I shall preserve one specimen, so classically elegant, that Pope himself might have composed it. It is from the pen of that Leonard Welsted whose “Aganippe” Pope has so shamefully characterised—
| “Flow, Welsted, flow, like thine inspirer, beer!” |
Can the reader credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who considered poetry only as a passing amusement? He has, however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his muse, some passages wrought up with equal felicity and power. There are several original poetical views of nature scattered in his works, which have been collected by Mr. Nichols, that would admit of a comparison with some of established fame.
Welsted imagined that the spirit of English poetry was on its decline in the age of Pope, and allegorises the state of our poetry in a most ingenious comparison. The picture is exquisitely wrought, like an ancient gem: one might imagine Anacreon was turned critic:—
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“A flask I rear’d whose sluice began to fail, And told, from Phærus, this facetious tale:— Sabina, very old and very dry, Chanced, on a time, an EMPTY FLASK to spy: The flask but lately had been thrown aside, With the rich grape of Tuscan vineyards dyed; But lately, gushing from the slender spout, Its life, in purple streams, had issued out. The costly flavour still to sense remain’d, And still its sides the violet colour stain’d: A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile; Pleased, she imbibes the generous fumes awhile, Then, downwards turn’d, the vessel gently props, And drains with patient care the lucid drops: O balmy spirit of Etruria’s vine! O fragrant flask, she said, too lately mine! If such delights, THOUGH EMPTY, thou canst yield, What wondrous raptures hadst thou given if filled!” Palœmon to Cœlia at Bath, or the Triumvirate. |
“The empty flask” only retaining “the costly flavour,” was the verse of Pope.
Pope was made to appear as ridiculous as possible, and often nicknamed “Poet Pug,” from the frontispiece to an attack in reply to his own, termed “Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility examined.” It represents Pope as a misshapen monkey leaning on a pile of books, in the attitude adopted by Jervas in his portrait of the poet.—Ed.