Vain was the Chief's, the Sage's pride! In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled! But he has made ample amends, by the Epistle addressed to the Earl of Oxford, when he presented to that nobleman the Poems of his old friend Parnell ;* in which epistle there is a weight of sentiment, and majesty of diction, which our author has no where surpassed. His † genius seems to have been invigorated, and exalted, by the high opinion he had justly conceived of the person to whom he was writing; who must be confessed, now that party-prejudices are worn away, He was a writer that improved gradually. Very wide is the difference betwixt his poems on the Peace, and on Unnatural Flights in Poetry; and betwixt his Hymn to Contentment, his Fairy Tale, his Rise of Woman, his Night-piece on Death, and his Hermit. All five of them delicious morsels. I am well informed that Lord Bolingbroke was greatly mortified at Pope's bestowing such praises on his old antago nist, whom he mortally hated. Yet I have seen two original letters of Lord Bolingbroke to Lord Oxford, full of the most fulsome flattery, and profane applications of scripture. At the time when the Secret Committee was held to examine the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, who was the person that away, to have had great genius, learning, and honesty. Strength of mind appears to have been his predominant characteristic; of which he gave the most striking proofs, when he was stabbed, displaced, imprisoned. These circumstances are alluded to in those noble and nervous verses: And sure, if aught below the seats divine, And of which fortitude and firmness, another striking proof still remains, in a letter which the Earl wrote from the Tower to a friend who advised him to meditate an escape, and which is worthy of the greatest hero of antiquity. This extraordinary letter I had the pleasure of reading, by the favour of his excellent grand-daughter, the that impeached the Earl of Oxford, Mr. Harley made an admirable speech in the House of Commons, declaring, that he would not treat Walpole as he had treated his relation, and immediately left the House without giving his vote against him. Sir Robert seemed much affected with this generous behaviour of Mr. Harley. the present Duchess Dowager of Portland, who inherits that love of literature and science, so peculiar to her ancestors and family. * JERVAS Owed much more of his reputation to the epistle POPE sent to him, with Dryden's translation of Fresnoy, than to his skill as a painter. He was defective (says Mr. Walpole) in drawing, colouring, and composition; and even in that most necessary, and perhaps most easy, talent of a portrait-painter, likeness. In general, his pictures are a light flimsy kind of fan-painting, as large as the life. His vanity was excessive. The reason why Lady Bridgewater's name is so frequently repeated in this epistle, is, because he affected to be violently in C c love VOL. II. *This didactic poem of Fresnoy, is but a cold, uninteresting, unpoetical performance. He was the intimate of Mignard, the rival of Le Brun. At the end of the life of Mignard, are three dialogues on painting, written by Fenelon, in a most exquisite taste, and which are here mentioned, because they are little known, and not inserted in the works of Fenelon, and are worthy to be read even after the admirable tenth chapter of the twelfth book of Quintilian. love with her. * Yet his vanity was greater than his passion. One day, as she was sitting to him, he ran over the beauties of her face with rapture; "But (said he) I cannot help telling your Ladyship that you have not a handsome ear.” "No! (said Lady Bridgewater.) Pray, Mr. Jervas, what is a handsome ear?" He turned aside his cap, and shewed her his own. Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iv. p. 18. As our author was addressing his master in this his favourite and delightful art, there is a warmth and glow of expression throughout this epistle. Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly, Fir'd with ideas of fair Italy: With He translated Don Quixote, without understanding Spanish, as his friend Pope used to say. Warburton added a supplement to the preface of this translation, concerning the origin and nature of romances of chivalry; which supplement Pope extols, in his Letters, vol. ix. p. 352, in the highest terms; but the opinions in it are thoroughly confuted by Mr. Tyrwhitt, in vol. xi. of Supplemental Observations on Shakespeare, p. 373. 1 With thee, on Raphael's * monument I mourn, Though the last line, by the way, is inferior to the rest, because it passes from particular images to something general. Yet, however elegant and finished this epistle must be allowed to be, it does not excel that of Dryden, addressed to Sir Godfrey Kneller ;† and the following lines, both In a curious and unpublished letter of Raffaele to his uncle, he tells him, that his personal estate in Rome amounted to 3000 ducats of gold; that is, 8621. 10s. sterling; that he has 50 crowns of gold per ann. as architect of St. Peter's; that is, 141. 7s. 6d. and a yearly pension for life of 300 ducats of gold; that is, 861. 5s. that he is in Bramante's place; that the church of St. Peter's would cost more than a million of gold, 287,500l. that the Pope had appropriated for it 60,000 ducats a year; that is, 17,250l. I will add to these anecdotes, taken from Richardson, that Raffaële with great modesty consulted his friend Ariosto, who was an excellent scholar, on the characters, lives, and countries, of the persons whom he was to introduce in the picture of Theology. All that Raffaele is ever known. to have written, is four letters, and a sonnet addressed to Ariosto. Michael Angelo also wrote verses, and addressed a sonnet to Vasari. To make an experiment what gross flattery Sir Godfrey was capable of swallowing, Pope one day said to him, "God, we |