the calamities of Nature, or of Fortune, verse 77, etc. IV. The folly of expecting that God should alter his general laws in favour of particulars, verse 123, etc. V. That we are not judges who are good; but that whoever they are, they must be happiest, verse 131, etc. VI. That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of Virtue. That even these can make no man happy without Virtue:—instanced in Riches; Honours; Nobility; Greatness; Fame; Superior Talents, with pictures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all, verse 149, etc. VII. That Virtue only constitutes a Happiness, whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal. That the perfection of Virtue and Happiness consists in a conformity to the Order of Providence here, and a resignation to it here and hereafter, verse 327, etc.

- O Happiness! our being’s end and aim!
- Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate’er thy name,
- That something still which prompts th’ eternal sigh,
- For which we bear to live, or dare to die;
- Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
- O’erlook’d, seen double, by the fool and wise:
- Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below,
- Say in what mortal soil thou deign’st to grow?
- Fair opening to some court’s propitious shine,
- Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?10
- Twin’d with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
- Or reap’d in iron harvests of the field?
- Where grows?—where grows it not? If vain our toil,
- We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
- Fix’d to no spot is Happiness sincere;
- ’T is nowhere to be found, or ev’rywhere:
- ’T is never to be bought, but always free,
- And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
- I. Ask of the Learn’d the way? the Learn’d are blind,
- This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind:20
- Some place the bliss in Action, some in Ease,
- Those call it Pleasure, and Contentment these;
- Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in Pain;
- Some swell’d to Gods, confess ev’n Virtue vain;
- Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
- To trust in everything, or doubt of all.
- Who thus define it, say they more or less
- Than this, that happiness is happiness?
- II. Take Nature’s path and mad Opinion’s leave;
- All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;30
- Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;
- There needs but thinking right and meaning well:
- And, mourn our various portions as we please,
- Equal is common sense and common ease.
- Remember, Man, ‘the Universal Cause
- Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws,’
- And makes what Happiness we justly call
- Subsist not in the good of one, but all.
- There’s not a blessing individuals find,
- But some way leans and hearkens to the kind;40
- No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,
- No cavern’d hermit, rests self-satisfied;
- Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
- Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend.
- Abstract what others feel, what others think,
- All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
- Each has his share; and who would more obtain,
- Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain.
- Order is Heav’n’s first law; and, this confest,
- Some are and must be greater than the rest,50
- More rich, more wise: but who infers from hence
- That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
- Heav’n to mankind impartial we confess,
- If all are equal in their happiness:
- But mutual wants this happiness increase;
- All Nature’s diff’rence keeps all Nature’s peace.
- Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
- Bliss is the same in subject or in king,
- In who obtain defence, or who defend,59
- In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
- Heav’n breathes thro’ every member of the whole
- One common blessing, as one common soul.
- But Fortune’s gifts, if each alike possest,
- And each were equal, must not all contest?
- If then to all men happiness was meant,
- God in externals could not place content.
- Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
- And these be happy call’d, unhappy those;
- But Heav’n’s just balance equal will appear,
- While those are placed in hope and these in fear:70
- Not present good or ill the joy or curse,
- But future views of better or of worse.
- O sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise
- By mountains piled on mountains to the skies?
- Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
- And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
- Know all the good that individuals find,
- Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind,
- Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
- Lie in three words—Health, Peace, and Competence.80
- But health consists with temperance alone,
- And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thy own.
- The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
- But these less taste them as they worse obtain.
- Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
- Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right?
- Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst,
- Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
- Count all th’ advantage prosp’rous vice attains,
- ’T is but what virtue flies from and disdains:90
- And grant the bad what happiness they would,
- One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
- O blind to truth and God’s whole scheme below,
- Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
- Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
- Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.
- But fools the good alone unhappy call,
- For ills or accidents that chance to all.
- See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!99
- See Godlike Turenne prostrate on the dust!
- See bleeds amid the martial strife!—
- Was this their virtue, or contempt of life?
- Say, was it virtue, more tho’ Heav’n ne’er gave,
- Lamented Digby ! sunk thee to the grave?
- Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,
- Why full of days and honour lives the sire?
- Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath
- When Nature sicken’d, and each gale was death?
- Or why so long (in life if long can be)109
- Lent Heav’n a parent to the poor and me?
- What makes all physical or moral ill?
- There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will.
- God sends not ill, if rightly understood,
- Or partial ill is universal good,
- Or change admits, or Nature lets it fall,
- Short and but rare till man improv’d it all.
- We just as wisely might of Heav’n complain
- The Righteous Abel was destroy’d by Cain,
- As that the virtuous son is ill at ease
- When his lewd father gave the dire disease.120
- Think we, like some weak prince, th’ Eternal Cause
- Prone for his fav’rites to reverse his laws?
- IV. Shall burning Ætna , if a sage requires,
- Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
- On air or sea new motions be imprest,
- O blameless Bethel ! to relieve thy breast?
- When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
- Shall gravitation cease if you go by?
- Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
- For Chartres’ head reserve the hanging wall?130
- V. But still this world, so fitted for the knave,
- Contents us not.—A better shall we have?
- A kingdom of the just then let it be;
- But first consider how those just agree.
- The good must merit God’s peculiar care;
- But who but God can tell us who they are?
- One thinks on Calvin Heav’n’s own spirit fell;
- Another deems him instrument of Hell:
- If Calvin feel Heav’n’s blessing or its rod,
- This cries there is, and that, there is no God.140
- What shocks one part will edify the rest;
- Nor with one system can they all be blest.
- The very best will variously incline,
- And what rewards your virtue punish mine.
- Whatever is, is right.—This world, ’t is true,
- Was made for Cæsar—but for Titus too:
- And which more bless’d? who chain’d his country, say,
- Or he whose virtue sigh’d to lose a day?
- VI. ‘But sometimes Virtue starves while Vice is fed.’149
- What then? is the reward of virtue bread?
- That vice may merit; ’t is the price of toil;
- The knave deserves it when he tills the soil,
- The knave deserves it when he tempts the main,
- Where Folly fights for kings or dives for gain.
- The good man may be weak, be indolent;
- Nor is his claim to plenty but content.
- But grant him riches, your demand is o’er.
- ‘No: shall the good want health, the good want power?’
- Add health and power, and every earthly thing.
- ‘Why bounded power? why private? why no king?160
- Nay, why external for internal giv’n?
- Why is not man a God, and earth a Heav’n?’
- Who ask and reason thus will scarce conceive
- God gives enough while he has more to give:
- Immense the power, immense were the demand;
- Say at what part of Nature will they stand?
- What nothing earthly gives or can destroy,
- The soul’s calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy,
- Is Virtue’s prize. A better would you fix?
- Then give humility a coach and six,170
- Justice a conqueror’s sword, or truth a gown,
- Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.
- Weak, foolish man! will Heav’n reward us there
- With the same trash mad mortals wish for here?
- The boy and man an individual makes,
- Yet sigh’st thou now for apples and for cakes?
- Go, like the Indian, in another life
- Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife;
- As well as dream such trifles are assign’d,
- As toys and empires, for a godlike mind:180
- Rewards, that either would to Virtue bring
- No joy, or be destructive of the thing:
- How oft by these at sixty are undone
- The virtues of a saint at twenty-one!
- To whom can Riches give repute or trust,
- Content or pleasure, but the good and just?
- Judges and senates have been bought for gold,
- Esteem and Love were never to be sold.
- O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
- The lover and the love of humankind,190
- Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
- Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.
- Honour and shame from no condition rise;
- Act well your part: there all the honour lies.
- Fortune in men has some small diff’rence made;
- One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
- The cobbler apron’d, and the parson gown’d;
- The friar hooded, and the monarch crown’d.
- ‘What differ more,’ you cry, ‘than crown and cowl?’
- I ’ll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.200
- You ’ll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
- Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
- Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,
- The rest is all but leather or prunella.
- Stuck o’er with titles, and hung round with strings,
- That thou mayst be by kings, or whores of kings,
- Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
- In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece:
- But by your fathers’ worth if yours you rate,
- Count me those only who were good and great.210
- Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood
- Has crept thro’ scoundrels ever since the flood,
- Go! and pretend your family is young,
- Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
- What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
- Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
- Look next on Greatness: say where Greatness lies.
- ‘Where but among the heroes and the wise?’
- Heroes are much the same, the point’s agreed,219
- From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede;
- The whole strange purpose of their lives to find,
- Or make, an enemy of all mankind!
- Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
- Yet ne’er looks forward further than his nose.
- No less alike the politic and wise;
- All sly slow things with circumspective eyes:
- Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
- Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
- But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat:229
- ’T is phrase absurd to call a villain great.
- Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
- Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
- Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
- Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
- Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
- Like Socrates:—that man is great indeed!
- What ’s fame? a fancied life in others’ breath;
- A thing beyond us, ev’n before our death.
- Just what you hear you have; and what ’s unknown
- The same, my lord, if Tully’s or your own.240
- All that we feel of it begins and ends
- In the small circle of our foes or friends;
- To all beside as much an empty shade,
- An Eugene living as a Cæsar dead;
- Alike or when or where, they shone or shine,
- Or on the Rubicon or on the Rhine.
- A Wit ’s a feather, and a Chief a rod;
- An Honest Man ’s the noblest work of God.
- Fame but from death a villain’s name can save,249
- As Justice tears his body from the grave;
- When what t’ oblivion better were resign’d
- Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
- All fame is foreign but of true desert,
- Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
- One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
- Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas:
- And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels
- Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
- In Parts superior what advantage lies?
- Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise?260
- ’T is but to know how little can be known,
- To see all others’ faults, and feel our own:
- Condemn’d in bus’ness or in arts to drudge,
- Without a second, or without a judge.
- Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?
- All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
- Painful preëminence! yourself to view
- Above life’s weakness, and its comforts too.
- Bring then these blessings to a strict account;
- Make fair deductions; see to what they mount;270
- How much of other each is sure to cost;
- How each for other oft is wholly lost;
- How inconsistent greater goods with these;
- How sometimes life is risk’d, and always ease.
- Think, and if still the things thy envy call,
- Say, wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall?
- To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly,
- Mark how they grace Lord Umbra or Sir Billy.
- Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?
- Look but on Gripus or on Gripus’ wife.280
- If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
- The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind!
- Or, ravish’d with the whistling of a name,
- See Cromwell damn’d to everlasting fame!
- If all united thy ambition call,
- From ancient story learn to scorn them all:
- There in the rich, the honour’d, famed, and great,
- See the false scale of Happiness complete!
- In hearts of Kings or arms of Queens who lay,
- How happy those to ruin, these betray.290
- Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows,
- From dirt and sea-weed, as proud Venice rose;
- In each how guilt and greatness equal ran,
- And all that rais’d the Hero sunk the Man:
- Now Europe’s laurels on their brows behold,
- But stain’d with blood, or ill-exchanged for gold;
- Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease,
- Or infamous for plunder’d provinces.
- O wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame
- E’er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame!300
- What greater bliss attends their close of life?
- Some greedy minion, or imperious wife,
- The trophied arches, storied halls invade,
- And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade.
- Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray,
- Compute the morn and ev’ning to the day;
- The whole amount of that enormous fame,
- A tale that blends their glory with their shame!
- VII. Know then this truth (enough for man to know),
- ‘Virtue alone is happiness below;’310
- The only point where human bliss stands still,
- And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
- Where only merit constant pay receives,
- Is bless’d in what it takes and what it gives;
- The joy unequall’d if its end it gain,
- And, if it lose, attended with no pain;
- Without satiety, tho’ e’er so bless’d,
- And but more relish’d as the more distress’d:
- The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears,
- Less pleasing far than Virtue’s very tears:
- Good from each object, from each place acquired,321
- For ever exercised, yet never tired;
- Never elated while one man ’s oppress’d;
- Never dejected while another ’s bless’d:
- And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
- Since but to wish more virtue is to gain.
- See the sole bliss Heav’n could on all bestow!
- Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:
- Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
- The bad must miss, the good untaught will find:330
- Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
- But looks thro’ Nature up to Nature’s God;
- Pursues that chain which links th’ immense design,
- Joins Heav’n and earth, and mortal and divine;
- Sees that no being any bliss can know,
- But touches some above and some below;
- Learns from this union of the rising whole
- The first, last purpose of the human soul;
- And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
- All end, in love of God and love of Man.
- For him alone Hope leads from goal to goal,341
- And opens still and opens on his soul,
- Till lengthen’d on to faith, and unconfin’d,
- It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
- He sees why Nature plants in man alone
- Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown
- (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
- Are giv’n in vain, but what they seek they find):
- Wise is her present; she connects in this
- His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
- At once his own bright prospect to be blest,351
- And strongest motive to assist the rest.
- Self-love thus push’d to social, to Divine,
- Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
- Is this too little for the boundless heart?
- Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
- Grasp the whole world of reason, life, and sense,
- In one close system of benevolence:
- Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
- And height of Bliss but height of Charity.
- God loves from whole to parts: but human soul361
- Must rise from individual to the whole.
- Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
- As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
- The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds,
- Another still, and still another spreads;
- Friends, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
- His country next; and next all human race;
- Wide and more wide, th’ o’erflowings of the mind
- Take ev’ry creature in of ev’ry kind:370
- Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
- And Heav’n beholds its image in his breast.
- Come then, my Friend! my Genius! come along,
- O master of the poet and the song!
- And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends,
- To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends,
- Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
- To fall with dignity, with temper rise:
- Form’d by thy converse, happily to steer
- From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
- Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,381
- Intent to reason, or polite to please.
- O! while along the stream of time thy name
- Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
- Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
- Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
- When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,
- Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
- Shall then this verse to future age pretend
- Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?390
- That, urged by thee, I turn’d the tuneful art
- From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart:
- For Wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light,
- Show’d erring pride, Whatever is, is right;
- That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim;
- That true Self-love and Social are the same;
- That Virtue only makes our bliss below,
- And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.

MORAL ESSAYS

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetæ,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
Horace.

The present order of the Moral Essays is very different from that of their original publication. The fifth epistle (to Addison) was written in 1715, and published five years later in Tickell’s edition of Addison’s works. The fourth epistle (to the Earl of Burlington) was published in 1731, under the title Of Taste. The third epistle (to Lord Bathurst) was published in 1732, and followed in 1733 by the first epistle (to Lord Cobham). The second epistle (to a Lady) was published in 1735. The whole series appeared in their present order, under the direction of Warburton, after Pope’s death.

Though it is doubtful how far it suggests Pope’s primary intention, Warburton’s Advertisement is here printed because Pope undoubtedly wished it, with its flattering implication of his philosophical breadth, to be accepted as a true statement of a plan which was plainly broader than its execution.

by dr. warburton

The Essay on Man was intended to be comprised in four books:—

The first of which the author has given us under that title in four epistles.

The second was to have consisted of the same number: 1. Of the extent and limits of human reason. 2. Of those arts and sciences, and of the parts of them, which are useful, and therefore attainable; together with those which are unuseful, and therefore unattainable. 3. Of the nature, ends, use, and application of the different capacities of men. 4. Of the use of learning; of the science of the world; and of wit; concluding with a satire against the misapplication of them, illustrated by pictures, characters, and examples.

The third book regarded civil regimen, or the science of politics; in which the several forms of a republic were to be examined and explained; together with the several modes of religious worship, as far forth as they affect society: between which the author always supposed there was the most interesting relation and closest connection. So that this part would have treated of civil and religious society in their full extent.

The fourth and last book concerned private ethics, or practical morality, considered in all the circumstances, orders, professions, and stations of human life.

The scheme of all this had been maturely digested, and communicated to Lord Bolingbroke, Dr. Swift, and one or two more; and was intended for the only work of his riper years; but was, partly through ill health, partly through discouragements from the depravity of the times; and partly on prudential and other considerations, interrupted, postponed, and lastly, in a manner, laid aside.

But as this was the author’s favourite work, which more exactly reflected the image of his strong capacious mind, and as we can have but a very imperfect idea of it from the disjecta membra poetœ that now remain, it may not be amiss to be a little more particular concerning each of these projected books.

The first, as it treats of man in the abstract, and considers him in general under every one of his relations, becomes the foundation, and furnishes out the subjects of the three following: so that—

The second book was to take up again the first and second epistles of the first book, and to treat of man in his intellectual capacity at large, as has been explained above. Of this only a small part of the conclusion (which, as we said, was to have contained a satire against the misapplication of wit and learning) may be found in the fourth book of the Dunciad; and up and down, occasionally, in the other three.

The third book, in like manner, was to reassume the subject of the third epistle of the first, which treats of man in his social, political, and religious capacity. But this part the poet afterwards conceived might be best executed in an epic poem, as the action would make it more animated, and the fable less invidious; in which all the great principles of true and false governments and religions should be chiefly delivered in feigned examples.

The fourth and last book was to pursue the subject of the fourth epistle of the first, and to treat of ethics, or practical morality; and would have consisted of many members, of which the four following epistles are detached portions; the two first, on the characters of men and women, being the introductory part of this concluding book.

EPISTLE I[ ]

TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM

of the knowledge and characters of men

ARGUMENT

I. That it is not sufficient for this knowledge to consider Man in the abstract; Books will not serve the purpose, nor yet our own Experience singly. General maxims, unless they be formed upon both, will be but notional. Some peculiarity in every man, characteristic to himself, yet varying from himself. Difficulties arising from our own Passions, Fancies, Faculties, &c. The shortness of Life to observe in, and the uncertainty of the Principles of action in men to observe by. Our own Principle of action often hid from ourselves. Some few Characters plain, but in general confounded, dissembled, or inconsustent. The same man utterly different in different places and seasons. Unimaginable weaknesses in the greatest. Nothing constant and certain but God and Nature. No judging of the Motives from the actions; the same actions proceeding from contrary Motives, and the same Motives influencing contrary actions. II. Yet to form Characters we can only take the strongest actions of a man’s life, and try to make them agree: the utter uncertainty of this, from Nature itself, and from Policy. Characters given according to the rank of men of the world; and some reason for it. Education alters the Nature, or at least the Character, of many. Actions, Passions, Opinions, Manners, Humours, or Principles, all subject to change. No judging by Nature. III. It only remains to find (if we can) his Ruling Passion: that will certainly influence all the rest, and can reconcile the seeming or real inconsistency of all his actions. Instanced in the extraordinary character of Clodio. A caution against mistaking second qualities for first, which will destroy all possibility of the knowledge of mankind. Examples of the strength of the Ruling Passion, and its continuation to the last breath.

- Yes, you despise the man to books confin’d,
- Who from his study rails at humankind;
- Tho’ what he learns he speaks, and may advance
- Some gen’ral maxims, or be right by chance.
- The coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave,
- That from his cage cries cuckold, whore, and knave,
- Tho’ many a passenger he rightly call,
- You hold him no philosopher at all.
- And yet the fate of all extremes is such,
- Men may be read, as well as books, too much.10
- To observations which ourselves we make,
- We grow more partial for th’ observer’s sake;
- To written wisdom, as another’s, less:
- Maxims are drawn from Notions, those from Guess.
- There ’s some peculiar in each leaf and grain,
- Some unmark’d fibre, or some varying vein.
- Shall only man be taken in the gross?
- Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss.
- That each from other differs, first confess;
- Next, that he varies from himself no less:
- And Nature’s, Custom’s, Reason’s, Passion’s strife,21
- And all Opinion’s colours cast on life.
- Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,
- Quick whirls and shifting eddies of our minds?
- On human actions reason tho’ you can,
- It may be Reason, but it is not Man:
- His Principle of action once explore,
- That instant ’t is his Principle no more.
- Like following life thro’ creatures you dissect,
- You lose it in the moment you detect.30
- Yet more; the diff’rence is as great between
- The optics seeing as the objects seen.
- All Manners take a tincture from our own,
- Or come discolour’d thro’ our Passions shown;
- Or Fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies,
- Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
- Nor will life’s stream for observation stay,
- It hurries all too fast to mark their way:
- In vain sedate reflections we would make,
- When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.40
- Oft in the Passions’ wide rotation toss’d,
- Our spring of action to ourselves is lost:
- Tired, not determin’d, to the last we yield,
- And what comes then is master of the field.
- As the last image of that troubled heap,
- When Sense subsides, and Fancy sports in sleep
- (Tho’ past the recollection of the thought),
- Becomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought:
- Something as dim to our internal view49
- Is thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do.
- True, some are open, and to all men known;
- Others so very close they ’re hid from none
- (So darkness strikes the sense no less than light):
- Thus gracious Chandos is belov’d at sight;
- And ev’ry child hates Shylock, tho’ his soul
- Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.
- At half mankind when gen’rous Manly raves,
- All know ’t is virtue, for he thinks them knaves:
- When universal homage Umbra pays,
- All see ’t is vice, and itch of vulgar praise.
- When Flatt’ry glares, all hate it in a Queen ,61
- While one there is who charms us with his spleen.
- But these plain Characters we rarely find;
- Tho’ strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind:
- Or puzzling contraries confound the whole;
- Or affectations quite reverse the soul.
- The dull flat falsehood serves for policy;
- And in the cunning truth itself ’s a lie:
- Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise:
- The fool lies hid in inconsistencies.70
- See the same man, in vigour, in the gout;
- Alone, in company, in place, or out;
- Early at bus’ness, and at hazard late,
- Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate,
- Drunk at a Borough, civil at a Ball,
- Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall!
- Catius is ever moral, ever grave,
- Thinks who endures a knave is next a knave,
- Save just at dinner—then prefers, no doubt,
- A rogue with ven’son to a saint without.80
- Who would not praise Patricio’s high desert,
- His hand unstain’d, his uncorrupted heart,
- His comprehensive head? all int’rests weigh’d,
- All Europe saved, yet Britain not betray’d!
- He thanks you not, his pride is in Piquet,
- Newmarket fame, and judgment at a bet.
- What made (say, Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
- Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
- A perjured prince a leaden saint revere,
- A godless regent tremble at a star ?90
- The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit,
- Faithless thro’ piety, and duped thro’ wit?
- Europe a woman, child, or dotard, rule;
- And just her wisest monarch made a fool?
- Know, God and Nature only are the same:
- In man the judgment shoots at flying game;
- A bird of passage! gone as soon as found;
- Now in the moon, perhaps now under ground.
- In vain the sage, with retrospective eye,
- Would from th’ apparent What conclude the Why,100
- Infer the Motive from the Deed, and show
- That what we chanced was what we meant to do.
- Behold! if Fortune or a Mistress frowns,
- Some plunge in bus’ness, others shave their crowns:
- To ease the soul of one oppressive weight,
- This quits an empire, that embroils a state
- The same adust complexion has impell’d
- Charles to the convent, Philip to the field.
- Not always Actions show the man: we find109
- Who does a kindness is not therefore kind;
- Perhaps Prosperity becalm’d his breast;
- Perhaps the wind just shifted from the east:
- Not therefore humble he who seeks retreat;
- Pride guides his steps, and bids him shun the great:
- Who combats bravely is not therefore brave;
- He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave:
- Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise;
- His pride in reas’ning, not in acting, lies.
- But grant that Actions best discover man;
- Take the most strong, and sort them as you can:120
- The few that glare each character must mark;
- You balance not the many in the dark.
- What will you do with such as disagree?
- Suppress them, or miscall them Policy?
- Must then at once (the character to save)
- The plain rough hero turn a crafty knave?
- Alas! in truth the man but changed his mind;
- Perhaps was sick, in love, or had not din’d.
- Ask why from Britain Cæsar would retreat?129
- Cæsar himself might whisper he was beat.
- Why risk the world’s great empire for a punk?
- Cæsar perhaps might answer, he was drunk.
- But, sage historians! ’t is your task to prove
- One action, Conduct, one, heroic Love.
- ’T is from high life high characters are drawn;
- A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;
- A judge is just, a chancellor juster still;
- A gownman learn’d; a bishop what you will;
- Wise if a minister; but if a king,
- More wise, more learn’d, more just, more ev’rything.140
- Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,
- Born where Heav’n’s influence scarce can penetrate.
- In life’s low vale, the soil the virtues like,
- They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
- Tho’ the same sun, with all-diffusive rays,
- Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze,
- We prize the stronger effort of his power,
- And justly set the gem above the flower.
- ’T is education forms the common mind;
- Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclin’d.
- Boastful and rough, your first son is a Squire;151
- 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 power: }
- A Quaker? sly: a Presbyterian? sour: }
- A smart Free-thinker? all things in an hour. }
- Ask men’s opinions! Scoto now shall tell
- How trade increases, and the world goes well:
- Strike off his pension by the setting sun,160
- 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 chanced 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:
- Opinions? they still take a wider range:
- Find, if you can, in what you cannot change.171
- Manners with Fortunes, Humours turn with Climes,
- Tenets with Books, and Principles with Times.
- Search then the Ruling Passion: 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:
- Wharton! the scorn and wonder of our days,180
- 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;
- Enough if all around him but admire,190
- And now the Punk applaud, and now the Friar.
- 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,200
- 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!
- Ask you why Wharton broke thro’ ev’ry rule?
- ’T was all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool.
- Nature well known, no prodigies remain;
- Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.
- Yet in this search the wisest may mistake,210
- If second qualities for first they take.
- When Catiline by rapine swell’d his store,
- When Cæsar made a noble dame 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.
- In vain th’ observer eyes the builder’s toil,
- But quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile.221
- 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 out230
- 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,
- 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.’241
- The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend,
- Still strives to save the hallow’d taper’s end,
- Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires,
- For one puff more, and in that puff expires.
- ‘Odious! in woollen! ’t would a saint provoke’
- (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke);
- ‘No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
- Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face:
- One would not, sure, be frightful when one ’s dead—250
- And—Betty—give this cheek a little red.’
- The courtier smooth, who forty years had shined
- An humble servant to all humankind,
- Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir:—
- ‘If—where I ’m going—I could serve you, sir?’
- ‘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 cried,260
- ‘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,
- ‘O save my country, Heav’n!’ shall be your last.

