(generally a very close and correct one), has confounded it with the Atlantis of Bacon; concluding, perhaps, according to the opinion then prevailing in Paris, that "philosophy" was a fashionable study with the belles of London. TROUBLES FROM BAD AUTHORS. (From the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.) Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued I said; Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? By land, by water, they renew the charge; They stop the chariot, and they board the barge. No place is sacred, not the church is free, Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me: Then from the mint walks forth the man of rhyme, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, Who pens a stanza, when he should engross ? Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope. Friend to my life! (which did you not prolong, With honest anguish, and an aching head; This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years." I want a patron: ask him for a place." Bless me! a packet.-"'T is a stranger sues, A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.” If I dislike it, "furies, death, and rage!” If I 66 approve, Commend it to the stage." There (thank my stars), my whole commission ends, The players and I are luckily no friends. Fir'd that the house reject him, "'Sdeath! I'll print it, And shame the fools-Your interest, sir, with Lintot." "Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much :" "Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch." All my demurs but double his attacks: At last he whispers, "Do; and we go snacks." 7 Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, The precincts of the Mint, in those days, included a jail for debtors. It was shabby of the poor devils of authors to take advantage of the poet's dinnerhour; but was it quite magnanimous in the poet to say so? If his father had not left him an independence, he might have found even himself hard pushed sometimes for a meal. Pope was a little too fond of taking his pecuniary advantages for merits. He did not see (so blind respecting themselves are the acutest satirists) that this inability to forego a false ground of superiority originated in an instinct of weakness. 8 Curll invites to dine.-Curll was the chief scandalous bookseller of that time. CHARACTERS AND RULING PASSIONS. CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF WHARTON. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Then turns repentant, and his God adores, Enough if all around him but admire, And now the punk applaud, and now the friar. Thus with each gift of nature and of art A fool, with more of wit than half mankind; He dies, sad outcast of each church and state, And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? 10 Then turns repentant, and his God adores With the same spirit that he drinks and whores. The reader must bear in mind that all which is considered coarse language now, was not so considered in Pope's time; and that words, which cannot any longer be read out loud in mixed company, may still have the benefit of that recollection, and be silently endured. 11 Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? Perhaps, if it were required to select from all Pope's writings the passage most calculated to have a practical effect on readers in want of it, it would be this couplet. The address of it is exquisite. The obvious conclusion is, that it is better to be thought a fool by a knave than by a man of genius. |