THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

ΤΟ

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

ST. JOHN, whose love indulged my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my last!
Why will you break the Sabbath of my days?'
Now sick alike of envy and of praise.
Public too long, ah, let me hide my age!
See, modest Cibber now has left the stage:"
Our generals now, retired to their estates,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gates;'
In life's cool evening satiate of applause,
Nor fond of bleeding, even in Brunswick's cause.'

1 This satire was written in 1738, when Pope was in his fiftieth year. Bolingbroke was in France, whither he had retired in 1735.

2 Colley Cibber retired from the stage in 1730. He reappeared on it, however, in 1744, when he was over seventy.

3 He is said to have alluded to the entrance of Lord Peterborough's house at Bevismount, near Southampton.-WARTON.

So in Moral Epistles, iv.

Load some vain church with o
state,
Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate.

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4 In the folio: "Br cause." In the former editions it was "Britain's cause." But the terms are synonymous.-WARBURTON.

Pope certainly never intended them to be synonymous except in the ironical sense of his Epistle to Augustus. The commentator, however, had more to gain from flattery than the poet.

[

A voice there is, that whispers in my ear,

('Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear,)
"Friend Pope! be prudent, let your Muse take breath,
And never gallop Pegasus to death;

Lest stiff, and stately, void of fire or force,

You limp, like Blackmore on a Lord Mayor's horse.” 1
Farewell, then, verse, and love, and every toy,
The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;
What right, what true, what fit, we justly call,
Let this be all my care, for this is all:

To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste,
What every day will want, and most, the last.
But ask not, to what doctors I apply?
Sworn to no master, of no sect am I :

As drives the storm, at any door I knock :

And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.*
Sometimes a patriot,' active in debate,

Mix with the world, and battle for the state,
Free as young Lyttelton,' her cause pursue,
Still true to virtue, and as warm as true;

1 The fame of this heavy poet, however problematical elsewhere, was universally received in the city of London. His versification is here exactly described: stiff, and not strong; stately and yet dull, like the sober and slow-paced animal generally employed to mount the Lord Mayor : and therefore here humorously opposed to Pegasus.-POPE.

The new turn given to the image "senescentem equum " in the original is admirably poetical.

2.e., Choose either an active or a contemplative life, as is most fitted to the season and circumstances. For he regarded these writers as the best schools to form a man for the world; or to give him a knowledge of himself: Montaigne excelling in his observations on social and civil life;

and Locke in developing the faculties, and explaining the operations of the human mind.-WARBURTON.

3" Patriot" was the name assumed by the younger members of the Opposition to distinguish them alike from Ministerial Whigs and Jacobites.

4 George Lyttelton, son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in Worcestershire, born 1709. Before his elevation to the peerage he sat in Parliament as member for Okehampton, and was a leading speaker on the side of the Opposition. He wrote much both in prose and verse that is now forgotten. Lord Waldegrave says of him: "Sir George Lyttelton was an enthusiast both in religion and politics; absent in business, not ready in a debate, and totally ig norant of the world: on the other

Sometimes, with Aristippus, or St. Paul, '
Indulge my candour, and grow all to all;"
Back to my native moderation slide,
And win my way by yielding to the tide.

Long, as to him who works for debt, the day,
Long as the night to her whose love's away,
Long as the year's dull circle seems to run,
When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one;
So slow the unprofitable moments roll,
That lock up all the functions of my soul;
That keep me from myself; and still delay
Life's instant business to a future day:
That task, which as we follow or despise,
The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise;
Which done, the poorest can no wants endure;'
And which not done, the richest must be
Late as it is, I put myself to school,
And feel some comfort, not to be a fool.
Weak though I am of limb, and short of sight,
Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite;

hand his studied orations were excellent; he was a man of parts, a scholar, no indifferent writer, and by far the honestest man of the whole society." He died August 22, 1773. See Epilogue to Satires, i. 47.

1 Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.-POPE.

There is an impropriety and indecorum in joining the name of the most profligate parasite of the Court of Dionysius with that of an Apostle. -WARTON.

There is also an entire perversion of St. Paul's meaning. The Apostle says, "I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some," while Pope says afterwards that Aristippus won his way by yielding to the tide."

2 I know not why he omitted a

poor.

He did not omit it; he probably intended to render it in the liue : And win my way, by yielding to the tide;

but he seems to have misunderstood the character given by Horace of Aristippus, who did not so much win his way by yielding to the tide, as by endeavouring to turn all circumstances to his own advantage.

3 Here we have one of the frequent instances of "incorrectness" in Pope. He simply means "can want nothing,' whereas he appears to say that the poorest are unable to endure want.

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I'll do what Mead' and Cheselden advise,

To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes.3
Not to go back, is somewhat to advance,
And men must walk at least before they dance.

Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move
With wretched avarice, or as wretched love?

Know, there are words, and spells, which can control,
Between the fits this fever of the soul: "

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Know, there are rhymes, which, fresh and fresh applied,

60

Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride.

Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk,
Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk,

A Switz, a High-Dutch, or a Low-Dutch bear;
All that we ask is but a patient ear.

'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor:

And the first wisdom, to be fool no more.
But to the world no bug-bear is so great,
As want of figure, and a small estate.
To either India see the merchant fly,
Scared at the spectre of pale poverty!

1 Speaking of his obligations to this great physician and others of the faculty, in a letter to Mr. Allen about a month before his death, he says: "There is no end of my kind treatment from the faculty. They are in general the most amiable companions, and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know."

-WARBURTON.

Mead is referred to in another connection in Moral Essays, iv. 10.

2 William Cheselden, Lithotomist and Anatomist, born 1683, died 1750. Pope's opinion of Cheselden was very high. In answer to an enquiry of Swift's who Cheselden was, he says in a letter of 25 March, 1736: "It shows that the truest merit does not travel so far any way as on the wings of poetry. He is the most noted and most deserving man in the whole profession of chirurgery, and has

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saved the lives of thousands by his manner of cutting for the stone." Cheselden was thoroughly acquainted with Pope's constitution. He told Spence: "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber's slander is false. He had been gay, but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B."

3 In a letter from Bath, dated Nov. 21 (the year not given), Pope writes to Cheselden, apparently with reference to his eyes: "Here are three cataracts ripened for you, Mr. Pierce assures me."

4 Pope might remember Dryden's version of the fourth book of Lucretius:

The fever of the soul shot from the fair,
And the cold ague of succeeding care.
-WAKEFIELD.

5 Pope has given life to the image,