66 "Hæc data pæna diu viventibus, ut renovata Semper clade domus multa in luctibus, inque "Perpetuo mærore et nigra veste senescant. Juv. Sat. x. 1. 245. "Enlarge my life with multitude of days, "In health and sickness, thus the suppliant prays; "In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain "And yield the tuneful lenitives of pain, "No sound, alas! would touch the impervious ear, "Though dancing mountains witness Orpheus near. "No lute nor lyre his feeble power attend, "Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; "But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, "Perversely grave, or positively wrong. "The still returning tale, and lingʼring jest, 66 Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest; "While growing hopes scarce awe the gath'ring sneer, "And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear; "The watchful guests still hint the last offence, "The daughter's petulance.....the son's expense, "Improve his heady rage with treach'rous skill, "And mould his passions till they make his will, "Unnumber'd maladies his joints invade, Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade; "He turns, with anxious heart and crippl'd hands, "The gen'ral fav'rite as the gen❜ral friend, Of these lines it is hard to say which are to be preferred, the original or the imitation. The original has more of satire, the imitation more of dignity. In the following the imitation is so much more concentrated, and on the whole so superior, that I omit transcribing the original.... "The teeming mother, anxious for her race, "And ask the latest fashion of the heart; "What care, what rules, your heedless charms shall save, "Each nymph your rival, and each youth your slave? Against your fame, with fondness hate combines, "The rival batters, and the lover pines. "With distant voice neglected virtue calls, "Less heard and less, the faint remonstrance falls: Boileau's satires in general may be classed among moral poems, for the writer was too courtly to lash individual vice. They are chiefly copied from Horace and Juvenal; and the remark of Warburton is perfectly true, that "Mr. Pope called his satires imitations, while the French poet dignified his imitations with the name of satires." In our language we have several fine didactic poems of the moral kind; but none are more celebrated than Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, and his Moral Essays. In the former the poet has aimed at being methodical; but I perfectly agree with Dr. Johnson, that the metaphysics are execrable, while the morality is pure, and sometimes sublime, the knowledge of human nature it displays profound, and the poetry incomparable. There is extant a posthumous work of Lord Bolingbroke, purporting to be the substance of several conversations between him and Mr. Pope, the object of which is to prove that the whole matter of the Essay on Man was dictated by his lordship, while Mr. Pope was little more than a versifier. To me it appears that the work in question was rather taken from the Essay on Man than the Essay from it; and neither Lord Bolingbroke nor Mr. Pope was the author of the system on which it is founded; for it is undoubtedly borrowed altogether from King's Origin of Evil: a work abundantly ingenious, but fallacious in its principles, and inaccurate in its conclusions. The best passages in the Essay on Man are the delineations of character, and of these there are none finer than the following: "Honour and shame from no condition rise; "The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd. 195 200 "What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?' "Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; "The rest is all but leather, or prunella. 204 210 "Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with strings, "That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings ; "Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race, "In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece : "But by your father's worth if yours you rate, "Count me those only who were good and great. "Go; if your ancient, but ignoble blood, "Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood, "Go! and pretend your family is young; "Now own your fathers have been fools so long. "What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? "Alas! not all the blood of all the HowARDS. 215 220 "Look next on Greatness; say where Greatness lies? "Where, but among the heroes and the wise?' "Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed, "From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; "The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find "Or make, an enemy of all mankind! "Not one looks backward, onward still he goes; "Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose. "No less alike the politic and wise; "All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes: 225 230 235 "What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath, "A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death. "Just what you hear, you have; and what's unknown, "The same, (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own. 240 "All that we feel of it begins and ends "In the small circle of our foes or friends: "To all beside, as much an empty shade, "An Eugene living, as a Cæsar dead; "Alike, or when, or where, they shone, or shine, 245 "An honest man's the noblest work of God. "Fame but from death a villain's name can save, "As justice tears his body from the grave; "When what t' oblivion better were resign'd, "One self-approving hour whole years outweighs "Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas; "Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart : "And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels, "Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? 250 255 260 265 "Above life's weakness, and its comforts too. 66 Bring then these blessings to a strict account; "Make fair deductions; see to what they mount : 66 Say, wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall? "To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly, 270 275 "Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy. 280 285 "From ancient story learn to scorn them all. "See the false scale of happiness complete! 290 "Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, "From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice rose; "In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, "And all that rais'd the hero, sunk the man. |