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EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES[ ]

IN TWO DIALOGUES. WRITTEN IN 1738

The first dialogue was originally entitled One Thousand Seven Hundred and thirty-eight, a Dialogue something like Horace. Johnson’s London is said by Boswell to have been published on the same morning of May, 1738, and in spite of its anonymity to have made more stir than Pope’s satire.

DIALOGUE I

- Fr.Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,
- And when it comes, the Court see nothing in ’t:
- You grow correct, that once with rapture writ,
- And are, besides, too moral for a Wit.
- Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel—
- Why now, this moment, don’t I see you steal?
- ’T is all from Horace; Horace long before ye
- Said ‘Tories call’d him whig, and whigs a tory;’
- And taught his Romans, in much better metre,
- ‘To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter.’10
- But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;
- Bubo observes, he lash’d no sort of vice:
- Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown,
- Blunt could do business, Higgins knew the town;
- In Sappho touch the failings of the sex,
- In rev’rend bishops note some small neglects,
- And own the Spaniards did a waggish thing,
- Who cropt our ears, and sent them to the King.
- His sly, polite, insinuating style
- Could please at court, and make Augustus smile:20
- An artful manager, that crept between
- His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.
- But, ’faith, your very Friends will soon be sore;
- Patriots there are who wish you ’d jest no more.
- And where ’s the glory? ’t will be only thought
- The great man never offer’d you a groat.
- Go see Sir Robert—
- P. See Sir Robert!—hum—
- And never laugh—for all my life to come;
- Seen him I have; but in his happier hour
- Of social Pleasure, ill exchanged for Power;
- Seen him, uncumber’d with a venal tribe,
- Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
- Would he oblige me? let me only find33
- He does not think me what he thinks mankind.
- Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;
- The only diff’rence is—I dare laugh out.
- F. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free;
- A horse-laugh, if you please, at Honesty;
- A joke on Jeky! , or some odd Old Whig,
- Who never changed his principle or wig.40
- A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age,
- Whom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage:
- These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,
- And wear their strange old virtue as they will.
- If any ask you, ‘Who ’s the man so near
- His Prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?’
- Why, answer, Lyttelton! and I ’ll engage
- The worthy youth shall ne’er be in a rage;
- But were his verses vile, his whisper base,
- You ’d quickly find him in Lord Fanny’s case.50
- Sejanus, Wolsey , hurt not honest Fleury,
- But well may put some statesmen in a fury.
- Laugh then at any but at Fools or Foes;
- These you but anger, and you mend not those.
- Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore,
- So much the better, you may laugh the more.
- To Vice and Folly to confine the jest
- Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest,
- Did not the sneer of more impartial men
- At Sense and Virtue, balance all again.60
- Judicious Wits spread wide the ridicule,
- And charitably comfort knave and fool.
- P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:
- Adieu Distinction, Satire, Warmth, and Truth!
- Come, harmless characters that no one hit;
- Come, Henley’s oratory, Osborne’s wit!
- The honey dropping from Favonio’s tongue,
- The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Yonge!
- The gracious dew of pulpit Eloquence,
- And all the well-whipt cream of courtly Sense70
- That first was H[er]vey’s, F[ox]’s next, and then
- The S[ena]te’s, and then H[er]vey’s once again,
- O come! that easy Ciceronian style,
- So Latin, yet so English all the while,
- As, tho’ the pride of Middleton and Bland ,
- All boys may read, and girls may understand!
- Then might I sing without the least offence,
- And all I sung should be the ‘Nation’s Sense;’
- Or teach the melancholy Muse to mourn,
- Hang the sad verse on Carolina’s urn,80
- And hail her passage to the realms of rest,
