*120) 
the name of Timon.* Dr. Johnson 
in his life of that poet says, “ from 
the reproach which the attack ona 
character so amiable brought upon 
him, hetried all means of escaping. 
He was at last reduced to’shelter his 
temerity behind dissimulation, and 
endeavoured to make that disbelieved 
which he had never the confidence 
openly to deny.+ He wrote an 
exculpatory letter to the duke, 
which was answered with great 
magnanimity, as by a man who ac- 
cepted his excuse without believing 
his professions.”t There is a 
print of Hogarth’s in which he re- 
presents Pope white-washing the 
earl of Burlington’s house, and be- 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 
1795. 
carriage as it passes by. Admitting 
«what there is little doubt of, the 
poet’s application of his satire to ~~ 
Canons, his concluding lines are sine - _ 
gularly prophetic : 
Another age shall see the golden ear © 
Imbrown the slope and nod on the 
parterre, 
Deep harvests bury all his pride has 
plann’d, 
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.§ 
When the Duke of Chandos died, 
this magnificient mansion being 
thought to require an establishment 
too expensive for the income of his 
successor, after fruitless attempts to 
dispose of it entire, was pulled down, 
and the materials‘sold by auction in 
spattering the duke of Chandos’s the year 1747. T he grand staircase 
* The most striking passages in the satire applicable to Canons are the following: 
Greatness with Timon dwells in such a draught 
As brings all Brobdignag before your thought : 
To compass this, his building is a town, 
His pond an ocean, his parterre a down. 
The suffering eye, inverted nature sees, 
Trees cut like statues, statues thick us trees. 
And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear, 
That summons you to all the pride of pray'r, 
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, 
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. 
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, 
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre, 
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, 
And bring all paradise before your eye. 
Bot hark the chiming clocks to dinner call, 
A hundred footsteps grace the marble hull. 
+ There is certainly something equivocating in what he says in the prologue to 
his satires : - ; 
Who to the Dean ahd silver bell can swear, 
And sees at Canons what was never there. 
There is no doubt if he intended at all todisguise his satire he would introduce 
some extraneous circumstances. After all, I think the chapel is the most cha- 
racteristic feature in the portrait. 
{ Lives of the Poets, vol. 1v. p. 89. 
§ It is a remarkable circumstance, that Warburton, in his first edition of Pope's 
works, admits the application of the satire to Canons, by observing upon this pas- ’ 
sage, that “ had the poet lived three years longer, he had seen his prophecy ful- 
filled.” In a future edition, as if anxious to explain away what upon considera- 
tion he thought might confirm a charge not creditable to his friend, he alters his 
observation thus: that “he would have seen his general prophecy against al} ill- 
judged magnificence displayed in a very particular instance.” 
; 1 is 
