Note 1521 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Marcellus was an opponent of Cæsar, and a partisan of Pompey. After the battle of Pharsalia he retired to Mitylene, was pardoned by Cæsar at the request of the senate, and assassinated by an attendant on his way back to Rome. His moral superiority over Cæsar is conjecture. Warton mentions that "by Marcellus Pope was said to mean the Duke of Ormond," a man of small abilities, and a tool of Bolingbroke and Oxford. He fled from England at the death of Queen Anne, joined the court of the Pretender, and being attainted had to pass the rest of his life abroad. He died at Madrid, Nov. 16, 1745, aged 94. One version of the couplet in the MS. has the names of Walpole, and the jacobite member of parliament, Shippen:
And more contentment honest Sh[ippen] feels Than W[alpole] with a senate at his heels.