Quo ducit gula : piscemur, venemur, ut 9 olim Gargilius : qui mane plagas, venabula, fervos, Differtum tranfire forum populumque jubebat, Unus ut e multis populo spectante referret. Emtum mulus aprum. ' crudi, tumidique lavemur, Quid deceat, quid non, obliti; Caerite cera Digni; s remigium vitiofum Ithacenfis Ulyssei; Cui potior i patria fuit interdicta voluptas. VER. 127. Wilmot.] Earl of Rochester. Ibid. 129. And SwIFT Say wisely, “ Vive la Bagatelle !"] Our Poet, speaking in one place of the purpose of his fatire, says, In this impartial glass, my Muse intends Fair to expose myself, my foes, my friends. and, in another, he makes his Court-Adviser say, Laugh at your Friends, and if your Friends before, So much the better, you roay laugh the more. because their impatience under reproof would Mew, they had a great deal which wanted to be set right. On this principle, Swift falls under his correction. He could not bear to see a friend he so much valued, live in the miserable abuse of one of Nature's best gifts, unadmonished of his folly. Swift (as we may see by some pofthumous Volumes, lately published, ro dishonourable and injurious to his memory) trifled away his old age in a dissipation that women and boys miglit bė alhamed of: For when men have 121 With hounds and horns go hunt an Appetite- 115 Or shall we r ev'ry Decency confound, If, after all, we must with · Wilmot own, The Cordial Drop of Life is Love alone, given into a long habit of employing their wit only to shew their parts, to edge their spleen, to pander to a faction; or, in short, to any thing but that for which Nature bestowed it, namely, to recommend, and set off Truth; old age, which abates the passions, will never rectify the abuses they occasioned. But the remains of wit, instead of seeking and recovering their proper channel, will run into that miserable depravity of taste here condemned: and in which Dr. Swift seems to have placed no inconsiderable part of his wisdom. " I chuse (says he, in a Letter to Mr. Pope) my Companions amongst those of the least consequence, and most com pliance: I read the most trifling Books I can find : and ” whenever I write, it is upon the most trifling subjects.” And again, “ I love La Bagatelle better than ever. I am al ways writing bad prose or worse verses, either of rage or raillery,” etc. And again, in a letter to Mr. Gay, “ My * rule is, Vive la Bagatelle," 7. u Si, Mimnermus uti censet, fine amore jocisque Nil est jucundum ; vivas in amore jocisque. w Vive, vale. fi quid novisti rectius iftis, Candidus imperti; fi non, his utere mecum. |