CANTO I.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

A. This text uses UTF-8 (unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and

quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an

incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that your

browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8).

You may also need to change the default font.

FRONTISPIECE TO POPE'S WORKS, VOL. II.

[Illustration: Frontispiece to the Essay on Man, designed by Pope

to represent the vanity of human glory.]

THE WORKS

OF

ALEXANDER POPE.

NEW EDITION.

INCLUDING

SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER

NEW MATERIALS.

COLLECTED IN PART BY THE LATE

RT. HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER.

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES.

BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN.

VOL. II.

POETRY.--VOL. II.

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1871.

[_The right of Translation is reserved._]

LONDON:

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

* * * * *

AN

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709.

* * * * *

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM,

4to.

----Si quid novisti rectius istis,

Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.--HORAT.

London: Printed for W. LEWIS, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden; and

sold by W. TAYLOR, at the Ship, in Pater-Noster-Row, T. OSBORN, in

Gray's-Inn, near the Walks, and J. GRAVES, in St. James's Street.

1711.

Warton says that the poem was "first advertised in the Spectator, No.

65, May 15th, 1711." Pope informed Caryll that a thousand copies were

printed. Lewis, the publisher, was a Roman Catholic, and an old

schoolfellow of the poet.

* * * * *

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Written by Mr. POPE.

The second edition, 8vo.

London: Printed for W. LEWIS, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden, 1713.

Though the date on the title page is 1713, Isaac Reed states that the

second edition was advertised in the Spectator on November 22, 1712. It

was a common practice to substitute the date of the coming, for that of

the expiring, year. A third and fourth edition in a smaller type and

size came out in 1713. In 1714, the poem was appended to the second

edition of Lintot's Miscellanies, by some arrangement with Lewis, whose

name appears upon the title page of that particular edition of the

Miscellanies as joint publisher. On July 17, 1716, Lintot purchased the

remainder of the copyright for £15, preparatory to inserting the piece

in the quarto of 1717. He brought out a sixth octavo edition of the

essay in 1719, and a seventh in 1722, and reprinted the poem in each of

the four editions of his Miscellanies which were published between 1720

and 1732.

* * * * *

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Written in the year 1709. With the Commentary and Notes of

W. WARBURTON, A.M. 4to.

The Essay on Criticism has no date, but on the title page of the "Essay

on Man," which appeared in the same volume is, "London: Printed by W.

BOWYER for M. COOPER, at the Globe in Pater-Noster Row. 1743." Pope,

writing to Warburton on October 7, 1743, says, "I have given Bowyer your

comment on the Essay on Criticism this week, and he shall lose no time

with the rest." On Jan. 12, 1744, he tells his commentator that the

publication had been delayed by the advice of Bowyer, and on Feb. 21, he

writes word that he shall keep it back till Warburton goes to town.

There is no doubt that the edition was printed in 1743, and published in

1744.

* * * * *

In the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which

displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such

acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern

learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest

experience. It was published about two years afterwards, and being

praised by Addison in the Spectator, with sufficient liberality, met

with so much favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself

attacked without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in

his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to

him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and

not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the

utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a

little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time

but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity."

How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his

person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope's

character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently

of his own virtues. Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis,

which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased.

Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wantonly; but though he

always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very

often, that he felt his force or his venom.

Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick,

because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could

understand it." The gentlemen and the education of that time seem to

have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentioned a

thousand copies as a numerous impression. Dennis was not his only

censurer. The zealous papists thought the monks treated with too much

contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but to these objections he

had not much regard. The Essay has been translated into French by

Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grammont, whose version was never

printed; by Robotham, secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel;

and commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and

connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by

the author. Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary

and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no

apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon

some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why

one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand,

whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. "It is

possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction from any one truth,

all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous truths, at least of all

truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be

produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed such as,

when it is once shown, shall appear natural; but if this order be

reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or

made. Aristotle is praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal

virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be

practised; but he might with equal propriety have placed prudence and

justice before it, since without prudence fortitude is mad, without

justice it is mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that

series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity, and where there is

no obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method.

The Essay on Criticism is one of Pope's greatest works, and if he had

written nothing else, would have placed him among the first critics and

the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can

embellish or dignify didactic composition--selection of matter, novelty

of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of illustration, and

propriety of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider

that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it.

He that delights himself with observing that such powers may be soon

attained, cannot but grieve to think that life was ever after at a

stand. To mention the particular beauties of the essay, would be

unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe that the

comparison of a student's progress in the sciences with the journey of a

traveller in the Alps, is perhaps the best that English poetry can show.

A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject;

must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to

the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be

sufficient to recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great

purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates though

it does not ennoble; in heroics that may be admitted which ennobles,

though it does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required

to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a

simile is said to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so

attentive, that circumstances were sometimes added which, having no

parallels, served only to fill the imagination, and produced what

Perrault ludicrously called "comparisons with a long tail." In their

similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed. The ship race

compared with the chariot race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised;

land and water make all the difference. When Apollo, running after

Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing

gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made

plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god, are not represented much

to their advantage by a hare and a dog. The simile of the Alps has no

useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the

foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold

on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.

Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph in which it

is directed that the sound should seem an echo to the sense,--a precept

which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet.

This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering

frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my

opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish

this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and

the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words

framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as _thump_, _rattle_,

_growl_, _hiss_. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make

them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned.

The time of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned

languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be

accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion

were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention

of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our

language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in

their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely

from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation

between a _soft_ line and a _soft_ couch, or between _hard_ syllables

and _hard_ fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified,

and yet it may be suspected that in such resemblances the mind often

governs the idea, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of

their most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of

Sisyphus:

With many a weary step, and many a groan,

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll

violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:

While many a merry tale, and many a song,

Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long;

The rough road then, returning in a round,

Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.

We have surely now lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity. But

to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles

of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet

who tells us that

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line too labours, and the words move slow;

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;

when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's

lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon _sound_ and _time_,

and produced this memorable triplet:

Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join

The varying verse, the full resounding line,

The long majestic march, and energy divine.

Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced

majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables,

except that the exact prosodist will find the line of swiftness by one

time longer than that of tardiness. Beauties of this kind are commonly

fancied, and when real are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected,

and not to be solicited.--JOHNSON.

The Essay on Criticism is a poem of that species for which our author's

genius was particularly turned,--the didactic and moral. It is

therefore, as might be expected, a master-piece in its kind. I have been

sometimes inclined to think that the praises Addison has bestowed on it

were a little partial and invidious. "The observations," says he,

"follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that

methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose

writer." It is, however, certain that the poem before us is by no means

destitute of a just integrity, and a lucid order.[1] Each of the

precepts and remarks naturally introduce the succeeding ones, so as to

form an entire whole. The Spectator adds, "The observations in this

Essay are _some_ of them _uncommon_." There is, I fear, a small mixture

of ill-nature in these words; for this Essay, though on a beaten

subject, abounds in many new remarks and original rules, as well as in

many happy and beautiful illustrations and applications of the old ones.

We are, indeed, amazed to find such a knowledge of the world, such a

maturity of judgment, and such a penetration into human nature, as are

here displayed, in so very young a writer as was Pope when he produced

this Essay, for he was not twenty years old. Correctness and a just

taste are usually not attained but by long practice and experience in

any art; but a clear head and strong sense were the characteristical

qualities of our author, and every man soonest displays his radical

excellences. If his predominant talent be warmth and vigour of

imagination it will break out in fanciful and luxuriant descriptions,

the colouring of which will perhaps be too rich and glowing. If his

chief force lies in the understanding rather than in the imagination, it

will soon appear by solid and manly observations on life or learning,

expressed in a more chaste and subdued style. The former will frequently

be hurried into obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction;

the latter will seldom hazard a figure whose usage is not already

established, or an image beyond common life; will always be perspicuous

if not elevated; will never disgust if not transport his readers; will

avoid the grosser faults if not arrive at the greater beauties of

composition. When we consider the just taste, the strong sense, the

knowledge of men, books, and opinions that are so predominant in the

Essay on Criticism, we must readily agree to place the author among the

first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, "among the first poets,"

on this account alone. As a poet he must rank much higher for his Eloïsa

and Rape of the Lock. The Essay, it is said, was first written in prose,

according to the precept of Vida, and the practice of Racine, who was

accustomed to draw out in plain prose, not only the subject of each of

the five acts, but of every scene, and every speech, that he might see

the conduct and coherence of the whole at one view, and would then say,

"My tragedy is finished."--WARTON.

Most of the observations in this Essay are just, and certainly evince

good sense, an extent of reading, and powers of comparison, considering

the age of the author, extraordinary. Johnson's praise however is

exaggerated.--BOWLES.

"Essay" in Pope's day was used in its now obsolete sense of an attempt.

Stephens in 1648 entitled his translation of the five first books of the

Thebais "an Essay upon Statius:" and Denham's "Essay on the second book

of Virgil's Æneis" is a version and not a dissertation. "I have

undertaken," Dryden wrote to Walsh, "to translate all Virgil; and as an

essay have already paraphrased the third Georgic as an example." Two

quotations in Johnson's Dictionary,--one from Dryden, the other from

Glanville,--show that the word was usually understood to imply

diffidence. Dryden, in his Epistle to Roscommon, says,

Yet modestly he does his work survey,

And calls a finished poem an essay;

and Glanville says, "This treatise prides itself in no higher a title

than that of an essay, or imperfect attempt at a subject." Locke named

his great and elaborate work an "Essay on the Human Understanding," from

the consciousness that it was an "imperfect attempt," and when hostile

critics refused him the benefit of his modest title, he answered that

they did his book an honour "in not suffering it to be an essay." Pope

borrowed both the word, and the plan of his poem, from some works which

enjoyed in his youth a credit far beyond their worth,--the Essay on

Translated Verse by the Earl of Roscommon, and the Essay on Satire, and

the Essay on Poetry by the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of

Buckingham. These small productions had been suggested in their turn by

Horace's Art of Poetry, and its modern imitations. Roscommon and

Mulgrave, men of common-place minds, were incapable of originality, and

Pope, with the latent genius of a leader, was a follower in early years.

"The things that I have written fastest," said Pope to Spence, "have

always pleased the most. I wrote the Essay on Criticism fast; for I had

digested all the matter in prose before I began upon it in verse."[2]

This last circumstance was mentioned by Warton in his Essay on the

Writings and Genius of Pope, long before the Anecdotes of Spence were

published, and Johnson commented upon the statement in his review of

Warton's work. "There is nothing," he said, "improbable in the report,

nothing indeed but what is more likely than the contrary; yet I cannot

forbear to hint the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to

information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false

information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless

reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of

himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of

confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what

belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men

are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently

diffused by successive relators."[3] The caution was not intended to

discredit the evidence of Spence. Warton had suppressed his authority,

and Johnson had a proper mistrust of common hearsay.

