Now, concerning the priests in the City of the Ford of the Ox, it is to be said that of all men whom we know they receive strangers most gladly, feasting them all day. Moreover, they have many drinks, cunningly mixed, and of these the best is that they call Archdeacon, naming it from one of the priests’ offices. Truly, as Homer says (if the Odyssey be Homer’s), “when that draught is poured into the bowl then it is no pleasure to refrain.” Drinking of this wine, or nectar, Herodotus, I pledge you, and pour forth some deal on the ground, to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in the House of Hades. And I wish you farewell, and good be with you. Whether the priest spoke truly, or not truly, even so may such good things betide you as befall dead men. V. _Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope_. FROM mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope, Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance, Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, Pursue the Poet, like Actæon’s Hounds, Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem, Rend from the laurel’d Brows the Diadem, And, if one Rag of Character they spare, Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare! Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet’s Tomb, With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends To _interview_ the Drudges of your Friends. Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high, And still proclaims your Poems _Poetry_, Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared! They say, “what say they?” Not in vain You ask; To tell you what they say, behold my Task! “Methinks already I your Tears survey” As I repeat “the horrid Things they say.” {48a} Comes El-n first: I fancy you’ll agree Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; For El-n’s Introduction, crabbed and dry, Like Churchill’s Cudgel’s {48b} marked with _Lie_, and _Lie_!