From

yon old walnut-tree a fhow'r fhall fall,
And grapes, long ling ring on my only wall,
And figs from standard and espalier join ;
The dev'l is in you if you cannot dine.
Then chearful healths (your mistress shall have place)
And, what's more rare, a poet fhall fay grace.

33. Nam propriæ Telluris herum natura neque illum Nec me nec quemquam ftatuit.

What's property? dear Swift! you see it alter,
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter §.

SWIFT was always reading lectures of economy, upon which he valued himself, to his poetical friends. A fhilling, says he, is a ferious thing. His favourite maxim was, "Have money in your head, but not in your heart." Our author would have been pleased, if he could have known that his pleasant villa would, after his time, have been the property of a person of distinguished learning, tafte, and virtue.

• Which Swift always did, with remarkable decency and devotion.

↑ Ver. 130.

+ Ver. 141.
The Right Honourable Welbare Ellis.

§ Ver. 167.

34. quocirca

34.

quocirca vivite fortes,

Fortiaque adverfis opponite pectora rebus *.

Let lands and houses have what lords they will,
Let us be fix'd, and our own mafters ftill †.

THE majestic plainness of the original is weakened and impaired, by the addition of an antithefis, and a turn of wit, in the laft line.

35. Primâ diete mihi, fummâ dicende Camænâ,

Spectatum fatis, & donatum jam rude quæris,
Mæcenas ; iterum antiquo me includere ludo.
Non eadem eft ætas, non mens; Veianius armis
Herculis

Ver. 135.

+ Ver. 179.

It has been fuspected that his affection to his friend was fo ftrong, as to make him resolve not to outlive him ; and that he actually put into execution his promise of ibimus, ibimus, Od. xvii. l. 3. Both died in the end of the year 746; U. C. Horace only three weeks after Mæcenas, November 27. Nothing can be fo different as the plain and manly ftyle of the former, in comparison with what Quintilian calls the calamiftros of the latter, for which Suetonius, and Macrobius, c. 86, fays Auguftus frequently ridiculed him, though Augustus himself was guilty of the fame fault. As when he faid, Vapidè fe habere, for malè. The learned C. G. Heyne, in his excellent edition of Virgil; after observing, that the well-known verses usually afcribed to Auguftus, on Virgil's ordering his Eneid to be burnt, are the work of fome bungling grammarian, and not of that Emperor, adds, " Videas tamen Voltairium, horridos hos & ineptos verfus non modo Augusto tribuere, verum

Herculis ad poftem fixis, fatet abditus agro,
Ne populum extremâ toties exoret arenâ♣.

St. John, whofe love indulg'd my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my latt.
Why will you break the fabbath of my days?
Now fick alike of envy and of praise.
Public too long, ah let me hide my age!
See modeft Cibber now has left the stage:
Our gen'rals now, retir'd to their eftates,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gates †.

THERE is more pleasantry and humour in Horace's comparing himself to an old gladiator, worn out in the fervice of the public, from which he had often begged his life, and has now at laft been difmiffed with the ufual ceremonies, than for Pope to compare himself to an old actor or retired general. Pope was in his forty-ninth year, and Horace probably in his fortyfeventh, when he wrote this epiftle. Bent

etiam magnopere probare; ils font beaux & femblent partir du cœur. Effai fur la Poefie Epique, c. 3. Ita vides, ad verum pulchrarum fententiarum fenfum & judicium, fermonis intelligentiam aliquam effe neceffariam."

P. V. Maronis Opera, tom. i. p. 131. Lipfiæ, 1767.

Ep. i. lib. i. v. 1.

↑ Ver. 1. ep. i.

ley

ley has arranged the writings * of Horace in the following order. He composed the first book of his Satires, between the twenty-fixth and twenty-eighth years of his age; the second book, from the years thirty-one to thirty-three; next, the Epodes, in his thirty-fourth and fifth year; next, the first book of his Odes, in three years, from his thirty-fixth to his thirty-eighth year; the fecond book in his fortieth and forty-first year; the third book, in the two next years; then, the first book of the Epiftles, in his fortyfixth and seventh year; next to that, the fourth book of his Odes, in his forty-ninth to his fifty-first year. Lastly, the Art of Poetry, and second book of the Epiftles, to which an exact date cannot be affigned.

36. Eft mihi purgatam crebro qui perfonet aurem, Solve fenefcentem mature fanus equum, ne Peccet ad extremum ridendus & ilia ducat +.

J. Mason, author of the Latin Life of Horace, does not agree to this arrangement of Horace's works; but does not seem to be able to substitute a more probable chronological order. See Hift. Crit. Repub. Lit. tom. v. p. 51.

+ Ver. 7.

A voice

A voice there is that whispers in my car *,

('Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear) Friend Pope, be prudent, let your muse take breath, And never gallop Pegasus to death,

Left stiff and stately, void of fire and force,

You limp like Blackmore, on a Lord Mayor's horse +.

HORACE plainly alludes to the good genius of Socrates, which constantly warned him against approaching evils and inconveniences. POPE has happily turned it to Wisdom's voice, and as happily has added, "which fometimes one can hear." The purged ear is a term of philofophy. The idea of the jaded Pegafus, and the Lord Mayor's horse, are high improvements on the original. A Roman reader was pleased

He has excelled Boileau's imitation of these verses, Ep. x. ver. 44. And Boileau himself is excelled by an old poet, whom indeed he has frequently imitated, that is, Le Frefnaie Vauquelin, who was the father of N. V. des Yvetaux, the preceptor of Louis XIII. whose poems were published towards the end of his life, 1612. He fays that he profited much by the fatires of Ariofte. Boileau has bor rowed much from him. He also wrote an Art of Poetry. One of his best pieces is an imitation of Horace's Trebatius, being a dialogue between himfelf and the Chancellor of France.

† Ver. 11.

with