To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The modesty of praise wears gradually away; and, perhaps, the pride of patronage may be in time so increased, that modest praise will no longer please.
Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never have known, had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told, that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague.
[Footnote 139: He left sir Isaac Newton 200/. M.]
[Footnote 140: Mr. Reed observes, that this anecdote is related by Mr. Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of the earl of Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristicks, but it appears to me to be a mistake, if we are to understand that the words were spoken by Shaftesbury at this time, when he had no seat in the house of commons; nor did the bill pass at this time, being thrown out by the house of lords. It became a law in the seventh of William, when Halifax and Shaftesbury both had seats. The editors of the Biog. Brit. adopt Mr. Walpole's story, but they are not speaking of this period. The story first appeared in the life of lord Halifax, published in 1715.]
[Footnote 141: Mr. Roscoe denies that Pope's character of Bufo, in the prologue to the Satires, was intended for Halifax. In evidence of his assertion he quotes several passages from Pope's poems, and the preface to the Iliad, all published after that nobleman's death, when the poet could hope for no return for his praises, when flattery could not sooth "the dull cold ear of death." Twenty years after Halifax's decease, he is thus commemorated:
"But does the court one worthy man remove,
That moment I declare he has my love:
I shun their zenith, court their mild decline;
Thus SOMERS once, and HALIFAX were mine."
See Roscoe's Pope, vol. i. p. 138. ED.]
PARNELL
The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness.
What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith: