Whether we 'joy or grieve, the same the curse, 30 41 If not so pleased, at 'council-board rejoice, 50 Ire tamen restat, Numa "quò devenit et Ancus. W Si latus aut renes morbo tentantur acuto, Quære fugam morbi. Vis rectè vivere ? quis non? Si virtus hoc una potest dare, fortis omissis Hoc age deliciis. NOTES. Ver. 52. Where MURRAY, &c.] The concurring testimony of friends and enemies confirms the high panegyric here expressed on Lord Mansfield, yet the intended parallel fails in its most material part. The Roman Consul has left unequivocal proofs of the fertile and comprehensive genius attributed to him by his contemporaries; the British Chancellor will be known to posterity in the character of a wise and virtuous historian. This cannot be said of the late Lord Chief Justice, eminent, learned, and possessed of the highest endowments, as he certainly was. Bowles. Ver. 53. TULLY-HYDE!] Equal to either, in the ministry of his profession; and, where the parallel fails, as it does in the rest of the character, superior to both. TULLY's brightest talents were frequently tarnished by vanity and fear; and HYDE's most virtuous purposes perverted and defeated by superstitious notions concerning the divine origin of government, and the unlimited obedience of the people. Warburton. Ver. 53. than HYDE!] Much beyond the original; particularly on account of the very happy and artful use Pope has made of the neighbourhood of the House of Parliament to Westminster Abbey; and of the well-turned and unexpected compliment he has paid to his illustrious friend. The character of Lord Chancellor Clarendon seems to grow every day brighter, the more it is scrutinized; and his integrity and abilities are more ascertained and acknowledged, even from the publication of private papers, never intended to see the light. When Clarendon was going from Court, just after his profligate and ungrateful master had obliged him to resign the great seal, the Duchess of Cleveland meanly and wantonly insulted him from a window in the palace. He looked up at her, and only said, with a calm and contemptuous dignity: "Madam, if you live, you will grow old." Ver. 57. Ward - Dover.] cines. Warton. Celebrated for their quack médi Where MURRAY (long enough his country's pride) See Ward by batter'd beaus invited over, 55 There all men may be cured, whene'er they please. Would ye be blest? *despise low joys, low gains; Disdain whatever CORNBURY disdains; Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains. NOTES. Ver. 60. Would ye be blest?] This amiable young nobleman wrote from Paris, 1752, a very pressing remonstrance to Mr. Mallet, to dissuade him, but in vain, from publishing a very offensive digression on the Old Testament, in Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on History. "I must say to you, Sir, for the world's sake, and for his sake, that part of the work ought by no means to be communicated further. If this digression be made public, it will be censured, it must be censured, it ought to be censured. It will be criticised too by able pens, whose erudition, as well as their reasonings, will not easily be answered." He concludes by saying: "I therefore recommend to you to suppress that part the work, as a good citizen of the world, for the world's peace, as one intrusted and obliged by Lord Bolingbroke, not to raise storms to his memory." Warton. of Ver. 61. whatever CORNBURY disdains;] When Lord Cornbury returned from his travels, the late Earl of Essex, his brother-inlaw, told him he had got a handsome pension for him. To which Lord Cornbury answered with a composed dignity: "How could you tell, my Lord, that I was to be sold; or, at least, how came you to know my price so exactly?" To this anecdote Pope alludes. Ruffhead. Lord Cornbury, to whom Pope pays so elegant a compliment, was in all respects a most amiable man. He resided for some time at Spa, on account of his health. In a letter from Pope to VOL. VI. N Mrs. Virtutem verba putes, ut Lucum ligna ? cave ne portus occupet alter: NOTES. Mrs. Price, (which I have been favoured with, by her grandson, Uvedale Price,) he is thus mentioned: Pray, Madam, tell my Lord Cornbury I am not worse than he left me, though I have endured some uneasiness since, beside what his indisposition, when I parted, gave me. "I earnestly wish his return, but not till he can bring himself whole to us, who want honest and able men too much to part with him, &c." Henry, Viscount Cornbury, was great grandson of the celebrated Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and only son of Henry, Earl of Clarendon and Rochester. Lord Cornbury acted with the greatest moderation and uprightness in political affairs; though a Tory, and violent in opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, he yet opposed the unconstitutional motion of Sandys, for the removal of that minister, in a manly and sensible speech. See Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, ch. 55. This amiable nobleman died before his father in 1753, without issue, and the title afterwards became extinct. Bowles. Ver. 63. art thou one,] Here we have a direct and decisive censure of a celebrated infidel writer; at this time, therefore, which was 1737, Pope was strongly and openly on the side of religion, as he knew the great lawyer to be, to whom he was writing. Horace, it is said, alludes to the words of a dying Hercules in a Greek Tragedy; and Dion Cassius relates, in the twenty-seventh Book of his History, that these were the words which Brutus used just before he stabbed himself, after his defeat at Philippi. But it is observable, that this fact rests solely on the credit of this fawning and fulsome Court historian; and that Plutarch, who treats largely of Brutus, is silent on the subject. If Brutus had adopted this passage, I cannot bring myself to believe, that Horace would so far have forgotten his old republican principles, as to have mentioned the words adopted by the dying patriot, with a mark of reproach and reprobation. It ' But art thou one, whom new opinions sway, One who believes as Tindal leads the way, Who virtue and a church alike disowns, 65 Thinks that but words, and this but brick and stones? Fly 'then, on all the wings of wild desire, NOTES. It must be added, to what is said above, of our author's orthodoxy at this time, that he wrote a very respectful letter to Dr. Waterland, to thank him for his Vindication of the Athanasian Creed, dated October 16, 1737. Which letter was given by Dr. Waterland to Mr. Seed, and was in the possession of Mr. Seed's widow, 1767, who shewed it to Mr. Bowyer, the eminent and learned printer. Warton. This attempt of Dr. Warton, to vindicate the orthodoxy of Pope at the expense of his consistency, might have been spared. Pope's religious opinions appear from his Letters to have undergone little or no change; but however they may have varied in other respects, there was one sentiment to which he uniformly and closely adhered-that of charity to others, and an abhorrence of what he calls "that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves." To which it must be added, that he was a firm believer in that truly Christian doctrine, that our acceptance in a future state must depend not upon our faith, but upon our conduct, and which he has so strongly expressed in the lines: "For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." If Pope therefore wrote a letter expressing his unlimited approbation of the Athanasian Creed, he was guilty of an inconsistency which invalidates all his professions on this subject, and disgraces his character. Ver. 65. Who virtue and a church alike disowns,] The one he renounces in his party-pamphlets; the other, in his Rights of the Christian Church. Warburton. |