For laws, without a sanction join'd, Besides, 'tis evident, that, seeing Laws from the great derive their being, The beast had now no time to lose He said, and left the swains their prey: ON THE REPORT OF A MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, TO THE MEMORY OF A LATE AUTHOR." [Part of a letter to a person of quality. *** Lest your Lordship, who are so well acquainted with every thing that relates to true honour, should think hardly of me for attacking the memory of the dead, I beg leave to offer a few words in my own vindication. If I had composed the following verses, with a view to gratify private resentment, to promote the interest of any faction, or to recommend myself to the patronage of any person whatsoever, I should have been altogether inexcusable. To attack the memory of the dead from selfish considerations, or from mere wantonness of malice, is an enormity which none can hold in greater detestation than I. But I composed them from very different motives; as every intelligent reader, who peruses them with attention, and who is willing to believe me upon my own testimony, will undoubtedly perceive. My motives proceeded from a sincere desire to do some small service to my country, and to the Churchill. cause of truth and virtue. The promoters of fac tion I ever did, and ever will consider as the enemies of mankind; to the memory of such 1 owe no veneration; to the writings of such I owe no indulgence. owed the Those Your Lordship knows that greatest share of his renown to the most incompetent of all judges, the mob; actuated by the most unworthy of all principles, a spirit of insolence; and inflamed by the vilest of all human passions, hatred to their fellow-citizens. who joined the cry in his favour seemed to me to be swayed rather by fashion than by real sentiment. He therefore might have lived and died unmolested by me; confident as I am, that posterity, when the present unhappy dissensions are forgotten, will do ample justice to his real charac ter. But when I saw the extravagant honours that were paid to his memory, and heard that a monument in Westminster Abbey was intended for one whom even his admirers acknowledge to have been an incendiary and a debauchee, I could not help wishing that my countrymen would relect a little on what they were doing, before they consecrated, by what posterity would think the public voice, a character which no friend to virtue or to true taste can approve. It was this sentiment, enforced by the earnest request of a friend, which produced the following little poem; in which I have said nothing of 's manners that is not warranted by the best authority; nor BUFO, begone! with Thee may Faction's fire, With not one thought that breathes the feeling With not one offering vow'd to Virtue's shrine, Alike debauch'd in body, soul, and lays ;- thrown ; Lo, Bufo shines the minion of renown! Is this the land that boasts a Milton's fire, Pope Elegy Young The land where Pope, with energy divine, Yet pure in manners, and in thought refin'd, Or while, sublime, on eagle-pinion driven, He soars Pindaric heights, and sails the waste of Is this the land, o'er Shenstone's recent urn Is this the land where Akenside displays Whose mighty song unnerv'd a tyrant's arm, |