d 'Mille talenta rotundentur, totidem altera, porrò et Qui possum tot? ait: tamen et quæram, et quot habebo Mittam: pòst paulò scribit, sibi millia quinque Esse domi chlamydum: partem, vel tolleret omnes. •Exilis domus est, ubi non et multa supersunt, NOTES. Ver. 77. For, mark] Not imitated with the vigour and energy of the original. This 77th line is uncommonly weak and languid. Three divinities, for such Horace has described them, Pecunia, Suadela, and Venus, conspire in giving their various accomplishments to this favourite of fortune. Warton. Ver. 85. His wealth] By no means equal to the original: there is so much pleasantry in alluding to the known story of the Prætor coming to borrow dresses (paludamenta) for a chorus in a public spectacle that he intended to exhibit, who asked him to lend him a hundred, says Plutarch; but Lucullus bade him take two hundred. Horace humorously has made it five thousand. We know nothing of Timon, except it be the nobleman introduced in the Epistle to Lord Burlington, ver. 99. There is still another beauty in Horace; he has suddenly, according to his manner, introduced Lucullus speaking; "Qui possum," &c. He is for ever introducing these little interlocutions, which give his Satires and Epistles an air so lively and dramatic. Warton. Ver. 85. Anstis birth.] was Garter King of Arms. Ver. 87. Or if three ladies like a luckless play,] The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the Anstis, whom Pope often mentions, names Is wealth thy passion? Hence! from pole to pole, Add one round hundred, and (if that's not fair) 75 NOTES. 90 names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other trifling circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry; even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been Mr. Pope's purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings. Warburton. Notwithstanding this remark of Dr. Warburton, I have taken some pains, though indeed in vain, to ascertain who these ladies were, and what the play they patronised. It was once said to be Young's Busiris. Warton. Et dominum fallunt, et prosunt furibus. "Ergo, k Mercemur servum, qui dictet nomina, lævum Qui fodicet latus, et 'cogat trans pondera dextram Porrigere: "Hic multùm in Fabia valet, ille Velind: Cuilibet is fasces dabit, eripietque curule Cui volet importunus ebur: "Frater, Pater, adde: NOTES. Ver. 104.] Who rules in Cornwall, &c.] Pope here seems to allude to Viscount Falmouth, who brought into Parliament several members for the Cornish boroughs. Bowles. sep Ver. 109. laugh at your own jest.] An admirable picture of tennial folly and meanness during an election canvass, in which the arts of English solicitation are happily applied to Roman. Some strokes of this kind, though mixed with unequal trash in the Pasquin of Fielding, may be mentioned as capital, and full of the truest humour. Warton. See in Ansty's Latin Epistle to Bampfield, a truly humourous description of this kind: "Tum numerat quot habet senior POT-WOBLER amicos." Bowles. A noble superfluity it craves, Not for yourself, but for your fools and knaves; Something, which for your honour they may cheat, And which it much becomes you to forget. "If wealth alone then make and keep us blest, 95 Still, still be getting, never, never rest. 100 But if to power and place your passion lie, Instructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest, Then turn about, and laugh at your own jest. Or if your life be one continued treat, 110 115 Through taverns, stews, and bagnios take our round, Digni; 'remigium vitiosum Ithacensis Ulyssei; Cui potior 'patriâ fuit interdicta voluptas. "Si, Mimnermus utì censet, sine amore jocisque NOTES. Ver. 126. Wilmot] Earl of Rochester. Warburton. Ver. 128. And SWIFT cry wisely, " Vive la Bagatelle !"] · Our poet, speaking in one place of the purpose of his satire, says: "In this impartial glass, my Muse intends Fair to expose myself, my foes, my friends;" and, in another, he makes his court-adviser say: 66 Laugh at your friends, and if your friends be sore, So much the better; you may laugh the more:" because their impatience under reproof would shew, they had a great deal amiss which wanted to be set right. On this principle, Swift falls under his correction. He could not bear to see a friend he so much valued, live in the miserable abuse of one of nature's best gifts, unadmonished of his folly. Swift, as we may see by some posthumous volumes, lately published, so dishonourable and injurious to his memory, trifled away his old age in a dissipation that women and boys might be ashamed of. For when men have given into a long habit of employing their wit only to shew their parts, to edge their spleen, to pander to a faction, or, in short, to any thing but that for which nature bestowed it, namely, to recommend virtue, and set off truth; old age, which abates the passions, will never rectify the abuses they occasioned. But the remains of wit, instead of seeking and recovering their proper channel, will run into that miserable depravity of taste here condemned: and in which Dr. Swift seems to have placed no inconsiderable part of his wisdom. "I chuse," says he, in a letter to Mr. Pope, "my companions amongst those of the least consequence, and most compliance: I read the most trifling books I can find: and whenever I write, it is upon the most trifling subjects." And again: "I love La Bagatelle better than ever. I am always writing bad prose or bad verses, either of RAGE or RAILLERY, &c. And again in a Letter to Mr. Gay: "My rule is, Vive la Bagatelle !" Warburton. In |