Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear,

285

Or from the foft-ey'd Virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Infults fall'n worth, or Beauty in distress,
Who loves a Lye, lame flander helps about,
Who writes a Libel, or who copies out :
That Fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet abfent, wounds an author's honeft fame:
Who can your merit felfifhly approve,

And show the sense of it without the love

NOTES.

290

derstood. He was not mistaken. This fourth book, the moft studied and highly finished of all his Poems, was esteemed obfcure (a name, which, in excefs of modefty, the Reader gives to what he does not understand) and but a faint imitation, by fome common hand, of the other three. He had, himself, the malicious pleasure to hear this judgment paffed on his favourite Work by feveral of his Acquaintance; a pleasure more to his tafte than the flatteries they used to entertain him with, and were then intentionally paying him. Of which he gave me another instance, that afforded him much diverfion. While these acquaintance read the Essay on Man as the work of an unknown author, they fairly owned they did not understand it: but when the reputation of the poem became fecured by the knowledge of the Writer, it foon grew fo clear and intelligible, that, on the appearance of the Comment on it, they told him, they wondered the Editor fhould think a large and minute interpretation neceffary.

VER. 293.felfifhy approve,] Because to deny, or pretend not to fee, a well established merit, would impeach his own heart or understanding.

VER. 294. And show the fenfe of it without the love;] i. e. will never fuffer the admiration of an excellence to produce any efteem for him, to whom it belongs.

Who has the vanity to call you friend,

295

Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lye not, must at least betray :
Who to the Dean, and filver bell can fwear,
And fees at Cannons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a luft to misapply,
Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction Lye.
A lash like mine no honeft man fhall dread,
But all fuch babling blockheads in his stead.

300

Let Sporus tremble—A. What? that thing of filk, Sporus, that mere white curd of Afs's milk? 306 Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

NOTES.

VER. 295. Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour injur'd to defend ;] When a great Genius, whose writings have afforded the world much pleasure and inftruction, happens to be enviously attacked, or falfely accused, it is natural to think, that a fenfe of gratitude for fo agreeable an obligation, or a sense of that honour refulting to our Country from such a Writer, should raise amongst those who call themselves his friends, a pretty general indignation. But every day's experience fhews us the very contrary. Some take a malignant fatisfaction in the attack; others a foolish pleasure in a literary conflict; and the far greater part look on with a felfifh indifference.

VER. 299. Who to the Dean, and filver bell, &c.] Meaning the man who would have perfuaded the Duke of Chandos that Mr. P. meant him in those circumstances ridiculed in the Epiftle on Tafte. See Mr. Pope's Letter to the Earl of Burlington concerning this matter.

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz 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,

way.

311

315

As fhallow ftreams run dimpling all the
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet fqueaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad,

Half froth, half venom, fpits himself abroad, 320
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or fpite, or smut, or rhymes, or blafphemies.
His wit all fee-faw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now mafter up, now mifs,
And he himself one vile Antithefis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,

NOTES.

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

326

VER. 320. Half froth,] Alluding to thofe frothy excretions, called by the people, Toad-fpits, feen in fummer-time hanging upon plants, and emitted by young infects which lie hid in the midft of them, for their prefervation, while in their helpless. fate.

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 reft,

331 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will truft, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the duft.

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool, 335 Not proud, nor fervile; 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 Lye in verfe or prose the same. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long, 340 But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his fong:

NOTES.

VER. 340. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,] His merit in this will appear very great, if we confider, that in this walk he had all the advantages which the moft 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 fend you two or three poems of Mr. Pope, the

beft poet of England, and at prefent of all the world. I hope "you are acquainted enough with the English tongue, to be fenfible of all the charms of his works. For my part, I look upon his poem called the Essay on Criticism as fuperior to "the Art of poetry of Horace; and his Rape of the Lock is, in 66 my opinion, above the Lutrin of Defpreaux. I never faw

66

fo amiable an imagination, fo gentle graces, fo great variety, "so much wit, and fo refined knowledge of the world, as in * this little performance." MS. Let. Oct. 15, 1726.

VER. 341. But floop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd bis fong:] This

345

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 diftant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lye fo oft o'erthrown,

Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;

NOTES.

350

may be faid no lefs in commendation of his literary, than of his moral character. And his fuperior excellence in poetry is owing to it. He foon discovered in what his force lay; and he made the best of that advantage, by a fedulous cultivation of his proper talent. For having read Quintilian early, this precept did not escape him, Sunt hæc duo vitanda prorfus: unum ne tentes quod effici non poffit; alterum, ne ab eo, quod quis optime facit, in aliud, cui minus eft idoneus, transferas. It was in this knowledge and cultivation of his genius that he had principally the advantage of his great mafter, Dryden; who, by his MacFlecno, his Abfolom and Achitophel, but chiefly by his Prologues and Epilogues, appears to have had great talents for this fpecies of moral poetry; but, unluckily, he feem'd neither to understand nor attend to it.

Ibid. But ftcop'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.

VER. 350. the lye fo oft oe'rthrown] As, that he received fubfcriptions for Shakespear, that he fet his name to Mr. Broome's verfes, &c. which, tho' publicly disproved were nevertheless fhamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epiftle. P.