Curst be the verfe, how well foe'er it flow, Or from the foft-ey'd Virgin steal a tear! And show the sense of it without the love; NOTES. 285 290 Who When Mr. Pope wrote the Advertisement to the first edition of the new Dunciad, intimating, that "it was by a different hand from the other, and found in detached pieces, incorrect and unfinished," I objected to him the affectation of ufing fo unpromifing an attempt to mislead his Reader. He replied, that I thought too highly of the public tafte; that, moft commonly, it was formed on that of half a dozen people in fashion; who took the lead, and who fometimes have intruded on the Town the dullest performances for works of wit: while, at the fame time, fome true effort of genius, without name or recommendation, hath paffed by the public eye unobferved or neglected: That he once before made the trial, I now objected to, with fuccefs, in the Efay on Man: which was at first given (as he told me) to Dr. Young, to Dr. Defaguliers, to Lord Bolingbroke, to Lord Paget, and, in fhort, to every body but to him who was capable of writing it. However, to make him amends, this fame Public, when let into the fecret, would, for fome time after, fuffer no poem with a moral title, to pafs for any man's but his. So the Effay on Human Life, the Effay on Reason, and many others of a worse tendency, were very liberally beftowed upon him. W.There are many admirable paffages in Harte's Effay on Human Reason, which was much praised on its first publication, and is faid to have been corrected by Pope. Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend; you fay, And, if he lie not, must at least betray: 295 300 Let Sporus tremble-A. What? that thing of filk, Sporus, that mere white curd of Afs's milk? NOTES. 306 Satire VER. 299. Who to the Dean, and filver bell, &c.] Meaning the man who would have perfuaded the Duke of Chandos that Mr. P. meant him in thofe circumftances ridiculed in the Epiftle on Tafle. See Mr. Pope's letter to the Earl of Burlington concerning this matter. P. VER. 305. Let Sporus tremble] Language cannot afford more glowing or more forcible terms to exprefs the utmost bitterness of contempt. We think we are here reading Milton against Salmafius. The raillery is carried to the very verge of railing, fome will fay ribaldry. He has armed his muse with a scalping knife. The portrait is certainly over-charged: for Lord H. for whom it was defign'd, whatever his morals might be, had yet confiderable abilities, though marred by affectation. Some of his speeches in parliament were much beyond florid impotence. They were, it is true, in favour of Sir R. Walpole; and this was fufficiently offenfive to Pope. The fact that particularly excited his indignation, was Lord H.'s Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity (Dr. Sherwin) from a Nobleman at Hampton Court, 1733; as well as his having been concerned with Lady M. W. M. in Verses to the Imitator of Horace, 1732. This Lady's beauty, wit, genius, and travels, of which she gave an account in a series of elegant and entertaining letters, very characteristical of the manners of the Turks, ? Satire or Senfe, alas! can Sporus feel? P. Yet NOTES. Turks, and of which many are addreffed to Pope; are well known, and jultly celebrated. With both noble perfonages had Pope lived in a state of intimacy. And justice obligeth us to confefs that he was the aggreffor in the quarrel with them: as he first affaulted and affronted Lord H. by these two lines in his Imitation of the first Satire of Horace's fecond Book: The lines are weak, another's pleas'd to fay, Lord Fanny fpins a thoufand fuch a day. And Lady M. W. M. by the eighty-third line of the fame piece, too grofs to be here repeated. It is a fingular circumftance, that our Author's indignation was fo vehement and inexhauftible, that it furnished him with another invective, of equal power, in profe, which is to be found at the end of the eighth volume, containing his Letters. The reader that turns to it, page 253, (for it is too long to be here inferted, and too full of matter to be abridged,) will find, that it abounds in fo many new ftrokes of farcafm, in so many sudden and repeated blows, that he does not allow the poor devoted peer a moment's breathing-time: Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille finiftrâ ; Creber utrâque manû pulfat, verfatque. It is indeed a mafter-piece of invective, and perhaps excels the character of Sporus itself, capital as that is, above quoted: who, however, would wish to be the author of fuch a cutting invective? But can this be the nobleman (we are apt to ask) whom Middleton, in his Dedication to the Hiftory of the Life of Tully, has fo feriously, and fo earneftly praised, for his ftrong good fenfe, his confummate politenefs, his real patriotifm, his rigid temperance, his thorough knowledge and defence of the laws of his country, his accurate skill in history, his unexampled and unremitted diligence in literary pursuits, who added credit to this very history, as P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and ftings; 310 Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys: In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 315 As fhallow ftreams run dimpling all the way. And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet fqueaks; Half froth, half venom, fpits himself abroad, 320 In NOTES. as Scipio and Lælius did to that of Polybius, by revifing and correcting it; and brightening it, as he expreffes it, by the strokes of his pencil? The man that had written this fplendid encomium on Lord H. could not, we may imagine, be very well affected to the bard who had painted Lord Fanny in fo ridiculous a light. We find him writing thus to Dr. Warburton, January 7, 1740: "You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles; but, like the old commentators on his Homer, will be thought perhaps, in fome places, to have found a meaning for him, that he himself never dreamt of. However, if you did not find him a philofopher, you will make him one; for he will be wife enough to take the benefit of your reading, and make his future Effays more clear and confiftent." VER. 306. White curd] Methinks this was too perfonal. Lord Hervey, to prevent the attacks of an epilepfy, perfifted in a strict regimen of daily food, which was a fmall quantity of affes milk and a flour bifcuit, with an apple once a week; and he used a Httle paint to foften his ghaftly appearance. VER. 308. Upon a wheel?] It ought to be the wheel. The in definite article is used for the definite. VER. 319. See Milton, Book iv. P. In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, } 325 330 Or fpite, or fmut, or rhymes, or blafphemies. NOTES. 335 349 That VER. 322. Or blafphemies.] In former editions these two lines followed immediately: Did ever Smock-face act so vile a part, A trifling head, and a corrupted heart. VER. 340. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,] His merit in this will appear very great, if we confider, that in this walk he had all the advantages which the most poetic Imagination could give to a great Genius. M. Voltaire, in a MS. letter now before me, writes thus from England to a friend in Paris: "I in tend |