Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, 285 290 Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! NOTES. Ver. 295, 296. Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend ;] 295 When a great genius, whose writings have afforded the world much pleasure and instruction, happens to be enviously attacked, or falsely accused, it is natural to think, that a sense of gratitude for so agreeable an obligation, or a sense of that honour resulting 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 shews us the very contrary. Some take a malignant satisfaction in the attack; others a foolish pleasure in a literary conflict; and the far greater part look on with a selfish indifference. Horace warned his friend against this excessive selfishness, not to say, baseness of mind: Ut penitùs notum, si tentent crimina, serves, A late imitator of Horace, in the manner of Mr. Pope, has turned this with great elegance and spirit; which, because it so well suits the occasion, I shall here transcribe : But should the man in whom (rare union!) shine Whose 300 Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say, NOTES. Whose modest manners virtue's sel' approves, The proud, the bigotted, the dull, the vain, Till bursting through the cloud, wth brightening ray 18 E. 1 1. mitated by Mr. Neville. Ver. 299. Who to the Dean, and silvr bell, &c.] Meaning the man who would have persuaded the Duke of Chandos that Mr. Pope meant him in those circumstance ridiculed in the Epistle on Taste. See Mr. Pope's letter to the Earl of Burlington concerning this matter. Pope. Ver. 305. Let Sporus tremble-] Laguage cannot afford more glowing or more forcible terms to exprss the utmost bitterness of contempt. We think we are here reaing Milton against Salmasius. The raillery is carried to the ery verge of railing, some will say ribaldry. He has armed his nuse with a scalping knife. The portrait is certainly over-charged for Lord H., for whom it was designed, whatever his morals miht be, had yet considerable abilities, though marred by affectation Some of his speeches in parliament were much beyond florid inpotence. They were, it is true, in favour of Sir R. Walpole; and this was sufficiently offensive to Pope. The fact that paricularly excited his indigna tion Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? NOTES. tion, was Lord H.'s Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity (Dr. Sherwin) from a Nobleman at Hampton Court, 1733; as well as his having been concerned with Lady M. W. M. in Verses to the Imitator of Horace, 1732 This lady's beauty, wit, genius, and travels, of which she gave an account in a series of elegant and entertaining letters, very characteristical of the manners of the Turks, and of which many are addressed to Pope, are well known, and justly celebrated. With both noble personages had Pope lived in a state of intimacy. And justice obligeth us to confess that he was the aggressor in the quarrel with them; as he first assaulted and affronted Lord H. by these two lines in his Imitation of the first Satire of Honce's second Book: The lines are wak, another's pleas'd to say; And Lady M. W. M., by the eighty-third line of the same piece, too gross to be here repated. But can this be the noleman (we are apt to ask) whom Middleton, in his Dedication tothe History of the Life of Tully, has so seriously and so earnestl praised, for his strong good sense, his consummate politeness, lis real patriotism, his rigid temperance, his thorough knowledgeand defence of the laws of his country, his accurate skill in histcy, his unexampled and unremitted diligence in literary pursuits who added credit to this very history, as Scipio and Lælius dido that of Polybius, by revising and correcting it; and brightenig it, as he expresses it, by the strokes of his pencil? The man hat had written this splendid encomium on Lord H. could not, we may imagine, be very well affected to the bard who had painte Lord Fanny in so ridiculous a light. We find him writing the to Dr. Warburton, January 7, 1740: "You have evinced the othodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles; but, like the old commentatorson his Homer, will be thought perhaps, in some places, to have fand a meaning for him, that he himself never dreamt of. However, if you did not find him a philosopher, you will make him one; for he will be wise enough to take the benefit 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 In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. NOTES. benefit of your reading, and make his future Essays more clear and consistent." Warton. Ver. 306. white curd] Lord Hervey, to prevent the attacks of an epilepsy, persisted in a strict regimen of daily food, which was a small quantity of ass's milk and a flour biscuit, with an apple once a week; and he used a little paint to soften his ghastly appearance. Warton. I must refer the reader to Mr. Coxe's humane and manly sentiments upon this occasion. Coxe's Walpole, oct. edit. vol. ii. P. 164. Bowles. Ver. 307. can Sporus feel?] In the first edition, Pope had the name "Paris," instead of Sporus; it seems a more suitable There is, I believe, no account why it was altered. name. Ver. 319.] See Milton, book iv. Pope. Bowles. Ver. 322. or blasphemies.] In former editions these two lines followed immediately: VOL. VI. Did ever smock-face act so vile a part ? A trifling head, and a corrupted heart. G 325 His wit all seesaw, between that and this, 335 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, NOTES. 340 Ver. 340. That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,] His merit in this will appear very great, if we consider, that in this walk he had all the advantages which the most 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 send you two or three poems of Mr. Pope, the best poet of England, and at present of all the world. I hope you are acquainted enough with the English tongue, to be sensible of all the charms of his works. For my part, I look upon his poem called the Essay on Criticism as superior to the Art of Poetry of Horace; and his Rape of the Lock is, in my opinion, above the Lutrin of Despreaux. I never saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle graces, so great variety, so much wit, and so refined knowledge of |