On the title-page of the poem in the quarto of 1717, it is said, that it

was "written in the year 1709," to which Richardson has attached the

note, "Mr. Pope told me himself that the Essay on Criticism was, indeed,

written 1707, though said 1709 by mistake." The poet continued the

alleged mistake through all succeeding revisions. The quarto of 1743 was

the last edition he superintended, and 1709 appears as usual upon the

title-page, but Warburton announced in the final sentence of the

commentary, that the Essay was "the work of an author who had not

attained the twentieth year of his age," and as the author was born in

May, 1688, he must, according to this testimony, have completed his task

before May, 1708, which confirms the account of Richardson. Pope had

thus assigned one date to his piece on the first page of the quarto of

1743, and sanctioned the promulgation of a different date on the

concluding page. There is the same contradiction in his conversations

with Spence. "My Essay on Criticism," he said on one occasion, "was

written in 1709, and published in 1711, which is as little time as ever

I let anything of mine lay by me."[4] This agrees with the printed

title-page. "I showed Walsh," he said to Spence on another occasion, "my

Essay on Criticism in 1706. He died the year after."[5] This falls in

with the evidence of Richardson and Warburton; for Walsh died on March

15, 1708, and 1706 was an error for 1707. The double date reappears in a

note to the Pope Letters of 1735, solely through a change in the

punctuation. "Mr. Walsh," it was said in some copies, "died at 49 years

old, in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on

Criticism." "Mr. Walsh," it was said in other copies, "died at 49 years

old in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on

Criticism." In the first version it is asserted that the poem was

written in 1709, or the year after Mr. Walsh died; in the second version

it is asserted that it was written in 1707, and that Mr. Walsh died the

year after. Such a series of conflicting statements could not all be

accidental. When Pope published the quarto edition of his Letters in

1737, he again altered the note. "Mr. Walsh," he then said, "died at 49

years old, in the year 1708, the year before the Essay on Criticism was

printed," which informs us of the new fact that it was printed a couple

of years before it was published, and since the poet assured Spence that

it was written two or three years before it was printed,[6] we have the

date of its composition once more thrown back to 1707. Pope forgot the

confession in the poem, ver. 735-740, that in consequence of having

"lost his guide" by the death of Walsh, he was afraid to attempt

ambitious themes, and selected the Essay on Criticism as a topic suited

to "low numbers." However fictitious may have been the reason he

assigned for the choice of his subject, he there admits that he did not

form the design till after the death of his friend in March 1708. In his

later statements he oscillated between the truth, and the desire to

magnify the precocity of his genius. He was always ambitious of the kind

of praise which Johnson bestows upon the Essay, when he calls it "the

stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty." But at whatever

period the poem was first written, it did not appear till May, 1711, and

represents the capacity of Pope at twenty-three. He avowedly kept his

pieces long in manuscript for the purpose of maturing and polishing

them, and they were as good as he could make them at the period when

they finally left his hands.

The Essay on Criticism was published anonymously. Warton was informed by

Lewis the bookseller, that "it laid many days in his shop unnoticed and

unread." Pope wrote word to Caryll, July 19, 1711, that he did not

expect it would ever arrive at a second edition. Piqued, said Lewis, at

the neglect, the poet one day directed copies to several great men, and

among others to Lord Lansdowne, and the Duke of Buckingham. These

presents caused the work to be talked about.[7] The name of the author,

which soon transpired, assisted the sale, and the paper of Addison in

the Spectator on December 20, 1711, brought the Essay under the notice

of the entire reading world, though it was still another twelvemonth

before the thousand copies were exhausted.

The notoriety, if not the sale, of the Essay on Criticism must have been

promoted by the angry pamphlet put forth by Dennis six months before the

laudatory paper of Addison appeared in the Spectator.[8] Dennis was the

only living writer who was openly abused in the poem, and there was an

asperity in the language which savoured of personal hostility. He and

Pope were slightly acquainted. "At his first coming to town," says

Dennis, "he was very importunate with the late Mr. Henry Cromwell to

introduce him to me. The recommendation of Mr. Cromwell engaged me to be

about thrice in company with him; after which I went into the country,

and neither saw him, nor thought of him, till I found myself insolently

attacked by him in his very superficial Essay on Criticism."[9] A

passage quoted by Bowles from Pope's Prologue to the Satires reveals the

cause of the enmity:

Soft were my numbers; who could take offence

While pure description held the place of sense?

Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,

A painted mistress, or a purling stream.

Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;

I never answered,--I was not in debt.[10]

Here we learn that Dennis thought meanly of Pope's Pastorals. The

critic had enough taste for true poetry to despise the conventional

puerilities which, more than "pure description, held the place of sense"

in these juvenile effusions. He frequented the coffee-houses where

authors congregated, he indulged in professional talk, and his

unfavourable judgment was sure to get round to Pope. The irritation at

the time must have been great, since the censure continued to rankle in

the mind of the poet at the distance of five-and-twenty years. His

memory was less faithful when he claimed credit for not replying. He

found it convenient to forget that he had seized an early opportunity

for retaliating in the Essay on Criticism.

Dennis complained that "he was attacked in a clandestine manner in his

person instead of his writings." "How the attack," says Johnson, "was

clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated."

Evidently Dennis termed the attack clandestine, because the Essay was

anonymous, and his assailant concealed. Pope, however, had not been

studious of secrecy among his acquaintances, and Dennis showed in his

pamphlet that he knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal. His

assertion, denied by Johnson, that he was attacked "in his person

instead of his writings" is clearly correct, unless, contrary to usage,

the word is restricted to what is indelible in a man's bodily make. To

say that he reddened at every word of objection, and stared tremendous

with a threatening eye, like the fierce tyrants depicted in old

tapestry, was to represent his personal bearing and appearance in an

offensive light. Pope himself disclaimed the personality. "I cannot

conceive," he wrote to Caryll, June 25, 1711, "what ground he has for so

excessive a resentment, nor imagine how those three lines can be called

a reflection on his person which only describe him subject to a little

colour and stare on some occasions, which are revolutions that happen

sometimes in the best and most regular faces in Christendom." The

description, in other words, was not a reflection upon the person of

Dennis, because some persons with handsome faces were liable to the same

infirmity, and no satire was personal which did not declare a man to be

radically ugly. That the resentment might seem the more unreasonable,

the stare tremendous and threatening eye, were softened down to a

"little stare." This was characteristic of Pope. He was not afraid to

strike, but when the blow was resented, he frequently made a hasty and

ignominious retreat. Either he pretended that the satire was not aimed

at the individuals who called him to account, or he gave a mitigated and

erroneous version of his lampoons.

Pope lashed Dennis for an intemperance of manner which could be

controlled at will. Dennis upbraided Pope with a deformity which he had

not caused and could not cure. "If you have a mind," said the infuriated

critic, "to enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham, for a young,

squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral

madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love, you will be soon

directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have taken a survey of him,

tell me whether he is a proper author to make personal reflections on

others. This little author may extol the ancients as much, and as long

as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was born

a modern, for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by

consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been

no longer than that of one of his poems,--the life of half a day."[11]

There was a wide difference between ridiculing the distortions of

countenance which grew out of irascible vanity, and mocking at defects

which were a misfortune, and not a fault. But Pope's lines were

insulting, and a man of the world would have foreseen that Dennis would

repel insult by scurrility. The poet was as yet a novice in the coarse

personalities of that abusive age, and he had not anticipated such

brutal raillery. "The latter part of Mr. Dennis's book," he wrote to

Caryll, "is no way to be properly answered, but by a wooden weapon, and

I should perhaps have sent him a present from Windsor Forest of one of

the best and toughest oaken plants between Sunninghill and Oakingham if

he had not informed me in his preface that he is at this time persecuted

by fortune. This, I protest, I knew not the least of before; if I had,

his name had been spared in the Essay for that only reason."[12] Pope

could no more compete with Dennis in personal prowess, than Dennis could

compete in satire with Pope. His assigned reason for not executing his

empty vaunt was equally hollow. He was not wont to spare his enemies out

of consideration for their necessities, but taunted them with their

forlorn condition, and, true to his custom, the persecution of fortune,

which he said would have induced him to suppress his satire upon Dennis,

was made the ingredient of a fresh satire at a future day:

I never answered; I was not in debt.

The insinuation was unjust. Violent, and often wrong-headed, Dennis

spoke his genuine sentiments, and was not more a hireling than Pope, or

any other author who earns money by his pen. The poor debtor could not

have bartered his honour for a sorrier bribe. The pamphlet on the Essay

on Criticism consisted of thirty-two octavo pages of small print, with a

preface of five pages, and he received for it 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._

Dennis urged as an aggravation of the "falsehood and calumny" in the

Essay, that they proceeded from a "little affected hypocrite, who had

nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship,

goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity." These are the qualities enforced

in the poem, and whether the description of Dennis, under the name of

Appius, was a faithful likeness or a caricature, the attack was at

variance with the precepts which accompanied it. Pope insisted that the

specification of faults, to be useful, must be delicate and courteous.

He laid down the proposition at ver. 573, that "blunt truths do more

mischief than nice falsehoods," and at ver. 576, that "without good

breeding truth is disapproved." At the interval of six lines he

exemplified the urbanity he enjoined by a derisive sketch which could

only be intended to injure and exasperate. The inconsistency did not

stop here. He prefaced the obnoxious passage by the maxim, "those best

can bear reproof who merit praise," and the sketch of Dennis is an

illustration of the opposite character. Was Pope a man who bore reproof

with the fortitude which entitled him to scoff at others for their

irritability? He certainly sometimes drew a flattering picture of his

own equanimity and forbearance. He assures us at ver. 741, that he was

"careless of censure." He told Spence, that "he never much minded what

his angry critics published against him,--only one or two things at

first." "When," he added, "I heard for the first time that Dennis had

written against me, it gave me some pain; but it was quite over as soon

as I came to look into his book, and found he was in such a

passion."[13] In the Prologue to the Satires, he represents himself to

have been a perfect model of candour and amiability, and says of the

objections of his correctors,

If wrong I smiled; if right I kissed the rod.[14]

But he could seldom keep long to one version of any subject, and the

truth comes out in his first Imitation of Horace:

Peace is my dear delight,--not Fleury's more,

But touch me, and no minister so sore.[15]

His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. His mind was like

inflamed flesh; the touch which a healthy constitution would have

disregarded, tortured and enraged him; his smile was a vindictive jeer;

and he used with acrimony the rod he professed to kiss. His soreness at

censure was the very cause of his charging the weakness upon Dennis. He

was angry at the disparagement of his Pastorals, and because he himself

was testy, he ridiculed the testiness of his critic. The accusation,

according to Dennis, was a malicious invention. "If a man," he said, "is

remarkable for the extraordinary deference which he pays to the opinions

and remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience

under reproof."[16] Though docility was not the virtue of Dennis, his

failing was probably overcharged in the Essay on Criticism, for

unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope.

In retaining a grudge against those who wounded his self-esteem, Pope

did not disdain to profit by their spiteful censorship. "I will make my

enemy," he said to Caryll, "do me a kindness where he meant an injury,

and so serve instead of a friend," and he requested Trumbull to tell him

"where Dennis had hit any blots."[17] He cared too much for his works to

be influenced by the stubborn pride which cannot stoop to confess an

error. Where the criticism has not been inspired by malice, authors in

general have not been intolerant of their critics. Coleridge relates

that his thankfulness to the reviewers of his juvenile poems was

sincere, when they concurred in condemning his obscurity, turgid

language, and profusion of double epithets. Of the obscurity he was

unconscious, "and my mind," he says, "was not then sufficiently

disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for my

own conviction." "The glitter both of thought and diction" he pruned

with an unsparing hand, "though, in truth," he adds, "these parasite

plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems

with such intricacy of union that I was often obliged to omit

disentangling the weed from the fear of snapping the flower."[18] The

candour and manliness are charming, but it must not be overlooked that

the magnanimity diminishes as the mental capacity increases. Wakefield

well remarks that one reason why those who merit praise can best bear

reproof is, that the reproof is either counterbalanced by praise, or by

the inward consciousness that the merit is great and will prevail.[19]

Inferior writers have not the same consolation. The chief advantage

after all which authors derive from the enumeration of their defects is,

that it teaches them modesty, and the true limits of their powers. They

are seldom able to mend. The qualities they lack are not within their

reach; for the mind cannot rise above itself, and has little pliancy

when once it has taken its bent.

