Per totum hoc tempus, subjectior in diem et horam Luserat in campo, fortunæ filius, omnes. Perditur hæc inter misero lux; non sine votis. O quando faba Pythagoræ cognata, simulque Yet some I know with envy swell, My Lord and he are grown so great, Always together, téte à téte. What, they admire him for his jokes See but the fortune of some folks?" There flies about a strange report Faith, Sir, you know as much as I. 105 110 115 "Ah Doctor, how you love to jest? 'Tis now no secret "-I protest When are the troops to have their pay?" 120 Pasco libatis dapibus. Prout cuique libido est, Pocula; seu modicis uvescit lætiùs. Ergo Sermo oritur, non de villis domibusve alienis, Nec malè necne Lepos saltet: sed quod magis ad nos Quidve ad amicitias, usus, rectumne, trahat nos: Ex re fabellas. Si quis nam laudat Arellî 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. 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 The beans and bacon set before 'em, Here no man prates of idle things, 140 A neighbour's madness, or his spouse's, For their own worth, or our own ends? 150 pathos); and his Solomon, a poem which, however faulty in its plan, has 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 of Babrius, which the learned Mr. Tyrrwhit published, and which are a most valuable curiosity. -Warton. The reader, perhaps, will be pleased to peruse the following letter from Prior; the original of which is among the Townsend papers, communicated Rusticus urbanum murem mus paupere fertur Vis tu homines urbemque feris præponere sylvis? Inde Ambo propositum peragunt iter, urbis aventes NOTES. by the kindness of Mr. Coxe. At the time when Pope paid Prior this compliment, Prior was envoy at Paris.-Bowles. Fontainbleau, Oct. "MY LORD, - 1714. "I am sure you will not think I make a compliment of form only, when I congratulate you on the honour of being Secretary of State; for, bonâ fide, I had rather you had the seals than any man in England, except myself, and I wish you most sincerely all satisfaction and prosperity in the course of your business, and in every part of your private life. I need not ask you for your favour, for taking it for granted that you think me an honest man, I assure myself of every thing from you that is good-natured and generous. How I am, or am not to be, HERE, or when I am to be recalled, your Lordship will soonest know. Pray, my Lord, do me all the good you can, and if, as we say here, the names of party and faction are to be lost, pray get me pricked down for one of the first that is desirous to come into so happy an agreement; and as I know so good a design as the obtaining an ensuing PEACE', suits admirably well with the sweetness of your Lordship's temper, I'll take my oath on it, it graduates extremely well with my present disposition and circumstances. I cannot presume to hope the happiness of seeing you very soon, for though I should be The Peace of Utrecht. |