And, if he lie not, must at least betray: 300 Let Sporus tremble A. What? that thing of silk, 305 Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk? 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: In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 315 As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad, Half froth5, half venom, spits himself abroad, 320 Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. Who to the Dean, and silver bell, &c.] Meaning the man who would have persuaded the Duke of Chandos that Mr P. meant him in those circumstances ridiculed in the Epistle on Taste. See Mr Pope's Letter to the Earl of Burlington concerning this matter. P. [See note on Moral Essays, Ep. 1. v. 54.] 2 [The original of this famous portrait was John Lord Hervey, eldest surviving son of the Earl of Bristol and author of the Memoirs of the Reign of George II. At an early age he became a great favourite at the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Richmond, where Pope and his literary friends enjoyed high favour. Не married Miss Lepell, whom Pope himself greatly admired. Afterwards he attached himself to Walpole's party and was appointed Vice Chamberlain to the King (George II.). Ultimately he attained to the office of Lord Privy Seal; and after Walpole's fall continued to take an active part in politics, notwithstanding his miserable health, till his death in 1743. The cause of his estrangement from Pope remains obscure; but the first public offence was given by Pope, in allusions in his Miscellanies (1727) and the first edition of the Dunciad (1728). Then in 1734 appeared the Imitation of the 2nd Satire of the 1st Bk. of Horace, where Lord Hervey was twice attacked under the sobriquet of Lord Fanny, and his friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was even more venomously aspersed. They retorted in verse and prose; and Pope wrote his prose Letter to a noble Lord. The character of Sporus followed in 1734; and another attack in the satire, originally called (Epilogue to the Satires) 1738 brought out a poem The Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue exemplified, &c. by Lord H. The original hints for all the insinuations and insults introduced by Pope into the character of Sporus are, according to Mr Croker, to be found in Pulteney's Reply to a pamphlet against himself and Bolingbroke (1731) which he attributed to H. The Reply brought about a duel. Mr Croker can find no evidence for the report that the rupture between Pope and Lady Mary was due to the 'rivalry' between himself and Hervey 'in her good graces.'] In the first edition, Pope had the name Paris' instead of 'Sporus.' Bowles. 3 [Lady M. W. M. humorously divided the world into 'men, women and Herveys.'. As to his whiteness cf. Dunciad, IV. 104. His miserable health necessitated a peculiar diet.] See Milton, Book iv. P. [In the first edition Pope explained this allusion by reference to a passage in Lady M. W. M.'s lampoon against himself.] 5 Half froth, Alluding to those frothy excretions, called by the people, Toad-spits, seen in summer-time hanging upon plants, and emitted by young insects which lie hid in the midst of them, for their preservation, while in their helpless state. Warburton. [Goethe's Mephistophiles is an abortion of mud and fire.'] His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Amphibious thing! that acting either part, } 325 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; The only trait perhaps of the whole [character of Sporus] that is not either false or overcharged, is Hervey's love for antithesis, which Pulteney had already ridiculed.... His parliamentary speeches were, as Warton says, very far above florid impotence; but they were in favour of the Ministry, and that was sufficiently offensive to Pope.' Croker, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, Biogr. Notice. But stoop'd to Truth,] The term is from falconry; and the allusion to one of those untamed birds of spirit, which sometimes wantons at large in airy circles before it regards, or stoops to, its prey. Warburton. 3 [i.e. made his poetry Moral, in both senses of the term.] the lie so oft o'erthrown] As, that he re 330 335 340 345 350 355 360 ceived subscriptions for Shakespear, that he set his name to Mr Broome's verses, &c. which, tho' publicly disproved were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epistle. P. 5 Th' imputed trash,] Such as profane Psalms, Court-Poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his Name by Curll and others. P. 6 Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,] Namely on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr Swift, Dr Arbuthnot, Mr Gay, his Friends, his Parents, and his very Nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons. P. P. A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state: A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, He gain his Prince's ear, or lose his own. Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit3, 1['Like Knights o' th' Post, and falsely charge Upon themselves what others forge.' Hudibras, Part I. Canto 1. The so-called 'Knights of the Post' stood about the sheriff's pillars near the courts, in readiness to swear anything for pay. See R. Bell's note ad loc.] Ver. 368 in the MS. 'Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit, 355 370 375 380 the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Dr Tindal, in the Grub-street Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Author. P. [He reappears in the Dunciad, II. v. 397-] 7 except his Will;] Alluding to Tindal's Will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgell, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. P. [Budgel was believed to have forged a will purporting to be by Dr Matthew Tindal, the author of Christianity Where Woman's is the sin, and Man's the as old as the Creation.] shame.' [Again alluding to Lady Mary.] [V. ante, note to v. 48.] 