The notice in the Spectator must have been doubly welcome to Pope after

the invective and cavils of Dennis. "In our own country," says Addison,

"a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all

his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of

the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he

makes his entrance into the world. I am sorry to find that an author,

who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some

strokes of this nature into a very fine poem,--I mean the Art of

Criticism, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece

of its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's

Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been

requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommon, but such as

the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that

elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which

are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so

beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they

have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was

before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and

solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so

very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine

writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in

giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us,

who live in the later ages of the world, to make observations in

criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been

touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the

common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon

lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but

very few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and

which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His

way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what

we chiefly admire."[20] Pope was delighted. "Moderate praise," he said

to Steele, whom he erroneously supposed to have held the pen,

"encourages a young writer, but a great deal may injure him; and you

have been so lavish in this point that I almost hope,--not to call in

question your judgment in the piece--that it was some particular

inclination to the author which carried you so far." He accepted in good

part the admonition for disparaging his "brother moderns," and expressed

his willingness to omit the "strokes" in another edition.[21] He

detected none of the "ill-nature" which Warton saw lurking in the phrase

"that _some_ of the observations were _uncommon_." Addison was familiar

with the sources from which the Essay was compiled, and could hardly

have been ignorant that even the "some" was a generous license. He

pleaded more plausibly for the work when he contended that wit consisted

in presenting old thoughts in a better dress, and that the "known

truths" in the poem were "placed in so beautiful a light, that they had

all the graces of novelty." The charge brought later by Pope against

Addison, of viewing him with jealous eyes, suggested to Warton his

strained imputation, which is not warranted by the expression he quotes,

and is contradicted by the genial tone of the praise. Addison at the

time had no acquaintance with Pope. The eulogy on the Essay was

spontaneous, and an envious rival would never have adopted the suicidal

device of voluntarily publishing a strong panegyric in a periodical

which every one read, and of which the decisions were accepted for law.

The truth is, that Addison, by his encomiums and authority, brought into

vogue the exaggerated estimate entertained of the Essay. The authors of

the next generation read it in their boyhood, and were taught that it

was a model of its kind. Juvenile impressions retain their hold, and

upon no other supposition could we understand the preposterous opinion

of Johnson, that the work set Pope "among the first critics and the

first poets," and that he "never afterwards excelled it." Warton

disputed the rank assigned to the poet, and assented to the claim put

forth for the critic, which was equally untenable. He was misled by his

relish for platitudes. "I propose," he said, "to make some observations

on such passages and precepts in this Essay as, on account of their

utility, novelty, or elegance, deserve particular attention," and his

opening specimen of these merits is the line,

In poets as true genius is but rare.[22]

He selected for distinction several other remarks which were not more

exquisite in their form, or recondite in their substance. Hazlitt took

up the strain of Johnson and Warton. "The Rape of the Lock," he says,

"is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism

is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this

work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful;

unless we adopt the supposition that most men of genius spend the rest

of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned

under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally

remarkable. Thus, in reasoning on the variety of men's opinions, he

says,

'Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and

illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much

those of a school, and of a confined one."[23] De Quincey, a subtler and

sounder critic than Hazlitt, boldly challenged decisions which had

passed, but little questioned, from mouth to mouth. "The Essay on

Criticism," he says, "is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's

writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical

multiplication table, of common-places the most mouldy with which

criticism has baited its rat-traps. The maxims have no natural order or

logical dependency, are generally so vague as to mean nothing, and what

is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man as often as by

Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this very poem."[24] The matter

of the Essay is not rated, in this passage, below its value.

"I admired," said Lady Mary W. Montagu, "Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism

at first very much, because I had not then read any of the ancient

critics, and did not know that it was all stolen."[25] Pope had found

the bulk of his materials nearer home. He told Spence that in his youth

"he went through all the best critics," and specified Quintilian, Rapin,

and Bossu.[26] He states in his Essay, ver. 712, that "critic-learning,"

in modern times, "flourished most in France," and in fact the Rapins and

Bossus were his principal masters. They had been brought into credit

with our countrymen by Dryden. "Impartially speaking," he said, in his

Dedication to the Æneis, "the French are as much better critics than the

English as they are worse poets." He had a wonderful faith in the virtue

of their precepts. "Spenser," he said, "wanted only to have read the

rules of Bossu; for no man was ever born with a greater genius, or had

more knowledge to support it." He compared the French critics to

generals, and our celebrated poets to common soldiers; the poet executed

what the commanding mind of the critic planned.[27] The treatises which

would have perfected the genius of Spenser were shallow drowsy

productions, compounded of truisms, pedantic fallacies, and doctrines

borrowed from antiquity. Pope culled most of his maxims from these, and

other modern works. Many of his remarks were the common property of the

civilised world. A slight acquaintance with books and men is sufficient

to teach us that people are partial to their own judgment, that some

authors are not qualified to be poets, wits, or critics, and that

critics should not launch beyond their depth. Such profound reflections,

kept up throughout the Essay, owed their credit to the disguising

properties of verse. Along with the singular nicety of distinction, and

knowledge of mankind, Johnson detected a no less surprising range of

ancient and modern learning. Pope mentions Homer, Virgil, and half a

dozen Greek and Latin critics. He has characterised some of these

critics in a manner which betrays that he had never looked into their

works, and what he says of the rest only required that he should know

their writings by repute. All, and more than all, the classical

information embodied in the Essay, might have been picked up from his

French manuals in a single morning.

A didactic poet who draws his precepts from the truisms and current

publications of his day, could not at twenty-three deserve credit for

precocity of learning or thought. He might still manifest an early

maturity of judgment in sifting the insignificant from the important,

the true from the false. Pope did not avoid the trite, but he is said to

have evinced a rare capacity for discriminating the true. Bowles agrees

with Johnson and Warton that "the good sense in the Essay is

extraordinary considering the age of the author," and it is pronounced

"an uncommon effort of critical good sense" by Hallam, conspicuous

himself for sense and sobriety.[28] Whoever looks through the

speciousness of rhyme, and views the ideas in their naked meaning, will

be much more struck by the want of good sense in the principal critical

canons. They are not even "extraordinary for the age of the author;"

versed as he was in English literature they are below his years. They

are the narrow, erroneous dogmas of a youth fresh from school-boy

studies, who imagined that the Greeks and Romans had ransacked the

illimitable realms of genius and taste, and swept off the whole of the

spoils. He broadly asserted this doctrine in the poetical creed which he

prefixed to his works.[29] He was at least old enough then to know

better, from whence it is clear that the common statements respecting

him are the opposite of the truth. He did not display the ripe judgment

of manhood in his juvenile criticism; he remained a boy in criticism

when he was a man.

Follow nature, said Pope, in his Essay, but beware of taking nature at

first hand. Homer and nature are the same, and to copy nature is to copy

the rules deduced from his works. The ancients sometimes deviated into

excellence by throwing off their self-imposed shackles. The moderns must

not presume to be irregularly great. They must keep to the precepts, and

if they ever break a rule they must at least be able to quote a case

precisely parallel from a classical author.[30] The English had not

submitted to the wholesome restraint. They had been "fierce for the

liberties of wit," and Pope avows his conviction that the entire race of

English writers were therefore "uncivilised," with the exception of a

few who had "restored among us wit's fundamental laws." He names the

most illustrious of these reformers. They were three in number,--the

Duke of Buckingham, Lord Roscommon, and Walsh.[31] The absurdity could

not be exceeded. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton were

"uncivilised" writers; they not only fell into minor errors, but set at

nought the "_fundamental_ laws" of poetry, while the persons who taught

how English poetry was to be raised from its rude condition were a trio

of prosy mediocrities, whose works might have been annihilated without

leaving the smallest vacuum in literature. "The Duke of Buckingham,"

said Pope later, "was superficial in everything; even in poetry, which

was his forte."[32]

Pope seems to have been unconscious of the vast metamorphose which the

world had undergone since the close of the Greek and Roman eras.

Religion, institutions, usages, opinions, all had changed. Society was

in a ferment with new ideas; nations had been gathered out of new

elements; characters were moulded under new influences, and the play of

passions, interests, convictions, and policy had assumed new forms. This

altered order of things was reflected in our poetry. The mighty men of

genius who led the way could not have put aside their genuine thoughts

to mimic works which, noble in themselves, were musty and obsolete in

modern imitations. The vigorous races which had sprung up drew living

pictures from their own minds; they were inspired by national and

present sentiments; they stamped upon their verse the feelings, humours,

and beliefs of their age. They borrowed from the classics, and sometimes

with bad taste; but the extrinsic details they appropriated were not

permitted to cramp the masculine elasticity of their native fancy and

experience. The materials of the edifice, in the main, were no longer

the same, and neither was the shape they assumed. The difference was as

great as between a Grecian temple and a Gothic cathedral. The principles

which governed the ancients in their compositions were confined, and did

not give verge enough for that variety and picturesqueness among

ourselves which demanded to be embodied in written words. The

originality, which was our glory, appeared a vice to Pope. The

adaptation of the structure to its complex purposes he believed to be a

declension towards barbarism. He would have preferred that our

magnificent English literature, instinct with the freshness of nature,

and gathering into its huge circumference the growth of centuries,

should have been reduced to a stale and meagre counterfeit. The ancients

had the prerogative to make and break critical laws; the moderns must

not dare to think for themselves. Genius had been free in Greece, and

was to be altogether a slave in England. It cannot be urged in excuse

for this protest against the independence of our literature that Pope

had imbibed the prejudices of his generation. His doctrine was

hacknied, but not allowed. He admits that it had few disciples,[33] and

one of the three adherents he claimed did not belong to him. "Not only

all present poets," wrote Dryden to Walsh, in 1693, "but all who are to

come in England will thank you for freeing them from the too servile

imitation of the ancients."[34] The rules of Pope could never have

prevailed, for they were intrinsically false, and would have emasculated

every national literature. The thoughts, words, and deeds of the actual

world would not have been impressed upon its books; a gulf would have

separated the sympathies of the reader from the feeble, monotonous

unrealities of the author, and both author and reader would soon have

grown sick of this unnatural effort to be artificial and dull.

An exclusive partisan of classical poetry, Pope did not the less

denounce sectarians in wit, the contracted spirits "who the ancients

only or the moderns prize," and he exhorted critics "to regard not if

wit be old or new."[35] The contradiction in his principles was not

accompanied by a corresponding contradiction in his practice, for in no

part of his Essay did he rectify his injustice towards his countrymen.

He had not one word of commendation for any great English poet, with the

exception of Dryden, and him he chiefly extolled, in company with Denham

and Waller, for his metrical euphony. Nay, Pope limited the fame of our

most illustrious writers to barely threescore years, on the pretence

that their language became partially obsolete, which would yet leave

them an enormous advantage over dead tongues. Because "length of fame

(our second life) is lost," he exhorted the public in common fairness to

recognise merit betimes.[36] There was not a semblance of truth in his

premise, nor was the plea which he grounded upon it admissible in his

mouth. "How vain," he exclaimed, "that second life in other's

breath,"[37] and if posthumous fame was worthless there was no claim for

compensation. In reality the value is not in the posthumous fame, but in

the anticipation which converts it into an immediate possession, the

mind feasting in imagination upon plaudits to come. The successful

author adds them to the chorus of present praise, and the unsuccessful

creates for himself the fame he lacks. The parental partiality which

appeals from contemporaries to posterity may deceive, but it soothes and

sustains. "A reputation after death," said Jortin, "is like a favourable

wind after a shipwreck."[38] Rather the faith in a future reputation is

the preservative against shipwreck, unless when men are indifferent to

literary immortality.

