'Tis (let me see) three years and more, (October next it will be four) Since HARLEY bid me first attend, And chose me for a humble friend; 85 Would take me in his coach to chat, 90 As, "What's o'clock?" And "How's the wind?" "Who's chariot's that we left behind ?" Or gravely try to read the lines Writ underneath the country signs; Or, "Have you nothing new to-day "From Pope, from Parnelle, or from Gay?" Such tattle often entertains My Lord and me as far as Staines, As once a week we travel down To Windsor, and again to town, 95 100 What, they admire him for his jokes- Mrs. Howard, to whom they paid incessant court. This has been before explained. Bowles. Scire, Deos quoniam propiùs contingis, oportet) Num quid de Dacis audîsti? Nil equidem. Ut tu Semper eris derisor! At omnes Dî exagitent me, Si quicquam. Quid? militibus promissa Triquetrâ Prædia Cæsar, an est Italâ tellure daturus? Jurantem me scire nihil, mirantur, ut unum Scilicet egregii mortalem altique silentî. Perditur hæc inter misero lux; non sine votis. O rus, quando ego te aspiciam? quandoque licebit, Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis, O quando faba Pythagoræ cognata, simulque NOTES. Ver. 141. Here no man prates] Alcibiades, in the Symposium of Plato, finely compares Socrates, whose face was disgusting and unpromising, to the little statues of Silenus, which had no external beauty; but if you opened them, you found within the figures of all the gods. Rabelais applied this comparison to the Satires of Horace, which at first sight do not seem to contain so many exquisite moral rules. Dacier borrowed this comparison from Rabelais, without acknowledgment, as he has done many remarks from Cruquius and Lambinus, and from the old commentators, Acron and Porphyrius. Warton. Ver. 142. that Italian sings,] Happily turned from Horace's Dancer, "Lepos;"-not so, ver. 144, which is political, and not one of the trifling topics here mentioned. Warton. "You, Mr. Dean, frequent the great; Inform us, will the Emperor treat? Or do the prints and papers lie?" Faith, Sir, you know as much as I. "Ah Doctor, how you love to jest? "Tis now no secret"-I protest 115 "Tis one to me-" Then tell us, pray, When are the troops to have their pay?" And, though I solemnly declare 120 I know no more than my Lord Mayor, They stand amazed, and think me grown THUS in a sea of folly toss'd, 125 130 And there in sweet oblivion drown Those cares that haunt the court and town. O charming noons! and nights divine! Or when I sup, or when I dine, 135 The beans and bacon set before 'em, The Grace-cup served with all decorum: 140 And even the very dogs at ease! Nec malè necne Lepos saltet: sed quod magis ad nos Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus; utrùmne Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati : Quidve ad amicitias, usus, rectumne, trahat nos: Ex re fabellas. Si quis nam laudat Arellî NOTES. Ver. 153. Our friend Dan Prior] I have frequently wondered how sparing Pope has been in general in his praises of Prior, especially as the latter was the intimate friend of Swift and Lord Oxford. I imagine this reserve is owing principally to some satirical epigrams that Prior wrote on Atterbury. The Alma is not the only composition of Prior, in which he has displayed a knowledge of the world and of human nature; for I was once permitted to read a curious manuscript, late in the hands of her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Portland, containing essays and dialogues of the dead, on the following subjects, by Prior: 1. Heads for a Treatise on Learning. 2. Essay on Opinion. 3. A Dialogue betwixt Charles the Fifth and Clenard the Grammarian. 4. Betwixt Locke and Montaigne. 5. The Vicar of Bray and Sir Thomas More. 6. Oliver Cromwell and his Porter. If these pieces were published, Prior would appear to be as good a prose-writer as a poet. It seems to be growing a little fashionable to decry his great merits as a poet. They who do this, seem not sufficiently to have attended to his admirable Ode to Mr. Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax; his Ode to the Queen, 1706; his Epistle and Ode to Boileau; most of his Tales; the Alma, here mentioned; the Henry and Emma, (in which surely are many strokes of true tenderness and pathos); and his Solomon, a poem which, however faulty in its plan, has yet A neighbour's madness, or his spouse's, But something much more our concern, 145 And quite a scandal not to learn: Which is the happier, or the wiser, Whether we ought to chuse our friends, For their own worth, or our own ends? 150 What good, or better, we may call, And what, the very best of all ? Our friend Dan Prior told (you know) A tale extremely à propos : Name a town life, and in a trice, He had a story of two mice. 155 NOTES. yet very many noble and finished passages, and which has been so elegantly and classically translated by Dobson, as to reflect honour on the college of Winchester, where he was educated, and where he translated the first book as a school-exercise. I once heard him lament, that he had not at that time read Lucretius, which would have given a richness, and variety, and force to his verses; the only fault of which, seems to be a monotony and want of different pauses, occasioned by translating a poem in rhyme, which he avoided in his Milton. It is one mark of a poem being intrinsically good, that it is capable of being well translated. The political conduct of Prior was blamed on account of the part he took in the famous Partition-Treaty; but in some valuable memoirs of his life, written by the Honourable Mr. Montague, his friend, which were also in the possession of the Duchess Dowager of Portland, this conduct is clearly accounted for, and amply defended. In those memoirs are many curious and interesting particulars of the history of that time. This beautiful fable, not so much now admired, because so well known, is not in the collection of those called Esop's, whose composition it certainly was, as appears from the collection of the fragments VOL. VI. 2 E |