‘T IS strange the Miser should his cares employ
To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy:
Is it less strange the Prodigal should waste
His wealth to purchase what he ne’er can taste?
Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats; 5
Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats:
He buys for Topham drawings and designs;
For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins;
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane. 10
Think we all these are for himself? no more
Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore.
For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
Only to show how many tastes he wanted.
What brought Sir Visto’s ill-got wealth to waste? 15
Some demon whisper’d, ‘Visto! have a Taste.’
Heav’n visits with a Taste the wealthy fool,
And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.
See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride,
Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide: 20
A standing sermon at each year’s expense,
That never coxcomb reach’d Magnificence!
You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use;
Yet shall, my Lord, your just, your noble rules 25
Fill half the land with imitating fools;
Who random drawings from your sheets shall take,
And of one Beauty many Blunders make;
Load some vain church with old theatric state,
Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate; 30
Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all
On some patch’d dog-hole eked with ends of wall,
Then clap four slices of pilaster on ‘t,
That laced with bits of rustic makes a front;
Shall call the winds thro’ long arcades to roar, 35
Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door:
Conscious they act a true Palladian part,
And if they starve, they starve by rules of Art.
Oft have you hinted to your brother peer
A certain truth, which many buy too dear: 40
Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous ev’n to Taste—’t is Sense;
Good Sense, which only is the gift of Heav’n,
And tho’ no science, fairly worth the sev’n;
A light which in yourself you must perceive; 45
Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.
To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot,
In all, let Nature never be forgot. 50
But treat the Goddess like a modest Fair,
Nor overdress, nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty everywhere be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points who pleasingly confounds, 55
Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.
Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters or to rise or fall;
Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale, 60
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and as you work designs.
Still follow Sense, of every art the soul; 65
Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev’n from difficulty, strike from chance:
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at — perhaps a Stowe. 70
Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls,
And Nero’s terraces desert their walls:
The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make,
Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake;
Or cut wide views thro’ mountains to the plain, 75
You ‘ll wish your hill or shelter’d seat again.
Ev’n in an ornament its place remark,
Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke.
Behold Villario’s ten years’ toil complete:
His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet, 80
The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,
And strength of shade contends with strength of light;
A waving glow the bloomy beds display,
Blushing in bright diversities of day,
With silver quiv’ring rills meander’d o’er — 85
Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more:
Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield,
He finds at last he better likes a field.
Thro’ his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray’d,
Or sat delighted in the thick’ning shade, 90
With annual joy the redd’ning shoots to greet,
Or see the stretching branches long to meet.
His son’s fine Taste an opener vista loves,
Foe to the dryads of his father’s groves;
One boundless green or flourish’d carpet views, 95
With all the mournful family of yews;
The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.
At Timon’s villa let us pass a day,
Where all cry out, ‘What sums are thrown away;’ 100
So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air,
Soft and agreeable come never there;
Greatness with Timon dwells in such a draught
As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.
To compass this, his building is a town, 105
His pond an ocean, his parterre a down:
Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
A puny insect shiv’ring at a breeze!
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole a labour’d quarry above ground. 110
Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind
Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
His gardens next your admiration call;
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene; 115
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suff’ring eye inverted Nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; 120
With here a fountain never to be play’d,
And there a summer-house that knows no shade,
Here Amphitrite sails thro’ myrtle bowers,
There gladiators fight or die in flowers;
Unwater’d, see the drooping seahorse mourn, 125
And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn.
My Lord advances with majestic mien,
Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen:
But soft! by regular approach — not yet —
First thro’ the length of yon hot terrace sweat; 130
And when up ten steep slopes you ‘ve dragg’d your thighs,
Just at his study door he ‘ll bless your eyes.
His study! with what authors is it stor’d?
In books, not authors, curious is my lord.
To all their dated backs he turns you round; 135
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound;
Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good,
For all his lordship knows, — but they are wood.
For Locke or Milton ‘t is in vain to look;
These shelves admit
not any modern book. 140
And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of prayer.
Light quirks of music, broken and unev’n,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n:
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, 145
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye:
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions Hell to ears polite. 150
But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call:
A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall;
The rich buffet well-colour’d serpents grace,
And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
Is this a dinner? this a genial room? 155
No, ‘t is a temple and a hecatomb;
A solemn sacrifice perform’d in state;
You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
So quick retires each flying course, you ‘d swear
Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there. 160
Between each act the trembling salvers ring,
From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the King.
