JOHN DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM
sums up his character in these lines:
'And yet so wondrous, so sublime a thing,
As the great Iliad, scarce could make me sing,
Unless I justly could at once commend
A good companion, and as firm a friend;
One moral, or a mere well-natured deed,
Can all desert in sciences exceed.'[159]
So also is he deciphered by the honourable
SIMON HARCOURT.
'Say, wondrous youth, what column wilt thou choose,
What laurell'd arch, for thy triumphant Muse?
Though each great ancient court thee to his shrine,
Though every laurel through the dome be thine.
Go to the good and just, an awful train!
Thy soul's delight.'[160]
Recorded in like manner for his virtuous disposition and gentle bearing,
by the ingenious
MR WALTER HART,
in this apostrophe:
'Oh! ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise!
Bless'd in thy life, and bless'd in all thy lays.
Add, that the Sisters every thought refine,
And even thy life be faultless as thy line.
Yet Envy still with fiercer rage pursues,
Obscures the virtue, and defames the Muse.
A soul like thine, in pain, in grief, resign'd,
Views with just scorn the malice of mankind.'
The witty and moral satirist, DR EDWARD YOUNG, wishing some check to the corruption and evil manners of the times, calleth out upon our poet to undertake a task so worthy of his virtue:
'Why slumbers Pope, who leads the Muses' train,
Nor hears that Virtue, which he loves, complain?'[162]
MR MALLET,
in his epistle on Verbal Criticism:
'Whose life, severely scann'd, transcends his lays;
For wit supreme is but his second praise.'
MR HAMMOND,
that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies,
Elegy xiv.:
'Now, fired by Pope and Virtue, leave the age,
In low pursuit of self-undoing wrong,
And trace the author through his moral page,
Whose blameless life still answers to his song.'
MR THOMSON,
in his elegant and philosophical poem of the Seasons:
'Although not sweeter his own Homer sings,
Yet is his life the more endearing song.'
To the same tune also singeth that learned clerk of Suffolk,
MR WILLIAM BROOME.
'Thus, nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause,
From thy own life transcribe the unerring laws.'[163]
And to close all, hear the reverend Dean of St Patrick's:
'A soul with every virtue fraught,
By patriots, priests, and poets taught.
Whose filial piety excels
Whatever Grecian story tells.
A genius for each business fit,
Whose meanest talent is his wit,' &c.
Let us now recreate thee by turning to the other side, and showing his character drawn by those with whom he never conversed, and whose countenances he could not know, though turned against him: first again, commencing with the high-voiced and never-enough quoted