But random praise-the task can ne'er be done:
Each mother asks it for her booby son,'

Each widow asks it for "the best of men,"
For him she weeps, for him she weds again.'
Praise cannot stoop, like satire, to the ground:
The number may be hanged, but not be crowned.'
Enough for half the greatest of these days,
To 'scape my censure, not expect my praise.
Are they not rich? what more can they pretend?
Dare they to hope a poet for their friend?
What Richelieu wanted, Louis scarce could gain,
And what young Ammon wished, but wished in vain."
No power the Muse's friendship can command;

No power, when virtue claims it, can withstand:

To Cato, Virgil paid one honest line;"

O let my country's friends illumine mine!
-What are you thinking?

F. Faith the thought's no sin,
I think your friends are out, and would be in.
P. If merely to come in, sir, they go out,
The way they take is strangely round about."

1 Compare Young, Sat. ii., ver. 165.

The booby father craves a booby son. -WAKEFIELD.

Pope's verse probably refers to the Duchess of Buckingham, the “booby son" being the young Duke for whom Pope composed an epitaph.

2 Lord Hailes (Life of Malone, p. 253) says that this is an allusion to Rowe's widow, who is referred to in Pope's epitaph on that poet,

To these, so mourned in death, so loved in life!

The childless parent, and the widowed wife,
With tears inscribes this monumental
stone,

That holds their ashes and expects her own.
Nevertheless she afterwards married
Colonel Deane.

3. The number" is used like
"numerus
in Latin.

merus sumus.

"Nos nu

110

115

120

125

4 i.c., when he congratulated Achilles with a mixture of regret for his own failure in this respect, on such a herald of his fame as Homer, at a visit to the tomb of that hero.WAKEFIELD.

5

Secretosque pios et dantem jura Catonem.-En. 8, 670.

"The Eneid was evidently a party piece as much as Absalom and Achitophel. I have formerly said that Virgil wrote one honest line, and that, I now believe, was not meant of Cato Uticensis." --POPE quoted by Spence, Anecdotes, p. 217. Virgil's line referred to Cato the censor.

6 The meaning is somewhat obscure. Several of Pope's intimate friends, Lords Cobham, Chesterfield, and Stair, had been dismissed from their offices, in consequence of voting against the

F. They, too, may be corrupted, you'll allow?
P. I only call those knaves who are so now.
Is that too little? Come then, I'll comply-1
Spirit of Arnall!' aid me while I lie.
Cobham's a coward,' Polwarth is a slave,"
And Lyttelton a dark designing knave;'
St. John has ever been a wealthy fool-
But, let me add, Sir Robert's mighty dull,
Has never made a friend in private life,

And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife."

But pray, when others praise him, do I blame ?

Call Verres,' Wolsey, any odious name?

130

135

Why rail they then, if but a wreath of mine,

Oh, all accomplished St. John! deck thy shrine?

Court, but, with the exception of Lord Burlington, none had resigned. He must mean that they had acted conscientiously, well knowing the consequences that would ensue from their independent conduct.

Here is a most happy imitation of Persius and of Boileau :

Per me equidem sint omnia protinus alba.
Nil moror; euge. Omnes, omnes bene

miræ eritis res! Hoc juvat?

And thus Boileau, Sat. ix. ver, 287 : Puisque vous le voulez, je vais changer le stile,

Je le déclare done Quinault est un Virgile,
Pradon comme un soleil en nos ans a paru ;
Pelletier écrit mieux qu'Ablancourt ni
Patru,

Cotin à ses sermons trainant toute la terre,
Fend les flots d'auditeurs pour aller à sa
chaire.

But Pope has plainly the advantage by the artful and ironical compliments paid to his friends.-WARTON.

2 A writer in the pay of Sir R. Walpole. Pope says in a note to Dunciad, ii. 315, that he received, in four years, for his political articles, £11,000.

VOL. III.-POETRY.

3 He had addressed him in Moral Essays, i., as "brave Cobham."

The Hon. Hugh Hume, son of Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, grandson of Patrick, Earl of Marchmont, and distinguished like them in the cause of liberty.-POPE.

Lord Polwarth was, after Barnard, the speaker whom Walpole considered the most formidable in debate of all the Opposition, on account of his fairness and independence.

5

Compare Dialogue i. 47.

