That Vice or Virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

But where th' Extreme of Vice, was ne'er agreed:

Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;

In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.

No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbor further gone than he;
Even those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

Virtuous and vicious every Man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree;
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;
And even the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;

For, Vice or Virtue, Self directs it still;

Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;

But HEAVEN'S great view is One, and that the Whole.
That counterworks each folly and caprice;

That disappoints th' effect of every vice;
That, happy frailties to all ranks applied,
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief:
That, Virtue's ends from Vanity can raise,
Which seeks no int'rest, no reward but praise;
And builds on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory of Mankind.

Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one Man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally

The common int'rest, or endear the tie.

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;

Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign;
Taught half by Reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

Whate'er the Passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,
Not one will change his neighbor with himself.
The learned is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty given,

The poor contents him with the care of Heaven.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king;

The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blest, the poet in his Muse.

See some strange comfort every state attend,
And Pride bestowed on all, a common friend;
See some fit Passion every age supply,
Hope travels thro', nor quits us when we die.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
"Till tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.

Meanwhile Opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense by Pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is given in vain;
Even mean Self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,
"Tis this, Tho' Man's a fool, yet God is WISE.

A DIALOGUE TO THE MEMORY OF MR. ALEXANDER POPE.

BY AUSTIN DOBSON.

[HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON: English poet and biographer; born at Plymouth, England, January 18, 1840. He was educated as a civil engineer, but since 1856 has held a position in the Board of Trade, devoting his leisure hours to literary work. He domesticated the old French stanza form in English verse, and has done much to revive an interest in English art and literature of the eighteenth century. "Vignettes in Rhyme,' ,""At the Sign of the Lyre," and "Proverbs in Porcelain" constitute his chief poetical works. In prose he has written biographies of Bewick, Walpole, Hogarth, Steele, and Goldsmith; "EighteenthCentury Vignettes," etc.]

Poet

I sing of POPE

Friend

Poet

What, POPE, the Twitnam Bard,

Whom Dennis, Cibber, Tibbald pushed so hard!
POPE of the Dunciad! POPE who dared to woo,
And then to libel, Wortley-Montagu!

POPE of the Ham-walks story

Scandals all!

Scandals that now I care not to recall.
Surely a little, in two hundred Years,
One may neglect Contemporary Sneers: -
Surely Allowance for the Man may make
That had all Grub-street yelping in his Wake!
And who (I ask you) has been never Mean,
When urged by Envy, Anger, or the Spleen?
No: I prefer to look on POPE as one
Not rightly happy till his Life was done;
Whose whole Career, romance it as you please,
Was (what he called it) but a "long Disease":
Think of his Lot, his Pilgrimage of Pain,
His "
crazy Carcass" and his restless Brain;
Think of his Night Hours with their Feet of Lead,
His dreary Vigil and his aching Head;
Think of all this, and marvel then to find
The "crooked Body with a crooked Mind!"
Nay, rather marvel that, in Fate's Despite,
You find so much to solace and delight, -
So much of Courage and of Purpose high
In that unequal Struggle not to die.

---

I grant you freely that POPE played his Part
Sometimes ignobly - but he loved his Art;
I grant you freely that he sought his Ends
Not always wisely-but he loved his Friends;
And who of Friends a nobler Roll could show-
Swift, St. John, Bathurst, Marchmont, Peterb'ro',
Arbuthnot-

Poet

(So Hamlet thought)

-

But leave POPE's Life.

Is often not polite

And Hamlet (Sir) was right.
To-day, methinks, we touch
The Work too little and the Man too much.
Take up the Lock, the Satires, Eloise
What Art supreme, what Elegance, what Ease!
How keen the Irony, the Wit how bright,
The Style how rapid, and the Verse how light!
Then read once more, and you shall wonder yet
At Skill, at Turn, at Point, at Epithet.
"True Wit is Nature to Advantage dressed "
Was ever Thought so pithily expressed?
"And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line".
Ah, what a Homily on Yours . . . and Mine!
Or take to choose at Random-take but This
"Ten censure wrong for one that writes amiss."

Friend

Packed and precise, no doubt. Yet surely those
Are but the Qualities we ask of Prose.
Was he a POET?

Poet

Yes: if that be what Byron was certainly and Bowles was not; Or say you grant him, to come nearer Date, What Dryden had, that was denied to Tate Friend

Poet

Which means, you claim from him the Spark divine,
Yet scarce would place him on the highest Line

True, there are Classes.

POPE was most of all

Akin to Horace, Persius, Juvenal;

POPE was, like them, the Censor of his Age,

An Age more suited to Repose than Rage;

When Rhyming turned from Freedom to the Schools,

And shocked with License, shuddered into Rules;
When Phoebus touched the Poet's trembling Ear
With one supreme Commandment Be thou Clear;
When Thought meant less to reason than compile,
And the Muse labored . . . chiefly with the File.
Beneath full Wigs no Lyric drew its Breath
As in the Days of great ELIZABETH;

And to the Bards of ANNA was denied

The Note that Wordsworth heard on Duddon side.
But POPE took up his Parable, and knit
The Woof of Wisdom with the Warp of Wit;
He trimmed the Measure on its equal Feet,
And smoothed and fitted till the Line was neat;
He taught the Pause with due Effect to fall;
He taught the Epigram to come at Call;

You like your Iliad in the Prose of Bohn,-
Tho' if you'd learn in Prose how Homer sang,
"Twere best to learn of Butcher and of Lang, -
Suppose you say your Worst of POPE, declare
His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre,
His Art but Artifice -I ask once more
Where have you seen such Artifice before?
Where have you seen a Parterre better graced,
Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?
Where can you show, among your Names of Note,
So much to copy and so much to quote?
And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse,
A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?

So I, that love the old Augustan Days
Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase;
That like along the finished Line to feel
The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel;
That like my Couplet as Compact as Clear;
That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe,
Unmixed with Bathos and unmarred by Trope,
I fling my Cap for Polish- and for POPE!