poetes, qui doivent bientôt rendre compte à Dieu de leurs actions. Tom. v. 4.

HAPPY indeed was the poet, of whom his worthy and amiable * friend could so truly fay, that in all his works was not to be dif covered

One line, that dying, he could wish to blot!

WOULD to God, faid AVERROES (regretting the libertinism of fome verses which he had made in his youth) I had been born old!

FONTAINE and CHAUCER, dying, wifht unwrote
The sprightlieft effort of their wanton thought:
SIDNEY and WALLER, brightest fons of fame,
Condemn'd the charm of ages to the flame +.

25. Let Sporus tremble-What! that king of filk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?

• Lord Lyttelton, in the Prologue to Thomfon's Coriolanus.

+ Young's Epiftle to Authors.

Satire or fenfe, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?—
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that ftinks and ftings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er taftes, and beauty ne'er enjoys;
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they cannot bite.
Eternal fmiles his emptiness betray,
As fhallow ftreams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And as the prompter breathes the puppet squeaks,
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad *,
Half froth, half venom, fpits himself abroad.
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lyes,
Or fpite, or smut, or rhymes, or blafphemies.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.

It is but juftice (faid Pope in the first edition) to own that the hint of Eve and the Serpent was taken from the verfes to the Imitator of Horace

"When God created thee, one would believe
"He faid the fame as to the fnake of Eve;
"To human race antipathy declare,

" "Twixt them and thee be everlasting war.
"But oh! the fequel of the fentence dread,

"And whilft you bruife their heel, beware your head."

Evi's

Eve's tempter thus, the rabbins have expreft,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the reft,

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will truft,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the duft t.

LANGUAGE Cannot afford more glowing or more forcible terms to exprefs the utmost bitterness of contempt. We think we are here reading MILTON against SALMASIUS. The raillery is carried to the very verge of railing, fome will say ribaldry. He has armed his mufe with a scalping-knife. The portrait is certainly over-charged: for Lord H. for whom it was defigned, whatever his morals might be, had yet confiderable abilities, though marred indeed by affectation. Some of his fpeeches in parliament were much beyond florid impotence. They were indeed in favour of Sir R. Walpole, and this was fufficiently offenfive to Pope. The fact

+ V. 305.

He fought a duel with Mr. Pulteney upon a political quarrel.-See alfo a pamphlet, entitled, The Court Secret, occafioned by Lord Scarborough's death, for a fevere character of Ibrahim, intended for this Lord. Printed 8vo. 1741.

that particularly incited 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 fhe gave an account in a series of elegant and entertaining letters, very characteristical of the manners of the Turks, and of which many are addreffed to Pope; are well known, and justly celebrated. With both these noble perfonages had Pope lived in a state of intimacy. And justice obligeth us to confess, that he himself was the aggreffor in the

After her quarrel with Mr. Pope, which Lord Peterborough in vain endeavoured to reconcile, fhe wrote thus from Florence, to the Countess of "The word malignity, and a paffage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wafp of Twickenham; his lyes affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the ftory of the feraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am perfuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base.. enough to affume the mafk of a moralift, in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred of man and womankind."

VOL. II.

Tt

quarrel

quarrel with them; as he first assaulted and affronted Lord H. by these two lines in his imitation of the 1ft Sat. of Horace's fecond book,

The lines are weak, another's pleas'd to fay,
Lord Fanny Spins a thousand such a day.

And Lady M. W. M. by the eighty-third line of the fame piece, too gross * to be here repeated.

It is a fingular circumstance, that our au thor's indignation was fo vehement and inexhaustible, 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 inserted, and too full of

So alfo are lines 87, 88, 89, 90 of the third epiftle con cerning Fulvia and old Narfes. But let us remember, that, As the foft plume gives swiftness to the dart, Good-breeding fends the satire to the heart. YouNG.