They say; what say they?  Not in vain You ask. 
To tell you what they say, behold my Task! 
‘Methinks already I your Tears survey’
As I repeat ‘the horrid Things they say.’ (1)

(1) Rape of the Lock.

Comes El—­n first:  I fancy you’ll agree
Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he;
For El—­n’s Introduction, crabbed and dry,
Like Churchill’s Cudgel’s (2) marked with Lie, and Lie!

(2) In Mr Hogarth’s Caricatura.

’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, (3) 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!"’

(3) Elwyn’s Pope, ii. 15.

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; (1)
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!’

(1) ‘Poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar.’
     —­Pope, by Leslie Stephen, 139.

The Learned thus, and who can quite reply,
Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie? 
You reap, in arme’d 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!