So was I punish'd, as if full as proud 20 Who live at Court, for going once that way! Or Sloane or Woodward's wondrous shelves contain, The watch would hardly let him pass at noon, 35 And the wise justice, starting from his chair, black: The suit, if by the fashion one might guess, Line 154 ran thus: NOTES. Shows Poland's interest, takes the Primate's part. 40 Dr. Johnson speaks, methinks, too slightingly of these Imitations of Donne, when he says, that "Pope seems to have known their imbecility." Warton. The thing hath travail'd, and faith, speaks all tongues, And only knoweth what to all States belongs, With his tongue, in his tongue call'd Compliment: Jovius, or Surius, or both together. He names me, and comes to me; I whisper, God, How have I sinn'd, that thy wrath's furious rod, This fellow, chuseth me! He saith, Sir, I love your judgment; whom do you prefer Of our two academies I named. Here He stopt me, and said, Nay, your Apostles were NOTES. Ver. 68. "The King's," said I.] "This sneer," said the ingenious Mr. Wilkes, "is really indecent. The good Bishop who published an edition of his works, ought, in the mild limbo of his Commentary, to have softened the severity of this passage." Warton. Our sons shall see it leisurely decay, First turn plain rash, then vanish quite away. 45 This thing has travell'd, speaks each language too, And knows what's fit for every state to do; And (all those plagues in one) the bawling bar: 55 And Oldmixon and Burnet both outlie. 60 He spies me out; I whisper, Gracious God! What sin of mine could merit such a rod? That all the shot of dulness now must be From this thy blunderbuss discharged on me? 65 Permit (he cries) no stranger to your fame To crave your sentiment, if's -'s your name. What Speech esteem you most?" The King's," said I. But the best words?" O, Sir, the Dictionary." 70 Good pretty linguists; so Panurgas was, To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood. NOTES. Ver. 71. "Onslow,] By an affected gravity, and a solemn and important air, he presided for many years over the House of Commons; but not with the ability, knowledge, patience, prudence, and amiable manners, of the present Speaker, Mr. Addington, 1795. It is a curious fact in the history of English liberty, that the very first person who was raised by the Commons to the dignity of their Speaker, was a member who had been imprisoned by Edward the Third, for attacking his ministers and his mistress in parliament. Warton. Ver. 73. But Hoadly for a period] Party occasioned this censure on a writer, whose style, it must be confessed, was sometimes but not always, (as for instance, in his Treatise on the Sacrament,) languid and diffuse: but who, having spent his life in defending the British Constitution, the Revolution, and the Succession of the House of Hanover, certainly did, by no means, deserve to be styled, as he hath lately been, "That Republican Prelate, Bishop Hoadly." The late excellent Bishop of London, Dr. Lowth, thought very differently of him, and calls him, in his admirable Life of Wickham, "The great advocate of civil and religious liberty." Warton. No name is more obnoxious to the Roman Catholics than that of Hoadly, whose manly and liberal principles were as remote from Republicanism, as from Popery and arbitrary power. Bowles. Ver. 73. a period of a mile."] A stadium of Euripides was a standing But, Sir, of writers? "Swift for closer style, Why yes, 'tis granted, these indeed may pass : NOTES. 80 standing joke amongst the Greeks. By the same kind of pleasantry, Cervantes has called his hero's countenance, a face of half a league long; which, because the humour, as well as the measure of the expression, was excessive, all his translators have judiciously agreed to omit; without doubt paying due attention to that sober rule of Quintilian, licet omnes hyperbole sit ultra fidem, non tamen debet esse ultra MODUM. Scribl. Ver. 75. so Panurge was;] It is surprizing that Rabelais, whose book is the most cutting satire on the Pope, the Church, and the principal events of his time, should have escaped severe censure and punishment. Garagantua is decisively Francis I., and Henry II. is Pantagruel; and Charles V. Pierocole. Swift, who formed himself on Rabelais, has exactly copied the famous speech of Panurge, in the Tale of the Tub, where Lord Peter, giving to Martin and John a piece of dry bread, tells them, it contains beef, partridge, capons, and the best wine of Burgundy. Rabelais, like Swift, loved politics. See his Letters from Rome, when he accompanied the Cardinal Bellay, embassador of Francis I. to Pope Paul III. Rabelais imitated, in many passages, the Litera Virorum Obscurorum. Warton. Ver. 78. Yet these were all poor gentlemen!] Our Poet has here added to the humour of his original. Donne makes his threadbare Traveller content himself under his poverty, with the reflection, that even Panurge himself (the great Traveller and Linguist in Rabelais) went a begging. There is infinite wit in this passage of |