Nothing is sacred now but villainy.
Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)
Show there was one who held it in disdain.’
His Satires are not in general so good as his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are equal in value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a scene,
‘Where Murray, long enough his country’s pride,
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde.’
To Bolingbroke he says—
‘Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine,
Oh all-accomplish’d St. John, deck thy shrine?’
Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury—