400

404

No Courts he faw, no suits 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,
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 !
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,
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.

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 feru'd a Queen.) An honest compliment to his friend's real and unaffected disinterestedness, when he was the favourite Physician of Queen Anne.

Ver. 418. A. Whether this bleling, &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.

S A TIRES

AND

E P I S T LES

OF HORA C E

IMITATED.

T HE Occasion of publishing these Imitations

1 was the Clamour rais’d on some of my EpiAles. 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 a Divine as Dr. Donne, seem'd a proof with what indignation and contempt a Chriftian 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 versifyed, 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 ferv'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 vir. tuous nothing is so hateful as à Hypocrite.

Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis. P.