Has life no fourness, drawn so near its end?
Can'st thou endure a foe, forgive a friend?
Has age but melted the rough parts away,
As winter-fruits grow mild ere they decay ?
Or will you think, my friend, your bus'ness done,
When, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one? 321

* Learn to live well, or fairly make your will ; You've play'd, and lov'd, and eat, and drank your

fill : Walk fober off; before a sprightlier age Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage : Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, 326 Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please*.

NOTES.

VER. 326. Leave such to trifte] It, perhaps, might have been better to have omitted these two lait lines : the second of which has a quaint and modern turn ; and the humour consists in being driven off the stage, potum largius equo. The word lufsi in the Original, is used in a loose and naughty sense, says Upton. As also l. 4. 13. Od. and in Propertius, populus lusit Erichonius."

WARTON.

SA und it,

this
ft refus)
eth, Dr.
id shewn it

ES
llory, or near
rpose, our Poe

r three Satires
DR. J Or three of B.) ONNE,

he much a

Acade
DEAN 01c lang PAUL'S,

little,
VERStirIED.

Quid vetat et nofmet Lucili fcripta legentes
Quærere, num illius, num rerum dura negârit
Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes
Mallius?

Hor.

THE wit, the vigour, and the honesty of Mr. Pope's Satiric Writings had raised a great clamour against him, as if the Supplement, as he calls it, to the Public Laws, was a violation of morality and society. In answer to this charge he had it in his purpose to Thew, that two of the most respectable characters in the modest and virtuous age of Elizabeth, Dr. Donne and Bishop Hall, had . arraigned Vice publicly, and shewn it in stronger colours, tlian he had done, whether they found it,

“ On the Pillory, or near the Throne. In pursuance of this purpose, our Poet hath admirably versified, as he expresses it, two or three Satires of Dr. Donne. He intended to have given two or three of Bishop Hall's likewise, whose force and claffical elegance he much admired; but as Hall was a better versifier, and, as a mere Academic, had not his vein vitiated like Donne's, by the fantastic language of Courts, Mr. Pope's purpose was only to correct a little, and smooth the versification. In the first edition of Hall's Satires, which was in Mr. Pope's library, we find that long Satire, called the First of the Sixtb Book, corrected throughout, and the versification mended for his use. He intitles it, in the beginning of his corrections, by the name of Sat. Opt. This writer, Hall, fell under a severe examiner of his wit and reasoning, in the famous Milton. For Hall, a little before the unhappy breach between Charles I. and the long Parliament, having written in defence of Episcopacy, Milton, who first set out an advocate for Presbytery, thought fit to take Hall's defence to task. And as he rarely gave quarter to his adversaries, from the Bishop's theologic writings, he fell upon his Poetry. But a tronger proof of the excellency of these Satires can hardly be given, than that all he could find to cavil at, was the title to the three first Books, which Hall, ridiculously enough, calls Toothless Satire : on this, for want of better hold, Milton faftens, and sufficiently mumbles. WARBURTON.

Dryden was the first who recommended the plan pursued by Pope, in rendering Donne more harmonious, and who says, if his fatires were translated into numbers, they would be admired.