Content with little, I can piddle here Fortune not much of humbling me can boast; gone; 155 I'll hire another's; is not that my own, And yours, my friends ? through whose free op’ning gate None comes too early, none departs too late ; (For I, who hold fage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going Guest.) 160 Pray NOTES. Ver. 154. Standing Armies came.] A constant topic of declamation against the court, at this time. WARTON. The outcry was equally violent against the Excise, and no lesa unjustly. See Cose's Memoirs, ch. 41. Nam proprie telluris herum natura neque illum, Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofelli NOTES. Ver. 160. Welcome the coming,] From Homer, Od. b. 15. v. 74. χρη ξεινον παρεούλα φιλειν, εθελονια δε πεμπτον. Theocritus has finely touched this subject in the fixteenth Idyllium. WARTON. VER. 165 Wel, if the use be mine, &c.] In a letter to this Vir. Bethel, of March 20, 1743, he says, “ My Landlady, Mrs. Vernon, being dead, this Garden and House are offered me in sale ; and, I believe, (together with the cottages on each fide my grass plot next the Thames,) will come at about a thousand pounds. If I thought any very particular friend would be pleased to live in it after my death, (for, as it is, it serves all my purposes as well, during life,) I would parchase it ; and more particularly could I hope two things; that the friend who should like it, was so much younger and healthier than myself, as to have a prospect of its continuing his, fome years longer than I can of its continuing mine. But most of those I love are travelling out of the world, not into it; and unless I have such a view given me, I have no vanity nor pleasure that does not stop short of the Grave.”-So that we see (what some who call themselves his friends would not believe) his thoughts in prose and verse were the same. WARBURTON. Ver. 171-2. Or in pure equity, (the case not clear,) The Chanc'ry takes your rents for twenty year:] A Protestant Miser's money in Chancery, and a Catholic Miser's person in Purgatory, are never to be got out, till the Law and the Church have been well paid for their redemption. WARFURTON. VER. 175. that to Bacon could] Gorhambury, near St. Al. ban's, a fine and venerable old manfion. WARTON Pope, with his usual proneness to invective, alludes to a very respectable nobleman, William, first Lord Grimfione. Pray Heav'n it last! (cries Swift) as you go on “ I wish to God this house had been your own: Pity! to build, without a son or wife: “ Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life.” Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, 165 Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon? What's “ Property ? dear Swift! you see it alter From you to me, from me to 'Peter Walter ; Or, in a mortgage, prove a Lawyer's share; Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir ; 170 Or, in pure ' equity, (the case not clear,) The Chanc'ry takes your rents for twenty year : At best, it falls to some s ungracious son, Who cries, “My father's damn’d, and all's my own.” Shades, that to BACON could retreat afford, 175 Become the portion of a booby Lord; And Hemsley, once proud Buckingham's delight, Slides to a Scriv’ner or a city Knight. i Let lands and houses have what. Lords they will, Let Us be fix'd, and our own masters still. 180 NOTES. VER. 177. And Hemsley,] Helmsley, in Yorkshire. Ver. 1;7proud Buckingham's, &c.] Villiers Duke of Buck. ingham. PoPB. . This imitation appears to me, the least successfully polished and pointed of any he has attempted. The observations, indeed, are not very striking in the original ; and as to Pope, if Bethel always " spoke what he thought, and always thought as he ought,” we cannot be impressed with the Sageness of his remarks. The chief merit of Horace is the language, and in this respect Pope has followed him with much lefs success than he has done in his other Imitations. |