EPISTLE II[ ]

TO A LADY OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN

ARGUMENT

That the particular Characters of women are not so strongly marked as those of men, seldom so fixed, and still more inconsistent with themselves. Instances of contrarieties given, even from such Characters as are more strongly marked, and seemingly, therefore, most consistent: as, 1. In the affected. 2. In the soft-natured. 3. In the cunning and artful. 4. In the whimsical. 5. In the lewd and vicious. 6. In the witty and refined. 7. In the stupid and simple. The former part having shown that the particular characters of women are more various than those of men, it is nevertheless observed that the general characteristic of the sex, as to the Ruling Passion, is more uniform. This is occasioned partly by their Nature, partly by their Education, and in some degree by Necessity. What are the aims and the fate of this sex: 1. As to Power. 2. As to Pleasure. Advice for their true interest. The picture of an estimable woman, with the best kind of contrarieties.

- Nothing 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,
- And how unlike each other, all how true!
- Arcadia’s countess here, in ermined pride,
- Is there, Pastora by a fountain side:
- Here Fannia, leering on her own good man,
- And there a naked Leda with a swan.10
- 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.20
- Rufa, whose eye quick glancing o’er the park,
- Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark,
- Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke,
- As Sappho’s diamonds with her dirty smock,
- 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;
- The frail one’s advocate, the weak one’s friend.30
- To her Calista proved her conduct nice,
- And good Simplicius asks of her advice.
- Sudden she storms! she raves! you tip the wink:
- But spare your censure; Silia does not drink.
- All eyes may see from what the change arose;
- All eyes may see—a Pimple on her nose.
- Papillia, wedded to her am’rous spark,
- Sighs for the shades—‘How charming is a park!’
- A park is purchased; but the Fair he sees
- All bathed in tears—‘Oh, odious, odious trees!’40
- Ladies, like variegated tulips, show;
- ’T is to their changes half their charms we owe:
- Fine by defect, and delicately weak,
- Their happy spots the nice admirer take.
- ’T was thus Calypso once each heart alarm’d,
- Awed 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;50
- 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,
- To make a wash would hardly stew a child;
- Has ev’n been prov’d to grant a lover’s prayer,
- 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,59
- When ’t is by that alone she can be borne?
- Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name?
- A fool to Pleasure, yet a slave to Fame:
- Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs,
- Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres:
- Now conscience chills her, and now passion burns,
- And atheism and religion take their turns:
- A very heathen in the carnal part,
- Yet still a sad good Christian at her heart.
- See Sin in state, majestically drunk,
- Proud as a peeress, prouder as a punk;70
- Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside,
- A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.
- What then? let blood and body bear the fault;
- Her head ’s untouch’d, that noble seat of Thought:
- Such this day’s doctrine—in another fit
- She sins with poets thro’ pure love of Wit.
- What has not fired her bosom or her brain?
- Cæsar and Tall-boy, Charles and Charlemagne.
- As Helluo, late dictator of the feast,
- The nose of Hautgout, and the tip of Taste,
- Critiqued your wine, and analyzed your meat,81
- Yet on plain pudding deign’d at home to eat:
- So Philomede , lecturing all mankind
- On the soft passion, and the taste refin’d,
- The address, the delicacy—stoops at once,
- And makes her hearty meal upon a dunce.
- Flavia ’s a Wit, has too much sense to pray;
- To toast our wants and wishes is her way;
- Nor asks of God, but of her stars, to give
- The mighty blessing ‘while we live to live.’90
- Then all for death, that opiate of the soul!
- Lucretia’s dagger, Rosamonda’s bowl.
- Say, what can cause such impotence of mind?
- A Spark too fickle, or a Spouse too kind.
- Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin’d to please;
- With too much spirit to be e’er at ease;
- With too much quickness ever to be taught;
- With too much thinking to have common thought:
- You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
- And die of nothing but a rage to live.100
- Turn then from Wits, and look on Simo’s mate,
- No ass so meek, no ass so obstinate:
- Or her that owns her faults but never mends,
- Because she ’s honest, and the best of friends:
- Or her whose life the church and scandal share,
- For ever in a Passion or a Prayer:
- Or her who laughs at Hell, but (like her Grace )
- Cries, ‘Ah! how charming if there ’s no such place!’
- Or who in sweet vicissitude appears109
- Of Mirth and Opium, Ratifie and Tears;
- The daily anodyne and nightly draught,
- To kill those foes to fair ones, Time and Thought.
- Woman and fool are two hard things to hit;
- For true No-meaning puzzles more than Wit.
- But what are these to great Atossa’s mind?
- Scarce once herself, by turns all womankind!
- Who with herself, or others, from her birth
- Finds all her life one warfare upon earth;
- Shines in exposing knaves and painting fools,
- Yet is whate’er she hates and ridicules;120
- No thought advances, but her eddy brain
- Whisks it about, and down it goes again.
- Full sixty years the World has been her Trade,
- The wisest fool much time has ever made:
- From loveless youth to unrespected age,
- No passion gratified except her rage:
- So much the Fury still outran the Wit,
- The pleasure miss’d her, and the scandal hit.
- Who breaks with her provokes revenge from Hell,
- But he ’s a bolder man who dares be well.
- Her ev’ry turn with violence pursued,131
- Nor more a storm her hate than gratitude:
- To that each Passion turns or soon or late;
- Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate.
- Superiors? death! and equals? what a curse!
- But an inferior not dependent? worse.
- Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;
- Oblige her, and she ’ll hate you while you live:
- But die, and she ’ll adore you—then the bust
- And temple rise —then fall again to dust.
- Last night her lord was all that ’s good and great;141
- A knave this morning, and his will a cheat.
- Strange! by the means defeated of the ends,
- By Spirit robb’d of power, by Warmth of friends,
- By Wealth of foll’wers! without one distress,
- Sick of herself thro’ very selfishness!
- Atossa, curs’d with ev’ry granted prayer,
- Childless with all her children, wants an heir:
- To heirs unknown descends th’ unguarded store,
- Or wanders, Heav’n-directed, to the poor.
- Pictures like these, dear Madam! to design,151
- Asks no firm hand and no unerring line;
- Some wand’ring touches, some reflected light,
- Some flying stroke, alone can hit ’em right:
- For how should equal colours do the knack?
- Chameleons who can paint in white and black?
- ‘Yet Chloë sure was form’d without a spot.’
- Nature in her then err’d not, but forgot.
- ‘With ev’ry pleasing, ev’ry prudent part,
- Say, what can Chloë want?’—She wants a Heart,160
- She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought,
- But never, never reach’d one gen’rous thought.
- Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,
- Content to dwell in decencies for ever.
- So very reasonable, so unmov’d,
- As never yet to love or to be lov’d.
- She, while her lover pants upon her breast,
- Can mark the figures on an Indian chest;
- And when she sees her friend in deep despair,
- Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair.170
- Forbid it, Heav’n! a favour or a debt
- She e’er should cancel!—but she may forget.
- Safe is your secret still in Chloë’s ear;
- But none of Chloë’s shall you ever hear.
- Of all her Dears she never slander’d one,
- But cares not if a thousand are undone.
- Would Chloë know if you ’re alive or dead?
- She bids her footman put it in her head.
- Chloë is prudent—Would you too be wise?
- Then never break your heart when Chloë dies.180
- One certain portrait may (I grant) be seen,
- Which Heav’n has varnish’d out and made a queen;
- The same for ever! and described by all
- With truth and goodness, as with crown and ball.
- Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will,
- And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.
- ’T is well—but, artists! who can paint or write,
- To draw the naked is your true delight.
- That robe of Quality so struts and swells,
- None see what parts of Nature it conceals:
- Th’ exactest traits of body or of mind,191
- We owe to models of an humble kind.
- If Queensbury to strip there ’s no compelling,
- ’T is from a handmaid we must take a Helen.
- From peer or bishop ’t is no easy thing
- To draw the man who loves his God or king.
- Alas! I copy (or my draught would fail)
- From honest Mah’met or plain parson Hale.
- But grant, in public, men sometimes are shown;
- A woman’s seen in private life alone:200
- Our bolder talents in full light display’d;
- Your virtues open fairest in the shade.
- Bred to disguise, in public ’t is you hide;
- There none distinguish ’twixt your shame or pride,
- Weakness or delicacy; all so nice,
- That each may seem a Virtue or a Vice.
- In men we various Ruling Passions find;
- In women two almost divide the kind;
- Those only fix’d, they first or last obey,
- The love of Pleasure, and the love of Sway.
- That Nature gives; and where the lesson taught211
- Is but to please, can Pleasure seem a fault?
- Experience this: by man’s oppression curst,
- They seek the second not to lose the first.
- Men some to bus’ness, some to pleasure take;
- But ev’ry woman is at heart a rake:
- Men some to quiet, some to public strife;
- But ev’ry lady would be queen for life.
- Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens!
- Power all their end, but Beauty all the means.220
- In youth they conquer with so wild a rage,
- As leaves them scarce a subject in their age:
- For foreign glory, foreign joy they roam;
- No thought of peace or happiness at home.
- But wisdom’s triumph is well-timed retreat,
- As hard a science to the Fair as Great!
- Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,
- Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone;
- Worn out in public, weary ev’ry eye,
- Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die.230
- Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue,
- Still out of reach, yet never out of view;
- Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most,
- To covet flying, and regret when lost:
- At last to follies youth could scarce defend,
- It grows their age’s prudence to pretend;
- Ashamed to own they gave delight before,
- Reduced to feign it when they give no more.
- As hags hold Sabbaths less for joy than spite,
- So these their merry miserable night;240
- Still round and round the Ghosts of Beauty glide,
- And haunt the places where their Honour died.
- See how the world its veterans rewards!
- A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;
- Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,
- Young without lovers, old without a friend;
- A Fop their passion, but their prize a Sot,
- Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot!
- Ah! friend! to dazzle let the vain design;
- To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine!250
- That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the Ring
- Flaunts and goes down an unregarded thing.
- So when the sun’s broad beam has tired the sight,
- All mild ascends the moon’s more sober light,
- Serene in virgin modesty she shines,
- And unobserv’d the glaring orb declines.
- O! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray257
- Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
- She who can love a sister’s charms, or hear
- Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
- She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,
- Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
- Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
- Yet has her humour most when she obeys;
- Let Fops or Fortune fly which way they will,
- Disdains all loss of tickets or Codille;
- Spleen, Vapours, or Smallpox, above them all,
- And mistress of herself, tho’ china fall.
- And yet believe me, good as well as ill,
- Woman ’s at best a contradiction still.270
- Heav’n when it strives to polish all it can
- Its last best work, but forms a softer Man;
- Picks from each sex to make the fav’rite blest,
- Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest;
- Blends, in exception to all gen’ral rules,
- Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools;
- Reserve with Frankness, Art with Truth allied,
- Courage with Softness, Modesty with Pride;
- Fix’d principles, with fancy ever new:279
- Shakes all together, and produces—You.
- Be this a woman’s fame; with this unblest,
- Toasts live a scorn, and Queens may die a jest.
- This Phœbus promis’d (I forget the year)
- When those blue eyes first open’d on the sphere;
- Ascendant Phœbus watch’d that hour with care,
- Averted half your parents’ simple prayer,
- And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf
- That buys your sex a tyrant o’er itself.
- The gen’rous God, who wit and gold refines,
- And ripens spirits as he ripens mines,290
- Kept dross for Duchesses, the world shall know it,
- To you gave Sense, Good-humour, and a Poet.

EPISTLE III[ ]

TO ALLEN, LORD BATHURST

of the use of riches

ARGUMENT

That it is known to few, most falling into one of the extremes, Avarice or Profusion. The point discussed, whether the invention of money has been more commodious or pernicious to mankind. That Riches, either to the Avaricious or the Prodigal, cannot afford happiness, scarcely necessaries. That Avarice is an absolute frenzy, without an end or purpose. Conjectures about the motives of avaricious men. That the conduct of men, with respect to Riches, can only be accounted for by the Order of Providence, which works the general good out of extremes, and brings all to its great end by perpetual revolutions. How a Miser acts upon principles which appear to him reasonable. How a Prodigal does the same. The due medium and true use of riches. The Man of Ross. The fate of the Profuse and the Covetous, in two examples; both miserable in life and in death. The story of Sir Balaam.

