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Letters to Dead Authors by Andrew Lang
page 29 of 131 (22%)
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 {3} marked with LIE, and LIE!

"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, {4} 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!'"

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; {5}
Affected, hypocritical, and vain,
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