'On morning wings how active springs the mind That leaves the load of yesterday behind! How easy every labor it pursues! How coming to the poet every Muse! Not but we may exceed, some holy time, 85 90 Our fathers praised rank venison: you sup pose, Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose. come, Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home. That sweetest music to an honest ear, 95 100 105 (For 'faith, lord Fanny! you are in the wrong; 110 "Right,' cries his lordship; for a rogue in need To have a taste, is insolence indeed : In me 'tis noble; suits my birth and state; 0, impudence of wealth ! with all thy store, 121 As M * * * o's was, but not at five per cent. Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind. 125 122 At five per cent. Bowles, from Coxe, quotes a letter of the duke of Marlborough to sir Robert Walpole, saying that he had £100,000 to dispose of, and requesting Walpole to lay it out for him. Yet it must be observed, in justice to the memory of so great a man, that this story adds but little to the customary stigma of his love for money. That a man of Marlborough's high employments and services should have £ 100,000 to dispose of in his retirement, can be no imputation on his character; that he should have written on the subject to the prime minister, at least shows that he was neither ashamed nor afraid of its coming to the public knowlege; and if he desired to make but five per cent of it, as the text seems to imply, while usury would have produced him ten, it is equally evident that he did not stoop to the common modes of making the most of his money.' Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought, And always thinks the very thing he ought: 130 His equal mind I copy what I can, And as I love would imitate the man : In South-sea days not happier, when surmised Than in five acres now of rented land. 135 133 In South-sea days. Pope had South-sea stock, valued, in the day of national madness, at between £20,000 and £30,000. He kept it until it vanished into air. There is,' 134 Than if now excised. A fragment of Pulteney's speech against the excise, is a model for popular panic. exclaimed this far-sighted orator, 'another thing impending, a monstrous project; such a project, as has struck terror into the minds of most gentlemen of this house, and into the minds of all men without doors, who have any regard to the happiness or the constitution of their country:-I mean that monster, the excise, that plan of arbitrary power, which is expected to be laid before the house in the present parliament.' The clamor succeeded; the people saw nothing in the excise but national chains; the cabinet was rooted up: and what was the result of all? The nation lost the best finance minister of the age, and Pulteney gained a peerage, and disgrace. The dreaded excise itself came in with flying colors, a few years after; and the nation, neither revolutionised, insolvent, nor enslaved, in the process, found it to be one of the most productive and powerful sources of revenue. 136 Than in five acres. Pope's villa at Twickenham was rented from a Mrs. Vernon. In his letter to Bethel, March, 1743, he says, My landlady, Mrs. Vernon, being dead, this garden and house are offered to me in sale; and I believe, together with the cottages on each side of my grass-plot next the Thames, will come to about a thousand pounds. If I thought any very particular friend would be pleased to live in it after my death, I would purchase 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 some years longer than I can have of its 140 Content with little, I can piddle here own: From yon old walnut-tree a shower shall fall; 145 Then cheerful healths, (your mistress shall have place) And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace. 150 My lands are sold, my father's house is gone; 155 And yours, my friends? through whose free opening gate None comes too early, none departs too late; 6 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 I have no vanity or pleasure that does not stop short of the grave.' me, Pity, to build, without a son or wife : Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, 165 6 170 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 scrivener or a city knight. Let lands and houses have what lords they will, Let us be fix'd, and our own masters still. 180 172 The chancery takes your rents. Warburton says, roughly but keenly,' A protestant miser's money in chancery, and a catholic miser's money in purgatory, are never to be got out, till the law and the church have been well paid for their redemption.' 175 Shades, that to Bacon. Gorhambury, near St. Albans. 177 Proud Buckingham's delight. Villiers, duke of Buckingham. |