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Where MURRAY (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than TULLY, or than HYDE !
"Rack'd with sciatics, martyr'd with the stone,
Will any mortal let himself alone?

See Ward by batter'd beaus invited over,
And desperate misery lays hold on Dover.
The case is easier in the mind's disease;

55

There all men may be cured, whene'er they please. Would ye be blest? *despise low joys, low gains; Disdain whatever CORNBURY disdains;

Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.

NOTES.

Ver. 60. Would ye be blest?] This amiable young nobleman wrote from Paris, 1752, a very pressing remonstrance to Mr. Mallet, to dissuade him, but in vain, from publishing a very offensive digression on the Old Testament, in Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on History. "I must say to you, Sir, for the world's sake, and for his sake, that part of the work ought by no means to be communicated further. If this digression be made public, it will be censured, it must be censured, it ought to be censured. It will be criticised too by able pens, whose erudition, as well as their reasonings, will not easily be answered." He concludes by saying: "I therefore recommend to you to suppress that part of the work, as a good citizen of the world, for the world's peace, as one intrusted and obliged by Lord Bolingbroke, not to raise storms to his memory." Warton.

Ver. 61. whatever CORNBURY disdains;] When Lord Cornbury returned from his travels, the late Earl of Essex, his brother-inlaw, told him he had got a handsome pension for him. To which Lord Cornbury answered with a composed dignity: "How could you tell, my Lord, that I was to be sold; or, at least, how came you to know my price so exactly?" To this anecdote Pope alludes. Ruffhead. Lord Cornbury, to whom Pope pays so elegant a compliment, was in all respects a most amiable man. He resided for some time at Spa, on account of his health. In a letter from Pope to

VOL. VI.

N

Mrs.

Virtutem verba putes, ut

Lucum ligna? cave ne portus occupet alter:
Ne Cibyratica, ne Bithyna negotia perdas.

NOTES.

Mrs. Price, (which I have been favoured with, by her grandson, Uvedale Price,) he is thus mentioned:

"Pray, Madam, tell my Lord Cornbury I am not worse than he left me, though I have endured some uneasiness since, beside what his indisposition, when I parted, gave me.

"I earnestly wish his return, but not till he can bring himself whole to us, who want honest and able men too much to part with him, &c."

Henry, Viscount Cornbury, was great grandson of the celebrated Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and only son of Henry, Earl of Clarendon and Rochester.

Lord Cornbury acted with the greatest moderation and uprightness in political affairs; though a Tory, and violent in opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, he yet opposed the unconstitutional motion of Sandys, for the removal of that minister, in a manly and sensible speech. See Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, ch. 55. This amiable nobleman died before his father in 1753, without issue, and the title afterwards became extinct.

Bowles.

Ver. 63. art thou one,] Here we have a direct and decisive censure of a celebrated infidel writer; at this time, therefore, which was 1737, Pope was strongly and openly on the side of religion, as he knew the great lawyer to be, to whom he was writing. Horace, it is said, alludes to the words of a dying Hercules in a Greek Tragedy; and Dion Cassius relates, in the twenty-seventh Book of his History, that these were the words which Brutus used just before he stabbed himself, after his defeat at Philippi. But it is observable, that this fact rests solely on the credit of this fawning and fulsome Court historian; and that Plutarch, who treats largely of Brutus, is silent on the subject. If Brutus had adopted this passage, I cannot bring myself to believe, that Horace would so far have forgotten his old republican principles, as to have mentioned the words adopted by the dying patriot, with a mark of reproach and reprobation.

It

' But art thou one, whom new opinions sway, One who believes as Tindal leads the way, Who virtue and a church alike disowns,

65

Thinks that but words, and this but brick and

stones?

Fly "then, on all the wings of wild desire,
Admire whate'er the maddest can admire:

NOTES.

It must be added, to what is said above, of our author's orthodoxy at this time,' that he wrote a very respectful letter to Dr. Waterland, to thank him for his Vindication of the Athanasian Creed, dated October 16, 1737. Which letter was given by Dr. Waterland to Mr. Seed, and was in the possession of Mr. Seed's widow, 1767, who shewed it to Mr. Bowyer, the eminent and learned printer.

