"View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obleeging that he ne'er obleeged." Pope at first praised Ambrose Philips, and said he was "a man who could write very nobly," but afterwards they became rivals, and things went so far between them that Pope called Philips "a rascal," and Philips hung up a rod with which he said he would chastise Pope. He probably had recourse to this kind of argument, because he felt that he was worsted by his adversary in wordy warfare, having little talent in satire. In fact, his attempts in this direction were particularly clumsy as--"On a company of bad dancers to good music." "How ill the motion with the music suits! So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes." Still there is a gaiety and lightness about many of his pieces. The following is a specimen of his favourite style. Italian singers, lately introduced, seem to have been regarded by many with disfavour and alarm. TO SIGNORA CUZZONI. "Little syren of the stage, Charmer of an idle age, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Wanton gale of fond desire, Bane of every manly art, Sweet enfeebler of the heart; O! too pleasing is thy strain, Hence, to southern climes again, Tuneful mischief, vocal spell, To this island bid farewell, Leave us, as we ought to be, Leave the Britons rough and free." To parody a work is to pay it a compliment, though perhaps unintentionally, for if it were not well known the point of the imitation would be lost. Thus, the general appreciation of Gray's "Elegy" called forth several humorous parodies of it about the middle of the last century. The following is taken from one by the Rev. J. Duncombe, Vicar of Bishop Ridley's old church at Herne in Kent. It is entitled "An Evening Contemplation in a College." "The curfew tolls the hour of closing gates, With jarring sound the porter turns the key, Then in his dreamy mansion, slumbering waits, And slowly, sternly quits it--though for me. "Now shine the spires beneath the paly moon, And through the cloister peace and silence reign, Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune, Or copious bowls inspire a jovial strain. "Save that in yonder cobweb-mantled room, Where lies a student in profound repose, Oppressed with ale; wide echoes through the gloom, The droning music of his vocal nose. "Within those walls, where through the glimmering shade, Appear the pamphlets in a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow bed till morning laid, The peaceful fellows of the college sleep.