335 340 Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool, Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool, Not proud nor servile; be one poet's praise, That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways; That flattery, ev'n to kings, he held a shame, And thought a lie in verse or prose the same; That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long, But stoop'd to truth, and moralised his song; That not for fame, but virtue's better end, He stood the furious foe, the timid friend, The damning critic, half-approving wit, The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit; Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had, The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad; The distant threats of vengeance on his head, The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed; The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown, The imputed trash, and dulness not his own; The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape, The libell'd person, and the pictured shape; 345 350 340 That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long. Warburton gives him credit for this, as a sacrifice to virtue: perhaps it was also a sacrifice to fashion. Didactic writing was the taste of the day: yet, who but must lament that the poetry of Pope should have been so often wasted on attempting to teach that which never was to be taught by poetry? Who can learn religion, morals, or public duties, by verse? The rigid realities of life are beyond the sphere of poetry: its region is fancy, its impulses are the feelings, and its purposes the pleasures of the mind: but the French taste, always the reverse of nature, was the taste of the time; and where Boileau was the model, the exquisite beauties of Shakspeare and Spenser were naturally forgotten. 353 The pictured shape. All the praises of his poetry could not reconcile Pope to the sense of his deformed figure. Warton, on the authority of Hay, (Essay on Deformity) says that Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread, 355 359 The whisper, that to greatness still too near, He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own. 365 370 Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply? Pope reckoned the caricatures of his person among his 'most atrocious injuries.' 355 A friend in exile. The bishop of Rochester, Dr. Atterbury. 363 Sporus at court. In former editions, Glaucus at court.' 378 Let Budgell. Budgell, in a weekly pamphlet, called 'The Bee,' bestowed much abuse on him, in the imagination that 380 Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse If there be force in virtue or in song. 386 Of gentle blood (part shed in honor's cause, While yet in Britain honor had applause) Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray?— Their own, P. And better got, than Bestia's from the throne. 390 396 The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. 400 he wrote some things about the last will of Dr. Tindal, in the 'Grub-street Journal;' a paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowlege of its author.-Pope. 379 Except his will. Eustace Budgell was charged with forging Tindal the infidel's will. Bowles gives the passage thus:'I, Matthew Tindal, &c. give and bequeathe to Eustace Budgell the sum of £2100, that his great talents may serve his country, &c., my strong box, my diamond ring,' &c. Tindal's nephew, a clergyman, and author of the Continuation of Rapin,' impeached the will. The charge was generally credited, and Budgell soon after threw himself into the Thames. 404 His life, though long, to sickness pass'd unknown; 410 With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, friend; 415 Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene, 417 As rich as when he served a queen. A compliment to Arbuthnot's disinterestedness: he had been the favorite physician of queen Anne. |