Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

EPISTLE

TO

DR. ARBUTHNOT.

This Epistle was first published in folio, 1734, with the following motto:

Neque sermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in præmiis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant, sed loquentur tamen. TULLY.

[blocks in formation]

ADVERTISEMENT

ΤΟ THE

FIRST PUBLICATION OF THIS EPISTLE.

THIS paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some Persons of Rank and Fortune [the Authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton-Court] to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my Writings (of which, being public, the Public is judge) but my Person, Morals, and Family, whereof, to those who knew me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth and the Sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have

4

for the most part spared their Names, and they may escape being laughed at, if they please.

I would have some of them know, it was owing to the request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs, as they have done of mine. However, I shall have this advantage, and honour, on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless Character can never be found out, but by its truth and likeness.

Lady Wortley Montague begins her Address to Mr. Pope, on his Imitation of the 1st Satire of the Second Book of Horace, in these words:

"In two large columns, on thy motley page,
Where Roman wit is strip'd with English rage;
Where ribaldry to satire makes pretence,
And modern scandal rolls with ancient sense :
Whilst on one side we see how Horace thought,
And on the other how he never wrote:
Who can believe, who view the bad and good,
That the dull copyist better understood
That spirit he pretends to imitate,

Than heretofore the Greek he did translate?
Thine is just such an image of his pen
As thou thyself art of the sons of men ;
Where our own species in burlesque we trace,
A sign-post likeness of the noble race,
That is at once resemblance and disgrace.
Horace can laugh, is delicate, is clear;
You only coarsely rail, or darkly sneer:
His style is elegant, his diction pure,
Whilst none thy crabbed numbers can endure,
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.

« PredošláPokračovať »