In plenty starving, tantalized in state,
And complaisantly help’d to all I hate,
Treated, caress’d, and tired, I take my leave, 165
Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;
I curse such lavish Cost and little Skill,
And swear no day was ever pass’d so ill.
Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;
Health to himself, and to his infants bread 170
The lab’rer bears; what his hard heart denies,
His charitable vanity supplies.
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann’d, 175
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?
Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle?
‘T is use alone that sanctifies expense,
And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. 180
His father’s acres who enjoys in peace,
Or makes his neighbours glad if he increase;
Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil;
Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed 185
The milky heifer and deserving steed;
Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
But future buildings, future navies, grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
First shade a country, and then raise a town. 190
You, too, proceed! make falling arts your care;
Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
Jones and Palladio to themselves restore
And be whate’er Vitruvius was before,
Till kings call forth th’ ideas of your mind 195
(Proud to accomplish what such hands design’d),
Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend,
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,
The mole projected break the roaring main, 200
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers thro’ the land.
These honours Peace to happy Britain brings;
These are imperial works, and worthy Kings.
Epistle V. To Mr. Addison, Occasioned by His Dialogues on Medals
‘This was originally written,’ says Pope, ‘in the year 1715, when Mr. Addison intended to publish his book Of Medals; it was some time before he was Secretary of State; but not published 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.’
Warburton connects the epistle with the preceding Essays in this ingenious way: ‘As the third epistle treated the extremes of Avarice and Profusion, and the fourth took up one particular branch of the latter, namely the vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality, and was therefore corollary to the third; so this treats of one circumstance of that vanity, as it appears in the common collections of old coins; and is therefore a corollary to the fourth.’
SEE the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears!
With nodding arches, broken temples spread,
The very tombs now vanish’d like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil’d, 5
Where mix’d with slaves the groaning martyr toil’d;
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drain’d a distant country of her floods;
Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey,
Statues of men, scarce less alive than they! 10
Some felt the silent stroke of mould’ring age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage:
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, 15
Some buried marble half preserves a name:
That name the learn’d with fierce disputes pursue
And give to Titus old Vespasian’s due.
Ambition sigh’d: she found it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust; 20
Huge moles, whose shadow stretch’d from shore to shore,
Their ruins perish’d, and their place no more!
Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, 25
Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps:
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine:
A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is roll’d,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold. 30
The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
Thro’ climes and ages bears each form and name:
In one short view subjected to our eye,
Gods, Emp’rors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties, lie.
With sharpen’d sight pale antiquaries pore, 35
Th’ inscription value, but the rust adore.
This the blue varnish, that the green endears,
The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years!
To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes,
One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams. 40
Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devour’d,
Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scour’d;
And Curio, restless by the fair one’s side,
Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride.
Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine: 45
Touch’d by thy hand, again Rome’s glories shine;
Her Gods and godlike Heroes rise to view,
And all her faded garlands bloom anew.
Nor blush these studies thy regard engage:
These pleas’d the fathers of poetic rage; 50
The verse and sculpture bore an equal part,
And art reflected images to art.
Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,
Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame?
In living medals see her wars enroll’d, 55
And vanquish’d realms supply recording gold?
Here, rising bold, the patriot’s honest face,
There warriors frowning in historic brass.
Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s looks agree; 60
Or in fair series laurell’d bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addis
on.
Then shall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine)
On the cast ore another Pollio shine;
With aspect open shall erect his head, 65
And round the orb in lasting notes be read,
‘Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear;
Who broke no promise, serv’d no private end,
Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend; 70
Ennobled by himself, by all approv’d
And prais’d, unenvied by the Muse he lov’d.’
Universal Prayer
Deo Opt. Max.
This poem was written in 1738 to correct the impression of fatalism which Warburton’s ingenious exposition had failed to remove. Pope had really as little mind for dogma as most poets; but these verses represent what, in view of the instructions of Bolingbroke, corrected by Warburton, he now believed himself to believe.
FATHER of all! in ev’ry age,
In ev’ry clime ador’d,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou Great First Cause, least understood, 5
Who all my sense confin’d
To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill; 10
And binding Nature fast in Fate,
Left free the human Will.
What Conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do;
This teach me more than Hell to shun, 15
That more than Heav’n pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives;
T’ enjoy is to obey. 20
Yet not to earth’s contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round.
Let not this weak unknowing hand 25
Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series Page 38