Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.

"Oh wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied)
"Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with torturing irons wreathed around?
For this with fillets strained your tender head,
And barely bore the double loads of lead?1
Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivalled shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
"Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heightened by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!"

She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,2
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuff-box opened, then the case,

And thus broke out-"My lord, why, what the devil. Zounds! d- the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!

Plague on't! 'tis past a jest-nay, prithee, pox!

1 Curl-papers fastened with lead.

2 Sir George Brown. He was the only one of the persons introduced into the poem who was offended by it. He was angry that the poet made him talk nothing but nonsense.-From a note by Warburton.

An engraving of Sir Plume, with seven other figures by Hogarth, was executed on the lid of a gold snuff-box and presented to one of the parties concerned. The original impression of a print of it was sold for thirty-three pounds.- Warton.

The long-contented honours of her head.

But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow.
Then see the nymph in beauteous grief appears,
Her eyes half-languishing, half-drowned in tears;
On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head,
Which, with a sigh, she raised; and thus she said:
"For ever cursed be this detested day,

Which snatched my best, my favourite curl away!
Happy! ah, ten times happy had I been,
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to numerous ills betrayed.
Oh, had I rather unadmired remained
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste Bohea!
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.

What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam?
Oh, had I stayed, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this, the morning omens seemed to tell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box3 fell,
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,

Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
A sylph, too, warned me of the threats of fate,
In mystic visions, now believed too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These in two sable ringlets taught to break,

1 In allusion to Achille's oath in Homer. "П." i.-Pope.

2 It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that patches were part of a lady's ornaments at that time, and were political symbols; the female Tories wearing them on one side of the face, the Whigs the other.

Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck;
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands,
And tempts, once more, the sacrilegious hands.
Oh, hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"

CANTO V.

SHE said: the pitying audience melt in tears,
But fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fixed the Trojan' could remain,
While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful waved her fan;
Silence ensued, and thus the nymph began:

"Say, why are beauties praised and honoured most,
The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast?
Why decked with all that land and sea afford,2
Why angels called, and angel-like adored?

Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaux ?

Why bows the side-box from its inmost rows?3
How vain are all these glories, all our pains,
Unless good sense preserves what beauty gains:
That men may say, when we the front-box grace:
'Behold the first in virtue as in face!'

Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charmed the small-pox, or chased old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewifes' cares pro-

duce,

Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,

Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to grey;

1 Anna, the sister of Dido, besought Eneas not to abandon the queen.

2 A parody of the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus in Homer.-Pope. 3 The gentlemen sat in the side boxes at that time. The ladies occupied the front boxes.-See "Guardian," No. 29.

1

Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;
What then remains but well our pow'r to use,
And keep good-humour still, whate'er we lose?
And trust me, dear! good-humour can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding
fail.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."
So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued;'
Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her prude.
"To arms, to arms!" the fierce virago cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties, and begin th' attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confusedly rise,
And bass, and treble voices strike the skies.
No common weapons in their hands are found,
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.

So when bold Homer makes the gods engage,
And heavenly breasts with human passions rage;
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;"
And all Olympus rings with loud alarms,
Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around,
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:
Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives

way,

And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapped his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
Propped on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.

While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
"O cruel nymph! a living death I bear,'
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,

1 It is a verse frequently repeated in Homer after any speech. "So spoke, and all the heroes applauded."-Fope.

2 Homer, "Il." xx.-Pope.

3 Minerva, in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with suitors in the Odyssey, perches on a beam of the roof to belold it.-Pope,

Those eyes are made so killing

Thus on Mæander's flowery margin lies
Th' expiring swan, as he sings he dies."

When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown;
She smiled to see the doughty hero slain,
But, at her smile, the beau revived again.

Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
See fierce Belinda on the baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord, with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued:
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw.
The gnomes direct, to ev'ry atom just,
The pungent grains of titilating dust.
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.

"Now meet thy fate," incensed Belinda cried,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same his ancient personage to deck,*
Her great-great-grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown:
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;
Then in a bodkin graced her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).
"Boast not my fall" (he cried), insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low:
Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind:
All that I dread is leaving you behind!
Rather than so, ah let me still survive,
And burn in Cupid's flames-but burn alive.”

1 The words of a song in the opera of "Camilla."-Pope.

2 "Sic ubi fata vocant udis abjectis in herbis,

Ad vado Mæandri concinit albus olor."-Ov. Ep.-Pope. 3 Vid. Hom. "Il." viii. and Virg. "En." xii.-Pope.

4 In imitation of the progress of Agamemnon's sceptre in Homer, "II" ii.-Pope.