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
Ἐκλίνθη ἰάχων—

than we do,

Τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰὼν, τὸ δὲ τέτρατον,ἵκετο τέκμωρ,
Aiydc-

Ver. 409. To rock the cradle] This tender image is from the Essays of Montaigne. Mr. Gray was equally remarkable for af fectionate 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 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,
Preserve him social, cheerful, 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.

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.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES

OF

HORACE

IMITATED.

Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur*. HoR.

This motto suited the free and easy manner of Horace; not the more solemn tones of his imitator. Pope told Mr. Spence, that he wrote this Imitation in two mornings, excellent as it is.

56

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 a Divine as Dr. Donne, seemed 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 looked upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they served 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

æquus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis. P.

Few Imitations of Horace are executed with more fidelity and spirit than that of the 1st Sat. of B. i. by Sir Brooke Boothby,

"Had

addressed to his amiable and poetical friend Dr. Darwin. Horace wrote his Satires or Epistles in the same kind of numbers with Virgil's Eneid, it would have been a monstrous impropriety; like hunting the fox or the hare on a war-horse, with the equipage of a General at a review, or in the day of battle. He knew very well, that, in familiar writings, dignity of versification would be quite ridiculous."-Armstrong.