IMITATIONS

OF

HORACE.

DR. WARTON informs us, "that the colloquial and burlesque style and measure of Swift, here adopted, did not suit the genius and manner of our author, who frequently falls back, as was natural, from the familiar, into his own more laboured, high, and pompous manner."

On this Mr. Bowles observes, "that the observation is so far just, that Pope certainly does not display, in his Imitations of Horace, the ease and familiarity of Swift; but this does not detract from their merit any farther than as professed imitations of Swift;" to which he adds, that " neither are the least like Horace."

Whether the public will implicitly adopt the opinions of the above critics, whose observations seem generally intended to preoccupy the judgment of the reader in a manner as unfavourable as possible to the author, may perhaps be doubted. Certain however it is, that such decisions are perfectly irreconcileable with the degree of estimation in which these lighter imitations of Horace have been held by former editors, and perhaps by all who are capable of forming an unprejudiced judgment respecting them. Warburton was of opinion, " that although Pope excelled his friend Swift in his own way of modernizing Horace, yet that this way was infinitely inferior to his own." For which he assigns as a reason "that though Horace be easy, he is not familiar; or if he be, it is the familiarity of courts, which is never without its dignity; these things burlesque verse cannot reconcile, nor indeed any other but that of these imitations." Dr. Warton has also pointed out in his introductory note to these pieces, several of Mr. Christopher Pitt's translations of Horace, which he assures us, " if carefully and candidly inspected, will be found really equal to any of Pope's Imitations; and are executed with a dignified familiarity and ease, in the very manner of Horace." Through what motives or with what propriety the Imitations of Pope are brought into comparison with the translations of Pitt, does not appear; but it is not improbable that the decision which inclines strongly to the latter, as being in the very manner of Horace, was founded on the peculiar habits and profession of the critic, and that the humour, the discursiveness, and the elegance of Pope, did not accord with the ideas of Warton so well as the more exact and classical translations of Pitt.

EPISTOLA VII.

QUINQUE dies tibi pollicitus me rure futurum,
Sextilem totum mendax desideror. Atqui,
Si me vivere vis sanum, rectèque valentem ;
Quam mihi das ægro, dabis ægrotare timenti,
Mæcenas, veniam: dum ficus prima, calorque
Designatorem decorat lictoribus atris :
Dum pueris omnis pater, et matercula pallet;
Officiosaque sedulitas, et opella forensis
Adducit febres, et testamenta resignat.
Quòd si bruma nives Albanis illinet agris,
Ad mare descendet vates tuus, et sibi parcet,
Contractusque leget; te, dulcis amice, reviset
Cum Zephyris, si concedes, et hirundine prima.
Non, quo more pyris vesci Calaber jubet hospes,
Tu me fecisti locupletem. Vescere sodes.

EPISTLE VII.

IMITATED IN THE MANNER OF DR. SWIFT.

'Tis true, my Lord, I gave my word,
I would be with you, June the third;
Changed it to August and (in short)
Have kept it-as you do at Court.
You humour me when I am sick;
Why not when I am splenetic?
In town, what objects could I meet?
The shops shut up in every street,
And funerals blackening all the doors,
And yet more melancholy whores :

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And what a dust in every place!
And a thin court that wants your face,
And fevers raging up and down,

And W** and H** both in town!

"The Dog-days are no more the case." 'Tis true, but winter comes apace: Then southward let your bard retire, Hold out some months 'twixt sun and fire;

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And you shall see, the first warm weather,
Me and the butterflies together.

My Lord, your favours, well I know,
'Tis with distinction you bestow;
And not to every one that comes,
Just as a Scotsman does his plums.

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