30. Cur* eget indignus quisquam te divite ?+

How dar'st thou let one worthy man be poor?

Very spirited, and superior to the original; for dar'st is far beyond the mere eget.

31. Non aliquid patriæ tanto emetiris acervo ?§

Or to thy country let that heap be lent,
As M-

-o's was-but not at five per cent.

He could not forbear this stroke against a nobleman, whom he had been for many years accustomed to hear abused by his most intimate friends. A certain parasite, who thought to please Lord Bolingbroke, by ridiculing the avarice of the Duke of M. was stopt short by Lord Bolingbroke; who said, He was so very great a man, that I forget he had that vice.

VOL. II.

X

32. Non

* "Ev'n modest want may bless your hand unseen,
"Tho' hush'd in patient wretchedness at home."

Which second line (of Dr. Armstrong) is exquisitely tender.

† Ver. 103. Ver. 118. § Ver. 105. | Ver. 121.

32. Non ego, narrantem, temere edi luce profesta Quidquam, &c.—

This speech of Ofellus continues in the original to the end of this satire. Pope has taken all that follows out of the mouth of Bethell, and speaks entirely in his own person. 'Tis impossible not to transcribe the pleasing picture of his way of life, and the account he gives of his own table, in lines that express common and familiar objects with dignity and elegance. See, therefore, his bill of fare, of which you will long to partake, and wish you could have dined at Twickenham.

my own.

'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
From yon old walnut-tree a show'r shall fall;
And grapes, long ling'ring on my only wall;
And figs from standard and espalier join;
The dev'l is in you if you cannot dine.

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

33. Nam

* Ver. 116.

+ Which Swift always did, with remarkable decency and

devotion.

‡ Ver. 141.

33. Nam propriæ Telluris herum natura neque illum Nec me nec quemquam statuit

*

What's property? dear Swift! you see it alter,
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter.†

SWIFT was always reading lectures of œconomy, upon which he valued himself, to his poetical friends. A shilling, says he, is a serious thing. His favourite maxim was, "Have money in your head, but not in your heart." Our author would have been pleased, if he could have known that his pleasant villa would, after his time, have been the property of a person of distinguished learning, taste, and virtue.‡

34.

quocirca vivite fortes,

Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus.§

Let lands and houses have what lords they will,
Let us be fix'd, and our own masters still.||

The majestic plainness of the original is weakened and impaired, by the addition of an antithesis, and a turn of wit, in the last line.

35. Primâ dicte mihi, summâ dicende Camænâ,
Spectatum satis, & donatum jam rude quæris,
Mæcenas ;* iterum antiquo me includere ludo.
Non eadem est ætas, non mens; Veianius armis
Herculis ad postem fixis, latet abditus agro,
Ne populum extremâ toties exoret arenà.†

St.

* It has been suspected that his affection to his friend was so strong, as to make him resolve not to outlive him; and that he actually put into execution his promise of ibimus, ibimus, Od. xvii. 1. 3. Both died in the end of the year 746 U. C. Horace only three weeks after Macenas, November 27. Nothing can be so different as the plain and manly style of the former, in comparison with what Quintilian calls the calamistros of the latter, for which Suetonius, and Macrobius, c. 86, says Augustus frequently ridiculed him; though Augustus himself was guilty of the same fault. As when he said, Vapidè se habere, for male. The learned C. G. Heyne, in his excellent edition of Virgil, after observing, that the well-known verses usually ascribed to Augustus, on Virgil's ordering his neid. to be burnt, are the work of some bungling grammarian, and not of that Emperor, adds, " Videas tamen Voltairium, horridos hos & ineptos versus non modo Augusto tribuere, verum etiam magnopere probare; ils sont beaux & semblent partir du cœur. Essai sur la Poesie Epique, c. 3. Ita vides, ad verum pulchrarum sententiarum sensum & judicium, sermonis intelligentiam aliquam esse necessariam."

P. V. Maronis Opera, tom. i. p. 131. Lipsiæ, 1767.

+ Ep. i. lib. i. v. 1.

St. John, whose love indulg'd 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 gen❜rals now, retir'd to their estates,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gates.*

There is more pleasantry and humour in Horace's comparing himself to an old gladiator, worn out in the service of the public, from which he had often begged his life, and has now at last been dismissed with the usual ceremonies, than for Pope to compare himself to an old actor, or retired general. Pope was in his fortyninth year, and Horace probably in his forty-seventh, when he wrote this epistle. Bentley has arranged the writings † of Horace in the following order. He composed the first book of his Satires, between the twenty-sixth and twentyeighth years of his age; the second book, from X 3

the

* Ver. 1. ep. i,

+ J. Masson, author of the Latin Life of Horace, does not agree to this arrangement of Horace's works; but does not seem to be able to substitute a more probable chronological order. See Hist. Crit. Repub. Lit. tom. v. p. 51.