To please his Mistress, one aspers'd his life; 376 NOTES. 380 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. Ver. 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. He also published that he libelled the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr. P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from any great Man whatsoever. P. Ver. 378. Let Budgel] Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Mr. Tindal, in the Grubstreet Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Author. P. Ver. 379. except his Will;] Alluding to Tindal's Will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgel, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. P. Ver. 381. His father, mother, &c.] In some of Curl'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 dropped 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 Yet why? That Father held it for a rule, That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore: If there be force in Virtue, or in Song. Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause While yet in Britain Honour had applause), 386 NOTES. sole Heiress married the Earl of Lindsay.-His Mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq. of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family.-Mr. Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few weeks after this Poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their Monument in the parish of Twickenham in Middlesex: D. O. M. ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO. QUI. VIXIT. ANNOS. LXXV. OB. MDCCXVII. Ver. 388. Of gentle blood] When Mr. Pope published the notes on the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, giving an account of his family, Mr. Pottinger, a relation of his, observed, that his cousin Pope had made himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered where he got it; that he had never heard any thing himself of their being descended from the Earls of Downe; and, what is more, he had an old maiden aunt, equally related, a great genealogist, who was always talking of her family, but never mentioned this circumstance; on which she certainly would not have been silent, had she known any thing of it. Mr. Pope's grandfather was a clergyman of the church of England in Hampshire. ?_ Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray? P. Their own, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne. 390 396 The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. 400 404 Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than I. VARIATIONS. After Ver. 405 in the MS. And of myself, too, something must I say? And if it live, it lives but to commend The man whose heart has ne'er forgot a Friend, And friend to Learning, yet too wise to write. NOTES. He placed his son, Mr. Pope's father, with a merchant at Lisbon, where he became a convert to Popery. (Thus far Dr. Bolton, late Dean of Carlisle, a friend of Pope; from Mr. Pottinger.) The burying-place and monuments of the family of the Popes, Earls of Downe, is at Wroxton, Oxfordshire. The Earl of Guildford says, that he has seen and examined the pedigrees and descents of that family, and is sure that there were then none of the name of Pope left, who could be descended from that family.(From John Loveday, of Caversham, Esquire.) 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, With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath, 410 Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death, NOTES. Ver. 408. Me, let the tender office] These exquisite lines give us a very interesting picture of the exemplary filial piety of our Author! There is a pensive and pathetic sweetness in the very flow of them. The eye that has been wearied and oppressed by the harsh and austere colouring of some of the preceding passages, turns away with pleasure from these asperities, and reposes with complacency on the soft tints of domestic tenderness. We are naturally gratified to see men descending from their heights, into the familiar offices of common life; and the sensation is the more pleasing to us, because admiration is turned into affection. In the very entertaining Memoirs of the Life of Racine (published by his son) we find no passage more amusing and interesting, than where that great Poet sends an excuse to Monsieur, the Duke, who had earnestly invited him to dine at the Hotel de Conde, because he had promised to partake of a great fish that his children had got for him, and he could not think of disappointing them. Melancthon appeared in an amiable light, when he was seen holding a book in one hand, and attentively reading, and with the other, rocking the cradle of his infant child. And we read with more satisfaction, - οὗ παιδὸς ὀρέξατο φαίδιμος Εκτωρ. *Αψ δ' ὁ πάϊς πρὸς κόλπον ἐϋζώνοιο τιθήνης than we do, Τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰὼν, τὸ δὲ τέτρατον,ἵκετο τέκμωρ, Ver. 409. To rock the cradle] This tender image is from the Essays of Montaigne. Mr. Gray was equally remarkable for affectionate attention to his aged mother; so was Ariosto. Pope's mother was a sister of Cooper's wife, the very celebrated miniature painter. Lord Carleton had a portrait of Cooper, in crayons, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And just as rich as when he serv'd a QUEEN. 416 which Mrs. Pope said was not very like; and which, descending to Lord Burlington, was given by his Lordship to Kent. "I have a drawing," says Mr. Walpole, "of Pope's father, as he lay dead in his bed, by his brother-in-law, Cooper." It was Mr. Pope's. Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iii. p. 115. Ver. 417. And just as rich as when he serv'd a QUEEN.] An honest compliment to his Friend's real and unaffected disinterestedness, when he was the favourite Physician of Queen Anne. W. |