"BY MUSIC, MINDS AN EQUAL TEMPER KNOW, NOR SWELL TOO HIGH, NOR SINK TOO LOW."—pope.
"WHO WICKEDLY IS WISE, OR MADLY BRAVE,
"MUSIC THE FIERCEST GRIEF CAN CHARM, AND FATE'S SEVEREST RAGE DISARM."-ALEXANDER pope.
UT all our praises why should lords engross?
Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross:
Pleased Vaga* echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost;
But clear and artless, pouring through the plain,
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vâle with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?
Who taught the heaven-directed spire to rise?
"The Man of Ross," each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where Age and Want sit smiling at the gate :
* The Latin name of the river Wye.
IS BUT THE MORE A FOOL, THE MORE A KNAVE."-Pope.
"WIT AND JUDGMENT OFTEN ARE AT STRIFE, THOUGH MEANT EACH OTHER'S AID."-ALEXANDER POPE.
HONOUR AND SHAME FROM NO CONDITION RISE:
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blessed,
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
any sick? the Man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, the med'cine makes, and gives.
Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Balked are the courts, and contests are no more:
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.
-Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
Oh, say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines to swell that boundless charity?
-Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear,
This man possessed-five hundred pounds a-year.
Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze!
Ye little stars, hide diminished
your
!
rays
-And what? no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name;
Go, search it there,† where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor makes all the history;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between,
Proved by the ends of being to have been.
When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who, living, saved a candle's end;
Shouldering God's altar a vile image stands,
Belies his features, nay, extends his hands;
Hide their diminished heads."-MILTON.
That is, in the Parish Register.
Matthew Hopkins, a notorious miser who lies buried in Wimbledon churchyard. The "Man of Ross" was one Mr. John Kyrle, who died in 1724, aged 90, after a career of noble and self-denying benevolence. He was buried at Ross, in Herefordshire.
ACT WELL YOUR PART-THERE ALL THE HONOur lies."-POPE.
"'TIS BUT BY PARTS WE FOLLOW GOOD OR ILL; FOR, VICE OR VIRTUE, SELF DIRECTS IT STILL."-POPE.
ONE SELF-APPROVING HOUR WHOLE YEARS OUTWEIGHS
That live-long wig, which Gorgon's self might own,
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.
Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend !
And see what comfort it affords our end!
[ALEXANDER POPE, porn at London in 1688. died 1744. This great master of versification, this polished satirist, and clear if superficial thinker, hardly now enjoys the estimation to which, I venture to think, his eminent abilities entitle him. That as a poet he stands foremost in the second rank, and only second to Milton, Spenser, Wordsworth, and the other "kings of song," must surely be admitted by every judicious critic who has studied his "Rape of the Lock," and his "Moral Essays." His other works are, "Eloisa to Abelard," "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady," "Windsor Forest," "The Temple of Fame," "Satires," "The Dunciad," his translation of the Homeric poems, and some minor odes, prologues, epitaphs, and epigrams. The foregoing extract is from the "Moral Essays," Epistle iii.]
"THE UNIVERSAL CAUSE ACTS TO ONE END, BUT ACTS BY VARIOUS LAWS."-ALEXANDER POPE.
"VICE IS A MONSTER OF SO FRIGHTFUL MIEN, AS, TO BE HATED, NEEDS BUT TO BE SEEN."-POPE.
JOT proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
Than what more humble mountains offer here,
Where, in their blessings, all those gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
Here blushing Flora paints the enamelled ground,
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.
See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings:
Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Ah, what avail his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold?
OF STUPID STARERS AND OF LOUD HUZZAS."-POPE.
"WHO TAKES NO PRIVATE ROAD, BUT LOOKS THROUGH NATURE UP TO NATURE'S GOD."-POPE.
ONE SCIENCE ONLY WILL ONE GENIUS FIT;
Nor yet when moist Arcturus clouds the sky,
The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny.
To plains with well-breathed beagles we repair,
And trace the mazes of the circling hare
(Beasts, urged by us, their fellow beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo):
With slaughtering guns th' unweary fowler roves,
When frosts have whitened all the naked groves;
Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade,
And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade.
SO VAST IS ART, SO NARROW HUMAN WIT."-POPE.
"THAT MERCY I TO OTHERS SHOW, THAT MERCY SHOW TO ME."-ALEXANDER POPE.
WHOEVER THINKS A FAULTLESS PIECE TO SEE,
THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT.
He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye;
Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky:
Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath,
The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death;
Oft as the mounting larks their holes prepare,
They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand :
With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race supply:
The bright-eyed perch, with fins of Tyrian dye;
The silver eel, in shining volume rolled;
The yellow carp, in scales bedropped with gold;
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains;
And pikes, the tyrants of the watery plains.
[ALEXANDER POPE. From "Windsor Forest," l. 111 to l. 146.]
"NOT ACTIONS SHOW THE MAN WHO DOES A KINDNESS IS NOT THEREFORE KIND."-POPE.
THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT.
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
Son of the Desert! e'en the camel feels,
Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands
Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
THINKS WHAT NE'ER WAS, NOR IS, NOR ne'er shall be."—pope.
"TAUGHT ON THE WINGS OF TRUTH TO FLY ABOVE THE REACH OF VULGAR SONG."-POPE.
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