The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intellectual

superiority. Of old the poets "who but endeavoured well," were praised

by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights of Parnassus

"employed their pains in spurning down others." Of old again the

professional critic was "generous and fanned the poet's fire." Now

critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had learned from him

the art of criticism.[39] A freedom from jealousy, a liberality of

eulogy were universal with pagans; malice and envy reigned supreme in

Christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had the luxury of indulging in

the vice he reprobated. He preached up "good-nature," he would suffer no

leaven of "spleen and sour disdain,"[40] and his Essay throughout is a

diatribe against English critics. The entire crew were spiteful

blockheads without sense or principle. The excessive rancour points to

some personal offence, and it is probable that his estimate of critics

was regulated by their low opinion of his Pastorals, which was the chief

work he had hitherto published. When he speaks of poets he keeps no

better to the leniency he advocates. He would "sometimes have censure

restrained, and would charitably let the dull be vain," upon the

uncharitable allegation that the more they were corrected the worse they

grew. He engrafts upon his recommendation of a "charitable silence," an

invective against the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have

not discovered that they are superannuated. For this inability to detect

the decay of their faculties he calls them "shameless bards,

impenitently bold."[41] No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be

treated with tenderness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less

excusable that it was certainly directed against his former friend

Wycherley.

There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the minor

positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth when he

said of the whole that it was "very superficial." There remains the

question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty of expression

signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his work to be a

combination of highly wrought passages, and of that more easy style

described by Dryden, when he says--

And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose,

As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.[42]

The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are far the

best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile of the

traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to his

improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. One or

two only are good; the rest have little point or appropriateness.

Anxious to string together as many smart comparisons as possible, Pope

was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of abusing paltry

versifiers, he says,

Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,

And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.

False steps but help them to renew the race,

As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.[43]

The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets become

callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure; the meaning of the

second that failure stimulated them to improvement. In the first couplet

they proceed from drowsiness to slumber; in the second their false steps

stir them up to mend their pace. They are first represented as

proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad to better. The attempt

in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only partially

successful. Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in different ways of

the familiar style, pour out words in their natural order with a

marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this unforced idiomatic

flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles of rhymes. Almost

anybody may convert ordinary prose into defective verse, and much of the

verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a low order. The phraseology is

frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and

ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metre

inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell

below bald and slip-shod prose. Examples lie thick, and a couple of

specimens will be enough:

But when t'examine ev'ry part he came.

Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the rule

with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of preserving the

legitimate arrangement of words; yet it is an anomaly in literature that

with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate such despicable

examples of the licence, and this in enunciating hacknied precepts, only

to be raised above insipidity by the perfection with which they were

moulded into verse. Where the plain portions of the poem are not

positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity,

relieved by occasional well-wrought passages, forms the staple of the

work, and Hazlitt must surely have given loose to one of his wilful

paradoxes when he contended that the general characteristics of the

Essay were originality, thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous

expression, and brilliant illustration.

In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of Pope's

poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. "There are,"

says Hazlitt, "no less than half a score couplets rhyming to _sense_.

This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less

so when they are given."

But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.--lines 3, 4.

In search of wit, these lose their common sense,

And then turn critics in their own defence.--l. 28, 29.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense.--l. 209, 10.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence,

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.--l. 324, 5.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.--l. 364, 5.

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,

That always shows great pride, or little sense.--l. 386, 7.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.--l. 566, 7.

Be niggards of advice on no pretence:

For the worst avarice is that of sense.--l. 578, 9.

Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,

And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.--l. 608, 9.

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,

And without method talks us into sense.--l. 653, 4.

The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied.

"Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and "pretence" are each

employed twice.

Hazlitt might have remarked, that _wit_ was even more favoured than

_sense_, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen

Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction; and wit,

besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as

synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings,

already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for

Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and

now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect,

the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word

does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay,

and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone:

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,

And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.--lines 52, 3.

One science only will one genius fit;

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.--l. 60, 1.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit

With the same spirit that its author writ.--l. 233, 4.

Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,

The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.--l. 237, 8.

As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,

T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.--l. 259, 60.

Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;

One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.--l. 291, 2.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,

So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.--l. 301, 2.

So schismatics the plain believers quit,

And are but damned for having too much wit.--l. 428, 9.

Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,

The current folly proves the ready wit.--l. 448, 9.

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:

Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.--l. 538, 9.

Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,

Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.--l. 651, 2.

He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,

Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.--l. 657, 8.

In these twelve instances "wit" rhymes five times to "fit," and three

times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. "Art," in the

singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every case rhymes to

"part," "parts," or "imparts."

Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the order in

which they are set down. "None, own--showed, trod--proved,

beloved--steer, character--esteem, them--full, rule--take, track--rise,

precipice--thoughts, faults--joined, mankind--delight, wit--appear,

regular--caprice, nice--light, wit--good, blood--glass, place--sun,

upon--still, suitable--ear, repair--join, line--line, join--Jove,

love--own, town--fault, thought--worn, turn--safe, laugh--lost,

boast--boast, lost (_bis_)--join, divine--prove, love--ease,

increase--care, war--join, shine--disapproved, beloved--take,

speak--fool, dull--satires, dedicators--read, head--speaks,

makes--extreme, phlegm--find, joined--joined, mind--revive,

live--chased, passed--good, blood--desert, heart--receive, give." In

numerous instances, "the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it,

when speaking of Denham, "is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it."

Some positive, persisting fops we know,

Who, if once wrong, will needs be always _so_;

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,

Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us _so_.

Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong emphasis,

as

False eloquēnce like thē prismatic glass,

which only ceases to be prose when "the," and the last syllable of

"eloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. Examples

like

Atones not fōr that envy which it brings;

That in̄ proud dullness joins with quality;

That not alone what tō your sense is due;

are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen,

offend the ear by the succession of "low" and "creeping words." Pope

belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who freely

dispensed with the laws they had made.

Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the sense,

thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to describe

the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used the same

measure to denote "the march of slow-paced majesty." There was no need

to look for an instance at the interval of thirty years. It would have

been found at an interval of half thirty lines in the Essay on

Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to portray the dragging

progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposition was doubtless

deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the opposite movements of

sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunderstood the theory. The

Alexandrine was not supposed to represent speed, but space. Thus when

Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, in his translation of the Iliad,

he says in a note, "Homer is very particular here in giving the picture

of the blood running in a long trace, lower and lower. The author's

design being only to image the streaming of the blood, it seemed

equivalent to make it trickle through the length of an Alexandrine

line."

As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.

A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long distance, the

retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be expressed by the slow

or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. The end was not

answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break in the middle of the

Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has equally shown that Pope

was not happy in the application of his mistaken rule. The slow march

outstrips the swift Camilla, who is even left behind by the wounded

snake in the first half of the line. Had the examples been a complete

illustration of the theory, the gain would have been nothing.

Representative metre, in the strict sense of the term, though sanctioned

by eminent names, would degrade poetry. There cannot be a paltrier

poetic effect than to mimic the roll of stones, the trickling of blood,

and the dragging motion of wounded snakes.

"Mr. Walsh used to tell me," says Pope, "that there was one way left of

excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one

great poet that was correct, and he desired me to make that my study and

aim."[44] Warton calls this "very important advice,"[45] and both he and

Pope seem to assume that it had been effectual. The notion has been

generally accepted. "To distinguish this triumvirate from each other,"

says Young, "Swift is a singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a

great author."[46] "He is the most perfect of our poets," said Byron;

"the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach."[47]

Hazlitt took the opposite side. "Those critics who are bigoted idolisers

of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness, seem to be of

opinion that there is but one perfect writer, even Pope. This is,

however, a mistake; his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he

had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical

construction is often lame and imperfect. His rhymes are constantly

defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a

greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding, writers.

The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform

smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been

considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually

changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme,

which shows either a want of technical resources, or great inattention

to punctilious exactness."[48] De Quincey confirms Hazlitt; but, with

his profounder knowledge of the characteristics of Pope's poetry, he saw

that the incorrectness was spread wider, and went deeper. "Let us ask,"

he says, "what is meant by correctness? Correctness in developing the

thought? In connecting it, or effecting the transitions? In the use of

words? In the grammar? In the metre?" In all these points he maintains

that Pope, "by comparison with other great poets, was conspicuously

deficient."[49] For an example of incorrectness in developing the

thought De Quincey refers to the character of Addison:

Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?

Who but must weep if Atticus were he?

"Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and

ignoble qualities. Very well; but why, then, must we weep? Because this

assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. Well,

that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human

nature. But then revolves the question, Why must we laugh? Because, if

the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping,

so much we know from the very first. The very first line says,

Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires

_True genius kindles_, and fair fame aspires.

Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character.

We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery

that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already

known from the beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in

Shakspeare."[50] Pope was still more deficient in logical correctness,

in the power of preserving consistency, and coherency between

congregated ideas. "Of all poets," says De Quincey, "that have practised

reasoning in verse he is the one most inconsequential in the deduction

of his thoughts, and the most severely distressed in any effort to

effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are not ten

consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. All his thinking

proceeded by insulated and discontinuous jets, and the only resource for

him, or chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty of

stringing his aphoristic thoughts, like pearls, having no relation to

each other but that of contiguity."[51] Many of his arguments are

capable of a double construction; absolute contradictions are not

uncommon; and when we try to get a connected view of his principles we

are irritated by their discordance, indefiniteness, and obscurity. As

little will his grammar bear the test of correctness. "His syntax," says

De Quincey, "is so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other

times to defeat it. Preterites and participles he constantly confounds,

and registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron index of

rhymes that never _can_ mend." Another defect of language was, in De

Quincey's opinion, "almost peculiar to Pope." "The language does not

realise the idea: it simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to give a single

illustration:

Know God and Nature only are the same;

In man the judgment shoots at flying game.

The first line one would naturally construe into this: that God and

Nature were in harmony, whilst all other objects were scattered into

incoherency by difference and disunion. Not at all; it means nothing of

the kind; but that God and Nature only are exempted from the infirmities

of change. This _might_ mislead many readers; but the second line _must_

do so: for who would not understand the syntax to be, that the judgment,

as it exists in man, shoots at flying game? But, in fact, the meaning

is, that the judgment in aiming its calculations at man, aims at an

object that is still on the wing, and never for a moment

stationary."[52] This, De Quincey contends, is the worst of all possible

faults in diction, since perspicuity, ungrammatical and inelegant, is

preferable to conundrums of which the solution is difficult, and often

doubtful. He says that there are endless varieties of the vice in Pope,

and that "he sought relief for himself from half an hour's labour at the

price of utter darkness to his reader." De Quincey was in error when he

imputed the imperfections to indolence. There never was a more

painstaking poet than Pope. His works were slowly elaborated, and

diligently revised. "I corrected," he says, "because it was as pleasant

to me to correct as to write,"[53] and his manuscripts attest his

untiring efforts to mend his composition. Language and not industry

failed him. Happy in a multitude of phrases, lines, couplets, and

passages, his vocabulary and turns of expression were often unequal to

the exactions of verse. Not even rhymes, dearly purchased by violations

of grammar and a false order of words, nor the imperfection of the

rhymes themselves, could always enable him to satisfy the double

requirement of metre and clearness. Most of his usual deviations from

correctness are especially prominent in the Essay on Criticism, and any

one who reads it with common attention might be tempted to think that

the claim which Warton and others set up for Pope, was an insidious

device to injure his reputation by diverting attention from his merits,

and basing his fame upon a foundation too unstable to support it. The

advice of Walsh was foolish. A poet who believed originality to be

exhausted, and who merely aspired to echo his predecessors, with no

distinguishing quality of his own beyond some additional correctness,

might have spared his pains. The correct imitator would be intolerable

by the side of the fresh and vigorous genius he copied. The assumption

that the domain of poetic thought had been traversed in every direction,

and that no untrodden paths were left for future explorers, was itself a

delusion, soon to be refuted by Pope's own Rape of the Lock. Many

immortal works have since belied the shallow doctrine of Walsh, who made

his dim perceptions the measure of intellectual possibilities. The

aspects under which the world, animate and inanimate, may be regarded by

the poet are practically endless. The latent truths of science do not

offer to the philosopher a more unbounded field of novelty.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION: That it is as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill,

and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1--That a true taste is

as rare to be found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18--That most men

are born with some taste, but spoiled by false education, ver. 19 to

25--The multitude of critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to

45--That we are to study our own taste, and know the limits of it,

ver. 46 to 67--Nature the best guide of judgment, ver. 68 to

87--Improved by art and rules, which are but methodised nature, ver.