- P. Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
- And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
- You hold the word from Jove to Momus giv’n,
- That Man was made the standing jest of Heav’n,
- And gold but sent to keep the fools in play,
- For some to heap, and some to throw away.
- But I, who think more highly of our kind
- (And surely Heav’n and I are of a mind),
- Opine that Nature, as in duty bound,
- Deep hid the shining mischief under ground:10
- But when by man’s audacious labour won,
- Flamed forth this rival to its sire the sun,
- Then careful Heav’n supplied two sorts of men,
- To squander these, and those to hide again.
- Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,
- We find our tenets just the same at last:
- Both fairly owning riches, in effect,
- No grace of Heavn’n, or token of th’ elect;
- Giv’n to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil,
- To Ward , to Waters, Chartres, and the Devil.20
- B. What Nature wants, commodious gold bestows;
- ’T is thus we eat the bread another sows.
- P. But how unequal it bestows, observe;
- ’T is thus we riot, while who sow it starve.
- What Nature wants (a phrase I much distrust)
- Extends to luxury, extends to lust.
- Useful I grant, it serves what life requires,
- But dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.
- B. Trade it may help, Society extend.
- P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend.30
- B. It raises armies in a nation’s aid.
- P. But bribes a senate, and the land ’s betray’d.
- In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave,
- If secret gold sap on from knave to knave.
- Once, we confess, beneath the patriot’s cloak,
- From the crack’d bag the dropping guinea spoke,
- And jingling down the back-stairs, told the crew
- ‘Old Cato is as great a rogue as you.’
- Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
- That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly!40
- Gold imp’d by thee, can compass hardest things,
- Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings ;
- A single leaf shall waft an army o’er,
- Or ship off senates to some distant shore;
- A leaf, like Sibyl’s, scatter to and fro
- Our fates and fortunes as the winds shall blow;
- Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
- And silent sells a King or buys a Queen.
- Oh, that such bulky bribes as all might see,
- Still, as of old, incumber’d villany!50
- Could France or Rome divert our brave designs
- With all their brandies or with all their wines?
- What could they more than Knights and Squires confound,
- Or water all the Quorum ten miles round?
- A statesman’s slumbers how this speech would spoil,
- ‘Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil;
- Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door;
- A hundred oxen at your levee roar.’
- Poor Avarice one torment more would find,59
- Nor could Profusion squander all in kind.
- Astride his cheese Sir Morgan might we meet;
- And Worldly crying coals from street to street,
- Whom with a wig so wild and mien so ’mazed,
- Pity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed.
- Had Colepepper’s whole wealth been hops and hogs,
- Could he himself have sent it to the dogs?
- His Grace will game: to White’s a bull be led,
- With spurning heels and with a butting head.
- To White’s be carried, as to ancient games,
- Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames.70
- Shall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep,
- Bear home six whores, and make his lady weep?
- Or soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine,
- Drive to St. James’s a whole herd of swine?
- Oh, filthy check on all industrious skill,
- To spoil the nation’s last great trade,—Quadrille!
- Since then, my lord, on such a world we fall,
- What say you? B. Say? Why, take it, gold and all.
- P. What Riches give us let us then inquire:
- Meat, Fire, and Clothes. B. What more? P. Meat, Clothes, and Fire.80
- Is this too little? would you more than live?
- Alas! ’t is more than Turner finds, they give.
- Alas! ’t is more than (all his visions past)
- Unhappy Wharton waking found at last!
- What can they give? To dying Hopkins , heirs?
- To Chartres, vigour? Japhet, nose and ears ?
- Can they in gems bid pallid Hippia glow?
- In Fulvia’s buckle ease the throbs below?
- Or heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail,
- With all th’ embroidery plaster’d at thy tail?90
- They might (were Harpax not too wise to spend)
- Give Harpax’ self the blessing of a friend;
- Or find some doctor that would save the life
- Of wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock’s wife.
- But thousands die without or this or that,
- Die, and endow a College or a Cat .
- To some indeed Heav’n grants the happier fate
- T’ enrich a bastard; or a son they hate.
- Perhaps you think the poor might have their part?
- Bond damns the poor , and hates them from his heart:100
- The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule
- That ev’ry man in want is knave or fool.
- ‘God cannot love (says Blunt, with tearless eyes)
- The wretch he starves’—and piously denies:
- But the good bishop, with a meeker air,
- Admits, and leaves them, Providence’s care.
- Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
- Each does but hate his neighbour as himself:
- Damn’d to the mines, an equal fate betides
- The slave that digs it and the slave that hides.110
- B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own,
- Must act on motives powerful tho’ unknown.
- P. Some war, some plague or famine, they foresee,
- Some revelation hid from you and me.
- Why Shylock wants a meal the cause is found;
- He thinks a loaf will rise to fifty pound.
- What made directors cheat in South-sea year ?
- To live on ven’son , when it sold so dear.
- Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys?
- Phryne foresees a general excise.120
- Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?
- Alas! they fear a man will cost a plum.
- Wise Peter sees the world’s respect for gold,
- And therefore hopes this nation may be sold.
- Glorious ambition! Peter, swell thy store,
- And be what Rome’s great Didius was before.
- The crown of Poland , venal twice an age,
- To just three millions stinted modest Gage .
- But nobler scenes Maria’s dreams unfold,
- Hereditary realms, and worlds of gold.130
- Congenial souls! whose life one av’rice joins,
- And one fate buries in th’ Asturian mines.
- Much-injured Blunt ! why bears he Britain’s hate?
- A wizard told him in these words our fate:
- ‘At length Corruption, like a gen’ral flood
- (So long by watchful ministers withstood),
- Shall deluge all; and Av’rice, creeping on,
- Spread like a low-born mist and blot the sun;
- Statesman and Patriot ply alike the stocks,
- Peeress and Butler share alike the Box,140
- And judges job, and bishops bite the town,
- And mighty Dukes pack cards for half a crown:
- See Britain sunk in lucre’s sordid charms,
- And France revenged of Anne’s and Edward’s arms!’
- ’T was no court-badge, great Scriv’ner! fired thy brain,
- Nor lordly luxury, nor city gain:
- No, ’t was thy righteous end, ashamed to see
- Senates degen’rate, patriots disagree,
- And nobly wishing party-rage to cease,
- To buy both sides, and give thy country peace.150
- ‘All this is madness,’ cries a sober sage:
- ‘But who, my friend, has Reason in his rage?
- The Ruling Passion, be it what it will,
- The Ruling Passion conquers Reason still.’
- Less mad the wildest whimsy we can frame
- Than ev’n that Passion, if it has no aim;
- For tho’ such motives folly you may call,
- The folly ’s greater to have none at all.
- Hear then the truth:—‘’T is Heav’n each Passion sends,159
- And diff’rent men directs to diff’rent ends.
- Extremes in Nature equal good produce;
- Extremes in Man concur to gen’ral use.’
- Ask me what makes one keep, and one bestow?
- That power who bids the ocean ebb and flow,
- Bids seed-time, harvest, equal course maintain,
- Thro’ reconciled extremes of drought and rain;
- Builds life on death, on change duration founds,
- And gives th’ eternal wheels to know their rounds.
- Riches, like insects, when conceal’d they lie,169
- Wait but for wings, and in their season fly.
- Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,
- Sees but a backward steward for the poor;
- This year a reservoir to keep and spare;
- The next a fountain spouting thro’ his heir
- In lavish streams to quench a country’s thirst,
- And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst.
- Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth,
- Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth.
- What tho’ (the use of barb’rous spits forgot)
- His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot?
- His court with nettles, moats with cresses stor’d,181
- With soups unbought, and salads, bless’d his board;
- If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more
- Than Bramins, Saints, and Sages did before;
- To cram the rich was prodigal expense,
- And who would take the poor from Providence?
- Like some lone Chartreux stands the good old hall,
- Silence without, and fasts within the wall;
- No rafter’d roofs with dance and tabor sound,
- No noontide bell invites the country round;
- Tenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey,191
- And turn th’ unwilling steeds another way;
- Benighted wanderers, the forest o’er,
- Curse the saved candle and unopening door;
- While the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
- Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.
- Not so his son; he mark’d this oversight,
- And then mistook reverse of wrong for right:
- (For what to shun will no great knowledge need
- But what to follow is a task indeed!)200
- Yet sure, of qualities deserving praise,
- More go to ruin fortunes than to raise.
- What slaughter’d hecatombs, what floods of wine,
- Fill the capacious Squire and deep Divine!
- Yet no mean motive this profusion draws;
- His oxen perish in his country’s cause;
- ’T is George and Liberty that crowns the cup,
- And zeal for that great House which eats him up.
- The woods recede around the naked seat,
- The sylvans groan—no matter—for the fleet;210
- Next goes his wool—to clothe our valiant bands;
- Last, for his country’s love, he sells his lands.
- To town he comes, completes the nation’s hope,
- And heads the bold train-bands, and burns a pope.
- And shall not Britain now reward his toils,
- Britain, that pays her patriots with her spoils?
- In vain at court the bankrupt pleads his cause;
- His thankless country leaves him to her laws.
- The sense to value Riches, with the art
- T’ enjoy them, and the virtue to impart;
- Not meanly nor ambitiously pursued,221
- Not sunk by sloth, nor raised by servitude;
- To balance fortune by a just expense,
- Join with economy magnificence;
- With splendour charity, with plenty health;
- O teach us, Bathurst! yet unspoil’d by wealth,
- That secret rare, between th’ extremes to move
- Of mad Good-nature and of mean Self-love.
- B. To worth or want well weigh’d be bounty giv’n
- And ease or emulate the care of Heav’n
- (Whose measure full o’erflows on human race):231
- Mend Fortune’s fault, and justify her grace.
- Wealth in the gross is death, but life diffused,
- As poison heals in just proportion used:
- In heaps, like ambergris, a stink it lies,
- But well dispers’d is incense to the skies.
- P. Who starves by nobles, or with nobles eats?
- The wretch that trusts them, and the rogue that cheats.
- Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon
- Without a fiddler, flatt’rer, or buffoon?240
- Whose table Wit or modest Merit share,
- Unelbow’d by a gamester, pimp, or player?
- Who copies yours or Oxford’s better part,
- To ease th’ oppress’d, and raise the sinking heart?
- Where’er he shines, O Fortune! gild the scene,
- And angels guard him in the golden mean!
- There English bounty yet a while may stand,
- And honour linger ere it leaves the land.
- But all our praises why should Lords engross?
- Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross :250
- Pleas’d Vaga echoes thro’ her winding bounds,
- And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
- Who hung with woods yon mountain’s sultry brow?
- From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
- Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
- Or in proud falls magnificently lost,
- But clear and artless, pouring thro’ the plain
- Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
- Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
- Whose seats the weary traveller repose?260
- Who taught that Heav’n-directed spire to rise?
- The Man of Ross, each lisping babe replies.
- Behold the market-place with poor o’erspread!
- The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
- He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
- Where age and want sit smiling at the gate:
- Him portion’d maids, apprenticed orphans blest,
- The young who labour, and the old who rest.
- Is any sick? the Man of Ross relieves,
- Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives:270
- Is there a variance? enter but his door,
- Balk’d are the courts, and contest is no more:
- Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
- And vile attorneys, now a useless race.
- B. Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
- What all so wish, but want the power to do!
- Oh say, what sums that gen’rous hand supply?
- What mines to swell that boundless charity?
- P. Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear,
- This man possess’d—five hundred pounds a year.280
- Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze!
- Ye little stars, hide your diminish’d rays!
- B. And what? no monument, inscription, stone,
- His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
- P. Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame,
- Will never mark the marble with his name:
- Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
- Of rich and poor makes all the history;
- Enough that Virtue fill’d the space between,
- Prov’d by the ends of being to have been.
- When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend291
- The wretch who living saved a candle’s end:
- Should’ring God’s altar a vile image stands,
- Belies his features, nay, extends his hands;
- That livelong wig, which Gorgon’s self might own,
- Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.
- Behold what blessings Wealth to life can lend!
- And see what comfort it affords our end.
- In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half-hung,
- The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
- On once a flock-bed, but repair’d with straw,301
- With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,
- The George and Garter dangling from that bed
- Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
- Great Villiers lies —alas! how changed from him,
- That life or pleasure and that soul of whim!
- Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove,
- The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and Love;
- Or just as gay at council, in a ring
- Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
- No Wit to flatter, left of all his store—311
- No Fool to laugh at, which he valued more—
- There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
- And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends!
- His Grace’s fate sage Cutler could foresee,
- And well (he thought) advised him, ‘Live like me.’
- And well his Grace replied, ‘Like you, Sir John?
- That I can do when all I have is gone!’
- Resolve me, Reason, which of these is worse,
- Want with a full or with an empty purse?
- Thy life more wretched, Cutler! was confess’d;321
- Arise, and tell me, was thy death more bless’d?
- Cutler saw tenants break and houses fall,
- For very want; he could not build a wall:
- His only daughter in a stranger’s power,
- For very want; he could not pay a dower:
- A few gray hairs his rev’rend temples crown’d;
- ’T was very want that sold them for two pound.
- What ev’n denied a cordial at his end,
- Banish’d the doctor, and expell’d the friend?330
- What but a want, which you perhaps think mad,
- Yet numbers feel,—the want of what he had!
- Cutler and Brutus dying both exclaim,
- ‘Virtue! and wealth! what are ye but a name!’
- Say, for such worth are other worlds prepared?
- Or are they both in this their own reward?
- A knotty point! to which we now proceed.
- But you are tired—I’ll tell a tale—B. Agreed.
- P.Where London’s column , pointing at the skies,
- Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies,340
- There dwelt a citizen of sober fame,
- A plain good man, and Balaam was his name.
- Religious, punctual, frugal, and so forth,
- His word would pass for more than he was worth;
- One solid dish his week-day meal affords,
- An added pudding solemnized the Lord’s;
- Constant at Church and ’Change; his gains were sure,
- His givings rare, save farthings to the poor.
- The Devil was piqued such saintship to behold,
- And long’d to tempt him like good Job of old;350
- But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
- And tempts by making rich, not making poor.
- Rous’d by the Prince of Air, the whirlwinds sweep
- The surge, and plunge his father in the deep;
- Then full against his Cornish lands they roar,
- And two rich shipwrecks bless the lucky shore.
- Sir Balaam now, he lives like other folks,
- He takes his chirping pint, and cracks his jokes.
- ‘Live like yourself,’ was soon my lady’s word;
- And lo! two puddings smoked upon the board.360
- Asleep and naked as an Indian lay,
- An honest factor stole a gem away:
- He pledg’d it to the knight; the knight had wit,
- So kept the diamond, and the rogue was bit.
- Some scruple rose, but thus he eas’d his thought:
- ‘I ’ll now give sixpence where I gave a groat;
- Where once I went to church I’ll now go twice—
- And am so clear too of all other vice.’
- The tempter saw his time; the work he plied;
- Stocks and subscriptions pour on ev’ry side,370
- Till all the demon makes his full descent
- In one abundant shower of cent per cent,
- Sinks deep within him, and possesses whole,
- Then dubs Director, and secures his soul.
- Behold Sir Balaam, now a man of Spirit,
- Ascribes his gettings to his parts and merit;
- What late he call’d a blessing now was wit,
- And God’s good providence a lucky hit.
- Things change their titles as our manners turn,
- His counting-house employ’d the Sunday morn:380
- Seldom at church (’t was such a busy life),
- But duly sent his family and wife.
- There (so the Devil ordain’d) one Christmas-tide
- My good old lady catch’d a cold and died.
- A nymph of quality admires our knight;
- He marries, bows at court, and grows polite;
- Leaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair)
- The well-bred cuckolds in St. James’s air:
- First for his son a gay commission buys,
- Who drinks, whores, fights, and in a duel dies;390
- His daughter flaunts a viscount’s tawdry wife;
- She bears a coronet and p—x for life.
- In Britain’s senate he a seat obtains,
- And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.
- My lady falls to play; so bad her chance,
- He must repair it; takes a bribe from France:
- The house impeach him; Coningsby harangues;
- The court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs.
- Wife, son, and daughter, Satan! are thy own,
- His wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the crown:400
- The Devil and the King divide the prize,
- And sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies.