6 See letter to Fortescue, 31 July, 1738, in explanation of this compliment to Walpole, which after all is no very great one, and has a sting in its tail in the allusion to the indifference with which Sir Robert tolerated the notorious levity of his first wife who died only on the 2nd August, 1737, when Sir Robert immediately married his mistress, Miss Skerritt, who died the very month before this satire was published.—CROKER.

Sir Robert's first wife was Catherine Shorter, daughter of Sir John Shorter, of Bybrook, in Kent, Lord Mayor of London.

7 In the first edition: "Clodius."

I I

What! shall each spur-galled hackney of the day,
When Paxton gives him double pots and pay,'
Or each new-pensioned sycophant, pretend
To break my windows if I treat a friend;"

2

Then wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt,
But 'twas my guest at whom they threw the dirt?
Sure, if I spare the minister, no rules

Of honour bind me, not to maul his tools;
Sure, if they cannot cut, it may be said
His saws are toothless, and his hatchets lead.

It angered Turenne, once upon a day,

To see a footman kicked that took his pay;
But when he heard the affront the fellow gave,
Knew one a man of honour, one a knave;

The prudent general turned it to a jest,

140

145

150

And begged, he'd take the pains to kick the rest:
Which not at present having time to do――

155

F. Hold, sir! for God's sake, where's the affront to you? Against your worship when had S―k writ ?3

Or P-ge poured forth the torrent of his wit ?
Or grant the bard whose distich all commend
["In power a servant, out of power a friend,"]"
To W-le guilty of some venial sin;
What's that to you who ne'er was out nor in?

1 See note to ver. 1. The spurgalled hackneys” are the party writers in the pay of the Minister.

2 Which was done when Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Bathurst were one day dining with him at Twickenham.-WARTON.

3 See note to ver. 92 of Dialogue 1. 4 Compare Imitation of Horace, 2 Sat. i. ver. 82. Dunciad, iv. 30.

5 This line is to be found in a poem addressed by Dodington, while Lord of the Treasury, to Walpole :

Let others barter servile faith for gold,
His friendship is not to be bought or sold.

Fierce opposition he unmoved shall face,
Modest in favour, daring in disgrace;
To share thy adverse fate alone pretend,
In power a servant, out of power a friend.

160

The priest whose flattery bedropped the Crown,'
How hurt he you? he only stained the gown.
And how did, pray, the florid youth offend,'
Whose speech you took, and gave it to a friend?

P. Faith, it imports not much from whom it came; Whoever borrowed, could not be to blame,

Since the whole House did afterwards the same.
Let courtly wits to wits afford supply,

As hog to hog in huts of Westphaly :3

If one, through Nature's bounty or his Lord's,
Has what the frugal, dirty soil affords,'
From him the next receives it, thick or thin,
As pure a mess almost as it came in ;
The blessed benefit, not there confined,
Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind:

From tail to mouth, they feed and they carouse:
The last full fairly gives it to the House.

F. This filthy simile, this beastly line,

Quite turns my stomach.-P. So does flattery mine:
And all your courtly civet-cats can vent,
Perfume to you, to me is excrement.

But hear me further :-Japhet, 'tis agreed,

Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read,
In all the Courts of Pindus guiltless quite;
But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write :
And must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown,
Because the deed he forged was not my own?
Must never patriot then declaim at gin,
Unless, good man! he has been fairly in ?
No zealous pastor blame a failing spouse,
Without a staring reason on his brows?
And each blasphemer quite escape the rod,
Because the insult's not on man, but God?

1 This part of the simile was doubtless intended to point to the parsimony of the Court.

2 He now diverges into a fresh argument. Hitherto he has been excusing himself for the preponderance of blame over praise in his verse; but apart from all personal feeling, he continues, the true inspiring motive of my satire is "the strong antipathy of good to bad (ver. 198).

3 In the MS. :

I grant it, sir; and further 'tis agreed, Japhet writ not, and Chartres scarce could read.

For Japhet, Chartres, see the

175

180

185

190

195

Epistle to Lord Bathurst.-POPE. See Moral Essays, iii. 86 and note. Pope evidently derived his knowledge of Japhet Crook's history from a pamphlet called The Unparalleled Impostor, published in 1731. In this many of Japhet's letters are printed, and they go far to confirm Pope's statement that he could not write. The following, enclosing to Haw. kins, his dupe, one of his forged deeds, exhibits the extent of his literature: "Worthy Sir: Inclosed in the Bage is the Grant from the Crown with the other Writeinges be pleased to Take them home with you and at your own Laziour Peruse them