"A married gentleman will be most agreeable."
_Praise undeserved._--Does any one know where the oft-quoted line,
"Praise undeserved in censure in disguise,"
is to be found? A long search for it has hitherto proved ineffectual.
D.S.
[This line, which is so often quoted, with the variation--
"Praise undeserved is _Satire_ in disguise,"
is to be found in Pope's _First Epistle of the Second Book of
Horace_; where, however, we find that neither _Censure_ nor
_Satire_ is the correct reading. It is moreover, both in
Warton's edition and in the _Aldine Poets_, edited by the Rev.
A. Dyce, marked as a quotation, as will be seen in the following
extract; so that Pope, it appears, is not the author of it.
Perhaps some of our correspondents can trace the source from
which he derived it:--
"Besides, a fate attends on all I write,
That when i aim at praise they say I bite.
A vile encomium doubly ridicules;
There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools.
If true, a woeful likeness; and, if lies,
'Praise undeserved is _Scandal_ in disguise.
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