Warton.

This attempt of Dr. Warton, to vindicate the orthodoxy of Pope at the expense of his consistency, might have been spared. Pope's religious opinions appear from his Letters to have undergone little or no change; but however they may have varied in other respects, there was one sentiment to which he uniformly and closely adhered that of charity to others, and an abhorrence of what he calls "that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves." To which it must be added, that he was a firm believer in that truly Christian doctrine, that our acceptance in a future state must depend not upon our faith, but upon our conduct, and which he has so strongly expressed in the lines:

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

If Pope therefore wrote a letter expressing his unlimited approbation of the Athanasian Creed, he was guilty of an inconsistency which invalidates all his professions on this subject, and disgraces his character.

Ver. 65. Who virtue and a church alike disowns,] The one he renounces in his party-pamphlets; the other, in his Rights of the Christian Church. Warburton.

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•Mille talenta rotundentur, totidem altera, porrò et
Tertia succedant, et quæ pars quadret acervum.
Scilicet uxorem cum dote, fidemque, et amicos,
Et genus, et formam, regina Pecunia donat;
Ac bene nummatum decorat Suadela, Venusque.
Mancipiis locuples eget aeris Cappadocum rex.
Ne fueris hic tu. 'Chlamydes Lucullus, ut aiunt,
Si posset centum scenæ præbere rogatus,

Qui possum tot? ait: tamen et quæram, et quot habebo

Mittam: pòst paulò scribit, sibi millia quinque Esse domi chlamydum: partem, vel tolleret omnes. "Exilis domus est, ubi non et multa supersunt,

NOTES.

Ver. 77. For, mark] Not imitated with the vigour and energy of the original. This 77th line is uncommonly weak and languid. Three divinities, for such Horace has described them, Pecunia, Suadela, and Venus, conspire in giving their various accomplishments to this favourite of fortune. Warton.

Ver. 85. His wealth] By no means equal to the original: there is so much pleasantry in alluding to the known story of the Prætor coming to borrow dresses (paludamenta) for a chorus in a public spectacle that he intended to exhibit, who asked him to lend him a hundred, says Plutarch; but Lucullus bade him take two hundred. Horace humorously has made it five thousand. We know nothing of Timon, except it be the nobleman introduced in the Epistle to Lord Burlington, ver. 99. There is still another beauty in Horace; he has suddenly, according to his manner, introduced Lucullus speaking; "Qui possum," &c. He is for ever introducing these little interlocutions, which give his Satires and Epistles an air so lively and dramatic. Warton.

Ver. 85. Anstis birth.] Anstis, whom Pope often mentions, was Garter King of Arms.

Bowles.

Ver. 87. Or if three ladies like a luckless play,] The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the

names

Is wealth thy passion? Hence! from pole to pole, Where winds can carry, or where waves can roll, 70 For Indian spices, for Peruvian gold,

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Prevent the greedy, and outbid the bold:

Advance thy golden mountain to the skies;

On the broad base of fifty thousand rise,

Add one round hundred, and (if that's not fair) 75
Add fifty more, and bring it to a square.
For, mark the advantage; just so many score
Will gain a 'wife with half as many more,
Procure her beauty, make that beauty chaste,
And then such "friends-as cannot fail to last. 80
A man of wealth is dubb'd a man of worth,
Venus shall give him form, and Anstis birth.
(Believe me, many a German prince is worse,
Who proud of pedigree, is poor of purse.)
His wealth 'brave Timon gloriously confounds; 85
Ask'd for a groat he gives a hundred pounds;
Or if three ladies like a luckless play,

Takes the whole house upon the poet's day.
"Now, in such exigencies not to need,
Upon my word, you must be rich indeed;

NOTES.

90

names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other trifling circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry; even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been Mr. Pope's purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings.

Warburton.

Notwithstanding this remark of Dr. Warburton, I have taken some pains, though indeed in vain, to ascertain who these ladies were, and what the play they patronised. It was once said to be Young's Busiris. Warton.

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