THE SIXTH EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

ΤΟ

MR. MURRAY.1

"Nor to admire, is all the art I know,
To make men happy, and to keep them so.""

(Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech,
So take it in the very words of Creech.3)

This vault of air, this congregated ball,

Self-centred sun, and stars that rise and fall,
There are, my friend, whose philosophic eyes

Look through, and trust the Ruler with his skies;
To him commit the hour, the day, the year,
And view this dreadful All without a fear."

1 William Murray, afterwards the famous Earl of Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. He was born 2nd March, 1705, was made Chief Justice in 1756, and died 20th March, 1793.

2 So Milton, Paradise Regained, iv. 362:

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so?

3 Creech published his translation of Horace in 1684. Pope, as he himself says, borrows the two first lines

5

10

of his translation of this Epistle. Creech is said to have committed suicide during a fit of insanity occasioned by the refusal of a fellow collegian to lend him money.

4 Pope, in a manner not unusual with him, gives a religious turn to the atheistic indifference of the original. Compare Imitation of Satire ii. Book ii. vv. 79, 80, where, as Warburton says, he mitigates Horace's Epicureanism.

Admire we then what earth's low entrails hold,
Arabian shores, or Indian seas infold;

All the mad trade of fools and slaves for gold?
Or popularity? or stars and strings ?
The mob's applauses, or the gifts of kings?
Say with what eyes we ought at Courts to gaze,
And pay the great our homage of amaze?

If weak the pleasure that from these can spring,
The fear to want them is as weak a thing:
Whether we dread, or whether we desire,
In either case, believe me, we admire :
Whether we joy or grieve, the same the curse,
Surprised at better, or surprised at worse.
Thus good or bad, to one extreme betray
The unbalanced mind, and snatch the man away:
For Virtue's self may too much zeal be had;
The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
Go then, and, if you can, admire the state
Of beaming diamonds, and reflected plate;
Procure a taste to double the surprise,

And gaze on Parian charms with learned eyes:
Be struck with bright brocade, or Tyrian dye,
Our birthday nobles' splendid livery.
If not so pleased, at council-board rejoice,
To see their judgments hang upon thy voice;
From morn to night, at Senate, Rolls, and Hall,'
Plead much, read more, dine late, or not at all.
But wherefore all this labour, all this strife?
For fame, for riches, for a noble wife?
Shall one whom nature, learning, birth conspired
To form, not to admire, but be admired,
Sigh, while his Chloe,' blind to wit and worth,
Weds the rich dulness of some son of earth?

In the House of Lords, and in the Courts of Chancery, and at Westminster.

2 "Murray," says Lord Campbell,

was attached to a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and birth, and she listened favourably to his suit. But her family requiring a

Yet time ennobles, or degrades each line;

It brightened Craggs's, and may darken thine :'
And what is fame? the meanest have their day,
The greatest can but blaze, and pass away.
Graced as thou art, with all the power of words,
So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords: 2
Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh,

(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde!
Racked with sciatics, martyred with the stone,
Will any mortal let himself alone?

See Ward by battered beaux invited over,
And desperate Misery lays hold on Dover.3

sight of his rent-roll, were not con-
tented that her jointure and pin-
money should be charged upon his
rood of ground at Westminster Hall,
and married her to a squire of broad
acres in a midland county."-Chief
Justices, ii. 339.

1 Lady M. W. Montagu says in her account of the Court of George I.: "His (the younger Craggs) father was nothing more considerable at'his first appearance in the world than footman to Lady Mary Mordant, the gallant Duchess of Norfolk." This statement has been repeated by Lord Macaulay, but it rests on mere gossip. The truth is, that the elder Craggs was the son of Anthony Craggs, Esq., of Hole House, near Walsingham, in the county of Durham, a gentleman of some estate, which he however had to mortgage or sell in consequence of his extravagance. James came to London in 1680. He found a patron in the Earl of Arundel, and having obtained the appointment of steward to the Duke of Norfolk, afterwards married a lady of good fortune. See Mr. Moy Thomas's note on Lady M. W. Montagu's Letters and Works, vol. i. p. 230.

VOL. III.-POETRY.

Murray was fourth son of the fifth Viscount Stormont.

2 There is a parody of these lines, said to be by Cibber:

Persuasion tips his tongue, whene'er he
talks,

And he has chambers in the King's Bench
Walks.

Pope's couplet has been often noticed as a specimen of the Bálos, but it is not quite so much so as it sounds, as he is speaking of Murray pleading before the highest tribunal of the land, the House of Lords in its judicial capacity, "conspicuous scene;" and then he carries on the idea, "another yet is nigh." CROKER.

This is just, but Pope ought to have perceived that the local association would predominate, and when taken in connection with the highly rhetorical construction of the first line would conspire to produce a "bathos." The slip is the more unfortunate as it to a certain extent spoils the effect of the fine and ingeniously turned compliment to Murray that immediately follows.

3 Two quack doctors. Joshua Ward's statue is in the Society of

Y

The case is easier in the mind's disease;

There all men may be cured, whene'er they please.
Would ye be blessed? despise low joys, low gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; '

Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.
But art thou one, whom new opinions sway,
One who believes as Tindal' leads the way,

Who virtue and a church alike disowns,

Thinks that but words,' and this but brick and stones?
Fly then, on all the wings of wild desire,

Admire whate'er the maddest can admire.

Is wealth thy passion? Hence! from pole to pole,
Where winds can carry, or where waves can roll,
For Indian spices, for Peruvian gold,
Prevent the greedy, and outbid the bold:
Advance thy golden mountain to the skies;
On the broad base of fifty thousand rise,
Add one round hundred, and (if that's not fair)
Add fifty more, and bring it to a square.

2

For, mark the advantage; just so many score
Will gain a wife with half as many more,
Procure her beauty, make that beauty chaste,
And then such friends-as cannot fail to last.
A man of wealth is dubbed a man of worth,
Venus shall give him form, and Anstis' birth.
(Believe me, many a German prince is worse,
Who, proud of pedigree, is poor of purse).
His wealth brave Timon gloriously confounds;'
Asked for a groat, he gives a hundred pounds;
Or if three ladies like a luckless play,
Takes the whole house upon the poet's day."

1 Compare Moral Essays, iii. 334. 2 Not imitated with the vigour and energy of the original. This 77th line is uncommonly weak and languid. Those divinities, as Horace has described them, Pecunia, Suadela, and Venus, conspire in giving their various accomplishments to this favourite of fortune.-WARTON.

3 John Anstis, the Garter King at Arms. He was born at St. Neots, 28 Sept. 1669, and represented the Borough of St. Germains from 17021714. In 1714 he was made Garter King at Arms, and died 4 March,

1744. Prior has an Epigram upon
him :

But coronets we owe to crowns,
And favour to a Court's affection;
By nature we are Adam's sons,
And sons of Anstis by election.

Compare Epilogue to Satires ii. 238.

4 The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other trifling circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry, even