EPISTLE IV

TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON

OF THE USE OF RICHES

ARGUMENT

The vanity of Expense in people of wealth and quality. The abuse of the word Taste. That the first principle and foundation in this, as in every thing else, is Good Sense. The chief proof of it is to follow Nature, even in works of mere luxury and elegance. Instanced in Architecture and Gardening, where all must be adapted to the genius and use of the place, and the beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it. How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings for want of this true foundation, without which nothing can please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will but be perverted into something burdensome and ridicculous. A description of the false taste of Magnificence; the first grand error of which is to imagine that greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the proportion and harmony, of the whole; and the second, either in joining together parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or, in the repetition of the same too frequently. A word or two of false taste in books, in music, in painting, even in preaching and prayer, and lastly in entertainments. Yet Providence is justified in giving wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is dispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind. [Recurring to what is laid down in the first book, ep. ii. and in the epistle preceding this.] What are the proper objects of Magnificence, and a proper field for the expense of great men. And, finally, the great and public works which become a Prince.

- ’T is strange the Miser should his cares employ
- To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy:
- Is it less strange the Prodigal should waste
- His wealth to purchase what he ne’er can taste?
- Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats;
- Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats:
- He buys for Topham drawings and designs;
- For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins;
- Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
- And books for Mead , and butterflies for Sloane.10
- Think we all these are for himself? no more
- Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore.
- For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
- Only to show how many tastes he wanted.
- What brought Sir Visto’s ill-got wealth to waste?
- Some demon whisper’d, ‘Visto! have a Taste.’
- Heav’n visits with a Taste the wealthy fool,
- And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.
- See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride,
- Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide:20
- A standing sermon at each year’s expense,
- That never coxcomb reach’d Magnificence!
- You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse,
- And pompous buildings once were things of use;
- Yet shall, my Lord, your just, your noble rules
- Fill half the land with imitating fools;
- Who random drawings from your sheets shall take,
- And of one Beauty many Blunders make;
- Load some vain church with old theatric state,
- Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate;30
- Reverse your ornaments, and bang them all
- On some patch’d dog-hole eked with ends of wall,
- Then clap four slices of pilaster on ’t,
- That laced with bits of rustic makes a front;
- Shall call the winds thro’ long arcades to roar,
- Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door:
- Conscious they act a true Palladian part,
- And if they starve, they starve by rules of Art.
- Oft have you hinted to your brother peer
- A certain truth, which many buy too dear:
- Something there is more needful than expense,41
- And something previous ev’n to Taste—’t is Sense;
- Good Sense, which only is the gift of Heav’n,
- And tho’ no science, fairly worth the sev’n;
- A light which in yourself you must perceive;
- Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.
- To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
- To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
- To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot,
- In all, let Nature never be forgot.50
- But treat the Goddess like a modest Fair,
- Nor overdress, nor leave her wholly bare;
- Let not each beauty everywhere be spied,
- Where half the skill is decently to hide.
- He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
- Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.
- Consult the genius of the place in all;
- That tells the waters or to rise or fall;
- Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale,
- Or scoops in circling theatres the vale,60
- Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
- Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
- Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines;
- Paints as you plant, and as you work designs.
- Still follow Sense, of every art the soul;
- Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole,
- Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
- Start ev’n from difficulty, strike from chance:
- Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
- A work to wonder at—perhaps a Stowe .70
- Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls,
- And Nero’s terraces desert their walls:
- The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make,
- Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake;
- Or cut wide views thro’ mountains to the plain,
- You ’ll wish your hill or shelter’d seat again.
- Ev’n in an ornament its place remark,
- Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke .
- Behold Villario’s ten years’ toil complete:
- His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet,
- The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,81
- And strength of shade contends with strength of light;
- A waving glow the bloomy beds display,
- Blushing in bright diversities of day,
- With silver quiv’ring rills meander’d o’er—
- Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more:
- Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield,
- He finds at last he better likes a field.
- Thro’ his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray’d,
- Or sat delighted in the thick’ning shade,90
- With annual joy the redd’ning shoots to greet,
- Or see the stretching branches long to meet.
- His son’s fine Taste an opener vista loves,
- Foe to the dryads of his father’s groves;
- One boundless green or flourish’d carpet views,
- With all the mournful family of yews;
- The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
- Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.
- At Timon’s villa let us pass a day,
- Where all cry out, ‘What sums are thrown away;’100
- So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air,
- Soft and agreeable come never there;
- Greatness with Timon dwells in such a draught
- As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.
- To compass this, his building is a town,
- His pond an ocean, his parterre a down:
- Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
- A puny insect shiv’ring at a breeze!108
- Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
- The whole a labour’d quarry above ground.
- Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind
- Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
- His gardens next your admiration call;
- On every side you look, behold the wall!
- No pleasing intricacies intervene;
- No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
- Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
- And half the platform just reflects the other.
- The suff’ring eye inverted Nature sees,119
- Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
- With here a fountain never to be play’d,
- And there a summer-house that knows no shade,
- Here Amphitrite sails thro’ myrtle bowers,
- There gladiators fight or die in flowers;
- Unwater’d, see the drooping seahorse mourn,
- And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn.
- My Lord advances with majestic mien,
- Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen:
- But soft! by regular approach—not yet—
- First thro’ the length of yon hot terrace sweat;130
- And when up ten steep slopes you ’ve dragg’d your thighs,
- Just at his study door he ’ll bless your eyes.
- His study! with what authors is it stor’d?
- In books, not authors, curious is my lord.
- To all their dated backs he turns you round;
- These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound;
- Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good,
- For all his lordship knows,—but they are wood.
- For Locke or Milton ’t is in vain to look;
- These shelves admit not any modern book.
- And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear,141
- That summons you to all the pride of prayer.
- Light quirks of music, broken and unev’n,
- Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n:
- On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
- Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
- On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
- And bring all paradise before your eye:
- To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
- Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.150
- But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call:
- A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall;
- The rich buffet well-colour’d serpents grace,
- And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
- Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
- No, ’t is a temple and a hecatomb;
- A solemn sacrifice perform’d in state;
- You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
- So quick retires each flying course, you ’d swear
- Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there.160
- Between each act the trembling salvers ring,
- From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the King.
- In plenty starving, tantalized in state,
- And complaisantly help’d to all I hate,
- Treated, caress’d, and tired, I take my leave,
- Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;
- I curse such lavish Cost and little Skill,
- And swear no day was ever pass’d so ill.
- Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;169
- Health to himself, and to his infants bread
- The lab’rer bears; what his hard heart denies,
- His charitable vanity supplies.
- Another age shall see the golden ear
- Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
- Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann’d,
- And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
- Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?
- Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle?
- ’T is use alone that sanctifies expense,
- And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.180
- His father’s acres who enjoys in peace,
- Or makes his neighbours glad if he increase;
- Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
- Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil;
- Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed
- The milky heifer and deserving steed;
- Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
- But future buildings, future navies, grow:
- Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
- First shade a country, and then raise a town.190
- You, too, proceed! make falling arts your care;
- Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
- Jones and Palladio to themselves restore
- And be whate’er Vitruvius was before,
- Till kings call forth th’ ideas of your mind
- (Proud to accomplish what such hands design’d),
- Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
- Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend,
- Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,
- The mole projected break the roaring main,200
- Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
- And roll obedient rivers thro’ the land.
- These honours Peace to happy Britain brings;
- These are imperial works, and worthy Kings.

EPISTLE V

TO MR. ADDISON

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS

‘This was originally written,’ says Pope, ‘in the year 1715, when Mr. Addison intended to publish his book Of Medals; it was some time before he was Secretary of State; but not published till Mr. Tickell’s edition of his works; at which time the verses on Mr. Craggs, which conclude the poem, were added, viz., in 1720.’

Warburton connects the epistle with the preceding Essays in this ingenious way: ‘As the third epistle treated the extremes of Avarice and Profusion, and the fourth took up one particular branch of the latter, namely the vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality, and was therefore corollary to the third; so this treats of one circumstance of that vanity, as it appears in the common collections of old coins; and is therefore a corollary to the fourth.’

- See the wild waste of all-devouring years!
- How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears!
- With nodding arches, broken temples spread,
- The very tombs now vanish’d like their dead!
- Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil’d,
- Where mix’d with slaves the groaning martyr toil’d;
- Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
- Now drain’d a distant country of her floods;
- Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey,9
- Statues of men, scarce less alive than they!
- Some felt the silent stroke of mould’ring age,
- Some hostile fury, some religious rage:
- Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
- And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
- Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,
- Some buried marble half preserves a name:
- That name the learn’d with fierce disputes pursue
- And give to Titus old Vespasian’s due.
- Ambition sigh’d: she found it vain to trust
- The faithless column and the crumbling bust;20
- Huge moles, whose shadow stretch’d from shore to shore,
- Their ruins perish’d, and their place no more!
- Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
- And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
- A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
- Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps:
- Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
- And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine:
- A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is roll’d,29
- And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
- The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
- Thro’ climes and ages bears each form and name:
- In one short view subjected to our eye,
- Gods, Emp’rors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties, lie.
- With sharpen’d sight pale antiquaries pore,
- Th’ inscription value, but the rust adore.
- This the blue varnish, that the green endears,
- The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years!
- To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes,
- One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams.40
- Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devour’d,
- Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scour’d;
- And Curio, restless by the fair one’s side,
- Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride.
- Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine:
- Touch’d by thy hand, again Rome’s glories shine;
- Her Gods and godlike Heroes rise to view,
- And all her faded garlands bloom anew.
- Nor blush these studies thy regard engage:
- These pleas’d the fathers of poetic rage;50
- The verse and sculpture bore an equal part,
- And art reflected images to art.
- Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,
- Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame?
- In living medals see her wars enroll’d,
- And vanquish’d realms supply recording gold?
- Here, rising bold, the patriot’s honest face,
- There warriors frowning in historic brass.
- Then future ages with delight shall see
- How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s looks agree;60
- Or in fair series laurell’d bards be shown,
- A Virgil there, and here an Addison.
- Then shall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine)
- On the cast ore another Pollio shine;
- With aspect open shall erect his head,
- And round the orb in lasting notes be read,
- ‘Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere,
- In action faithful, and in honour clear;
- Who broke no promise, serv’d no private end,69
- Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend;
- Ennobled by himself, by all approv’d
- And prais’d, unenvied by the Muse he lov’d.’

UNIVERSAL PRAYER

DEO OPT. MAX.

This was written in 1738 to correct the impression of fatalism which Warburton’s ingenious exposition had failed to remove. Pope had really as little mind for dogma as most poets; but these verses represent what, in view of the instructions of Bolingbroke, corrected by Warburton, he now believed himself to believe.

