Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her

mind,
Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.
And who stands fafest ? tell me, is it he

125
That spreads and swells in puffd Prosperity,
Or bleft with little, whose preventing care
In

peace provides fit arms against a war ?
• Thus BETHEL spoke, who always speaks his

thought,
And always thinks the very thing he ought:130
His equal mind I copy what I can,
And as I love, would imitate the Man.
In South-sea days not happier, when surmis'd
The Lord of Thousands, than if now "Excis’d;
In forest planted by a Father's hand,
Than in five acres now of rented land.
Content with little I can piddle here
On * brocoli and mutton, round the year 3

135

NOTES.

whịch oblique Panegyric the Imitator has very properly turned into a juft Itroke of satire.

VER. 133. In South-fea days not happier, etc.) Mr. Pope had South-sea stock, which he did not sell out. It was valued at between twenty and thirty thousand pounds when it fell.

Vicinus; bene erat, non piscibus urbe petitis,

O pueri, nituistis, ut huc novus incola venit?

NOTES.

VER.150. And, what's more rare, a Poet shall fay Grace.] The pleasantry of this line consists in the supposed rarity of a Poet's having a table of his own; or a sense of gratitude for the blef

z

a

But y ancient friends (tho' poor, or out of play)
That touch my bell, I cannot turn away. 140.
'Tis true, no? Turbots dignify my boards,
But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords:
To Hounslow-heath I point and Bansted-down,
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks

my own:

144 a From

yon

old walnut-tree a show'r shall fall; And grapes, long ling’ring on my only wall, And figs from standard and espalier join ; The dev'l is in you if you cannot dine: Then'chearfulhealths(yourMistressshall haveplace) And, what's more rare, a Poet shall say Grace. 150

Fortune not much of humbling me can boast: Tho' double tax'd, how little have I lost ? My Life's amusements have been just the same, Before, and after Standing Armies came. My lands are sold, my father's house is gone; 155

; I'll hire another's; is not that my own, And yours, myfriends? thro'whose free-op'ning gate None comes too early, none departs too late;

с

Nama propriae telluris herum natura neque illum,

Nec me, nec quemquam ftatuit. nos expulit ille;

Dictus erat: nulli proprius ; fed cedit in usum

a

Notes. Ver. 165. Well, if the use be mine, etc.) In a letter to this Mr. Bethel, of March 20,1743, he says, "My Landlady, Mrs. “ Vernon, being dead, this Garden and House are offered me « in sale; and, I believe (together with the cottages on each “ side my grass-plot next the Thames) will come at about a “ thousand pounds. If I thought any very particular friend es would be pleased to live in it after my death (for, as it is, it “ serves all my purposes as well during life) I would purchase « it; and more particularly could I hope two Things, That

CC

your life.”

(For I, who hold fage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.)160

Pray heav'n it last! (cries Swift!) as you go on ; “ I wish to God this house had been your own:

I
Pity! to build, without a fon or wife:

Why, you'll enjoy it only all
Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, 165
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon?
What's d Property? dear Swift! you see it alter
From
you

from me to · Peter Walter; Or, in a mortgage, prove a Lawyer's share; Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir; 170 Or in pure f equity (the case not clear) The Chanc'ry takes your rents for twenty year: At best, it falls to fome & ungracious fon, Who cries, “My father's damn’d, and all's my own.

Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford, 175 Become the portion of a booby Lord;

d

to me,

NOTES " the Friend who should like it, was so much younger and “ healthier than myself, as to have a prospect of its continuing « his fome years longer than I can of its continuing mine. “ But most of those I love are travelling out of the world, not o into it; and unless I have such a view given me, I have no “ vanity nor pleasure that does not stop short of the Grave." So that we see, what some of his Friends would not believe, his thoughts in prose and verse were the same.

Ver. 170. Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir ;] The ex

a