FullReads

Gray was so fond of this pleasing imagery, that he repeats it in his Ode to the Installation; and Mason echoes it in his Ode to Memory.

Milton thus paints the evening sun:

If chance the radiant SUN with FAREWELL SWEET
Extends his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, etc.
Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 492.

Can there be a doubt that he borrowed this beautiful farewell from an obscure poet, quoted by Poole, in his “English Parnassus,” 1657? The date of Milton’s great work, I find since, admits the conjecture: the first edition being that of 1669. The homely lines in Poole are these,

To Thetis’ watery bowers the sun doth hie,
BIDDING FAREWELL unto the gloomy sky.

Young, in his “Love of Fame,” very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more exquisite wit.

Each WINDOW like the PILLORY appears,
With HEADS thrust through: NAILED BY THE EARS!
Hudibras, Part ii. c. 3, v. 301.

An opera, like a PILLORY, may be said
To NAIL OUR EARS down, and EXPOSE OUR HEAD.
YOUNG’S Satires.

In the Duenna we find this thought differently illustrated; by no means imitative, though the satire is congenial. Don Jerome alluding to the serenaders says, “These amorous orgies that steal the senses in the hearing; as they say Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, extracting the brain through the ears.” The wit is original, but the subject is the same in the three passages; the whole turning on the allusion to the head and to the ears.

When Pope composed the following lines on Fame,

How vain that second life in others’ breath,
The ESTATE which wits INHERIT after death;
Ease, health, and life, for this they must resign,
(Unsure the tenure, but how vast the fine!)
Temple of Fame.

he seems to have had present in his mind a single idea of Butler, by which he has very richly amplified the entire imagery. Butler says,

Honour’s a LEASE for LIVES TO COME,
And cannot be extended from
The LEGAL TENANT.
Hudibras, Part i. c. 3, v. 1043.

The same thought may be found in Sir George Mackenzie’s “Essay on preferring Solitude to public Employment,” first published in 1665: Hudibras preceded it by two years. The thought is strongly expressed by the eloquent Mackenzie: “Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death.”

Dryden, in his “Absalom and Achitophel,” says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,

David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.

This verse was ringing in the ear of Pope, when with equal modesty and felicity he adopted it in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot.

Friend of my life; which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song!

Howell has prefixed to his Letters a tedious poem, written in the taste of the times, and he there says of letters, that they are

The heralds and sweet harbingers that move
From East to West, on embassies of love;
They can the tropic cut, and cross the line.

It is probable that Pope had noted this thought, for the following lines seem a beautiful heightening of the idea:

Heaven first taught letters, for some wretch’s aid,
Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid.

Then he adds, they