Still follow Sense, of every art the soul; Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, Spontaneous beauties all around advance, Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance: Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow 70 A work to wonder at-perhaps a Stowe. Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls, And Nero's terraces desert their walls: The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make, Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake; Or cut wide views thro' mountains to the plain, You'll wish your hill or shelter'd seat again. Ev'n in an ornament its place remark, Behold Villario's ten years' toil com- His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet, The wood supports the plain, the parts unite, 81 And strength of shade contends with strength of light; A waving glow the bloomy beds display, He finds at last he better likes a field. Thro' his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray'd, Or sat delighted in the thick'ning shade, 90 With annual joy the redd'ning shoots to greet, Or see the stretching branches long to meet. With all the mournful family of yews; made, Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade. sees, 108 A puny insect shiv'ring at a breeze! His gardens next your admiration call; No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suff'ring eye inverted Nature sees, 119 Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; With here a fountain never to be play'd, And there a summer-house that knows no shade, Here Amphitrite sails thro' myrtle bowers, There gladiators fight or die in flowers; Unwater'd, see the drooping seahorse That summons you to all the pride of prayer. Light quirks of music, broken and unev'n, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall; The rich buffet well-colour'd serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. third epistle treated the extremes of Avarice and Profusion, and the fourth took up one particular branch of the latter, namely the vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality, and was therefore corollary to the third; so this treats of one circumstance of that vanity, as it appears in the common collections of old coins; and is therefore a corollary to the fourth.' See the wild waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears! With nodding arches, broken temples spread, The very tombs now vanish'd like their dead! Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil'd, Where mix'd with slaves the groaning martyr toil'd; Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, Now drain'd a distant country of her floods; Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scour'd; And Curio, restless by the fair one's side, Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride. Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine: Touch'd by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine; Her Gods and godlike Heroes rise to view, And all her faded garlands bloom anew. Nor blush these studies thy regard engage: These pleas'd the fathers of poetic rage; 50 The verse and sculpture bore an equal part, And art reflected images to art. Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim, Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame? Here, rising bold, the patriot's honest face, Ennobled by himself, by all approv'd And prais'd, unenvied by the Muse he lov'd.' UNIVERSAL PRAYER DEO OPT. MAX. This was written in 1738 to correct the im. pression of fatalism which Warburton's ingenious exposition had failed to remove. Pope had really as little mind for dogma as most poets; but these verses represent what, in view of the instructions of Bolingbroke, corrected by Warburton, he now believed himself to believe. FATHER of all! in ev'ry age, Thou Great First Cause, least understood, To know but this, that thou art good, Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the good from ill; And binding Nature fast in Fate, Left free the human Will. What Conscience dictates to be done, What blessings thy free bounty gives For God is paid when man receives; Yet not to earth's contracted span Thy goodness let me bound, Or think thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round. Let not this weak unknowing hand If I am right, thy grace impart, Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O teach my heart To find that better way. Save me alike from foolish Pride Teach me to feel another's woe, That mercy show to me. Mean tho' I am, not wholly so, This day be bread and peace my lot: To Thee, whose temple is all Space, SATIRES The Satires retain nearly the order of their original publication. They appeared between 1733 and 1738. It is said that Bolingbroke suggested the translation of the First Satire of EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES ADVERTISEMENT This paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some Persons of Rank and Fortune (the authors of 'Verses to the Imitator of Horace,' and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court') to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my Writings (of which, being public, the Public is judge), but my Person, Morals, and Family; whereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth and the Sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous. Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have, for the most part, spared their names, and they may escape being laughed at if they please. I would have some of them know it was owing to the request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs as they have done of mine. However, I shall have this advantage and honour on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless character can never be found out but by its truth and like ness. P. 'SHUT, shut the door, good John!' fatigued, I said; Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.' |