- Father of all! in ev’ry age,
- In ev’ry clime ador’d,
- By saint, by savage, and by sage,
- Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
- Thou Great First Cause, least understood,
- Who all my sense confin’d
- To know but this, that thou art good,
- And that myself am blind:
- Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
- To see the good from ill;
- And binding Nature fast in Fate,
- Left free the human Will.
- What Conscience dictates to be done,
- Or warns me not to do;
- This teach me more than Hell to shun,
- That more than Heav’n pursue.
- What blessings thy free bounty gives
- Let me not cast away;
- For God is paid when man receives;
- T’ enjoy is to obey.
- Yet not to earth’s contracted span
- Thy goodness let me bound,
- Or think thee Lord alone of man,
- When thousand worlds are round.
- Let not this weak unknowing hand
- Presume thy bolts to throw,
- And deal damnation round the land
- On each I judge thy foe.
- If I am right, thy grace impart,
- Still in the right to stay;
- If I am wrong, O teach my heart
- To find that better way.
- Save me alike from foolish Pride
- Or impious Discontent,
- At aught thy wisdom has denied,
- Or aught thy goodness lent.
- Teach me to feel another’s woe,
- To hide the fault I see:
- That mercy I to others show,
- That mercy show to me.
- Mean tho’ I am, not wholly so,
- Since quicken’d by thy breath;
- O lead me, whereso’er I go,
- Thro’ this day’s life or death!
- This day be bread and peace my lot:
- All else beneath the sun
- Thou know’st if best bestow’d or not,
- And let thy will be done.
- To Thee, whose temple is all Space,
- Whose altar earth, sea, skies,
- One chorus let all Being raise,
- All Nature’s incense rise!

SATIRES

The Satires retain nearly the order of their original publication. They appeared between 1733 and 1738. It is said that Bolingbroke suggested the translation of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, and that the translation of the others was done somewhat at random, as Pope saw his opportunity of adapting them to his own day.

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT[ ]

BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES

This paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some Persons of Rank and Fortune (the authors of ‘Verses to the Imitator of Horace,’ and of an ‘Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court’) to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my Writings (of which, being public, the Public is judge), but my Person, Morals, and Family; whereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth and the Sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have, for the most part, spared their names, and they may escape being laughed at if they please.

I would have some of them know it was owing to the request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs as they have done of mine. However, I shall have this advantage and honour on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless character can never be found out but by its truth and likeness.

- P. ‘Shut, shut the door, good John!’ fatigued, I said;
- ‘Tie up the knocker, say I ’m sick, I ’m dead.’
- The Dog-star rages! nay, ’t is past a doubt
- All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out:
- Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
- They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
- What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?
- They pierce my thickets, thro’ my grot they glide,
- By land, by water, they renew the charge,
- They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.10
- No place is sacred, not the church is free,
- Ev’n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:
- Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
- Happy to catch me just at dinner time.
- Is there a Parson much bemused in beer,
- A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer,
- A clerk foredoom’d his father’s soul to cross,
- Who pens a stanza when he should engross?
- Is there who, lock’d from ink and paper, scrawls
- With desp’rate charcoal round his darken’d walls?20
- All fly to Twit’nam, and in humble strain
- Apply to me to keep them mad or vain,
- Arthur , whose giddy son neglects the laws,
- Imputes to me and my damn’d works the cause:
- Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
- And curses Wit and Poetry, and Pope.
- Friend to my life (which did not you prolong,
- The world had wanted many an idle song)!
- What Drop or Nostrum can this plague remove?
- Or which must end me, a fool’s wrath or love?30
- A dire dilemma! either way I ’m sped;
- If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.
- Seiz’d and tied down to judge, how wretched I!
- Who can’t be silent, and who will not lie.
- To laugh were want to goodness and of grace,
- And to be grave exceeds all power of face.
- I sit with sad civility, I read
- With honest anguish and an aching head,
- And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
- This saving counsel, ‘Keep your piece nine years .’40
- ‘Nine years!’ cries he, who, high in Drury lane,
- Lull’d by soft zephyrs thro’ the broken pane,
- Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,
- Obliged by hunger and request of friends:
- ‘The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it!
- I ’m all submission: what you ’d have it—make it.’
- Three things another’s modest wishes bound,
- ‘My friendship, and a Prologue, and ten pound.’
- Pitholeon sends to me: “You know his Grace,
- I want a patron; ask him for a place.’50
- Pitholeon libell’d me—‘But here ’s a letter
- Informs you, Sir, ’twas when he knew no better.
- Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,
- He ’ll write a Journal, or he ’ll turn Divine.’
- Bless me! a packet.—’T is a stranger sues,
- A Virgin Tragedy, an Orphan Muse.
- If I dislike it, ‘Furies, death, and rage!’
- If I approve, ‘Commend it to the stage.’
- There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,59
- The players and I are, luckily, no friends.
- Fired that the house rejects him, ‘’Sdeath, I ’ll print it,
- And shame the fools—your int’rest, Sir, with Lintot .’
- Lintot, dull rogue, will think your price too much:
- ‘Not, Sir, if you revise it, and retouch.’
- All my demurs but double his attacks;
- At last he whispers, ‘Do, and we go snacks.’
- Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door;
- ‘Sir, let me see your works and you no more.’
- ’T is sung, when Midas’ ears began to spring
- (Midas, a sacred person and a king),70
- His very Minister who spied them first
- (Some say his Queen) was forc’d to speak or burst.
- And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,
- When ev’ry coxcomb perks them in my face?
- A. Good friend, forbear! you deal in dangerous things;
- I ’d never name Queens, Ministers, or Kings;
- Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick,
- ’T is nothing— P. Nothing! if they bite and kick?
- Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,
- That secret to each fool, that he ’s an ass:
- The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)81
- The Queen of Midas slept, and so may I.
- You think this cruel? take it for a rule,
- No creature smarts so little as a fool.
- Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,
- Thou unconcern’d canst hear the mighty crack:
- Pit, Box, and Gall’ry in convulsions hurl’d,
- Thou stand’st unshook amidst a bursting world.
- Who shames a Scribbler? break one cobweb thro’,
- He spins the slight self-pleasing thread anew:90
- Destroy his fib, or sophistry—in vain!
- The creature ’s at his dirty work again,
- Throned in the centre of his thin designs,
- Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines.
- Whom have I hurt? has Poet yet or Peer
- Lost the arch’d eyebrow or Parnassian sneer?
- And has not Colley still his lord and whore?
- His butchers Henley? his freemasons Moore?
- Does not one table Bavius still admit?
- Still to one Bishop Philips seem a wit?100
- Still Sappho — A. Hold! for God’s sake—you ’ll offend.
- No names—be calm—learn prudence of a friend.
- I too could write, and I am twice as tall;
- But foes like these— P. One flatt’rer ’s worse than all.
- Of all mad creatures, if the learn’d are right,
- It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.
- A fool quite angry is quite innocent:
- Alas! ’t is ten times worse when they repent.
- One dedicates in high heroic prose,
- And ridicules beyond a hundred foes;110
- One from all Grub-street will my fame defend,
- And, more abusive, calls himself my friend:
- This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,
- And others roar aloud, ‘Subscribe, subscribe!’
- There are who to my person pay their court:
- I cough like Horace; and tho’ lean, am short;
- Ammon’s great son one shoulder had too high,
- Such Ovid’s nose, and ‘Sir! you have an eye —’
- Go on, obliging creatures! make me see
- All that disgraced my betters met in me.
- Say, for my comfort, languishing in bed,121
- ‘Just so immortal Maro held his head:’
- And when I die, be sure you let me know
- Great Homer died three thousand years ago.
- Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
- Dipp’d me in ink, my parents’, or my own?
- As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
- I lisp’d in numbers , for the numbers came:
- I left no calling for this idle trade,
- No duty broke, no father disobey’d:130
- The Muse but serv’d to ease some friend, not wife,
- To help me thro’ this long disease my life,
- To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,
- And teach the being you preserv’d, to bear.
- A. But why then publish? P.Granville the polite,
- And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
- Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
- And Congreve lov’d, and Swift endured my lays;
- The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield , read;
- Ev’n mitred Rochester would nod the head,140
- And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friends before)
- With open arms receiv’d one poet more.
- Happy my studies, when by these approv’d!
- Happier their author, when by these belov’d!
- From these the world will judge of men and books,
- Not from the Burnets , Oldmixons, and Cookes.
- Soft were my numbers; who could take offence
- While pure description held the place of sense?
- Like gentle Fanny’s was my flowery theme,
- ‘A painted mistress, or a purling stream.’
- Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;151
- I wish’d the man a dinner, and sat still:
- Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
- I never answer’d; I was not in debt.
- If want provoked, or madness made them print,
- I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.
- Did some more sober critic come abroad;
- If wrong, I smiled, if right, I kiss’d the rod.
- Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
- And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.160
- Commas and points they set exactly right,
- And ’t were a sin to rob them of their mite.
- Yet ne’er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,
- From slashing Bentleys down to piddling Tibbalds.
- Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells,
- Each word-catcher that lives on syllables,
- Ev’n such small critics some regard may claim,
- Preserv’d in Milton’s or in Shakespeare’s name.
- Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
- Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!170
- The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
- But wonder how the devil they got there.
- Were others angry: I excused them too;
- Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.
- A man’s true merit ’t is not hard to find;
- But each man’s secret standard in his mind,
- That casting-weight Pride adds to emptiness,
- This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
- The bard whom pilfer’d pastorals renown ,
- Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,180
- Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
- And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year;
- He who still wanting, tho’ he lives on theft,
- Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left;
- And he who now to sense, now nonsense, leaning,
- Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
- And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad,
- It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
- All these my modest satire bade translate,
- And own’d that nine such poets made a Tate .190
- How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
- And swear not Addison himself was safe.
- Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
- True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires,
- Bless’d with each talent and each art to please,
- And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
- Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
- Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
- View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
- And hate for arts that caus’d himself to rise;200
- Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
- And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
- Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
- Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
- Alike reserv’d to blame or to commend,
- A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
- Dreading ev’n fools; by flatterers besieged,
- And so obliging that he ne’er obliged;
- Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
- And sit attentive to his own applause:210
- While Wits and Templars ev’ry sentence raise,
- And wonder with a foolish face of praise—
- Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
- Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
- What tho’ my name stood rubric on the walls,
- Or plaster’d posts, with claps, in capitals?
- Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers load,
- On wings of winds came flying all abroad?
- I sought no homage from the race that write;
- I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight:220
- Poems I heeded (now berhymed so long)
- No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.
- I ne’er with Wits or Witlings pass’d my days
- To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
- Nor like a puppy daggled thro’ the town
- To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
- Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth’d, and cried,
- With handkerchief and orange at my side;
- But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
- To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.230
- Proud as Apollo on his forked hill
- Sat full-blown Bufo , puff’d by ev’ry quill:
- Fed with soft dedication all day long,
- Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
- His library (where busts of poets dead,
- And a true Pindar stood without a head )
- Receiv’d of Wits an undistinguish’d race,
- Who first his judgment ask’d, and then a place:
- Much they extoll’d his pictures, much his seat,
- And flatter’d ev’ry day, and some days eat:240
- Till grown more frugal in his riper days,
- He paid some bards with port, and some with praise;
- To some a dry rehearsal was assign’d,
- And others (harder still) he paid in kind.
- Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh;
- Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:
- But still the great have kindness in reserve;
- He help’d to bury whom he help’d to starve.
- May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill!
- May every Bavius have his Bufo still!250
- So when a statesman wants a day’s defence,
- Or Envy holds a whole week’s war with Sense,
- Or simple Pride for flatt’ry makes demands,
- May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
- Bless’d be the great! for those they take away,
- And those they left me—for they left me Gay ;
- Left me to see neglected Genius bloom,
- Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:
- Of all thy blameless life the sole return
- My Verse, and Queensb’ry weeping o’er thy urn!260
- Oh let me live my own, and die so too
- (To live and die is all I have to do)!
- Maintain a poet’s dignity and ease,
- And see what friends, and read what books I please;
- Above a Patron, tho’ I condescend
- Sometimes to call a minister my Friend.
- I was not born for courts or great affairs;
- I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;
- Can sleep without a poem in my head,
- Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.270
- Why am I ask’d what next shall see the light?
- Heav’ns! was I born for nothing but to write?
- Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)
- Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?
- ‘I found him close with Swift’—‘Indeed? no doubt
- (Cries prating Balbus) something will come out.’
- ’T is all in vain, deny it as I will;
- ‘No, such a genius never can lie still:’
- And then for mine obligingly mistakes279
- The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes.
- Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,
- When ev’ry coxcomb knows me by my style?
- Curst be the verse, how well soe’er it flow,
- That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
- Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear,
- Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!
- But he who hurts a harmless neighbour’s peace,
- Insults fall’n Worth, or Beauty in distress,
- Who loves a lie, lame Slander helps about,
- Who writes a libel, or who copies out;290
- That fop whose pride affects a patron’s name,
- Yet absent, wounds an author’s honest fame;
- Who can your merit selfishly approve,
- And show the sense of it without the love;
- Who has the vanity to call you friend,
- Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend;
- Who tells whate’er you think, whate’er you say,
- And, if he lie not, must at least betray;
- Who to the Dean and Silver Bell can swear,299
- 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;310
- 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 froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,320
- 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 Antithesis. }
- 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,330
- 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.
- 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;339
- That not in fancy’s maze he wander’d long,
- But stoop’d to truth, and moralized his song;
- 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;349
- The tale revived , the lie so oft o’erthrown,
- Th’ imputed trash and dulness not his own;
- The morals blacken’d when the writings ’scape,
- The libell’d person, and the pictured 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?360
- 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 post 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 wit,
- Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:
- This dreaded Satirist Dennis will confess
- Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress :371
- So humble, he has knock’d at Tibbald’s door,
- Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore.
- Full ten years slander’d, did he once reply?
- Three thousand suns went down on Welsted’s lie .
- To please a mistress one aspers’d his life;
- He lash’d him not, but let her be his wife:
- Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on his quill,
- And write whate’er he pleased, except his will;379
- Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse
- His father, mother, body, soul, and muse:
- Yet why? that father held it for a rule,
- It was a sin to call our neighbour fool;
- That harmless mother thought no wife a whore:
- Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!
- Unspotted names, and memorable long,
- 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;390
- And better got than Bestia’s from the throne.
- Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
- Nor marrying discord in a noble wife ,
- Stranger to civil and religious rage,
- The good man walk’d innoxious thro’ his age.
- No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
- Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.
- Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art,
- No language but the language of the heart.
- By Nature honest, by Experience wise,400
- Healthy by Temp’rance and by Exercise;
- His life, tho’ long, to sickness pass’d unknown,
- His death was instant and without a groan.
- O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!
- Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.
- O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!
- Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
- Me, let the tender office long engage
- To rock the cradle of reposing Age,409
- With lenient arts extend a Mother’s breath,
- 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 denied or giv’n,
- Thus far was right;—the rest belongs to Heav’n.

