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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;

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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,
A friend in exile, or a father dead;

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The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear.
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue, all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue, welcome ev'n the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave to me, in every state;
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail;
Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,
A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer;
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a pillory, or near a throne,

He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.

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Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:
This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for
Moore.

Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?
Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.
To please his mistress, one aspersed his life; 376
He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife;
Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleased, except his will;

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

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Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse
His father, mother, body, soul, and Muse.
Yet why? that father held it for a rule,
It was a sin to call our neighbor fool:
That harmless mother thought no wife a whore :
Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names, and memorable long,

If there be force in virtue or in song.

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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.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

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The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.
No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art;
No language, but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temperance and by exercise;

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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.

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His life, though long, to sickness pass'd unknown;
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O, grant me thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.
O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine;
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine.
Me, let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age,

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With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smoothe the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my

friend;

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Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a queen.
A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,
Thus far was right; the rest belongs to Heaven.

417 As rich as when he served a queen. A compliment to Arbuthnot's disinterestedness: he had been the favorite physician of queen Anne.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES

OF

HORACE

IMITATED.

Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.-HORACE.

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