Note 1229 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
After ver. 226 in the MS.:
The Col'nel swears the agent is a dog; The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue; Against the thief th' attorney loud inveighs, For whose ten pound the county twenty pays; The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state, And dying mourns small villains hanged by great.—Warburton.
The agent of whom the Colonel complained was the army agent. The scrivener, who drew contracts, and invested money, hated the attorneys because they were in part competitors for the same class of business. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, says, that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791, aged 93, was the last of the scriveners. Their occupation had gradually lapsed to other professions, legal or monetary. Pope's remaining instances are forced. The attorney did not pay more than his neighbours to the county expenditure for prosecuting thieves, and as the trials were much to his own profit, he was the last person who had an interest in inveighing against thievery. As little did the thief at his execution denounce "the knaves of state," of whom he commonly knew nothing. Pope has put the satire of the Beggar's Opera into the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets and highwaymen.