'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expence, And Splendor borrows all her rays from Sense. 180 His Father's Acres who enjoys in peace, 185 Or makes his Neighbours glad, if he encrease: NOTES. VER. 179, 180. 'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expence, And Splendor borrows all her rays from sense.] Here the poet, to make the examples of good Taste the better understood, introduces them with a summary of his Precepts in these two fublime lines: for, the consulting Use is beginning with Sense; and the making Splendor or Taste borrow all its rays from thence, is going on with Sense, after she has led us up to Taste. The art of this can never be fufficiently admired. But the Expression is equal to the Thought. This fanctifying of expence gives us the idea of fomething confecrated and set apart for facred uses, and indeed, it is the idea under which it may be properly confidered : For wealth employed according to the intention of Providence, is its true confecration; and the real uses of humanity were certainly first in its intention. You too proceed! make falling Arts your care, Erect new wonders, and the old repair; 195 NOTES, VER. 195, 197, . 'Till Kings - Bid Harbours open, &c.] The poet after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expence, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and publick works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is fatirically alluded to in our author's imitation of Hor. Lib. ii. Sat. 2. Shall half the new-built Churckes round thee fall) others were vilely executed, (ed by Turnpikes were made thro' fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham breach had done very great mischiefs ; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repair jobbs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrances of London itself: The proposal of building a Bridge at Weftminster had been petition'd against and rejected; but in two years after the publica Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain, These Honours, Peace to happy Britain brings, NOTES. tion of this poem, an Act left to the carpenter above- never drove a pile? Who builds a Bridge that See the notes on that place. P. S EE the wild Waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own fed Sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very Tombs now vanish'd like their dead! NOTES. THIS was originally | till Mr Tickell's Edition of his works; at which time the verses on Mr Craggs, which conclude the poem, were added, viz. in 1720. P. EPIST. V.] As the third Epistle treated of the ex written in the year 1715, when Mr Addison intended to publish his book of medals; it was fome time before he was Secretary of State; but not published 5 Imperial wonders rais'd on Nations spoil'd, toil'd: Huge Theatres, that now unpeopled Woods, Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey, NOTES. tremes of Avarice and Profufion; and the fourth took up one particular branch of the latter, namely, the vanity of expence in people of wealth and quality, and was therefore a corollary to the third; so this treats of one circumftance of that Vanity, as it appears in the common collectors of old coins; and 10 is, therefore, a corollary to the fourth. VER. 6. Where mix'd with flaves the groaning Martyr toil'd] The inattentive reader might wonder how this circumstance came to find a place here. But let him compare it with y 13, 14, and he will fee the Reafon, Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. ruin what those were so injuriously employed in rearing: for the poet never loseth fight of his great principle. For the Slaves mentioned above were of the same nation with the Barbarians here: and the Christians here, the Successors of the Martyrs there: Providence VER. 9. Fanes, which ordaining, that these should | admiring Gods with pride : |