THIS Imitation is highly finished, like the last, but it is open to objections of the same kind. We feel throughout what Johnson calls the irreconcileable dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. In truth Horace's own Epistle seems on first reading somewhat insipid; the point, however, lies in its burlesque motives. The poet pretends to excuse himself for his laziness in writing, on high Stoic principles; the gravity with which he elaborates his philosophy; the fidelity with which he copies the minute manner of the Stoics in reasoning about commonplaces; the sublime conclusion as to virtue; and the final bathos about the cough, are all admirable. These characteristics Pope has not attempted to reproduce. His Epistle to Bolingbroke seems to be written in all seriousness; but if the Stoic philosophy sounded somewhat commonplace to the Romans under Augustus, it must have appeared ten times more so to society under George II. The best part of the Imitation, and probably the chief motive of the poet himself, is the passage reflecting on the monied interest which Pope cordially hated. There are many ingenious applications of the original; on the other hand some of the parallels-as that of Aristippus and St. Paul-are more smart than just, and in one passage at least (through too close an adherence to the Latin), his satire upon his own times completely misses fire. (See note to v. 86.)

This Imitation was advertised in the London Magazine of March, 1738, the publisher being Dodsley. The title page in the folio, however, bears the date of 1737.

THE FIRST EPISTLE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK
BOOK OF
OF HORACE.

ΤΟ

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

ST. JOHN, whose love indulged my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my last!
Why will you break the Sabbath of my days?'
Now sick alike of envy and of praise.
Public too long, ah, let me hide my age!
See, modest Cibber now has left the stage:2
Our generals now, retired to their estates,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gates;'
In life's cool evening satiate of applause,
Nor fond of bleeding, even in Brunswick's cause."

This satire was written in 1738, when Pope was in his fiftieth year. Bolingbroke was in France, whither he had retired in 1735.

2 Colley Cibber retired from the stage in 1730. He reappeared on it, however, in 1744, when he was over seventy.

3 He is said to have alluded to the entrance of Lord Peterborough's house at Bevismount, near Southampton.-WARTON.

So in Moral Epistles, iv.

5

10

A voice there is, that whispers in my ear,

2.

ме

('Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear,)
"Friend Pope! be prudent, let your Muse take breath,
And never gallop Pegasus to death;

Lest stiff, and stately, void of fire or force,

You limp, like Blackmore on a Lord Mayor's horse."'
Farewell, then, verse, and love, and every toy,
The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;
What right, what true, what fit, we justly call,
Let this be all my care, for this is all:

To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste,
What every day will want, and most, the last.
But ask not, to what doctors I apply?

Sworn to no master, of no sect am I :

As drives the storm, at any door I knock:

And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.*
Sometimes a patriot,' active in debate,

Mix with the world, and battle for the state,
Free as young Lyttelton,' her cause pursue,
Still true to virtue, and as warm as true;

30

and Locke in developing the faculties, and explaining the operations of the human mind.-WARBURTON.

346 'Patriot" was the name assumed by the younger members of the Opposition to distinguish them alike from Ministerial Whigs and Jacobites.

4 George Lyttelton, son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in Worcestershire, born 1709. Before his elevation to the peerage he sat in Parliament as member for Okehampton, and was a leading speaker on the side of the Opposition. He wrote much both in prose and verse that is now forgotten. Lord Waldegrave says of him "Sir George Lyttelton was an enthusiast both in religion and politics; absent in business, not ready in a debate, and totally ig norant of the world: on the other

Sometimes, with Aristippus, or St. Paul,1
Indulge my candour, and grow all to all;'
Back to my native moderation slide,
And win my way by yielding to the tide.

2

Long, as to him who works for debt, the day,

Long as the night to her whose love's away,
Long as the year's dull circle seems to run,
When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one;
So slow the unprofitable moments roll,
That lock up all the functions of my soul;
That keep me from myself; and still delay
Life's instant business to a future day:
That task, which as we follow or despise,
The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise;

Which done, the poorest can no wants endure; 3
And which not done, the richest must be poor.
Late as it is, I put myself to school,
And feel some comfort, not to be a fool.
Weak though I am of limb, and short of sight,
Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite;

3

hand his studied orations were excellent; he was a man of parts, a scholar, no indifferent writer, and by far the honestest man of the whole society." He died August 22, 1773. See Epilogue to Satires, i. 47.

1 Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.-POPE.

There is an impropriety and indecorum in joining the name of the most profligate parasite of the Court of Dionysius with that of an Apostle. -WARTON.

There is also an entire perversion of St. Paul's meaning. The Apostle says, "I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some," while Pope says afterwards that Aristippus won his way by yielding to the tide."

66

2 I know not why he omitted a

strong sentiment that follows immediately:

Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor.-WARTON.

He did not omit it; he probably intended to render it in the line:

And win my way, by yielding to the tide; but he seems to have misunderstood the character given by Horace of Aristippus, who did not so much win his way by yielding to the tide, as by endeavouring to turn all circumstances to his own advantage.

3 Here we have one of the frequent instances of "incorrectness" in Pope. He simply means "can want nothing," whereas he appears to say that the poorest are unable to endure want.