“Too dull to know what his own System meant, Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent; A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends, Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends; His mind, like Flesh inflamed, {49} was raw and sore, And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more! Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right, His Spirit sank when he was called to fight. Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole, Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole, And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel, Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele! Still he denied the Letters he had writ, And still mistook Indecency for Wit. His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries, ‘Detains the Reader, and at times defies!’” Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage, And furious Foot-notes growl ’neath every Page: See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail! “Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South, But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; {50} Affected, hypocritical, and vain, A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain; A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour, The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power, Pope yet possessed”—(the Praise will make you start)— “Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart! And still we marvel at the Man, and still Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form, Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line That from the Noble separates the Fine!” The Learned thus, and who can quite reply, Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie? You reap, in armèd Hates that haunt your Name, Reap what you sowed, the Dragon’s Teeth of Fame: You could not write, and from unenvious Time Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme, You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend, And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend! The Pity of it! And the changing Taste Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste! My Childhood fled your Couplet’s clarion tone, And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn. Still through the Dust of that dim Prose appears The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears; Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel, And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel! But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence, Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence, And great Achilles’ Eloquence doth show As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau!