For, when we open'd him, we found From Dublin soon to London spread, Now Chartres, at Sir Robert's levee, Provided Bolingbroke were dead!” Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains : Here shift the scene, to represent * "Which the Dean (he says) in vain expected, in return for a small present he had sent to the Princess." Sir Robert Walpole's antagonist, Pulteney. Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay St. John himself will scarce forbear When we are lash'd, they kiss the rod, The fools, my juniors by a year, Who wisely thought my age a screen, When death approach'd to stand between : They mourn for me without dissembling. My female friends, whose tender hearts Have better learn'd to act their parts, Receive the news in doleful dumps : "The Dean is dead: (Pray what is trumps?) Then, Lord have mercy on his soul ! (Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.) Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall : Why do we grieve that friends should die ? No loss more easy to supply. One year is past; a different scene! No farther mention of the Dean, 6 Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift.—I give these verses (which comprise about half the original) as a true specimen of Swiftian wit and humour, but not at all (some obvious banter excepted) as agreeing with the spirit of them, or counting them among the evidences of his wisdom. The Dean's prodigious discovery, assisted by his brother wit Rochefoucault, just amounts to this:-that Nature in her kindly wisdom has prevented mankind from feeling as much for the pangs of others as for their own; and that when a misfortune happens to a neighbour, they cannot, in spite of their condolence, help congratulating themselves on having escaped it. There are exceptions,-many,-even to these conclusions; and what do the conclusions prove? Why, simply, that existence would be nothing but misery if human beings were otherwise constituted; that the best people would have the power neither to receive nor to give enjoyment; and that mean time (by the same kind providence of nature against worse consequences) they do suffer and sympathize greatly on occasion, often to a far greater degree than the author chooses to think. The sick neighbour feeling for the dying man endures but half the anguish of many (I do not say of all) who are here called "snivellers round a bed," and who would sometimes gladly die instead of the sufferer? What? Have not millions of lives been thrown away for less things than love; and are we to be told by a loveless misanthrope, girding his own friends, that affection never grieves for a death beyond a "month" or a "day?" Nonsense. I mourn with and admire Swift, who was a great man, notwithstanding what was little in him; but (wit excepted) he fell to the level of the vulgar when he " sunk in the spleen." Yet how handsome the opportunity he takes of complimenting Pope and others at his own expense, and how pleasantly it tells both against him and for him! 7 Refin'd it first, and show'd its use.—. -A bold claim, after Butler and all the other wits and poets who excelled in it! and, indeed, quite unfounded. GREEN. BORN, 1696-died, 1737. THE author of the Spleen, a poem admired by Pope, and quoted by Johnson, was a clerk in the customhouse, and had been bred a quaker. He was subject to low spirits, and warded them off by wit and good sense. Something of the quaker may be observable in the stiffness of his versification, and its excessive endeavours to be succinct. His style has also the fault of being occasionally obscure; and his wit is sometimes more laboured than finished. But all that he says is worth attending to. His thoughts are the result of his own feeling and experience; his opinions rational and cheerful, if not very lofty; his warnings against meddling with superhuman mysteries admirable; and he is remarkable for the brevity and originality of his similes. He is of the school of Butler; and it may be affirmed of him as a rare honour, that no man since Butler has put so much wit and reflection into the same compass of lines. |