SATIRES, EPISTLES, AND ODES OF HORACE IMITATED[ ]

Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.—Hor.

[Epistle IV. Line 74.]Mountains piled on mountains. Alluding to the Titans’ attempt to scale Olympus. (Ward.)

[Line 99.] Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland (1610-1643), a brilliant young statesman and versifier, was killed in the battle of Newburg, at the age of thirty-three.

[Lines 100-101.] Henry, Vicomte de Turenne, and Sir Philip Sidney both fell in battle before their extraordinary powers had reached full maturity.

[Line 104.] The Hon. Robert Digby, third son of Lord Digby, was a personal friend and correspondent of Pope’s. He died in 1726.

[Line 107.] M. de Belsance was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate of his flock whilst that horrid calamity prevailed. (Warburton.)

[Line 123.]Shall burning Ætna, etc. Alluding to the fate of those two great naturalists, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an approach to Ætna and Vesuvius, while they were exploring the cause of their eruptions. (Warburton.)

[Line 126.]Blameless Bethel. Hugh Bethel, to whom the Imitations of Horace are addressed.

[Line 220.]Macedonia’s madman, etc. An epigrammatic expression will also tempt him into saying something without basis in truth; as where he ranks together ‘Macedonia’s madman and the Swede,’ and says that neither of them ‘looked forward farther than his nose,’ a slang phrase which may apply well enough to Charles XII., but certainly not to the pupil of Aristotle, who showed himself capable of a large political forethought. So, too [line 236], the rhyme, if correct, is sufficient apology for want of propriety in phrase, as where he makes Socrates ‘bleed.’ (Lowell.)

[Line 278.]Lord Umbra. Bubb Dodington, called Bubo in the Epistle to Arbuthnot (line 280), where Sir William Yonge’s name is again coupled with his.

[Page 157.]Moral Essays.Epistle I.

[Line 57.]Manly. The hero of Wycherley’s Plain-Dealer. The name was commonly applied to Wycherley.

[Line 58.]Umbra. Bubb Dodington. See note on Essay on Man, IV. 278.

[Line 61.]A Queen. Queen Caroline, whom Swift, alluded to in the succeeding line, had satirized.

[Line 77.]Catius. Charles Dartineuf, according to Carruthers. See Imitations of Horace, Bk. II. Ep. ii. 87, note.

[Line 81.]Patricio. Conjectured by Warburton to be Lord Godolphin. See Glossary.

[Line 89.]A perjur’d prince. Louis XI. of France wore in his hat a leaden image of the Virgin Mary, which when he swore by he feared to break his oath. (Pope.)

[Line 90.]A godless Regent tremble at a star. Philip, Duke of Orleans. Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV., superstitious in judicial astrology, though an unbeliever in all religion. (Warburton.)

[Line 91.]The throne, etc. Philip V. of Spain, who, after renouncing the throne for religion, resumed it to gratify his queen; and Victor Amadeus II., king of Sardinia, who resigned the crown, and trying to resume it, was imprisoned till his death. (Pope.)

[Line 136.]A saint in crape. That is, in the garb of the clergy.

[Line 179.]Wharton. Philip, Duke of Wharton. See Glossary.

[Line 187.]Wilmot. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, famous for his wit and extravagances in the time of Charles the Second. (Pope.)

[Line 231.]Lanesb’row. An ancient nobleman, who continued this practice long after his legs were disabled by the gout. (Pope.)

[Line 247.]Were the last words, etc. This story, like the others, is founded on fact, though the author had the goodness not to mention the names. Several attribute this in particular to a very celebrated actress who, in detestation of the thought of being buried in woollen, gave these her last orders with her dying breath. (Pope.) Warton says that the actress was Mrs. Oldfield.

[Epistle II.] 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, Chloë, 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 herself. 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 ‘favor’ was the desire to settle Martha Blount in independent circumstances for life. (Ward.)

[Lines 7-14.]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 whereas in the Characters of Men, he has sometimes made use of real names, in the Characters of Women always fictitious. (Pope.)

[Line 24.]Sappho. A name for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, first used by Pope in compliment, but later retained for purposes of abuse.

[Line 53.]Narcissa. Warton says that Narcissa stands for the Duchess of Hamilton. The lines were adopted from the earlier verses, which Pope had called Sylvia, a Fragment.

[Line 83.]Philomede. Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough in her own right (daughter of Sarah), an admirer of Congreve. She married the second Earl of Godolphin.

[Line 107.]Her Grace. This refers, according to Warton, to the Duchess of Montagu, with whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was intimate.

[Line 115.]Atossa. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. In 1678 she was married to Colonel Churchill, and it was largely by her influence that he was made Duke of Marlborough.

[Lines 139, 140.]The bust and temple rise. This alludes to a temple she erected with a bust of Queen Anne in it, which mouldered away in a few years. (Wilkes.)

[Line 157.]Chloë. Lady Suffolk, mistress of George II., and friend of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot. See On a Certain Lady, etc., page 118.

[Line 198.]Mah’met. Servant to the late king (George I.), said to be the son of a Turkish Bassa, whom he took at the siege of Buda, and constantly kept about his person. (Pope.)

Hale. Dr. Stephen Hale, not more estimable for his useful discoveries as a natural philosopher than for his exemplary life and pastoral charity as a parish priest. (Pope.)

[Line 251.]The Ring. See note on The Rape of the Lock, Canto I. line 44.

[Epistle III.] This Epistle was written after a violent outcry against our author, on a supposition that he had ridiculed a worthy nobleman merely for his wrong taste. He justified himself upon that article in a letter to the Earl of Burlington; at the end of which are these words: ‘I have learnt that there are some who would rather be wicked than ridiculous: and therefore it may be safer to attack vices than follies. I will therefore leave my betters in the quiet possession of their idols, their groves, and their high places; and change my subject from their pride to their meanness, from their vanities to their miseries; and as the only certain way to avoid misconstructions, to lessen offence, and not to multiply ill-natured applications, I may probably, in my next, make use of real names instead of fictitious ones.’ (Pope.)

[Line 20.] John Ward, of Hackney, Esq.; Member of Parliament, being prosecuted by the Duchess of Buckingham, and convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House, and then stood in the pillory on the 17th of March, 1727. He was suspected of joining in a conveyance with Sir John Blunt, to secrete fifty thousand pounds of that Director’s estate, forfeited to the South-Sea Company by Act of Parliament. The company recovered the fifty thousand pounds against Ward; but he set up prior conveyances of his real estate to his brother and son, and conceal’d all his personal, which was computed to be one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. These conveyances being also set aside by a bill in Chancery, Ward was imprisoned, and hazarded the forfeiture of his life, by not giving in his effects till the last day, which was that of his examination. During his confinement, his amusement was to give poison to dogs and cats, and to see them expire by slower or quicker torments. To sum up the worth of this gentleman, at the several æras of his life. At his standing in the Pillory he was worth above two hundred thousand pounds; at his commitment to Prison, he was worth one hundred and fifty thousand; but has been since so far diminished in his reputation, as to be thought a worse man by fifty or sixty thousand. (Pope.) From Pope’s intimate acquaintance with Mr. Ward’s career, it might almost be suspected that he is the same who is enumerated among Pope’s friends in Gay’s poem (Ward.)

[Line 35.]Beneath the patriot’s cloak. This is a true story, which happened in the reign of William III., to an unsupected old patriot, who coming out at the back-door from having been closeted by the King, where he had received a large bag of guineas, the bursting of the bag discovered his business there. (Pope.)

[Line 42.]Fetch or carry kings. In our author’s time, many Princes had been sent about the world, and great changes of kings projected in Europe. The partition-treaty had disposed of Spain; France had set up a king for England, who was sent to Scotland and back again; the Duke of Anjou was sent to Spain and Don Carlos to Italy. (Pope.)

[Line 44.]Or ship off senates. Alluding to several ministers, counsellors, and patriots banished in our times to Siberia, and to that more glorious fate of the Parliament of Paris, banished to Pontoise in the year 1720. (Pope.)

[Line 62.]Worldly crying coals. Some misers of great wealth, proprietors of the coal-mines, had entered at this time into an association to keep up coals to an extravagant price, whereby the poor were reduced almost to starve, till one of them, taking the advantage of underselling the rest, defeated the design. One of these misers was worth ten thousand, another seven thousand a year. (Pope.)

[Line 65.]Colepepper. Sir William Colepepper, Bart., a person of an ancient family and ample fortune, without one other quality of a gentleman, who, after ruining himself at the gaming-table, past the rest of his days in sitting there to see the ruin of others; preferring to subsist upon borrowing and begging, rather than to enter into any reputable method of life, and refusing a post in the army which was offered him. (Pope.)

[Line 67.]White’s. The most fashionable of London gambling resorts.

[Line 82.]Turner. A very wealthy miser.

[Line 84.]Wharton. Philip, Duke of Wharton.

[Line 85.]Hopkins. A citizen whose rapacity obtained him the name of Vulture Hopkins. He lived worthless, but died worth three hundred thousand pounds, which he would give to no person living, but left it so as not to be inherited till after the second generation. His counsel representing to him how many years it must be, before this could take effect, and that his money could only lie at interest all that time, he expressed great joy thereat, and said, ‘They would then be as long in spending, as he had been in getting it.’ But the Chancery afterwards set aside the will, and give it to the heir at law. (Pope.)

[Line 86.]Japhet, nose and ears? Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, was punished with the loss of those parts, for having forged a conveyance of an Estate to himself, upon which he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a Will, by which he possessed another considerable Estate, in wrong of the brother of the deceased. By these means he was worth a great sum, which (in reward for the small loss of his ears) he enjoyed in prison till his death, and quietly left to his executor. (Pope.)

[Line 96.]Die, and endow a College, or a Cat. A famous Duchess of Richmond in her last will left considerable legacies and annuities to her Cats. (Pope.) [Warton more than vindicates the memory of this famous beauty of Charles II.’s court from Pope’s taunt by stating that she left annuities to certain poor ladies of her acquaintance, with the burden of maintaining some of her cats; this proviso being intended to disguise the charitable character of the bequests. (Ward.)

[Line 99.]Bond damns the poor, &c. This epistle was written in the year 1730, when a corporation was established to lend money to the poor upon pledges, by the name of the Charitable Corporation; but the whole was turned only to an iniquitous method of enriching particular people, to the ruin of such numbers, that it became a parliamentary concern to endeavour the relief of those unhappy sufferers, and three of the managers, who were members of the house, were expell’d. By the report of the committee, appointed to enquire into that iniquitous affair, it appears, that when it was objected to the intended removal of the office, that the Poor, for whose use it was erected, would be hurt by it, Bond, one of the Directors, replied, Damn the poor. That ‘God hates the poor,’ and, ‘That every man in want is knave or fool,” &c. were the genuine apothegms of some of the persons here mentioned. (Pope.) Dennis Bond, a member of Parliament, died in 1747. (Carruthers.)

[Line 100.] Sir Gilbert Heathcote, director of the Bank of England, and one of the richest men of his day. (Ward.)

[Line 117.]South-Sea Year. 1720. Pope was involved in the speculation, but is supposed to have escaped without loss.

[Line 118.]To live on venison. In the extravagance and luxury of the South-Sea year, the price of a haunch of venison was from three to five pounds.

[Line 121.]Sappho. This is a particularly gratuitous insult, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu invested in South-Sea stock by Pope’s advice and lost her money.

[Line 123.]Wise Peter. Peter Walter, a person not only eminent in the wisdom of his profession, as a dextrous attorney, but allowed to be a good, if not a safe conveyancer; extremely respected by the Nobility of this land, tho’ free from all manner of luxury and ostentation: his Wealth was never seen, and his bounty never heard of, except to his own son, for whom he procured an employment of considerable profit, of which he gave him as much as was necessary. Therefore the taxing this gentleman with any Ambition, is certainly a great wrong to him. (Pope.)

[Line 126.]Rome’s great Didius. A Roman Lawyer, so rich as to purchase the Empire when it was set to sale upon the death of Pertinax. (Pope.) Didius Julianus ad 193. The vendors were the Prætorian Guards. (Ward.)

[Line 127.]The Crown of Poland, &c. The two persons here mentioned were of Quality, each of whom in the Mississippi despis’d to realize above three hundred thousand pounds; the Gentleman with a view to the purchase of the Crown of Poland, the Lady on a vision of the like royal nature. They since retired into Spain, where they are still in search of gold in the mines of the Asturies. (Pope.)

[Line 128.] A Mr. Gage, of the ancient Suffolk Catholic family of that name; and Lady Mary Herbert, daughter of the Marquess of Powis and of a natural daughter of James II.: whence the phrase ‘hereditary realm.’ (Bowles.)

[Line 133.]Much injur’d Blunt. Sir John Blunt, originally a scrivener, was one of the first projectors of the South-Sea Company, and afterwards one of the directors and chief managers of the famous scheme in 1720. He was also one of those who suffer’d most severely by the bill of pains and penalties on the said directors. (Pope.)

[Line 177.]Old Cotta. Supposed to be the Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1711; and his son, the well-known peer of that name, who afterwards became prime minister. (Carruthers.)

[Line 243.]Oxford’s better part. Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford. The son of Robert, created Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer by Queen Anne. This Nobleman died regretted by all men of letters, great numbers of whom had experienced his benefits. He left behind him one of the most noble Libraries in Europe. (Pope.)

[Line 250.]The Man of Ross. The person here celebrated, who with a small Estate actually performed all these good works, and whose true name was almost lost (partly by the title of the Man of Ross given him by way of eminence, and partly by being buried without so much as an inscription) was called Mr. John Kyrle. He died in the year 1724, aged 90, and lies interred in the chancel of the church of Ross in Herefordshire. (Pope.)

[Line 296.]Eternal buckle, etc. The poet ridicules the wretched taste of carving large periwigs on bustos, of which there are several vile examples at Westminster and elsewhere. (Pope.)

[Line 305.]Great Villiers lies. This Lord, yet more famous for his vices than his misfortunes, after having been possess’d of about £50,000 a year, and passed thro’ many of the highest posts in the kingdom, died in the Year 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the utmost misery. (Pope.)

[Line 307.]Cliveden. A delightful palace, on the banks of the Thames, built by the D. of Buckingham. (Pope.)

[Line 308.]Shrewsbury. The Countess of Shrewsbury, a woman abandoned to gallantries. The Earl her husband was kill’d by the Duke of Buckingham in a duel; and it has been said, that during the combat she held the Duke’s horses in the habit of a page. (Pope.)

[Line 315.] Sir John Cutler, a wealthy citizen of the Restoration period, accused of rapacity on account of a large claim made by his excutors against the College of Physicians, which he had aided by a loan. (Carruthers.)

[Line 339.]Where London’s column, etc. The monument on Fish Street Hill, built in memory of the fire of London of 1666, with an inscription importing that city to have been burnt by the Papists. (Pope.)

[Epistle IV. Line 7.]Topham. A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings. (Pope.)

[Line 8.]Pembroke. Henry, Earl of Pembroke, a patron of the arts, and owner of many valuable paintings.

[Line 10.]Mead—Sloane. Two eminent physicians; the one had an excellent library, the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity. (Pope.) Dr. Mead was physician to George II. ‘He was, however,’ says Ward, ‘the reverse of a bookworm; for Johnson says of him that “he lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man.” ’ Sir John or Hans Sloane was a skilled botanist and physician. His natural history collection is now preserved in the British Museum.

[Line 18.]Ripley. This man was a carpenter, employed by a first Minister, who raised him to an Architect, without any genius in the art; and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him Comptroller of the Board of Works. (Pope.)

[Line 20.]Bubo. Bubb Dodington. See Epistle to Arbuthnot, line 280.

[Line 23.]You show us Rome, etc. The Earl of Burlington was then publishing the designs of Inigo Jones, and the Antiquities of Rome by Palladio. (Pope.)

[Line 46.]Le Nôtre. André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), landscape-gardener of Louis XIV.

[Line 70.]Stowe. The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham in Buckinghamshire. (Pope.)

[Line 78.]In a hermitage set Dr. Clarke. Dr. L. Clarke’s busto placed by the Queen in the Hermitage, while the doctor duly frequented the court. (Pope.) Dr. Clarke was one of Queen Caroline’s chaplains.

[Line 150.]Never mentions Hell, etc. This is a fact; a reverend Dean preaching at court threatened the sinner with punishment in ‘a place which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly.’ (Pope.)

[Line 169.]Yet hence the poor, etc. The Moral of the whole, where Providence is justified in giving wealth to those who squander it in this manner. A bad taste employs more hands, and diffuses expense more than a good one. (Pope.)

[Line 173.]Another age, etc. Had the poet lived but three years longer, he had seen this prophecy fulfilled. (Warburton.)

[Lines 193-202.]Till Kings . . . Bid Harbours open, etc. The poet after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expense, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and public works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built Churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is satirically alluded to in our author’s imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. 2:—

‘Shall half the new-built Churches round thee fall,’

others were vilely executed, thro’ fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham-breach had done very great mischiefs; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrances of London itself: The proposal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petition’d against and rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a Bridge pass’d thro’ both houses. After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above-mentioned, who would have made it a wooden one: to which our author alludes in these lines,

‘Who builds a Bridge that never drove a pile?
Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile.’

See the notes on that place. (Pope.)

[Page 176.]Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. For John Arbuthnot see Glossary.

Advertisement. Lines 6, 7. Of these papers the former was said to be a joint production of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey; the latter was written by Hervey alone. See Carruthers’ Life of Pope, ch. viii.

[Line 1.] John Searl, Pope’s body-servant for many years.

[Line 13.]The Mint, a place to which insolvent debtors retired, to enjoy an illegal protection, which they were there suffered to afford one another, from the persecution of their creditors. (Warburton.)

[Line 23.]Arthur. Arthur Moore, a prominent politician, father of the James Moore-Smythe whom Pope so often ridiculed.

[Line 40.] ‘Keep your piece nine years.’

‘Novemque prematur in annum.’
Horace, De Arte Poetica, 388.

[Line 43.]Term. The London ‘season.’

[Line 51.]Pitholeon, the name taken from a foolish poet of Rhodes, who pretended much to Greek. (Pope.)

[Line 53.] Edmund Curll was a piratical bookseller who did Pope several ill turns, as in publishing some of his private letters (see 113 below), and printing in his name various sorts of rubbish (see 351 below, and Pope’s note).

[Line 54.] The London Journal favored the Whigs. Pope was very little of a politician, but his leaning was toward the Tories.

[Line 62.] Bernard Lintot, after 1712, published much of Pope’s work.

[Line 72.]Some say his Queen. The story is told by some of his Barber, but by Chaucer of his Queen. See Wife of Bath’s Tale. (Pope.)

[Line 100.]Philips. Ambrose Philips, of whom Bishop Bolter became patron.

[Line 101.]Sappho. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

[Line 118.]You have an eye. It is remarkable that, amongst these complaints on his infirmities and deformities, he mentions his eye, which was fine and piercing. (Warburton.)

[Line 128.]I lisped in numbers.

‘Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
Et, quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.’
Ovid, Tristia, 4, x. 25, 26.

[Line 135.]Granville. George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdown, known for his poems, most of which he composed very young. (Pope.)

Granville, Mr. Walsh, and Dr. Garth are mentioned in Pope’s first note to the Pastorals as among those who encouraged him in his earliest efforts.

[Line 139.]Talbot, Somers, Sheffield. These are the persons to whose account the author charges the publication of his first pieces, persons with whom he was conversant (and he adds beloved) at sixteen or seventeen years of age, an early period for such acquaintance. The catalogue might have been made yet more illustrious had he not confined it to that time when he writ the Pastorals and Windsor Forest, on which he passes a sort of censure in the lines following [147-150]. (Pope.)

[Line 146.]Burnets, etc. Authors of secret and scandalous history. (Pope.)

[Line 149.]Fanny. Lord Hervey, the Sporus of lines 305-333 below.

[Line 151.]Gildon. Charles Gildon, a critic who had abused Pope.

[Line 153.]Dennis. John Dennis, a free-lance in letters, and one of the favorite butts of Pope’s satire. It was he who indirectly caused the difference between Pope and Addison. See Glossary.

[Line 164.]Slashing Bentleys, etc. Bentley’s edition of Paradise Lost, which appeared in 1732, was at once the last and the least worthy effort of his critical prowess; as to Theobald’s Shakspere, it was an honest and not wholly unsuccessful piece of work, and a better edition than Pope’s own. Bentley’s Milton is better characterized in Imitations of Horace, i. Ep. of ii. Bk. vv. 103-4. (Ward.)

[Line 179.]The bard whom pilfer’d pastorals renown. Ambrose Philips. Charles Gildon ranked him with Theocritus and Virgil.

[Line 190.]Tate. Nahum Tate was then poet laureate, ‘the author of the worst alterations of Shakespeare,’ says Professor Craik, ‘the worst version of the Psalms of David, and the worst continuation of a great poem [Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel] extant.’

[Line 218.]On wings of winds, etc. Pope credits this line to Hopkins’s paraphrase of Psalm civ.

[Line 232.]Bufo probably stands for Lord Halifax.

[Line 236.]And a true Pindar stood without a head. Ridicules the affectation of Antiquaries, who frequently exhibit the headless trunks and terms of statues, for Plato, Homer, Pindar, etc. (Pope.)

[Line 248.]He help’d to bury, etc. Mr. Dryden, after having lived in exigencies, had a magnificent funeral bestowed upon him by the contribution of several persons of quality. (Pope.)

[Line 256.]Gay. John Gay (1688-1732), author of the famous Beggar’s Opera, and one of Pope’s best friends. In his last years he was taken excellent care of by the Duke of Queensbury (260, below), and died by no means a pauper.

[Line 280.]Sir Will or Bubo. See Essay on Man, IV. 278 and note.

[Line 299.]The Dean and Silver Bell. Pope had been accused of ridiculing, in the Essay on Taste, the furniture and appointments of Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos, where Pope had been received. Pope’s denial of the charge was accepted by the Duke.

[Line 305.]Sporus is John Lord Hervey, a well-known court favorite. He seems to have been at least harmless. Pope, for some unknown reason, conceived one of his violent antipathies for him; and the following lines, hardly less celebrated than those on Addison, are the result.

[Line 350.]The tale revived, etc. As that he received subscriptions to Shakespeare, that he set his name to Mr. Broome’s verses, etc., which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless repeated in the libels. (Pope.)

[Line 351.]Th’ imputed trash. This imputed trash, such as profane psalms, court poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his name by Curll and others. (Pope.)

[Line 365.]Knight of the post corrupt. The so-called Knights of the Post stood about the sheriff’s pillars near the courts, in readiness to swear anything for pay. (Ward.)

[Line 371.]Friend to his distress. In 1733 Pope wrote a prologue to a play given for the benefit of Dennis, who was then old, blind, and not far from death.

[Line 374.]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. (Pope.)

[Line 375.]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. (Pope.)

[Line 379.]Budgell was charged with forging a will, with profit to himself.

[Line 391.]Bestia. L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha into a dishonorable peace. (Ward.)

[Line 393.]Discord in a noble wife. Dryden had married Lady Howard, and Addison the Countess of Warwick.

[Line 417.] Dr. Arbuthnot had been the favorite physician of Queen Anne.

[Page 182.]Satires, Epistles and Odes of Horace Imitated.First Satire, Second Book.

Home

The Forum

Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

The Library

Return to Title Page for The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Also in the Library:

EPISTLE IV OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

About Liberty Fund:

Copyright information:

Fair use statement:

EPISTLE IV

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS

ARGUMENT

MORAL ESSAYS

ADVERTISEMENT

EPISTLE I[ ]

TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE II[ ]

TO A LADY OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE III[ ]

TO ALLEN, LORD BATHURST

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE IV

TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON

OF THE USE OF RICHES

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE V

TO MR. ADDISON

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS

UNIVERSAL PRAYER

DEO OPT. MAX.

SATIRES

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT[ ]

BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES

ADVERTISEMENT

SATIRES, EPISTLES, AND ODES OF HORACE IMITATED[ ]

Home

The Forum

Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

The Library

Return to Title Page for The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

EPISTLE IV OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

About Liberty Fund:

Copyright information:

Fair use statement:

EPISTLE IV OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS

ARGUMENT

MORAL ESSAYS

ADVERTISEMENT

EPISTLE I[ ]TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE II[ ]TO A LADY OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE III[ ]TO ALLEN, LORD BATHURST

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE IV

TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON OF THE USE OF RICHES

ARGUMENT

EPISTLE V

TO MR. ADDISON OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS

UNIVERSAL PRAYER DEO OPT. MAX.

SATIRES

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT[ ]BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES

ADVERTISEMENT

SATIRES, EPISTLES, AND ODES OF HORACE IMITATED[ ]

EPISTLE IV

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS

EPISTLE I[ ]

TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM

EPISTLE II[ ]

TO A LADY OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN

EPISTLE III[ ]

TO ALLEN, LORD BATHURST

TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON

OF THE USE OF RICHES

TO MR. ADDISON

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS

UNIVERSAL PRAYER

DEO OPT. MAX.

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT[ ]

BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES