Then sighing, thus, "And am I now three-score? 285
"Ah why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?"[R 1]
He said, and clim'd a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd down-right.
The Senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher. 290
Next Smedley div'd;[R 2] slow circles dimpled o'er,
The quaking mud, that clos'd, and op'd no more.
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 286. "Ah why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?"] Very reasonably doth this ancient Critic complain: Without doubt it was a fault in the Constitution of things. For the World, as a great writer faith, being given to man for a subject of disputation, he might think himself mock'd with a penurious gift, were any thing made certain. Hence those superior masters of wisdom, the Sceptics and Academics, reasonably conclude that two and two do not make four. Scribl.
But we need not go so far, to remark what the Poet principally intended, the absurdity of complaining of old age, which must necessarily happen, as long as we are indulged in our desires of adding one year to another. - ↑ Ver. 291. Next Smedley div'd;] The person here mentioned, an Irishman, was author and publisher of many scurrilous pieces, a weekly Whitehall Journal, in the year 1722. in the name of Sir James Baker; and particularly whole volumes of Billingsgate against Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana, printed in octavo, 1728.
he pretended to be falsified, produced since, after almost ninety years, in that noble author's original manuscript. He was all his life a virulent Party-writer for hire, and received his reward in a small place, which he enjoyed to his death.He is here likened to Milo, in allusion to that verse of Ovid,
—Fletque Milon senior, cum spectat inanes
Herculeis similes, fluidos pendere lacertos;
either with regard to his Age, or because he was undone by trying to pull to pieces
———Remember Milo's end
Wedg'd in that timber which he strove to rend.Lord Rosc.