- All parts perform’d, and all her children blest!
- So—Satire is no more—I feel it die—
- No Gazetteer more innocent than I—
- And let, a’ God’s name! ev’ry Fool and Knave
- Be graced thro’ life, and flatter’d in his grave.
- F. Why so? if Satire knows its time and place,
- You still may lash the greatest—in disgrace;
- For merit will by turns forsake them all;
- Would you know when? exactly when they fall.90
- But let all Satire in all changes spare
- Immortal S[elkir]k, and grave De[lawa]re .
- Silent and soft, as saints remove to Heav’n,
- All ties dissolv’d, and ev’ry sin forgiv’n,
- These may some gentle ministerial wing
- Receive, and place for ever near a King!
- There where no Passion, Pride, or Shame transport,
- Lull’d with the sweet Nepenthe of a Court:
- There where no father’s, brother’s, friend’s disgrace
- Once break their rest, or stir them from their place;100
- But past the sense of human miseries,
- All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes;
- No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,
- Save when they lose a Question or a Job.
- P. Good Heav’n forbid that I should blast their glory,
- Who know how like Whig ministers to Tory,
- And when three Sov’reigns died could scarce be vext,
- Consid’ring what a gracious Prince was next.
- Have I, in silent wonder, seen such things
- As pride in slaves, and avarice in Kings?
- And at a peer or peeress shall I fret,111
- Who starves a sister or forswears a debt?
- Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
- But shall the dignity of Vice be lost?
- Ye Gods! shall Cibber’s son, without rebuke,
- Swear like a Lord; or Rich outwhore a Duke?
- A fav’rite’s porter with his master vie,
- Be bribed as often, and as often lie?
- Shall Ward draw contracts with a statesman’s skill?119
- Or Japhet pocket, like His Grace, a will?
- Is it for Bond or Peter (paltry things)
- To pay their debts, or keep their faith, like Kings?
- If Blount dispatch’d himself, he play’d the man,
- And so mayst thou, illustrious Passeran!
- But shall a printer , weary of his life,
- Learn from their books to hang himself and wife?
- This, this, my friend, I cannot, must not bear;
- Vice thus abused demands a nation’s care;
- This calls the Church to deprecate our sin ,
- And hurls the thunder of the Laws on Gin.130
- Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
- Ten Metropolitans in preaching well;
- A simple quaker, or a quaker’s wife,
- Outdo Landaff in doctrine—yea, in life;
- Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
- Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
- Virtue may choose the high or low degree,
- ’T is just alike to Virtue and to me;
- Dwell in a monk, or light upon a King,
- She ’s still the same belov’d, contented thing.140
- Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth,
- And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth;
- But ’t is the Fall degrades her to a whore;
- Let Greatness own her, and she’s mean no more:
- Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess;
- Chaste Matrons praise her, and grave Bishops bless;
- In golden chains the willing world she draws,
- And hers the Gospel is, and hers the Laws;
- Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,
- And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead.
- Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car,151
- Old England’s genius, rough with many a scar,
- Dragg’d in the dust! his arms hang idly round,
- His flag inverted trails along the ground!
- Our youth, all liv’ried o’er with foreign gold,
- Before her dance! behind her crawl the old!
- See thronging millions to the pagod run,
- And offer country, parent, wife, or son!
- Hear her black trumpet thro’ the land proclaim,
- That not to be corrupted is the shame.160
- In Soldier, Churchman, Patriot, Man in Power,
- ’T is Av’rice all, Ambition is no more!
- See all our nobles begging to be slaves!
- See all our fools aspiring to be knaves!
- The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore,
- Are what ten thousand envy and adore:
- All, all look up with reverential awe,
- At crimes that ’scape, or triumph o’er the law:
- While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry—
- ‘Nothing is sacred now but Villany.’170
- Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)
- Show there was one who held it in disdain.

