Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:
This dreaded Sat'rift Dennis will confess

370
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress :
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhym'd for Moor.
Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?
Three thousand suns went down on Welfed's lye.

VARIATIONS.
VER. 368. in the MS.

Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And lik'd that dang’rous thing, a female wit:
Safe as he thought, tho' all the prudent chid ;
He writ no Libels, but my Lady did :
Great odds in am'rous or poetic game,
Where Woman's is the fin, and Man's the fhame.

NOTES.
VER. 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
fcurrilities and falsehoods concerning him.

P. Ver. 375. Welfted's Lye.] This man had the impudence to tell in print, that Mr. P. had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a perlon he never heard of. He also publifh'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.

376

To please a Mistress one afpers’d his life;
He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife:
Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his Will;
Let the two Curls of Town and Court, abuse
His father, mother, body, soul, and muse.

380

Notes.

Ver. 378. Let Budgel] Budgel, in a weekly pamphlec called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Dr. Tindal, in the Grubftreet Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Author.

VER. 379. 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 him. felf almost the whole fortane of a man entirely unrelated

P.

to him.

VER. 381. His father, mother, &c.] In some of Curls 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 Epiftle 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 Imitation 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

386

Yet why ? that Father held it for a rule,
It was a fin 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.

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. 395

Their own,

Notes. a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her familyMr. Pope died in 1717, aged 75 ; She in 1733, aged 93, a very few weeks after this poem was finished. The fol. lowing infcription was placed by their fon on their Monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middle sex,

D. O.

M.
ALEXANDRO. POPE, VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. P10.

QUI. VIXIT. ANNOS. LXXV, OB. MDCCXVII.
ET. EDITHAE, CONIVGI. INCULPABILI.
PIENTISSIMAE. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS.

XCIII. OB, MDCCXXXIII.
PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT,
ET. SIBI.

P.

No Courts he saw, no fuits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lye.
Un-learn’d, he knew no schoolman's subtile 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 past unknown,
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die !

404 Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than I.

O Friend I may each domestic bliss be chine!
Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine :
Me, let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing Age,
With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,

410
Make Langour 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,

VARIATIONS.
After x 405. in the MS.

And of myself, too, something must I say?
Take then this verse, the trifle of a day.
And if it live, it lives but to commend
The man whose heart has ne'er forgot a Friend,
Or head, an Author: Critic, yet polite
And friend to Learning, yet too wise to write.

5

416

Preserve him social, chearful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he serv'd a QUEEN,
A. Whether that blessing be deny'd or giv'n,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav'n.

Notes. Ver. 417. And just as rich as when he serv'd a Queen.] An honeft compliment to his Friend's real and unaffected disipterestedness, when he was the favourite Physician of Queen Anne.

Ver. 418. A. Wbetber this bleffing, &c.] He makes his friend close the Dialogue with a sentiment very expressive of that religious resignation, which was the Character both of his temper, and his piety.