When truth or virtue an affront endures, Th' affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. P. So proud, I am no slave; So impudent, I own myself no knave; When black ambition stains a public cause, A monarch's sword when mad vainglory draws, Not Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar, Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star. Not so when, diadem'd with rays divine, Touch'd with the flame that breaks from virtue's shrine, Her priestess muse forbids the good to die, There other trophies deck the truly brave Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw, When truth stands trembling on the edge of law. Here, last of Britons! let your names be read; Are none, none living? let me praise the dead; And for that cause which made your fathers shine, Fall by the votes of their degenerate line. F. Alas! alas! pray end what you began, And write next winter more Essays on Man. 8 See note 4, p. 50. 1 Bishop of Worcester. 9 Kent and Grafton. ON RECEIVING FROM THE RIGHT HONOUR ABLE THE LADY FRANCES SHIRLEY A STANDISH AND TWO PENS1 YES, I beheld th' Athenian queen Secure the radiant weapons wield; Aw'd, on my bended knees I fell, 6 What well? what weapon? (Flavia cries) A standish, steel, and golden pen! It came from Bertrand's,2 not the skies; 1 These lines were occasioned by the poet's being threatened with a prosecution in the House of Lords, for writing the two foregoing Dialogues. 2 A toy-shop at Bath. 'But, friend, take heed whom you attack; 'You'd write as smooth again on glass, As not to stick at fool or ass, 'Athenian queen! and sober charms! 'Come, if you'll be a quiet soul, CELIA, we know, is sixty-five, Yet Celia's face is seventeen; How cruel Celia's fate! who hence Too pretty for our reverence, Too ancient for our gallantry. What god, what mortal shall prevent thy fall? Through clouds of passion P's* views are clear; He foams a patriot to subside a peer; 1 "I shall here," says Dr. Warton, "present the reader with a valuable literary curiosity, a Fragment of an unpublished Satire of Pope, entitled, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty; communicated to me by the kindness of the learned and worthy Dr. Wilson, formerly fellow and librarian of Trinity College, Dublin; who speaks of the Fragment in the following terms: "This poem I transcribed from a rough draft in Pope's own hand. He left many blanks for fear of the Argus eye of those who, if they cannot find, can fabricate treason; yet, spite of his precaution, it fell into the hands of his enemies. To the hieroglyphics there are direct allusions, I think, in some of the notes on the Dunciad. It was lent me by a grandson of Lord Chetwynd, an intimate friend of the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who gratified his curiosity by a boxful of the rubbish and sweepings of Pope's study, whose executor he was, in conjunction with Lord Marchmont.'" But see Memoir prefixed to these volumes, p. cxiv. 2 Britain. 8 Cobham. 4 Pulteney's. |