Young, in his "Love of Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more exquisite wit.
Each WINDOW like the PILLORY appears,
With HEADS thrust through: NAILED BY THE EARS!
Hudibras, Part ii. c. 3, v. 301.
An opera, like a PILLORY, may be said
To NAIL OUR EARS down, and EXPOSE OUR HEAD.
YOUNG'S Satires.
In the Duenna we find this thought differently illustrated; by no means imitative, though the satire is congenial. Don Jerome alluding to the serenaders says, "These amorous orgies that steal the senses in the hearing; as they say Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, extracting the brain through the ears." The wit is original, but the subject is the same in the three passages; the whole turning on the allusion to the head and to the ears.
When Pope composed the following lines on Fame,
How vain that second life in others' breath,
The ESTATE which wits INHERIT after death;
Ease, health, and life, for this they must resign,
(Unsure the tenure, but how vast the fine!)
Temple of Fame.
he seems to have had present in his mind a single idea of Butler, by which he has very richly amplified the entire imagery. Butler says,
Honour's a LEASE for LIVES TO COME,
And cannot be extended from
The LEGAL TENANT.
Hudibras, Part i. c. 3, v. 1043.
The same thought may be found in Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on preferring Solitude to public Employment," first published in 1665: Hudibras preceded it by two years. The thought is strongly expressed by the eloquent Mackenzie: "Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death."
Dryden, in his "Absalom and Achitophel," says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,