Who can your merit selfishly approve,

And shew the sense of it without the love;

Who has the vanity to call you friend,

295

300

Yet wants the honour, injur'd to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Cannons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction Lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
Let Sporus tremble-A. What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk?

NOTES.

306

Ver. 299. 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.

Ver. 305. Let Sporus tremble] Language cannot afford more glowing or more forcible terms to express the utmost bitterness of contempt. We think we are here reading Milton against Salmasius. The raillery is carried to the very verge of railing, some will say ribaldry. He has armed his muse with a scalping knife. The portrait is certainly overcharged: for Lord H. for whom it was designed, whatever his morals might be, had yet considerable abilities, though marred by affectation. Some of his speeches in parliament were much beyond florid impotence. They were, it is true, in favour of Sir R. Walpole; and this was sufficiently offensive to Pope. The fact that particularly excited his indignation, was Lord H.'s Epistle to a Doctor of Divinty (Dr. Sherwin) from a Nobleman at Hampton Court, 1733; as well as his having been concerned with Lady M. W. M. in Verses to the Imitator of Horace, 1732. This Lady's beauty, wit, genius, and travels, of which she gave an account in a series of elegant and entertaining letters, very characteristical of

Satire or Sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

NOTES.

the manners of the Turks, and of which many are addressed to Pope; are well known, and justly celebrated. With both noble personages had Pope lived in a state of intimacy. And justice obligeth us to confess that he was the aggressor in the quarrel with them: as he first assaulted and affronted Lord H. by these two lines in his Imitation of the first Satire of Horace's second Book :

The lines are weak, another's pleas'd to say,

Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.

And Lady M. W. M. by the eighty-third line of the same piece, too gross to be here repeated.

It is a singular circumstance, that our Author's indignation was so vehement and inexhaustible, that it furnished him with another invective, of equal power, in prose, which is to be found at the end of the third volume, containing his Letters. The reader that turns to it, page 328 (for it is too long to be here inserted, and too full of matter to be abridged), will find, that it abounds in so many new strokes of sarcasm, in so many sudden and repeated blows, that he does not allow the poor devoted peer a moment's breathing-time:

Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra ;
Nec mora, nec requies; quam multa grandine nimbi
Culminibus crepitant; sic densis ictibus heros

Creber utraque manu pulsat, versatque.

It is indeed a master-piece of invective, and perhaps excels the character of Sporus itself, capital as that is, above-quoted: who, however, would wish to be the author of such a cutting invective? But can this be the nobleman (we are apt to ask) whom Middleton, in his Dedication to the History of the Life of Tully, has so seriously and so earnestly praised, for his strong good sense, his consummate politeness, his real patriotism, his rigid temperance, his thorough knowledge and defence of the laws of his country, his accurate skill in history, his unexampled and unremitted diligence in literary pursuits, who added credit to this very history, as Scipio and Lælius did to that of Polybius, by revising and correcting it; and brightening it, as he expresses it, by the strokes of his pencil? The man that had

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; 310
Whose buz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

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 froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,

In

puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.

NOTES.

320

written this splendid encomium on Lord H. could not, we may imagine, be very well affected to the bard who had painted Lord Fanny in so ridiculous a light. We find him writing thus to Dr. Warburton, January 7, 1740: "You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles; but, like the old commentators on his Homer, will be thought perhaps, in some places, to have found a meaning for him, that he himself never dreamt of. However, if you did not find him a philosopher, you will make him one; for he will be wise enough to take the benefit of your reading, and make his future Essays more clear and consistent."

Ver. 306. white curd] Methinks this was too personal. Lord Hervey, to prevent the attacks of an epilepsy, persisted in a strict regimen of daily food, which was a small quantity of asses milk and a flour biscuit, with an apple once a week; and he used a little paint to soften his ghastly appearance.

Ver. 308. upon a wheel?] It ought to be the wheel. The indefinite article is used for the definite.

Ver. 319. See Milton, Book iv. P.

Ver. 322. or blasphemies.] In former editions these two lines followed immediately:

Did ever Smock-face act so vile a part,
A trifling head, and a corrupted heart.

His wit all sea-saw, between that and this,

Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile Antithesis.

Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest,

325

330

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile; Be one Poet's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways:
That Flatt'ry, ev'n to Kings, he held a shame,
And thought a Lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his song:

335

340

NOTES.

Ver. 340. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,] His merit in this will appear very great, if we consider, that in this walk he had all the advantages which the most poetic Imagination could give to a great Genius. M. Voltaire, in a MS. letter now before me, writes thus from England to a friend in Paris : "I intend to send you two or three poems of Mr. Pope, the best Poet of England, and at present of all the world. I hope you are acquainted enough with the English tongue, to be sensible of all the charms of his works. For my part, I look upon his poem called the Essay on Criticism as superior to the Art of Poetry of Horace; and his Rape of the Lock is, in my opinion, above the Lutrin of Despreaux. I never saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle graces, so great variety, so much wit, and so refined knowledge of the world, as in this little performance." MS. Lett. Oct. 15, 1726. W.

That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit ;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;

345

350

NOTES.

Ver. 341. But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his song:] This may be said no less in commendation of his literary, than of his moral character. And his superior excellence in poetry is owing to it. He soon discovered in what his force lay; and he made the best of that advantage, by a sedulous cultivation of his proper talent. For having read Quintilian early, this precept did not escape him, Sunt hæc duo vitanda prorsus: unum ne tentes quod effici non possit; alterum, ne ab eo, quod quis optime facit, in aliud, cui minus est idoneus, transferas. It was in this knowledge and cultivation of his genius that he had principally the advantage of his great master, Dryden ; who, by his Mac-Flecno, his Absalom and Achitophel, but chiefly by his Prologues and Epilogues, appears to have had great talents for this species of moral poetry; but, unluckily, he seemed neither to understand nor attend to it. W.

Ibid. 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. W.

Ver. 343. He stood the furious foe,] Stood, improperly used for withstood.

Ver. 350. The tale reviv'd,] Formerly, "The tales of vengeance."

Ver. 350. the lie so oft o'erthrown,] As, that he received subscriptions for Shakspeare, that he set his name to Mr. Broome's verses, &c. which, though publicly disproved, were nevertheless