DIALOGUE II[ ]

- Fr. ’T is all a libel—Paxton, Sir, will say. }
- P. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow ’faith it may; }
- And for that very cause I print to-day. }
- How should I fret to mangle ev’ry line
- In rev’rence to the sins of Thirty-nine!
- Vice with such giant strides comes on amain,
- Invention strives to be before in vain;
- Feign what I will, and paint it e’er so strong,
- Some rising genius sins up to my song.
- F. Yet none but you by name the guilty lash;10
- Ev’n Guthry saves half Newgate by a dash.
- Spare then the Person, and expose the Vice.
- P. How, Sir! not damn the Sharper, but the Dice?
- Come on them, Satire! gen’ral, unconfin’d,
- Spread thy broad wing, and souse on all the kind.
- Ye statesmen, priests, of one religion all!
- Ye tradesmen vile, in army, court, or hall!
- Ye rev’rend atheists! F. Scandal! name them, who?
- P. Why that’s the thing you bid me not to do.
- Who starv’d a sister, who forswore a debt,
- I never named; the town’s inquiring yet.21
- The pois’ning Dame—F. You mean—P. I don’t. F. You do.
- P. See, now I keep the secret, and not you!
- The bribing Statesman—F. Hold, too high you go.
- P. The bribed Elector—F. There you stoop too low.
- P. I fain would please you, if I knew with what.
- Tell me, which knave is lawful game, which not?
- Must great offenders, once escaped the crown,
- Like royal harts, be never more run down?
- Admit your law to spare the Knight requires,30
- As beasts of Nature may we hunt the Squires?
- Suppose I censure—you know what I mean—
- To save a Bishop, may I name a Dean?
- F. A Dean, sir? no: his fortune is not made;
- You hurt a man that’s rising in the trade.
- P. If not the tradesman who set up today,
- Much less the ’prentice who to-morrow may.
- Down, down, proud Satire! tho’ a realm be spoil’d,
- Arraign no mightier thief than wretched Wild ;
- Or, if a court or country’s made a job,40
- Go drench a pickpocket, and join the Mob.
- But, Sir, I beg you—for the love of Vice—
- The matter’s weighty, pray consider twice—
- Have you less pity for the needy cheat,
- The poor and friendless villain, than the great?
- Alas! the small discredit of a bribe
- Scarce hurts the Lawyer, but undoes the Scribe.
- Then better sure it charity becomes
- To tax Directors, who (thank God!) have plums;
- Still better Ministers, or if the thing50
- May pinch ev’n there—why, lay it on a King.
- F. Stop! stop!
- P. Must Satire then nor rise nor fall?
- Speak out, and bid me blame no rogues at all.
- F. Yes, strike that Wild, I’ll justify the blow.
- P. Strike? why the man was hang’d ten years ago:
- Who now that obsolete example fears?
- Ev’n Peter trembles only for his ears .
- F. What, always Peter? Peter thinks you mad;
- You make men desp’rate, if they once are bad;
- Else might he take to Virtue some years hence—60
- P. As S[elkir]k, if he lives, will love the Prince.
- F. Strange spleen to S[elkir]k!
- P. Do I wrong the man?
- God knows I praise a Courtier where I can.
- When I confess there is who feels for fame,
- And melts to goodness, need I Scarb’row name?
- Pleased let me own, in Esher’s peaceful grove
- (Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham’s love),
- The scene, the master, opening to my view,
- I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew!
- Ev’n in a Bishop I can spy desert;70
- Secker is decent, Rundel has a heart;
- Manners with candour are to Benson giv’n;
- To Berkley ev’ry virtue under Heav’n.
- But does the Court a worthy man remove?
- That instant, I declare, he has my love:
- I shun his zenith, court his mild decline.
- Thus Somers once and Halifax were mine:
- Oft in the clear still mirror of retreat
- I studied Shrewsbury, the wise and great:
- Carleton’s calm sense and Stanhope’s noble flame80
- Compared, and knew their gen’rous end the same;
- How pleasing Atterbury’s softer hour!
- How shined the soul, unconquer’d, in the Tower!
- How can I Pulteney, Chesterfield, forget,
- While Roman Spirit charms, and Attic Wit?
- Argyle, the state’s whole thunder born to wield,
- And shake alike the senate and the field?
- Or Wyndham , just to freedom and the throne,
- The Master of our Passions and his own?
- Names which I long have lov’d, nor lov’d in vain,90
- Rank’d with their friends, not number’d with their train;
- And if yet higher the proud list should end,
- Still let me say,—no foll’wer, but a Friend.
- Yet think not friendship only prompts my lays;
- I follow Virtue; where she shines I praise,
- Point she to priest or elder, Whig, or Tory,
- Or round a quaker’s beaver cast a glory.
- I never (to my sorrow I declare)
- Dined with the Man of Ross or my Lord Mayor.
- Some in their choice of friends (nay, look not grave)100
- Have still a secret bias to a knave:
- To find an honest man I beat about,
- And love him, court him, praise him, in or out.
- F. Then why so few commended?
- P. Not so fierce;
- Find you the Virtue, and I’ll find the Verse.
- But random praise—the task can ne’er be done;
- Each mother asks it for her booby son;
- Each widow asks it for the best of men,
- For him she weeps, for him she weds again.
- Praise cannot stoop, like Satire, to the ground;110
- The number may be hang’d, but not be crown’d.
- Enough for half the greatest of these days
- To ’scape my Censure, not expect my Praise.
- Are they not rich? what more can they pretend?
- Dare they to hope a poet for their friend?—
- What Richelieu wanted, Louis scarce could gain,
- And what young Ammon wish’d, but wish’d in vain.
- No power the Muse’s friendship can command;
- No power, when Virtue claims it, can withstand.
- To Cato, Virgil paid one honest line;120
- O let my country’s friends illumine mine!
- —What are you thinking? F. Faith, the thought’s no sin;
- I think your friends are out, and would be in.
- P. If merely to come in, Sir, they go out,
- The way they take is strangely round about.
- F. They too may be corrupted, you’ll allow?
- P. I only call those knaves who are so now.
- Is that too little? come, then, I’ll comply—
- Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!129
- Cobham’s a coward! Polworth is a slave!
- And Lyttelton a dark designing knave!
- St. John has ever been a wealthy fool!—
- But let me add, Sir Robert’s mighty dull,
- Has never made a friend in private life,
- And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife!
- But pray, when others praise him, do I blame?
- Call Verres, Wolsey, any odious name?
- Why rail they then if but a wreath of mine,
- O all-accomplish’d St. John! deck thy shrine?
- What! shall each spur-gall’d hackney of the day,140
- When Paxton gives him double pots and pay,
- Or each new-pension’d Sycophant, pretend
- To break my windows if I treat a friend;
- Then, wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt,
- But ’t was my guest at whom they threw the dirt?
- Sure if I spare the Minister, no rules
- Of honour bind me not to maul his Tools;
- Sure if they cannot cut, it may be said
- His saws are toothless, and his hatchet’s lead.
- It anger’d Turenne, once upon a day,150
- To see a footman kick’d that took his pay;
- But when he heard th’ affront the fellow gave,
- Knew one a Man of Honour, one a Knave,
- The prudent Gen’ral turn’d it to a jest,
- And begg’d he’d take the pains to kick the rest;
- Which not at present having time to do—
- F. Hold, Sir! for God’s sake, where’s th’ affront to you?
- Against your worship when had S[herloc]k writ,
- Or P[a]ge pour’d forth the torrent of his wit?
- Or grant the bard whose distich all commend160
- (‘In power a servant, out of power a friend’)
- To W[alpo]le guilty of some venial sin,
- What’s that to you who ne’er was out nor in?
- The Priest whose flattery bedropp’d the crown,
- How hurt he you? he only stain’d the gown.
- And how did, pray, the florid youth offend,
- Whose speech you took, and gave it to a friend?
- P. Faith, it imports not much from whom it came; }
- Whoever borrow’d could not be to blame, }
- Since the whole House did afterwards the same.170 }
- Let courtly Wits to Wits afford supply,
- As hog to hog in huts of Westphaly:
- If one, thro’ Nature’s bounty or his Lord’s
- Has what the frugal dirty soil affords,
- From him the next receives it, thick or thin,
- As pure a mess almost as it came in;
- The blessed benefit, not there confin’d,
- Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind;
- From tail to mouth they feed and they carouse;
- The last full fairly gives it to the House.180
- F. This filthy simile, this beastly line,
- Quite turns my stomach—P. So does flatt’ry mine;
- And all your courtly civet-cats can vent,
- Perfume to you, to me is excrement.
- But hear me further—Japhet , ’t is agreed,
- Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read
- In all the courts of Pindus, guiltless quite;
- But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write,
- And must no egg in Japhet’s face be thrown,
- Because the deed he forged was not my own?190
- Must never Patriot then declaim at Gin
- Unless, good man! he has been fairly in?
- No zealous Pastor blame a failing spouse
- Without a staring reason on his brows?
- And each blasphemer quite escape the rod,
- Because the insult’s not on man but God?
- Ask you what provocation I have had?
- The strong antipathy of good to bad.
- When Truth or Virtue an affront endures,
- Th’ affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.200
- Mine, as a foe profess’d to false pretence,
- Who think a coxcomb’s honour like his sense;
- Mine, as a friend to ev’ry worthy mind;
- And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.
- F. You’re strangely proud. }
- P. So proud, I am no slave; }
- So impudent, I own myself no knave; }
- So odd, my country’s ruin makes me grave. }
- Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see
- Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me;
- Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne,210
- Yet touch’d and shamed by Ridicule alone.
- O sacred weapon! left for Truth’s defence,
- Sole dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence,
- To all but Heav’n-directed hands denied,
- The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide!
- Rev’rent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,
- To rouse the watchmen of the public weal,
- To Virtue’s work provoke the tardy hall,
- And goad the Prelate, slumb’ring in his stall.
- Ye tinsel insects! whom a Court maintains,
- That counts your beauties only by your stains,221
- Spin all your cobwebs o’er the eye of day!
- The Muse’s wing shall brush you all away.
- All His Grace preaches, all His Lordship sings,
- All that makes Saints of Queens, and Gods of Kings;
- All, all but Truth, drops dead-born from the press,
- Like the last Gazette, or the last Address.
- When black Ambition stains a public cause,
- A Monarch’s sword when mad Vainglory draws,
- Not Waller’s wreath can hide the nation’s scar,230
- Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star .
- Not so when, diadem’d with rays divine,
- Touch’d with the flame that breaks from Virtue’s shrine,
- Her priestess Muse forbids the good to die,
- And opes the Temple of Eternity.
- There other trophies deck the truly brave
- Than such as Anstis casts into the grave;
- Far other stars than [Kent] and [Grafton] wear,
- And may descend to Mordington from Stair;—
- Such as on Hough’s unsullied mitre shine,
- Or beam, good Digby! from a heart like thine.241
- Let envy howl, while heav’n’s whole chorus sings,
- And bark at honour not conferr’d by Kings;
- Let Flatt’ry sick’ning see the incense rise,
- Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:
- Truth guards the Poet, sanctifies the line,
- And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.
- Yes, the last pen for Freedom let me draw,
- When Truth stands trembling on the edge of law
- Here, last of Britons! let your names be read;250
- Are none, none living? let me praise the dead;
- And for that cause which made your fathers shine
- Fall by the votes of their degen’rate line.
- F. Alas! alas! pray end what you began,
- And write next winter more Essays on Man.

[Page 208.]Epilogue to the Satires.Dialogue I.

[Line 13.]Sir Billy. Sir William Yonge.

[Line 14.]Huggins. Formerly jailer of the Fleet prison; enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled. (Pope.)

[Line 24.]Patriots. This appellation was generally given to those in opposition to the court. Though some of them (which our author hints at) had views too mean and interested to deserve that name. (Pope.)

[Line 26.]The great man. A phrase by common use appropriated to the First Minister. (Pope.)

[Line 39.]A Joke on Jekyl. Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity. He sometimes voted against the Court, which drew upon him the laugh here described of One who bestowed it equally upon Religion and Honesty. He died a few months after the publication of this poem. (Pope.)

[Line 51.]Sejanus, Wolsey. The one the wicked minister of Tiberius; the other, of Henry VIII. The writers against the Court usually bestowed these and other odious names on the Minister, without distinction, and in the most injurious manner. See Dial. II. v. 137. (Pope.)

Fleury. Cardinal: and Minister to Louis XV. It was a Patriot-fashion, at that time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty. (Pope.)

[Line 66.]Henley—Osborne. See them in their places in The Dunciad. (Pope.)

[Line 68.] Sir William Yonge, not, as Bowles conjectures to be possible, Dr. Edward Young, author of The Night Thoughts, although to the latter Dodington (Bubo) was a constant friend. (Ward.)

[Line 69.]The gracious Dew. Alludes to some court sermons, and florid panegyrical speeches; particularly one very full of puerilities and flatteries; which afterwards got into an address in the same pretty style; and was lastly served up in an Epitaph, between Latin and English, published by its author. (Pope.) An ‘Epitaph’ on Queen Caroline was written by Lord Hervey, and an address moved in the House ofCommons (the Senate) on the occasion by H. Fox. (Carruthers.)

[Line 75.]Middleton and Bland. Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of a Life of Cicero. Dr. Bland, of Eton, according to Burnet a very bad writer.

[Line 78.]The ‘Nation’s Sense.’ Warburton says this was a cant phrase of the time.

[Line 80.]Carolina. Queen Caroline, died in 1737.

[Line 92.]Selkirk—Delaware. Pope’s note would seem to apply to the names here suggested: ‘A title [was] given that lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber to King William; he was so to George I.; he was so to George II. This lord was very skilful in all the forms of the House, in which he discharged himself with great gravity.’

[Line 120.]Japhet. Japhet Crook.

[Line 121.]Peter. Peter Walter.

[Line 123.]If Blount. Author of an impious and foolish book called The Oracles of Reason, who being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died. (Pope.)

[Line 124.]Passeran! Author of another book of the same stamp, called A Philosophical Discourse on Death, being a defence of suicide. He was a nobleman of Piedmont, banished from his country for his impieties, and lived in the utmost misery, yet feared to practise his own precepts; and at last died a penitent. (Warburton.)

[Line 125.]But shall a Printer, etc. A fact that happened in London a few years past. The unhappy man left behind him a paper justifying his action by the reasonings of some of these authors. (Pope.)

[Line 129.]This calls the Church to deprecate our Sin. Alluding to the forms of prayer, composed in the times of public calamity; where the fault is generally laid upon the People. (Warburton.)

[Page 210.]Dialogue II.

[Line 11.]Ev’n Guthry. The Ordinary of Newgate, who publishes the memoirs of the Malefactors, and is often prevailed upon to be so tender of their reputation, as to set down no more than the initials of their name. (Pope.)

[Line 39.]Wretched Wild. Jonathan Wild, a famous thief, and thief-impeacher, who was at last caught in his own train, and hanged. (Pope.)

[Line 57.]Ev’n Peter trembles only for his ears. Peter [Walter] had, the year before this, narrowly escaped the Pillory for forgery: and got off with a severe rebuke only from the bench. (Pope.)

[Line 66.]Scarb’row. Earl of, and Knight of the Garter, whose personal attachment to the king appeared from his steady adherence to the royal interest, after his resignation of his great employment of Master of the Horse; and whose known honour and virtue made him esteemed by all parties. (Pope.) He committed suicide in a fit of melancholy in 1740; and was mourned by Lord Chesterfield as ‘the best man he ever knew, and the dearest friend he ever had.’ (Ward.)

[Line 67.]Esher’s peaceful Grove. The house and gardens of Esher in Surrey, belonging to the Honourable Mr. Pelham, Brother of the Duke of Newcastle. The author could not have given a more amiable idea of his Character than in comparing him to Mr. Craggs. (Pope.)

[Line 88.]Wyndham. Sir William Wyndham.

[Line 99.]The Man of Ross. See Moral Essays, Epistle III. lines 240-290. My Lord Mayor. Sir John Barnard.

[Line 132.]St. John. Lord Bolingbroke.

[Line 133.]Sir Roberts. Sir Robert Walpole.

[Line 158.]Sherlock, Dr. William, Dean of St. Paul’s, and the bête noire of the non-jurors in the reign of William III. (Ward.)

[Line 160.]The bard. Bubb Dodington, who wrote a poem to Sir Robert Walpole from which the following line is quoted.

[Line 164.]The Priest, etc. Pope disclaims any allusion to a particular priest, but the passage is understood to refer to Dr. Alured Clarke, who wrote a fulsome panegyric to Queen Caroline.

[Line 166.]The florid youth. Lord Hervey. Alluding to his painting himself. (Bowles.)

[Lines 185-186.]Japhet—Chartres. See the epistle to Lord Bathurst. (Pope.)

[Line 222.]Cobwebs. Weak and light sophistry against virtue and honour. Thin colours over vice, as unable to hide the light of truth, as cobwebs to shade the sun. (Pope.)

[Line 228.]When black Ambition, etc. The course of Cromwell in the civil war of England; (line 229), of Louis XIV. in his conquest of the Low Countries. (Pope.)

[Line 231.]Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star. See his Ode on Namur; where (to use his own words) ‘il a fait un Astre de la Plume blanche que le Roy porte ordinairement à son chapeau, et qui est en effet une espèce de Comète, fatale à nos ennemis.’ (Pope.)

[Line 236.]Anstis. The chief Herald at Arms. It is the custom, at the funeral of great peers, to cast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour. (Pope.)

[Line 238.]Stair. John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, Knight of the Thistle; served in all the wars under the Duke of Marlborough; and afterwards as Ambassador in France. (Pope.) Bennet, who supplies the blanks in v. 239 by the names of Kent and Grafton, has ‘some notion that Lord Mordington kept a gaming-house.’ (Ward.)

[Lines 240, 241.]Hough—Digby. Dr. John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby. The one an assertor of the Church of England in opposition to the false measures of King James II. The other as firmly attached to the cause of that King. Both acting out of principle, and equally men of honour and virtue. (Pope.)

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EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES [ ] IN TWO DIALOGUES. WRITTEN IN 1738 - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

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EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES[ ]IN TWO DIALOGUES. WRITTEN IN 1738

DIALOGUE I

DIALOGUE II[ ]

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES[ ]

IN TWO DIALOGUES. WRITTEN IN 1738