4 ten years] It was so long after many libels before the Author of the Dunciad published that poem, till when, he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him. P. Welsted's lie.] This man had the impudence to tell in print, that Mr P. had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of He also publish'd that he libell'd the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from Any great Man whatsoever. P. [Compare Dunciad, II. vv. 207-210.] 6 Let Budgel Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in 8 His father, mother, &c.] In some of Curll's and other pamphlets, Mr Pope's father was said to be a Mechanic, a Hatter, a Farmer, nay a Bankrupt. But, what is stranger, a Nobleman (if such a Reflection could be thought to come from a Nobleman) had dropt an allusion to that pitiful untruth, in a paper called an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity: And the following line, Hard as thy Heart, and as thy Birth obscure, had fallen from a like Courtly pen, in certain Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Mr Pope's Father was of a Gentleman's Family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole Heiress married the Earl of Lindsey. His mother was the daughter of William Turnor, Esq. of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family-Mr Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore: 1 If there be force in Virtue, or in Song. 385 Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause, While yet in Britain Honour had applause) Each parent sprung1- A. What fortune, pray?- P. Their own, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne2. 391 Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife, Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife 3, The good man walk'd innoxious thro' his age. 395 400 Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than 15. 405 Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine: To rock the cradle of reposing Age, Me, let the tender office long engage, With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath, 410 Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death, And keep a while one parent from the sky! May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend, weeks after this poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their Monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middlesex. D. O. M. ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO. PIENTISSIMAE. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS. XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. ET. SIBI. P. 1 [See Introductory Memoir, p. viii.] 2 [L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha into a dishonourable peace.] 3 Alluding to Addison's marriage with the 415 Countess of Warwick, and Dryden's with Lady 4 He was a nonjuror, and would not take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, or the oath against the Pope. Bowles. 5 After v. 405 in the MS. 'And of myself, too, something must I say? Warburton. SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. ADVERTISEMENT. THE Occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on some of my Epistles. An Answer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the Example of much greater Freedom in so eminent à Divine as Dr Donne, seem'd a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat Vice or Folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a Station. Both these Authors were acceptable to the Princes and Ministers under whom they lived. The Satires of Dr Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State; neither of whom look'd upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they serv'd in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which Fools are so apt to fall into, and Knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a Satirist for a Libeller; whereas to a true Satirist nothing is so odious as a Libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a Hypocrite. Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis. P. ['Whoever,' says Warburton, 'expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing in these Imitations, will be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his own, without scruple or ceremony.' 'He deemed it more modest,' felicitously adds the same authority, 'to give the name of Imitations to his Satires, than, like Despreaux' [Boileau], 'to give the name of Satires to Imitations.' 'In two large columns,' wrote a less kindly critic, from whom impartiality could hardly be expected, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (alluding to the juxtaposition of the Latin and English texts), 'In two large columns, on thy motley page Who can believe, who views the bad and good, That the dull copyist better understood That spirit he pretends to imitate, Than heretofore the Greek he did translate;' proceeded, from this pleasant allusion to Pope's Homer, to explain the moral obliquities of her detractor by his defects of person, birth and nature. It was not |