88--Rules derived from the practice of the ancient poets, ver. 88 to

110--That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied by a

critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to 138--Of licenses,

and the use of them by the ancients, ver. 142 to 180--Reverence due

to the ancients, and praise of them, ver. 181, &c.

PART II. VER. 201, &C.

Causes hindering a true judgment--1. Pride, ver. 208--2. Imperfect

learning, ver. 215--3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver.

233 to 288--Critics in wit, language, versification, only, ver. 288,

305, 339, &c.--4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire,

ver. 384--5. Partiality, too much love to a sect, to the ancients or

moderns, ver. 394--6. Prejudice or prevention, ver. 408--7.

Singularity, ver. 424--8. Inconstancy, ver. 430--9. Party spirit,

ver. 452, &c.--10. Envy, ver. 466--Against envy and in praise of

good nature, ver. 508, &c.--When severity is chiefly to be used by

critics, ver. 526, &c.

PART III. VER. 560, &C.

Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic--1. Candour, ver.

563--Modesty, ver. 566--Good breeding, ver. 572--Sincerity and

freedom of advice, ver. 578--2. When one's counsel is to be

restrained, ver. 584--Character of an incorrigible poet, ver.

600--And of an impertinent critic, ver. 610--Character of a good

critic, ver. 629--The history of criticism, and characters of the

best critics, Aristotle, ver. 645--Horace, ver. 653--Dionysius, ver.

665--Petronius, ver. 667--Quintilian, ver. 670--Longinus, ver.

675--Of the decay of criticism, and its revival. Erasmus, ver.

693--Vida, ver. 705--Boileau, ver. 714--Lord Roscommon, &c. ver.

725--Conclusion.

AN

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill;

But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.

Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 5

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;

A fool might once himself alone expose,

Now one in verse makes many more in prose.[54]

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 10

In poets as true genius is but rare,

True taste as seldom is the critic's share;[55]

Both must alike from heav'n derive their light,

These born to judge, as well as those to write.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, 15

And censure freely, who have written well.[56]

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,

But are not critics to their judgment too?

Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find

Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind:[57] 20

Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light,

The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right;

But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, }

Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,[58] }

So by false learning is good sense defaced:[59] } 25

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools,[60]

And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.[61]

In search of wit, these lose their common sense,

And then turn critics in their own defence:[62]

Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30

Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.[63]

All fools have still an itching to deride,

And fain would be upon the laughing side.[64]

If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,[65]

There are who judge still worse than he can write. 35

Some have at first for wits, then poets passed,

Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.

Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,

As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.[66]

Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle, 40

As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;[67]

Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,[68]

Their generation's so equivocal:[69]

To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require,

Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.[70] 45

But you who seek to give and merit fame,

And justly bear a critic's noble name,

Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,

How far your genius, taste, and learning go;[71]

Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, 50

And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,

And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.

As on the land while here the ocean gains,

In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; 55

Thus in the soul while memory prevails,

The solid pow'r of understanding fails;[72]

Where beams of warm imagination play,[73]

The memory's soft figures melt away.[74]

One science only will one genius fit; 60

So vast is art, so narrow human wit:[75]

Not only bounded to peculiar arts,

But oft in those confined to single parts.

Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,

By vain ambition still to make them more 65

Each might his sev'ral province well command,

Would all but stoop to what they understand.

First follow nature, and your judgment frame

By her just standard,[76] which is still the same:

Unerring nature, still divinely bright, 70

One clear, unchanged, and universal light,[77]

Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,[78]

At once the source, and end, and test of art.

Art from that fund each just supply provides;

Works without show, and without pomp presides:[79] 75

In some fair body thus th' informing soul

With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,[80]

Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;

Itself unseen, but in th' effects remains.[81]

Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse, 80

Want as much more, to turn it to its use;[82]

For wit and judgment often are at strife,[83]

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed;

Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed; 85

The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,[84]

Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

Those rules of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodised;[85]

Nature, like liberty,[86] is but restrained 90

By the same laws which first herself ordained.

Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,

When to repress, and when indulge our flights:

High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed,

And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; 95

Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,[87]

And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.

Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,[88]

She drew from them what they derived from heav'n,[89]

The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire, 100

And taught the world with reason to admire.

Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,

To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:

But following wits from that intention strayed,

Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid;[90] 105

Against the poets their own arms they turned,

Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned.[91]

So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art

By doctors' bills[92] to play the doctor's part,

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, 110

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.

Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,

Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled[93] so much as they;

Some dryly plain, without invention's aid,

Write dull receipts how poems may be made; 115

These leave the sense, their learning to display,

And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then whose judgment the right course would steer,

Know well each ancient's proper character;

His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page; 120

Religion, country, genius of his age:[94]

Without all these at once before your eyes,

Cavil you may,[95] but never criticise.[96]

Be Homer's works your study and delight,

Read them by day, and meditate by night;[97] 125

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,

And trace the muses upward to their spring.[98]

Still with itself compared, his text peruse;[99]

And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.

When first young Maro in his boundless mind 130

A work t' outlast[100] immortal Rome designed,[101]

Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,

And but from nature's fountain scorned to draw:

But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,

Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 135

Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design: }

And rules as strict his laboured work confine,[102] }

As if the Stagyrite[103] o'erlooked each line.[104] }

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;

To copy nature is to copy them.[105] 140

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,

For there's a happiness as well as care.

Music resembles poetry; in each }

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,[106] }

And which a master hand alone can reach. } 145

If, where the rules not far enough extend,[107]

(Since rules were made but to promote their end,)

Some lucky licence answer to the full

Th' intent proposed, that licence is a rule.

Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 150

May boldly deviate from the common track.

Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,[108]

And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;[109]

From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,[110] 155

Which, without passing through the judgment, gains

The heart, and all its end at once attains.

In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes, }

Which out of nature's common order rise,[111] }

The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.[112] } 160

But though the ancients thus their[113] rules invade,

(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,[114])

Moderns, beware! or if you must offend

Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;

Let it be seldom, and compelled by need; 165

And have, at least, their precedent to plead.

The critic else proceeds without remorse,

Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts

Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.[115] 170

Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped[116] appear,

Considered singly, or beheld too near,

Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,

Due distance reconciles to form and grace.[117]

A prudent chief not always must display[118] 175

His pow'rs in equal rank, and fair array,

But with th' occasion and the place comply,

Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,[119]

Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.[120] 180

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;[121]

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.[122]

See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring; 185

Hear, in all tongues consenting Pæans ring!

In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined,

And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind.[123]

Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;[124]

Immortal heirs of universal praise! 190

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,

As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;

Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,

And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found![125]

O may some spark of your celestial fire, 195

The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,

(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;

Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)

To teach vain wits a science little known,

T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own! 200

II.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Whatever nature has in worth denied,[126] 205

She gives in large recruits of needful pride;

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:[127]

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 210

If once right reason drives that cloud away,

Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,

Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.

A little learning is a dang'rous thing; 215

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130] 220

While from the bounded level of our mind,

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]

But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132] 225

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:

But those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthened way, 230

Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]

A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]

With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]

Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 235

Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;

Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,

The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.

But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,[136]

Correctly cold,[137] and regularly low, 240

That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,

We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.

In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts

Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;

'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 245

But the joint force and full result of all.[138]

Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,

(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])

No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to th' admiring eyes; 250

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]

The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,

Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.[141]

In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, 255

Since none can compass more than they intend;

And if the means be just, the conduct true,

Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.[142]

As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,

T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: 260

Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]

For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]

Most critics, fond of some subservient art,

Still make the whole depend upon a part:

They talk of principles, but notions prize, 265

And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]

A certain bard encount'ring on the way,

Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,

As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;[146] 270

Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,

Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.

Our author, happy in a judge so nice,

Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;

Made him observe the subject, and the plot, 275

The manners, passions, unities, what not,

All which, exact to rule, were brought about,

Were but a combat in the lists left out.

"What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;

Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite. 280

"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,

"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."

So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.

"Then build a new, or act it in a plain."[147]

Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 285

Curious not knowing,[148] not exact but nice,

Form short ideas; and offend in arts,

As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,

And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; 290

Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;

One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace

The naked nature, and the living grace,

With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, 295

And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]

True wit is nature[151] to advantage dressed;

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]

Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,

That gives us back the image of our mind. 300

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]

So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]

For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]

As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Others for language all their care express, 305

And value books, as women men, for dress:

Their praise is still,--the style is excellent;

The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: 310

False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,

Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;

The face of nature we no more survey,

All glares alike, without distinction gay;

But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, } 315

Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, }

It gilds all objects, but it alters none.[157] }

Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent,[158] as more suitable:[159]

A vile conceit in pompous words expressed 320

Is like a clown in regal purple dressed:

For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,

As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence,[160]

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; 325

Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,

Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.

Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,[161] }

These sparks with awkward vanity display }

What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; } 330

And but so mimic ancient wits at best,

As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;

Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,[162] 335

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:[163]

In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; 340

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, }

Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, }

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.[164] }

These equal syllables alone require,

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;[165] 345

While expletives their feeble aid do join;[166]

And ten low words[167] oft creep in one dull line:[168]

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,

With sure returns of still expected rhymes;[169]

Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze," 350

In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"

If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"

The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep:"[170]

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 355

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.[171]

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,[172] and know

What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;

And praise[173] the easy vigour of a line, 360

Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.[174]

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,[175]

As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.[176] 365

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,[177]

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,[178]

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,[179] 370

The line too labours, and the words move slow:[180]

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn,[181] and skims along the main.[182]

Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,[183]

And bid alternate passions fall and rise![184] 375

While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove

Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;

Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,

Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:[185]

Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, 380

And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!

The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,

And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.[186]

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,

Who still are pleased too little or too much. 385

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,

That always shows great pride, or little sense:

Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,

Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.

Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; 390

For fools admire, but men of sense approve:[187]

As things seem large which we through mists descry,

Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers,[188] some our own despise;

The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 395

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied

To one small sect, and all are damned beside.[189]

Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,

And force that sun but on a part to shine,

Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, 400

But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;

Which, from the first has shone on ages past,

Enlights[190] the present, and shall warm the last;

Though each may feel increases and decays,[191]

And see now clearer and now darker days: 405

Regard not then if wit be old or new,

But blame the false, and value still the true.

Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,[192]

But catch the spreading notion of the town:

They reason and conclude by precedent, 410

And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then

Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Of all this servile herd, the worst is he

That in proud dulness joins with quality,[193] 415

A constant critic at the great man's board,

To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.

What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,

In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me![194]

But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420

How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,

And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

The vulgar thus through imitation err;

As oft the learn'd by being singular; 425

So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng

By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:

So schismatics the plain believers quit,[196]

And are but damned for having too much wit.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night; 430

But always think the last opinion right.

A muse by these is like a mistress used,

This hour she's idolised, the next abused;

While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,

'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.[197] 435

Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;

And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.

Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread; 440

Who knew most Sentences,[198] was deepest read;

Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,

And none had sense enough to be confuted:

Scotists and Thomists,[199] now, in peace remain,

Amidst their kindred cobwebs[200] in Duck-lane.[201] 445

If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,

What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?[202]

Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,

The current folly proves the ready wit;

And authors think their reputation safe, 450

Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.

Some valuing those of their own side or mind,

Still make themselves the measure of mankind:

Fondly we think we honour merit then,

When we but praise ourselves in other men. 455

Parties in wit attend on those of state,

And public faction doubles private hate.[203]

Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,

In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;[204]

But sense survived when merry jests were past; 460

For rising merit will buoy up at last.

Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,[205]

New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:[206]

Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,

Zoilus[207] again would start up from the dead. 465

Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;

But like a shadow, proves the substance true:

For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known

Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own.

When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays, 470

It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;

But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,

Reflect new glories, and augment the day.[208]

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;

His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. 475

Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,

And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.

