This is a high compliment, but was not first bestowed on Dorset by
Pope[152]. The next verse is extremely beautiful.
Blest satirist!
In this distich is another line of which Pope was not the author. I do
not mean to blame these imitations with much harshness; in long
performances they are scarcely to be avoided; and in shorter they may be
indulged, because the train of the composition may naturally involve
them, or the scantiness of the subject allow little choice. However,
what is borrowed is not to be enjoyed as our own; and it is the business
of critical justice to give every bird of the muses his proper feather.
Blest courtier!
Whether a courtier can properly be commended for keeping his _ease
sacred_, may, perhaps, be disputable. To please king and country,
without sacrificing friendship to any change of times, was a very
uncommon instance of prudence or felicity, and deserved to be kept
separate from so poor a commendation as care of his ease. I wish our
poets would attend a little more accurately to the use of the word
_sacred_, which surely should never be applied in a serious composition,
but where some reference may be made to a higher being, or where some
duty is exacted, or implied. A man may keep his friendship sacred,
because promises of friendship are very awful ties; but, methinks, he
cannot, but in a burlesque sense, be said to keep his ease _sacred_.
Blest peer!
The blessing ascribed to the _peer_ has no connexion with his peerage;
they might happen to any other man whose ancestors were remembered, or
whose posterity are likely to be regarded.
I know not whether this epitaph be worthy either of the writer or of the
man entombed.