Scatter your Favours on a Fop, 35 40 Sir, you may spare your Application, I'm no such Beast, nor his Relation; ( Nor one that Temperance advance, Cramm'd to the throat with Ortolans: Extremely ready to resign 65 All that may make me none of mine. Now this I'll say: you'll find in me A Weasel once made shift to slink 45 55 The first Part imitated in the Year 1714, by Dr SWIFT; the latter Part adde And not like forty other Fools: As thus, "Vouchsafe, oh gracious Maker! 21 25 "To grant me this and t'other Acre: 30 35 I must by all means come to town, 'Tis for the service of the Crown. "Lewis, the Dean will be of use, "Send for him up, take no excuse." The toil, the danger of the Seas; Great Ministers ne'er think of these; Or let it cost five hundred pound, No matter where the money's found, It is but so much more in debt, And that they ne'er consider'd yet. "Good Mr Dean, go change your gown, 40 "Let my Lord know you're come to town." 66 Consider, 'tis my first request. 'Be satisfied, I'll do my best:' Then presently he falls to tease, "You may for certain, if you please; So "I doubt not, if his Lordship knew— And, Mr Dean, one word from you' 'Tis (let me see) three years and more, (October next it will be four) Since HARLEY bid me first attend, And chose me for an humble friend; Would take me in his Coach to chat, And question me of this and that; "What's o'clock?" And, the Wind?" As, 85 66 How's 91 "Whose 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 Parnell, or from Gay?" Such tattle often entertains 95 3 [The orders of the Garter and Shamrock. The Bath was not revived till 1725 (by Sir R. Walpole). At Lilliput, Gulliver observed the nobles leaping over a stick, in order to be decorated with blue, red and green threads.] 4 [Swift commenced his literary labours for the Tories in 1710.] 5 [Thomas Parnell (born in 1679), author of the Hermit, and a lyrical poet of real merit, went My Lord and me as far as Staines, 66 99 the 106 "I wonder what some people mean; My Lord and he are grown so great, Always together, tête à tête; "What, they admire him for his jokes"See but the fortune of some Folks!" There flies about a strange report Of some Express arriv'd at Court; I'm stopp'd by all the Fools I meet, And catechis'd in ev'ry street. "You, Mr Dean, frequent the Great; "Inform us, will the Emp'ror treat? "Or do the Prints and Papers lie?" 115 'Faith, Sir, you know as much as I.' "Ah Doctor, how you love to jest? ""Tis now no secret"-"I protest "'Tis one to me '--"Then tell us, pray, "When are the Troops to have their pay?" And, tho' I solemnly declare 120 I know no more than my Lord Mayor, They stand amaz'd, and think me grown The closest mortal ever known. over, like Swift, from the Whigs to the Tories, and was one of the members of the Scriblerus Club. He died in 1717; and Pope published his poems in 1722, with a dedication to the Earl of Oxford (v. infra, p. 441). Parnell wrote the Life of Homer for Pope's Iliad, and translated the Batrachomyomachia. His biography was afterwards written by Goldsmith.] [Charles Fox, on a summer's day at St Ann's, declared it the right time for lying in the shade with a book. • Why with a book?" asked Sheridan.] 2 ['(For one whole day) we have had nothing A Neighbour's Madness, or his Spouse's, Our Friend Dan Prior3, told, (you know) 160 A Tale extremely à propos : 164 for dinner but mutton-broth, beans and bacon, and a barn-door fowl.' Pope to Swift (from Dawley), June 28, 1728.] 3 [The City Mouse and Country Mouse was written by Prior and Charles Montagu after wards Earl of Halifax) in 1688, in ridicule of Dryden's Hind and Panther. The reason why Pope was so sparing in his praise of Prior, is found by Warton in the satirical epigrams writ ten by Prior on Atterbury. Dan' is the old familiar abbreviation for dominus; Douglas speaks of 'Dan Chaucer; and Prior himself, in his Alma, facetiously mentions 'Dan Pope."] But show'd his Breeding and his Wit; 'Consider, Mice, like Men, must die, The veriest Hermit in the Nation tion. 185 Away they come, thro' thick and thin, The Guests withdrawn had left the Treat, 201 210 Was ever such a happy Swain? 215 BOOK IV. ODE L TO VENUS1. GAIN? new Tumults in my breast? AG Ah spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest! I am not now, alas! the man As in the gentle Reign of My Queen Anne. Ah sound no more thy soft alarms, Nor circle sober fifty with thy Charms. Mother too fierce of dear Desires! Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires. To Number five direct your Doves, There spread round MURRAY all your blooming Loves; ΙΟ Noble and young, who strikes the heart With ev'ry sprightly, ev'ry decent part; Equal, the injur'd to defend, To charm the Mistress, or to fix the Friend. 1 It may be worth observing, that the measure Pope has here chosen is precisely the same that Ben Jonson used in a translation of this very Ode. Warten. * The number of Murray's lodgings in King's Bench Walks. Bowles. [See Imitations of Horace, B. 1. Ep. VI. 49, note.] He, with a hundred Arts refin'd, Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind: Make but his Riches equal to his Wit1. (Thy Grecian Form) and Chloe lend the Face: His House, embosom'd in the Grove, Sacred to social life and social love 2, Shall glitter o'er the pendant green, Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Thither, the silver-sounding lyres Shall call the smiling Loves, and young Desires; There Youths and Nymphs, in concert gay, With me, alas! those joys are o'er; For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more. The still-believing, still-renew'd desire; Adieu, the heart-expanding bowl, And all the kind Deceivers of the soul! But why? ah tell me, ah too dear3! Steals down my cheek th' involuntary Tear? Why words so flowing, thoughts so free, Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? Thee, drest in Fancy's airy beam, Absent I follow thro' th' extended Dream; Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms, And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms; And swiftly shoot along the Mall, Or softly glide by the Canal, Now, shown by Cynthia's silver ray, And now, on rolling waters snatch'd away. PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK 4. |