Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile, 285 290 Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbor's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress, Who loves a lie, lame slanders helps about, Who writes a libel, or who copies out; That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name, Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame; Who can your merit selfishly approve, And show the sense of it without the love; Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honor, injured, to defend; Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say, And, if he lie not, must at least betray: 295 300 Who to the 'dean' and 'silver bell' can swear, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk? 305 305 Let Sporus tremble. Lord Hervey, whom Pope conceived to have joined lady M. Montague in lampooning him. Middleton (Life of Cicero) describes lord Hervey as an intelligent and polished nobleman, steadily patriotic in his views, and remarkable for his literary ardor. Yet we may fairly make Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. As shallow streams run dimpling all the way; 315 And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, 320 Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 325 331 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. some deduction for the language of a preface, and still more for the language of a man like Middleton. In his first edition, Pope had used the more becoming name of Paris: no reason but its bitterness has been assigned for the change. 335 340 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 pleased, he pleased by manly ways; That flattery, 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 moralised his song; 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 revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown, The imputed trash, and dulness not his own; The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape, The libell'd person, and the pictured shape; 345 350 340 That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long. Warburton gives him credit for this, as a sacrifice to virtue: perhaps it was also a sacrifice to fashion. Didactic writing was the taste of the day: yet, who but must lament that the poetry of Pope should have been so often wasted on attempting to teach that which never was to be taught by poetry? Who can learn religion, morals, or public duties, by verse? The rigid realities of life are beyond the sphere of poetry: its region is fancy, its impulses are the feelings, and its purposes the pleasures of the mind: but the French taste, always the reverse of nature, was the taste of the time; and where Boileau was the model, the exquisite beauties of Shakspeare and Spenser were naturally forgotten. 353 The pictured shape. All the praises of his poetry could not reconcile Pope to the sense of his deformed figure. Warton, on the authority of Hay, (Essay on Deformity) says that Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread, every state; 355 The whisper, that to greatness still too near, 365 370 Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply? Pope reckoned the caricatures of his person among his 'most atrocious injuries.' 355 A friend in exile. The bishop of Rochester, Dr. Atterbury. 363 Sporus at court. In former editions, 'Glaucus at court.' 378 Let Budgell. Budgell, in a weekly pamphlet, called 'The Bee,' bestowed much abuse on him, in the imagination that 380 Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse If there be force in virtue or in song. 386 Of gentle blood (part shed in honor's cause, And better got, than Bestia's from the throne. 390 396 The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. 400 he wrote some things about the last will of Dr. Tindal, in the 'Grub-street Journal;' a paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowlege of its author.-Pope. 379 Except his will. Eustace Budgell was charged with forging Tindal the infidel's will. Bowles gives the passage thus:'I, Matthew Tindal, &c. give and bequeathe to Eustace Budgell the sum of £2100, that his great talents may serve his country, &c., my strong box, my diamond ring,' &c. Tindal's nephew, a clergyman, and author of the Continuation of Rapin,' impeached the will. The charge was generally credited, and Budgell soon after threw himself into the Thames. |