Let fops or fortune fly which way they will,' And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, 1 This and the three following lines show false taste, as they are out of harmony with the serious and touching sentiment in the rest of the passage. It would have been well to wind up the earnest address with the light humour of the last line, but the introduction of so much elaborate triviality makes the general effect rather discordant. 2 So in the Rape of the Lock: Just in the jaws of ruin and codille. Codille was a term in the game of quadrille, which was played by four persons, each playing as he thought proper, but at the same time in partnership with another during each deal. One party was said to stand the game, the other to defend the pool. Ombre, or the leading player, who was said to stand the game, called for a king, and the person who held it became his partner during the deal. Codille was when those who defended the pool made more tricks than those who stood the game, and this was called winning the codille. It is mentioned with a humorous reference to politics in the Ballad of 265 270 275 Quadrille, in the Miscellany of 1727. Sure cards he has for every thing, Which well Court-cards they name, 3 It appears from a letter of Pope to Teresa Blount, that Martha had had the small-pox. He says: "Whatever ravages a merciless distemper may commit, I dare promise her boldly what few (if any) of her makers of visits and compliments dare do: She shall have one man as much her admirer as ever." 4 From La Bruyère, De l'Homme : "Pendant que l'homme, qui est en effet sort de son sens, crie, se désespère, étincelle des yeux, et perd la respiration pour un chien perdu, ou pour une porcelaine qui est en pièces." 5 There is true elegance in thus carrying her back to the opening of the Epistle, and turning the quality, which he had indicated as the general defect of the sex, into a particular compliment to herself. Fixed principles, with fancy ever new; Shakes this together, and produces--you ! ' When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere ; 2 Averted half your parents' simple prayer ; The generous god, who wit and gold refines, Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall know it, you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet. So Swift, in the Miscellanies on Mrs. Biddy Floyd, after enumerating the qualities of a true woman : Jore mixed up all and his best clay employed, Then called the happy composition-Floyd. Horace Walpole writes not long after Pope's death: "I was standing at my window after dinner in summer, in Arlington Street, and saw Patty Blount, with nothing remaining of her immortal charms but her blue 280 285 290 eyes, trudging on foot with her petticoats pinned up, for it rained, to visit 'blameless Bethel' who was sick at the end of the street." 3 So Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, v. 553: As those who unripe veins in mines explore, On the rich bed again the warm turf lay, Till time digests the yet imperfect ore, And know it will be gold another day. Compare Moral E say, iii. 12. EPISTLE III.1 ΤΟ ALLEN, LORD BATHURST. 1 This Epistle was written after a violent outcry against our author on a supposition that he had ridiculed a worthy nobleman merely for his wrong taste. He justified himself upon that article in a letter to the Earl of Burlington, at the end of which are these words: I have learnt that there are some who would rather be wicked than ridiculous; and therefore it may be safer to attack vices than follies. I will, therefore, leave my betters in the quiet possession of their idols, their groves, and their high places; and change my subject from their pride to their meanness, from their vanities to their miseries; and, as the only certain way to avoid misconstruction, to lessen offence, and not to multiply ill-natured applications, I may probably, in my next, make use of real names instead of feigned ones.-POPE. The "outcry" referred to was of course that raised on the occasion of the publica 2 tion of the Epistle on False Taste (now Epistle IV.), containing the character of Timon. 2 Allen Apsley, Lord Bathurst, born in 1684, represented Cirencester in Parliament, and was one of the Tory peers created in 1711. He steadily supported his party against Walpole, and was one of Atterbury's most active defenders in the House of Lords. He was for some time Treasurer to the Prince of Wales, but when George III. came to the throne, he retired with a pension of £2000. He died in 1775. A few years before his death he made the acquaintance of Sterne, who says of him in a Letter to Eliza (cxxxiii.): "This nobleman I say is a prodigy; for at eighty-five he has all the wit and prompt ness of a man of thirty. A disposition to be pleased and the power to please others beyond whatever I knew: added to which, a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling." |