No longer now that golden age appears,

When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:

Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 480

And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;[209]

Our sons their fathers' failing language see,

And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.

So when the faithful pencil has designed

Some bright idea of the master's mind, 485

Where a new world leaps out at his command,

And ready nature waits upon his hand;

When the ripe colours soften and unite,

And sweetly melt into just shade and light;

When mellowing years their full perfection give, 490

And each bold figure just begins to live,

The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,[210]

And all the bright creation fades away!

Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,[211]

Atones not for that envy which it brings. 495

In youth alone its empty praise we boast,[212]

But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:

Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,[213]

That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.

What is this wit, which must our cares employ?[214] 500

The owner's wife,[215] that other men enjoy;

Then most our trouble still when most admired,

And still the more we give, the more required;[216]

Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,[217]

Sure some to vex, but never all to please; 505

'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,

By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!

If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,

Ah let not learning too commence its foe![218]

Of old, those met rewards who could excel, 510

And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:[219]

Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,

Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.

Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,[220]

Employ their pains to spurn some others down; 515

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,

Contending wits become the sport of fools:[221]

But still the worst with most regret commend,

For each ill author is as bad a friend.[222]

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, 520

Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise![223]

Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,[224]

Nor in the critic let the man be lost.

Good-nature and good sense must ever join;

To err is human, to forgive, divine. 525

But if in noble minds some dregs remain

Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;

Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,

Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.

No pardon vile obscenity should find,[225] 530

Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;[226]

But dulness with obscenity must prove

As shameful sure as impotence in love.

In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,

Sprung the rank weed,[227] and thrived with large increase: 535

When love was all an easy monarch's care;

Seldom at council, never in a war:

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:

Nay, wits had pensions,[228] and young lords had wit;[229]

The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, 540

And not a mask[230] went unimproved away:

The modest fan was lifted up no more,[231]

And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.

The following licence of a foreign reign

Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;[232] 545

Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,[233]

And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;[234]

Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,

Lest God himself should seem too absolute:

Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, 550

And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there![235]

Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies,

And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.

These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,

Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage! 555

Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,

Will needs mistake an author into vice;

All seems infected that th' infected spy,

As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.[236]

III.

Learn then what morals critics ought to show, 560

For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.

'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;

In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,

That not alone what to your sense is due

All may allow, but seek your friendship too. 565

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]

Some positive, persisting fops we know,

Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;

But you with pleasure own your errors past, 570

And make each day a critique on the last.

'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;

Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,

And things unknown proposed as things forgot. 575

Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;

That only makes superior sense beloved.

Be niggards of advice on no pretence:

For the worst avarice is that of sense.

With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust, 580

Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;

Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.

'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,

But Appius reddens[239] at each word you speak, 585

And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,

Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]

Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,

Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;

Such, without wit, are poets when they please, 590

As without learning they can take degrees.[241]

Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,

And flattery to fulsome dedicators,

Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,

Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595

'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,

And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]

Your silence there is better than your spite,

For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]

Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600

And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]

False steps but help them to renew the race,

As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.

What crowds of these, impenitently bold,

In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, 605

Still run on poets in a raging vein,

Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,

Strain out the last dull droppings[245] of their sense,

And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.

Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true, 610

There are as mad, abandoned critics too.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,

With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]

With his own tongue still edifies his ears,

And always list'ning to himself appears. 615

All books he reads, and all he reads assails,

From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.

With him most authors steal their works, or buy;

Garth did not write his own Dispensary.[247]

Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, 620

Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?

No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]

Nor is Paul's church[249] more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]

Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251] 625

Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, }

It still looks home, and short excursions makes;[252] }

But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, }

And never shocked, and never turned aside,

Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide. 630

But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,

Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?

Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;

Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;

Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;

Modestly bold, and humanly[253] severe; 636

Who to a friend his faults can freely show,

And gladly praise the merit of a foe?

Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;

A knowledge both of books and human kind; 640

Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;

And love to praise,[254] with reason on his side?

Such once were critics; such the happy few,

Athens and Rome in better ages knew.[255]

The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore, 645

Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;[256]

He steered securely, and discovered far,[257]

Led by the light of the Mæonian star.[258]

Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,

Still fond and proud of savage liberty, 650

Received his laws;[259] and stood convinced 'twas fit,

Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.[260]

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,[261]

And without method talks us into sense;

Will, like a friend, familiarly convey 655

The truest notions in the easiest way.

He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,

Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,

Yet judged with coolness,[262] though he sung with fire;

His precepts teach but what his works inspire. 660

Our critics take a contrary extreme,

They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:[263]

Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations

By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.[264]

See Dionysius[265] Homer's thoughts refine, 665

And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!

Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,

The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.[266]

In grave Quintilian's[267] copious work, we find

The justest rules, and clearest method joined: 670

Thus useful arms in magazines we place,

All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,

But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,

Still fit for use, and ready at command.[268]

Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,[269] 675

And bless their critic with a poet's fire.

An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,

With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:

Whose own example strengthens all his laws;

And is himself that great sublime he draws.[270] 680

Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,

Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.

Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;

And arts still followed where her eagles flew;

From the same foes, at last, both felt[271] their doom, 685

And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.[272]

With tyranny, then superstition joined,

As that the body, this enslaved the mind;[273]

Much was believed, but little understood,[274]

And to be dull was construed to be good;[275] 690

A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,

And the monks finished what the Goths begun.[276]

At length Erasmus, that great injured name,

(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)[277]

Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,[278] 695

And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days,

Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,

Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,[279]

Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head. 700

Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;

Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;[280]

With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;[281]

A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.[282]

Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow 705

The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:[283]

Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,

As next in place to Mantua, next in fame![284]

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,

Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.[285] 710

Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,

But critic-learning flourished most in France;

The rules a nation, born to serve,[286] obeys;

And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.[287]

But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised, 715

And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;

Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,

We still defied the Romans, as of old.[288]

Yet some there were, among the sounder few

Of those who less presumed, and better knew, 720

Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,

And here restored wit's fundamental laws.

Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell

"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."[289]

Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,[290] 725

With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;

To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,

And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.[291]

Such late was Walsh,[292] the muse's judge and friend,

Who justly knew to blame or to commend: 730

To failings mild, but zealous for desert;

The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.

This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,

This praise at least a grateful muse may give:

The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing, 735

Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,

(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,

But in low numbers short excursions tries;[293]

Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,

The learn'd reflect on what before they knew: 740

Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;

Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;[294]

Averse alike to flatter, or offend;

Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.[295]

APPENDIX.

Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not

discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of his

intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this

Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has

accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he

has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton

had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was

perpetually dazzled and misled, by the eager desire of seeing everything

in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and

forced comments. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such

unsubstantial objects. Accordingly his notes on Shakspeare have been

totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the

roots his fanciful and visionary interpretation of the sixth book of

Virgil. And but few readers, I believe, will be found that will

cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered,[296] that his notes

on Pope's Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever.

For, to instance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines

of the Essay on Man to the doctrines of revelation, is the rashest

adventure in which ever critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to

divine, rather than to explain an author's meaning.--WARTON.

If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as

Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved

of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of

admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To

assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult

not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the

commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to

replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his

own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had

already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on

the subject. For these reasons I have thought it advisable, in this

edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only

been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious,

if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate

the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of

his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.--ROSCOE.

Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not

complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no

obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts,

was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to

ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The

second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression

that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the

sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's

Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make

him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if

Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly

inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges

that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his

meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another,

and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own

meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views

which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in

consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when

he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should

be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not

warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account

the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity,

though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren.

THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF

W. WARBURTON

ON THE

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

COMMENTARY.

_An Essay._] The poem is in one book, but divided into three principal

parts or members. The first, to ver. 201, gives rules for the study of

the art of criticism: the second, from thence to ver. 560, exposes the

causes of wrong judgment: and the third, from thence to the end, marks

out the morals of the critic.

In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be necessary to

observe, that though it be entitled simply An Essay on Criticism, yet

several of the precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to

the true judging of a poem. This is so far from violating the unity of

the subject, that it preserves and completes it: or from disordering the

regularity of the form, that it adds beauty to it, as will appear by the

following considerations: 1. It was impossible to give a full and exact

idea of the art of poetical criticism, without considering at the same

time the art of poetry; so far as poetry is an art. These therefore

being closely connected in nature, the author has, with much judgment,

interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally through his whole poem. 2.

As the rules of the ancient critics were taken from poets who copied

nature, this is another reason why every poet should be a critic:

therefore as the subject is poetical criticism, it is frequently

addressed to the critical poet. And 3dly, the art of criticism is as

properly, and much more usefully exercised in writing than in judging.

But readers have been misled by the modesty of the title, which only

promises an art of criticism, to expect little, where they will find a

great deal,--a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the art both of

criticism and poetry. This, and the not attending to the considerations

offered above, was what, perhaps misled a very candid writer, after

having given the Essay on Criticism all the praises on the side of

genius and poetry which his true taste could not refuse it, to say, that

"the observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of

Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been

requisite in a prose writer." Spect. No. 235. I do not see how method

can hurt any one grace of poetry: or what prerogative there is in verse

to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every part of it.

Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism, the reader will soon see, is a regular

piece, and a very learned critic has lately shown that Horace had the

same attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. Hurd's Comment on

the Epistle to the Pisos.[297]

Ver. 1. _'Tis hard to say, &c._] The poem opens, from ver. 1 to 9, with

showing the use and seasonableness of the subject. Its use, from the

greater mischief in wrong criticism than in ill poetry--this only

tiring, that misleading the reader. Its seasonableness, from the growing

number of bad critics, which now vastly exceeds that of bad poets.

Ver. 9. _'Tis with our judgments, &c._] The author having shown us the

expediency of his subject, the art of criticism, inquires next, from

ver. 8 to 15, into the proper qualities of a true critic, and observes

first, that judgment alone is not sufficient to constitute this

character, because judgment, like the artificial measures of time, goes

different, and yet each man relies upon his own. The reasoning is

conclusive, and the similitude extremely just. For judgment, when it is

alone, is generally regulated, or at least much influenced, by custom,

fashion, and habit; and never certain and constant but when founded upon

and accompanied by taste, which is in the critic, what in the poet we

call genius. Both are derived from heaven, and like the sun, the natural

measure of time, always constant and equable.

Judgment alone, it is allowed, will not make a poet; where is the wonder

then, that it will not make a critic in poetry? For on examination we

shall find, that genius and taste are but one and the same faculty,

differently exerting itself under different names, in the two

professions of poetry and criticism. The art of poetry consists in

selecting, out of all those images which present themselves to the

fancy, such of them as are truly beautiful; and the art of criticism in

discerning, and fully relishing what it finds so selected. The main

difference is, that in the poet, this faculty is eminently joined to a

bright imagination, and extensive comprehension, which provide stores

for the selection, and can form that selection, by proportioned parts,

into a regular whole: in the critic, it is joined to a solid judgment

and accurate discernment, which can penetrate into the causes of an

excellence, and display that excellence in all its variety of lights.

Longinus had taste in an eminent degree; therefore, this quality, which

all true critics have in common, our author makes his distinguishing

character:

Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,

And bless their critic with a poet's fire.

_i. e._ with taste, or genius.

Ver. 15. _Let such teach others, &c._] But it is not enough that the

critic hath these natural endowments of judgment and taste, to entitle

him to exercise his art; he should, as our author shows us, from ver. 14

to 19, in order to give a further test of his qualification, have put

them successfully into use. And this on two accounts: 1. Because the

office of a critic is an exercise of authority. 2. Because he being

naturally as partial to his judgment as the poet is to his wit, his

partiality would have nothing to correct it, as that of the person

judged hath by the very terms. Therefore some test is necessary; and the

best and most unexceptionable, is his having written well himself--an

approved remedy against critical partiality, and the surest means of so

maturing the judgment as to reap with glory what Longinus calls "the

last and most perfect fruits of much study and experience." Η γαρ των

λογων κρισις πολλης εστι πειρας τελευταιον επιγεννημα.

