Drinking of this wine, or nectar, Herodotus, I pledge you, and pour forth some deal on the ground, to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in the House of Hades.

And I wish you farewell, and good be with you. Whether the priest spoke truly, or not truly, even so may such good things betide you as befall dead men.

V.

Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope.

FROM mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope,
Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope?
Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame,
Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their
Aim,

Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance,

Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, Pursue the Poet, like Actæon's Hounds,

Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds,

Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed
Gem,

Rend from the laurel'd Brows the Diadem,
And, if one Rag of Character they spare,

Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare!

Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy

Doom.

Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet's Tomb,

With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Linc, Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends

To interview the Drudges of your Friends.
Thus though your Courthope holds your merits
high,

And still proclaims your Poems Poetry,
Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered,
And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared!

They say," "What say they?" Not in vain You ask ;

"

To tell you what they say, behold my Task!
"Methinks already I your Tears survey'
As I repeat" the horrid Things they say."1

Comes El-n first: I fancy you'll agree
Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he ;

For El-n's Introduction, crabbed and dry,
Like Churchill's Cudgel's marked with Lie, and

Lie!

"Too dull to know what his own System meant Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent ;

Rape of the Lock.

In Mr. Hogarth's Caricatura.

A Snake that puffed himself and stung his

Friends,

Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends;

His mind, like Flesh inflamed,1 was raw and

sore,

And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more!

Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right,

His Spirit sank when he was called to fight.
Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole,
Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole,
And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel,
Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele !
Still he denied the Letters he had writ,
And still mistook Indecency for Wit.
His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries,
'Detains the Reader, and at times defies!""

Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage, And furious Foot-notes growl 'neath every

Page:

See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail!

1 Elwin's Pope, ii. 15.

"Some forage Falsehoods from the North and

South,

But Pope, poor D-1, lied from Hand to

Mouth;1

Affected, hypocritical, and vain,

A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain ;
A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour,
The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power,

Pope yet possessed "-(the Praise will make you start)

"Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a

Heart!

And still we marvel at the Man, and still

Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form,

Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line

That from the Noble separates the Fine!

"

The Learned thus, and who can quite reply,
Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie?

"Poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar."-Pope, by Leslie Stephen, 139.