Or to thy country let that heap be lent,

As M** o's was, but not at five per cent.1

Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind,
Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.

And who stands safest? tell me, is it he
That spreads and swells in puffed prosperity;
Or, blest with little, whose preventing care

In peace provides fit arms against a war?

Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought,
And always thinks the very thing he ought:
His equal mind I copy what I can,
And, as I love, would imitate the man."

In South-sea days not happier, when surmised
The lord of thousands,' than if now excised;"

1 The Duchess of Marlborough. Coxe says (Life of Walpole, chap. 24): "The Duchess's enormous wealth enabled her occasionally to forward or obstruct the public loans, and she was highly offended with Walpole for presuming to raise money at a less interest than she had required." On the other hand, the Duchess herself says in her Opinions, under the year 1737 "From the beginning I lent such sums to the Government as reduced the interest from six per cent. to four per cent., thinking it would have a good effect on the security of the nation; and at that time he could not have procured such sums without me." Walpole himself acknowledged in 1726 (Coxe, ii. 452) that he thought himself obliged to the Duchess for the credit and service she had done the Government by lending it for several years so great a sum of money. It appears from the British Chronologist under June, 1732, "the Duchess of Marlborough about this time advanced £300,000 on the Salt Duty." The satire in the text was of course published before the compact between Pope and the Duchess.

125

130

See Introductory Remarks to Second
Moral Essay.

2 See note 1, p. 305, on Bethel.

3 It is noticeable in this place, that Pope departs from the spirit of the original. Horace continues his portrait of Ofella, and puts the contented sentiments that follow into his mouth; Pope, on the other hand, seeks only to display his own character in an amiable light. In the same way, in the First Imitation, he appropriates to himself the zeal for Virtue, which Horace ascribes to Lucilius. See note to v. 47 of that Imitation.

4 Mr. Pope had South-sea Stock, which he did not sell out. It was valued at between twenty and thirty thousand pounds when it fell.-WAR

In forest planted by a father's hand,'
Than in five acres now of rented land."
Content with little, I can piddle here,
On brocoli and mutton, round the year;
But ancient friends (though poor, or out of play)
That touch my bell, I cannot turn away.
'Tis true, no turbots dignify my boards,

But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords :
To Hounslow Heath I point, and Bansted Down,
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own:
From yon old walnut-tree a shower shall fall;

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140

145

And grapes, long lingering on my only wall,'
And figs from standard and espalier join;
The devil is in you if you cannot dine:

Then cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place)
And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace.

150

Fortune not much of humbling me can boast:
Though double taxed, how little have I lost!"
My life's amusements have been just the same,
Before and after standing armies came."

My lands are sold; my father's house is gone;
I'll hire another's; is not that my own,

1 Pope's father bought twenty acres of land in Windsor Forest, which he sold in 1716.

2 This was just the extent of his grounds at Twickenham.

3 The wall, I suppose, was that along the high road; his separation rom the cottages on each side of his lawn consisted, as appears from the drawings, only of hedges.-CROKER.

4 In 1723 a bill was passed for aising £100,000 by a tax on the Roman Catholics over and above the double land tax which they paid. Pope says to Caryll in a letter written some time in 1723: "If this bill passes, I shall lose a great part of my income."

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5 As a standing army was one of the first-fruits of the Revolution of 1688, the year of Pope's birth, his philosophy was not severely tested by this change of fortune. The maintenance of a standing army was one of the stock arguments used by the Opposition to show the danger to which liberty was exposed under Walpole's administra tion.

In a debate in 1738, after the publication of this Imitation, Shippen declared, in reference to the army, that the Tories, as desiring the reduction of the forces, had proved themselves truer friends to Revolution principles than the Whigs.

6 Mrs. Vernon's. See note to v. 166.

And yours, my friends? through whose free opening gate None comes too early, none departs too late;

(For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest).'

2

"Pray Heaven it last! (cries Swift!) as you go on;
I wish to God this house had been your own:
Pity to build without a son or wife;
Why, you'll enjoy it only all your life."
Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one,
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon ?
What's property? dear Swift! you see it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter;
Or, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer's share;
Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir;"
Or, in pure equity (the case not clear)
The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year:

1 From Hom. Odyssey, xv. 84:

χρὴ ξεῖνον παρεόντα φιλεῖν, ἐθέλοντα δὲ πέμπειν.

In Pope's translation it is: Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

2 In a letter to this Mr. Bethel, of March 20th, 1743, he says: "My landlady, Mrs. Vernon, being dead, this house and garden are offered me in sale, and I believe (together with my cottages on each side my grass plot next the Thames) will come at about a thousand pounds. If I thought any very particular friend would be pleased to live in it after my death (for, as it is, it serves all my purposes as well, during life), 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 of its continuing mine. But most of those I love are travelling out of the world, not into it; and unless

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I have such a view given me, I have no vanity nor pleasure, that does not stop short of the grave." So that we see (what some who call themselves his friends would not believe) his thoughts and prose were the same. -WARBURTON.

Mrs. Vernon possessed Twickenham Park, which had belonged to Robert, Earl of Essex, who gave it to Sir Francis Bacon. He sold it for £1800. Thence it came into Lord Cardigan's family, who sold it to King William, who gave it to Lord Albemarle, who sold it to Mr. Vernon.-CROKER.

3 The expression well describes the surprise an heir must be in to find himself excluded by that instrument, which was made to secure his succession. For Butler humorously defines a Jointure to be the act whereby parents turn

Their children's Tenants, ere they're born.
-WARBURTON.

Compare the general spirit of this passage with Imitation of Horace, Epistle ii. 2, 246-263.