P. I fain would please you, if I knew with what; Tell me, which knave is lawful game, which not? Must great offenders, once escaped the crown, Like royal harts, be never more run down? Admit your law to spare the knight requires, As beasts of nature may we hunt the squires? 30 NOTES. Stanzas, 1740, on the road to Portsmouth. Now, Britain, is the crisis of thy fate, View the heap'd pile with undesiring eyes, Since then the difference of their souls we see, Bowles. Ver. 29. Like royal harts, &c.] Alluding to the old game laws; when our Kings spent all the time they could spare from Warburton. human slaughter, in woods and forests. Ver. 31. As beasts of nature may we hunt the squires?] The expression is rough, like the subject, but without reflection: for if beasts of nature, then not beasts of their own making; a fault too frequently objected to country squires. However, the Latin is nobler; Feræ naturæ, things uncivilized, and free. Fera, as the critics say, being from the Hebrew, Pere, Asinus silvestris. Scriblerus. Suppose I censure-you know what I mean- F. A dean, Sir? No: his fortune is not made; You hurt a man that's rising in the trade. 35 P. If not the tradesman who set up to-day, Much less the 'prentice who to-morrow may. Down, down, proud satire! though a realm be spoil'd, Arraign no mightier thief than wretched Wild; 40 The poor and friendless villain, than the great? 45 Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe. To tax directors who (thank God) have plums; NOTES. 50 Ver. 35. You hurt a man] In a former edition there was the following note on this line: "For as the reasonable De la Bruyère observes, Qui ne sait être une Erasme, doit penser à être Evêque." Dr. Warburton omitted it after he got a seat on the Bench. Warton. Ver. 39. wretched Wild;] Jonathan Wild, a famous thief, and thief-impeacher, who was at last caught in his own train, and hanged. Pope. "He is se Ver. 51. why, lay it on a king.] Warburton says: rious in the foregoing subjects of satire, but ironical here; and only F. Stop! stop! P. Must satire, then, not rise nor fall? Speak out, and bid me blame no rogues at all. F. Yes, strike that Wild, I'll justify the blow. P. Strike? why the man was hang'd ten years ago: Who now that obsolete example fears? Even Peter trembles only for his ears. 55 F. What, always Peter? Peter thinks you mad; You make men desperate if they once are bad : Else might he take to virtue some years henceP. As S-k, if he lives, will love the PRINCE. F. Strange spleen to S-k! P. Do I wrong the man? God knows I praise a courtier where I can. NOTES. only alludes to the common practice of ministers, in laying their own miscarriages on their masters." I fear Pope meant more. Ver. 57. Even Peter trembles only for his ears.] year before this, narrowly escaped the pillory for got off with a severe rebuke only from the bench. Bowles. Peter had, the forgery; and Pope. Ver. 65. SCARB'ROW] Earl of, and Knight of the Garter, whose personal attachments to the King appeared from his steady adherence to the royal interest, after his resignation of his great employment of Master of the Horse, and whose known honour and virtue made him esteemed by all parties. Pope. His character is ably and elegantly drawn by Lord Chesterfield, and the manner of his lamented death, minutely and pathetically related by Dr. Maty, in the Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield's Life. Warton. The scene, the master, opening to my view, NOTES. 70 Ver. 66. Esher's peaceful grove,] The house and gardens of Esher, in Surrey, belonging to the Honourable Mr. Pelham, brother of the Duke of Newcastle. The author could not have given a more amiable idea of his character, than in comparing him to Mr. Craggs. Pope. Ver. 67. Kent and nature] Means no more than art and nature. And in this consists the compliment to the artist. Warburton. Ver. 71. Secker is decent,] To say of a prelate, whose life was exemplary, and his learning excellent, that he was only decent, is surely to damn with faint praise. His lectures and his sermons are written with a rare mixture of simplicity and energy, and contain (what sermons too seldom possess) a great knowledge of life and human nature. Dr. Lowth, Dr. Kennicott, and Mr. Merrick, frequently acknowledged his uncommon skill in oriental learning; but the author of Warburton's Life has lately thought proper to deny him this praise. The characters of Benson and Rundel are justly drawn. It was Gibson, Bishop of London, who prevented the latter, though strongly patronized by Lord Chancellor Talbot, from being an English Bishop, on account of some unguarded expressions he had used relating to Abraham's offering of his son Isaac. Warton. Ver. 71. Secker is decent, &c.] Notwithstanding the candid and acute remarks of Warburton, this praise of Secker is undoubtedly parsimonious, and the poet almost incurs the censure, which he passed on Addison, Damns with faint praise. His notion of decent is proved with tolerable precision from his Moral Essays, ii. 163, where, after saying that Chloe, the subject of his satire, wanted, what Rundel had, a heart, he subjoins : Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, Content to dwell in decencies for ever. He means, therefore, to allow Secker moderate, but not leading, excellences Manners with candour are to Benson given; But does the court a worthy man remove? NOTES. 75 excellences of character; to exhibit him as free from informal improprieties, rather than a great proficient in sublimer virtue. Nor were the political principles of Secker likely to permit a very warm encomium from the prejudiced feelings of our poet. Concerning Rundel, the reader may find more in Pope's and Swift's Letters, and in Whiston's Memoirs of himself. poem on the Bishop is excellent. Swift's Wakefield. Ver. 73. Berkley, &c.] Dr. Berkley was, I believe, a good man, a good Christian, a good citizen, and all, in an eminent degree. He was besides very learned; and of a fine and lively imagination; which he unhappily abused by advancing, and, as far as I can learn, throughout his whole life persisting in, the most outrageous whimsey that ever entered into the head of any ancient or modern madman; namely, the impossibility of the real or actual existence of matter; which he supported on principles that take away the boundaries of truth and falsehood; expose reason to all the outrage of unbounded scepticism; and even, in his own opinion, make mathematical demonstration doubtful. To this man may be eminently applied that oracle of the Stagirite, which says, To follow Reason against the SENSES, is a sure sign of a bad understanding. But if (though at the expense of his moral character) we should suppose, that all this was only a wanton exercise of wit; how his metaphysics came to get him the character of a great genius, unless from the daring nature of his attempt, I am at a loss to conceive. His pretended demonstration, on this capital question, being the poorest, lowest, and most miserable of all sophisms; that is, a sophism which begs the question, as the late Mr. Baxter has clearly shewn; a few pages of whose reasoning have not only more sense and substance than all the elegant discourses of Dr. Berkley, but infinitely better entitle him to the character of a great genius. He was truly such: and a time will come, if learning ever revive amongst us, when the present inattention to his admirable metaphysics, established on the physics of Newton, |