Ver. 19. _Yet, if we look, &c._] But the author having been thus free

with the fundamental quality of criticism, judgment, so as to charge it

with inconstancy and partiality, and to be often warped by custom and

affection, that he may not be misunderstood, he next explains, from ver.

18 to 36, the nature of judgment, and the accidents occasioning those

miscarriages before objected to it. He owns, that the seeds of judgment

are indeed sown in the minds of most men, but by ill culture, as it

springs up, it generally runs wild, either on the one hand, by false

learning, which pedants call philology, and by false reasoning, which

philosophers call school-learning, or, on the other, by false wit, which

is not regulated by sense, and by false politeness, which is solely

regulated by the fashion. Both these sorts, who have their judgment thus

doubly depraved, the poet observes, are naturally turned to censure and

abuse, only with this difference, that the learned dunce always affects

to be on the reasoning, and the unlearned fool on the laughing side. And

thus, at the same time, our author proves the truth of his introductory

observation, that the number of bad critics is vastly superior to that

of bad poets.

Ver. 36. _Some have at first for wits, &c._] The poet having enumerated,

in this account of the nature of judgment and its various depravations,

the several sorts of bad critics, and ranked them into two general

classes, as the first sort,--namely, the men spoiled by false

learning--are but few in comparison of the other, and likewise come less

within his main view (which is poetical criticism) but keep grovelling

at the bottom amongst words and syllables, he thought it enough for his

purpose here, just to have mentioned them, proposing to do them right

hereafter. But the men spoiled by false taste are innumerable, and these

are his proper concern. He therefore, from ver. 35 to 46, subdivides

them again into the two classes of the volatile and heavy. He describes,

in few words, the quick progression of the one through criticism, from

false wit to plain folly, where they end; and the fixed station of the

other, between the confines of both; who under the name of witlings,

have neither end nor measure. A kind of half-formed creature from the

equivocal generation of vivacity and dulness, like those on the banks of

Nile, from heat and mud.

Ver. 46. _But you who seek, &c._] Our author having thus far, by way of

introduction, explained the nature, use, and abuse of criticism, in a

figurative description of the qualities and characters of critics,

proceeds now to deliver the precepts of the art. The first of which,

from ver. 45 to 68, is, that he who sets up for a critic should

previously examine his own strength, and see how far he is qualified for

the exercise of his profession. He puts him in a way to make this

discovery, in that admirable direction given ver. 51.

And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

He had shown above, that judgment, without taste or genius, is equally

incapable of making a critic or a poet. In whatsoever subject then the

critic's taste no longer accompanies his judgment, there he may be

assured he is going out of his depth. This our author finely calls,

that point where sense and dulness meet.

and immediately adds the reason of his precept, the author of nature

having so constituted the mental faculties, that one of them can never

greatly excel, but at the expense of another. From this state of

co-ordination in the mental faculties, and the influence and effects

they have upon one another, the poet draws this consequence, that no one

genius can excel in more than one art or science. The consequence shows

the necessity of the precept, just as the premises, from which the

consequence is drawn, show the reasonableness of it.

Ver. 68. _First follow nature, &c._] The critic observing the directions

before given, and now finding himself qualified for his office, is shown

next how to exercise it. And as he was to attend to nature for a call,

so he is first and principally to follow nature when called. And here

again in this, as in the foregoing precept, our poet, from ver. 67 to

88, shows both the fitness and necessity of it. I. Its fitness. 1.

Because nature is the source of poetic art, this art being only a

representation of nature, who is its great exemplar and original. 2.

Because nature is the end of art, the design of poetry being to convey

the knowledge of nature in the most agreeable manner. 3. Because nature

is the test of art, as she is unerring, constant, and still the same.

Hence the poet observes, that as nature is the source, she conveys life

to art; as she is the end, she conveys force to it, for the force of any

thing arises from its being directed to its end; and as she is the test,

she conveys beauty to it, for everything acquires beauty by its being

reduced to its true standard. Such is the sense of these two important

lines,

Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,

At once the source, and end, and test of art.

II. The necessity of the precept is seen from hence. The two constituent

qualities of a composition, as such, are art and wit; but neither of

these attains perfection, till the first be hid, and the other

judiciously restrained. This only happens when nature is exactly

followed; for then art never makes a parade; nor can wit commit an

extravagance. Art, while it adheres to nature, and has so large a fund

in the resources which nature supplies, disposes every thing with so

much ease and simplicity, that we see nothing but those natural images

it works with, while itself stands unobserved behind; but when art

leaves nature, misled either by the bold sallies of fancy, or the quaint

oddness of fashion, she is then obliged at every step to come forward,

in a painful or pompous ostentation, in order to cover, to soften, or to

regulate the shocking disproportion of unnatural images. In the first

case, our poet compares art to the soul within, informing a beauteous

body; but in the last, we are bid to consider it but as a mere outward

garb, fitted only to hide the defects of a misshapen one. As to wit, it

might perhaps be imagined that this needed only judgment to govern it;

but, as he well observes,

wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

They want therefore some friendly mediator; and this mediator is nature:

and in attending to nature, judgment will learn where he should comply

with the charms of wit; and wit how she ought to obey the sage

directions of judgment.

Ver. 88. _Those rules of old, &c._] Having thus, in his first precept,

to follow nature, settled criticism on its true foundation; he proceeds

to show, what assistance may be had from art. But lest this should be

thought to draw the critic from the ground where our poet had before

fixed him, he previously observes, from ver. 87 to 92, that these rules

of art, which he is now about to recommend to the critic's observance,

were not invented by abstract speculation; but discovered in the book of

nature; and that therefore, though they may seem to restrain nature by

laws, yet as they are laws of her own making, the critic is still

properly in the very liberty of nature. These rules the ancient critics

borrowed from the poets, who received them immediately from nature.

Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,

These drew from them what they derived from heav'n,

so that both are to be well studied.

Ver. 92. _Hear how learn'd Greece, &c._] He speaks of the ancient

critics first, and with great judgment, as the previous knowledge of

them is necessary for reading the poets, with that fruit which the end

here proposed requires. But having, in the foregoing observation,

sufficiently explained the nature of ancient criticism, he enters on the

subject treated of from ver. 91 to 118, with a sublime description of

its end; which was to illustrate the beauties of the best writers, in

order to excite others to an emulation of their excellence. From the

raptures which these ideas inspire, the poet is brought back, by the

follies of modern criticism, now before his eyes, to reflect on its base

degeneracy. And as the restoring the art to its original purity and

splendour is the great purpose of this poem, he first takes notice of

those, who seem not to understand that nature is exhaustless; that new

models of good writing may be produced in every age; and consequently,

that new rules may be formed from these models, in the same manner as

the old critics formed theirs, which was, from the writings of the

ancient poets: but men wanting art and ability to form these new rules,

were content to receive and file up for use, the old ones of Aristotle,

Quintilian, Longinus, Horace, &c. with the same vanity and boldness that

apothecaries practise, with their doctors' bills: and then rashly

applying them to new originals (cases which they did not hit) it was no

more in their power, than in their inclination, to imitate the candid

practice of the ancients when

The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,

And taught the world with reason to admire.

For, as ignorance, when joined with humility, produces stupid

admiration, on which account it is commonly observed to be the mother of

devotion and blind homage, so when joined with vanity (as it always is

in bad critics) it gives birth to every iniquity of impudent abuse and

slander. See an example (for want of a better) in a late ridiculous and

now forgotten thing, called the Life of Socrates;[298] where the head of

the author (as a man of wit observed) has just made a shift to do the

office of a _camera obscura_, and represent things in an inverted order,

himself above, and Sprat, Rollin, Voltaire, and every other writer of

reputation, below.

Ver. 118. _You then whose judgment, &c._] He comes next to the ancient

poets, the other and more intimate commentators of nature, and shows,

from ver. 117 to 141, that the study of these must indispensably follow

that of the ancient critics, as they furnish us with what the critics,

who only give us general rules, cannot supply, while the study of a

great original poet, in

His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page:

Religion, country, genius of his age;

will help us to those particular rules which only can conduct us safely

through every considerable work we undertake to examine; and without

which, we may cavil indeed, as the poet truly observes, but can never

criticise. We might as well suppose that Vitruvius's book alone would

make a perfect judge of architecture, without the knowledge of some

great master-piece of science, such as the rotunda at Rome, or the

temple of Minerva at Athens, as that Aristotle's should make a perfect

judge of wit, without the study of Homer and Virgil. These therefore he

principally recommends to complete the critic in his art. But as the

latter of these poets has, by superficial judges, been considered rather

as a copier of Homer, than an original from nature, our author obviates

that common error, and shows it to have arisen (as often error does)

from a truth, _viz._, that Homer and nature were the same; that the

ambitious young poet, though he scorned to stoop at anything short of

nature, when he came to understand this great truth, had the prudence to

contemplate nature in the place where she was seen to most advantage,

collected in all her charms in the clear mirror of Homer. Hence it would

follow, that though Virgil studied nature, yet the vulgar reader would

believe him to be a copier of Homer; and though he copied Homer, yet the

judicious reader would see him to be an imitator of nature, the finest

praise which any one, who came after Homer, could receive.

Ver. 141. _Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, &c._] Our author,

in these two general directions for studying nature and her

commentators, having considered poetry as it is, or may be reduced to

rule, lest this should be mistaken as sufficient to attain perfection

either in writing or judging, he proceeds from ver. 140 to 201, to point

up to those sublimer beauties which rules will never reach, nor enable

us either to execute or taste,--beauties, which rise so high above all

precept as not even to be described by it; but being entirely the gift

of heaven, art and reason have no further share in them than just to

regulate their operations. These sublimities of poetry (like the

mysteries of religion, some of which are above reason, and some contrary

to it) may be divided into two sorts, such as are above rules, and such

as are contrary to them.

Ver. 146. _If, where the rules, &c._] The first sort our author

describes from ver. 145 to 152, and shows that where a great beauty is

in the poet's view, which no stated rules will authorise him how to

reach, there, as the purpose of rules is only to attain an end like

this, a lucky licence will supply the place of them: nor can the critic

fairly object, since this licence, for the reason given above, has the

proper force and authority of a rule.

Ver. 152. _Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, &c._] He

describes next the second sort, the beauties against rule. And even

here, as he observes, from ver. 151 to 161, the offence is so glorious,

and the fault so sublime, that the true critic will not dare either to

censure or reform them. Yet still the poet is never to abandon himself

to his imagination. The rules laid down for his conduct in this respect

are these: 1. That though he transgress the letter of some one

particular precept, yet that he be still careful to adhere to the end or

spirit of them all, which end is the creation of one uniform perfect

whole. And 2. That he have, in each instance, the authority of the

dispensing power of the ancients to plead for him. These rules observed,

this licence will be seldom used, and only when he is compelled by need,

which will disarm the critic, and screen the offender from his laws.

Ver. 169. _I know there are, &c._] But as some modern critics have

pretended to say, that this last reason is only justifying one fault by

another, our author goes on, from ver. 168 to 181, to vindicate the

ancients; and to show that this presumptuous thought, as he calls it,

proceeds from mere ignorance,--as where their partiality will not let

them see that this licence is sometimes necessary for the symmetry and

proportion of a perfect whole, in the light, and from the point, wherein

it must be viewed; or where their haste will not give them time to

observe, that a deviation from rule is for the sake of attaining some

great and admirable purpose. These observations are further useful, as

they tend to give modern critics an humbler opinion of their own

abilities, and a higher of the authors they undertake to criticise. On

which account he concludes with a fine reproof of their use of that

common proverb perpetually in the mouths of the critics, "quandoque

bonus dormitat Homerus;" misunderstanding the sense of Horace, and

taking quandoque for aliquando:

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Ver. 181. _Still green with bays, &c._] But now fired with the name of

Homer, and transported with the contemplation of those beauties which a

cold critic can neither see nor conceive, the poet, from ver. 180 to

201, breaks out into a rapturous salutation of the rare felicity of

those few ancients who have risen superior over time and accidents; and

disdaining, as it were, any longer to reason with his critics, offers

this as the surest confutation of their censures. Then with the humility

of a suppliant at the shrine of immortals, and the sublimity of a poet

participating of their fire, he turns again to these ancient worthies,

and apostrophises their Manes:

Hail, bards triumphant! &c.

Ver. 200. _T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!_] This line

concludes the first division of the poem; in which we see the subject of

the first and second part, and likewise the connexion they have with one

another. It serves likewise to introduce the second. The effect of

studying the ancients, as here recommended, would be the admiration of

their superior sense, which, if it will not of itself dispose moderns to

a diffidence of their own (one of the great uses, as well as natural

fruits of that study), our author, to help forward their modesty, in his

second part shows them (in a regular deduction of the causes and

effects of wrong judgment) their own bright image and amiable turn of

mind.

Ver. 201. _Of all the causes, &c._] Having, in the first part, delivered

rules for perfecting the art of criticism, the second is employed in

explaining the impediments to it. The order of the two parts was well

adjusted. For the causes of wrong judgment being pride, superficial

learning, a bounded capacity, and partiality, they to whom this part is

principally addressed, would not readily be brought either to see the

malignity of the causes, or to own themselves concerned in the effects,

had not the author previously both enlightened and convinced them, by

the foregoing observations, on the vastness of art, and narrowness of

wit; the extensive study of human nature and antiquity; and the

characters of ancient poetry and criticism; the natural remedies to the

four epidemic disorders he is now endeavouring to redress.

Ver. 201. _Of all the causes, &c._] The first cause of wrong judgment is

pride. He judiciously begins with this, from ver. 200 to 215, as on

other accounts, so on this, that it is the very thing which gives modern

criticism its character, whose complexion is abuse and censure. He calls

it the vice of fools, by which term is not meant those to whom nature

has given no judgment (for he is here speaking of what misleads the

judgment), but those to whom learning and study have given more

erudition than taste, as appears from the happy similitude of an

ill-nourished body, where the same words which express the cause,

express likewise the nature of pride:

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find,

What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind.

It is the business of reason, he tells us, to dispel the cloud in which

pride involves the mind: but the mischief is, that the rays of reason,

diverted by self-love, sometime gild this cloud, instead of dispelling

it. So that the judgment, by false lights reflected back upon itself, is

still apt to be a little dazzled, and to mistake its object. He

therefore advises to call in still more helps:

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,

Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.

Both the beginning and conclusion of this precept are remarkable. The

question is of the means to subdue pride. He directs the critic to begin

with a distrust of himself; and this is modesty, the first mortification

of pride: and then to seek the assistance of others, and make use even

of an enemy; and this is humility, the last mortification of pride: for

when a man can once bring himself to submit to profit by an enemy, he

has either already subdued his vanity, or is in a fair way of so doing.

Ver. 215. _A little learning, &c._] We must here remark the poet's skill

in his disposition of the causes obstructing true judgment. Each general

cause which is laid down first, has its own particular cause in that

which follows. Thus, the second cause of wrong judgment, superficial

learning, is what occasions that critical pride, which he places first.

Ver. 216. _Drink deep, &c._] Nature and learning are the pole-stars of

all true criticism: but pride obstructs the view of nature; and a

smattering of letters makes us insensible of our ignorance. To avoid

this ridiculous situation, the poet, from ver. 214 to 233, advises,

either to drink deep, or not to drink at all; for the least sip at this

fountain is enough to make a bad critic, while even a moderate draught

can never make a good one. And yet the labours and difficulties of

drinking deep are so great, that a young author, "fired with ideas of

fair Italy," and ambitious to snatch a palm from Rome, here engages in

an undertaking like that of Hannibal: finely illustrated by the

similitude of an inexperienced traveller penetrating through the Alps.

Ver. 233. _A perfect judge, &c._] The third cause of wrong judgment is a

narrow capacity; the natural cause of the foregoing defect, acquiescence

in superficial learning. This bounded capacity our author shows, from

ver. 232 to 384, betrays itself two ways: in its judgment both of the

matter, and the manner of the work criticised. Of the matter, in judging

by parts, or in having one favourite part to a neglect of all the rest.

Of the manner, in confining men's regard only to conceit, or language,

or numbers. This is our poet's order, and we shall follow him as it

leads us, only just observing one general beauty which runs through this

part of the poem; it is,--that under each of these heads of wrong

judgment, he has intermixed excellent precepts for the right. We shall

take notice of them as they occur.

He exposes the folly of judging by parts very artfully, not by a direct

description of that sort of critic, but of his opposite, a perfect

judge, &c. Nor is the elegance of this conversion less than the art; for

as, in poetical _style_, one word or figure is still put for another, in

order to catch new lights from distant images, and reflect them back

upon the subject in hand, so in poetical _matter_ one person or

description may be commodiously employed for another, with the same

advantage of representation. It is observable that our author makes it

almost the necessary consequence of judging by parts, to find fault: and

this not without much discernment: for the several parts of a complete

whole, when seen only singly, and known only independently, must always

have the appearance of irregularity,--often of deformity; because the

poet's design being to create a resultive beauty from the artful

assemblage of several various parts into one natural whole, those parts

must be fashioned with regard to their mutual relations in the stations

they occupy in that whole, from whence the beauty required is to arise;

but that regard will occasion so unreducible a form in each part, when

considered singly, as to present a very mis-shapen form.

Ver. 253. _Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see_,] He shows next,

from ver. 252 to 263, that to fix our censure on single parts, though

they happen to want an exactness consistent enough with their relation

to the rest, is even then very unjust: and for these reasons:--1.

Because it implies an expectation of a faultless piece, which is a vain

fancy. 2. Because no more is to be expected of any work than that it

fairly attains its end. But the end may be attained, and yet these

trivial faults committed: therefore, in spite of such faults, the work

will merit that praise that is due to everything which attains its end.

3. Because sometimes a great beauty is not to be procured, nor a

notorious blemish to be avoided, but by suffering one of these minute

and trivial errors. 4. And lastly, because the general neglect of them

is a praise, as it is the indication of a genius, attentive to greater

matters.

Ver 263. _Most critics, fond of some subservient art, &c._] II. The

second way in which a narrow capacity, as it relates to the matter,

shows itself, is judging by a favourite part. The author has placed

this, from ver. 262 to 285, after the other of judging by parts, with

great propriety, it being indeed a natural consequence of it. For when

men have once left the whole to turn their attention to the separate

parts, that regard and reverence due only to a whole is fondly

transferred to one or other of its parts. And thus we see, that heroes

themselves, as well as hero-makers, even kings, as well as poets and

critics, when they chance never to have had, or long to have lost the

idea of that which is the only legitimate object of their office, the

care and conservation of the whole, are wont to devote themselves to the

service of some favourite part, whether it be love of money, military

glory, despotic power, &c. And all, as our author says on this occasion,

to one loved folly sacrifice.

This general misconduct much recommends that maxim in good poetry and

politics, to give a principal attention to the whole,--a maxim which our

author has elsewhere shown to be equally true likewise in morals and

religion, as being founded in the order of things; for if we examine we

shall find the misconduct here complained of to arise from this

imbecility of our nature, that the mind must always have something to

rest upon, to which the passions and affections may be interestingly

directed. Nature prompts us to seek it in the most worthy objects; and

reason points us to a whole, or system: but the false lights which the

passions hold out confound and dazzle us: we stop short; and, before we

get to a whole, take up with some part, which thenceforth becomes our

favourite.

Ver. 285. _Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,

Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,

Form short ideas, &c._]

2. He concludes his observations on those two sorts of judges by parts,

with this general reflection:--The curious not knowing are the first

sort, who judge by parts, and with a microscopic sight (as he says

elsewhere) examine bit by bit. The not exact but nice, are the second,

who judge by a favourite part, and talk of a whole to cover their

fondness for a part, as philosophers do of principles, in order to

obtrude notions and opinions in their stead. But the fate common to both

is, to be governed by caprice and not by judgment, and consequently to

form short ideas, or to have ideas short of truth; though the latter

sort, through a fondness to their favourite part, imagine that it

comprehends the whole in epitome, as the famous hero of La Mancha,

mentioned just before, used to maintain, that knight errantry comprised

within itself the quintessence of all science, civil, military, and

religious.

Ver. 289. _Some to conceit alone, &c._] We come now to that second sort

of bounded capacity, which betrays itself in its judgment on the manner

of the work criticised. And this our author prosecutes from ver. 288 to

384. These are again subdivided into divers classes.

Ver. 289. _Some to conceit alone, &c._] The first, from ver. 288 to 305,

are those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit. And here

again the critic by parts, offends doubly in the manner, just as he did

in the matter; for he not only confines his attention to a part, when it

should be extended to the whole, but he likewise judges falsely of that

part. And this, as the other, is unavoidable, the parts in the manner

bearing the same close relation to the whole, that the parts in the

matter do; to which whole, the ideas of this critic have never yet

extended. Hence it is, that our author, speaking here of those who

confine their attention solely to conceit or wit, describes the distinct

species of true and false wit, because they not only mistake a wrong

disposition of true wit for a right, but likewise false wit for true. He

describes false wit first, from ver. 288 to 297,

Some to conceit alone, &c.,

where the reader may observe our author's address in representing, in a

description of false wit, the false disposition of the true; as the

critic by parts is apt to fall into both these errors.

He next describes true wit, from ver. 296 to 305,

True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c.

And here again the reader may observe the same beauty; not only an

explanation of true wit, but likewise of the right disposition of it,

which the poet illustrates, as he did the wrong, by ideas taken from the

art of painting, in the theory of which he was exquisitely skilled.

Ver. 305. _Others for language, &c._] He proceeds secondly to those

contracted critics, whose whole concern turns upon language, and shows,

from ver. 304 to 337, that this quality, where it holds the principal

place in a work, deserves no commendation:--1. Because it excludes

qualities more essential. And when the abounding verbiage has choked and

suffocated the sense, the writer will be obliged to varnish over the

mischief with all the false colouring of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because

the critic who busies himself with this quality alone, is unable to make

a right judgment of it; because true expression is only the dress of

thought, and so must be perpetually varied according to the subject, and

manner of treating it. But those who never concern themselves with the

sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the

language.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c.

Now as these critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole

judgment in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination

of single words; and generally those which are most to his taste, are

(for an obvious reason) such as smack most of antiquity, on which

account our author has bestowed a little raillery upon it; concluding

with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, so far as

regards their novelty and ancientry.

Ver. 337. _But most by numbers judge, &c._] The last sort are those,

from ver. 336 to 384, whose ears are attached only to the harmony of a

poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other

sort did of the eloquence, and for the same reason. Our author first

describes that false harmony with which they are so much captivated; and

shows that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: for

Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong.

He then describes the true: 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a

happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the

roughness and flatness of false harmony: and 2. As it is varied in

compliance to the subject, where the sound becomes an echo to the sense,

so far as is consistent with the preservation of numbers, in

contradiction to the monotony of false harmony. Of this he gives us, in

the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of smoothness,

roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this correspondence

of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter

and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is

to calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and

warm the beneficent, which he illustrates in the famous adventure of

Timotheus and Alexander, where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that

subject, he turns it to a high compliment on his favourite poet.

Ver. 384. _Avoid extremes, &c._] Our author is now come to the last

cause of wrong judgment, partiality,--the parent of the immediately

preceding cause, a bounded capacity, nothing so much narrowing and

contracting the mind as prejudices entertained for or against things or

persons. This, therefore, as the main root of all the foregoing, he

prosecutes at large, from ver. 383 to 474. First, to ver. 394, he

previously exposes that capricious turn of mind, which, by running into

extremes, either of praise or dispraise, lays the foundation of an

habitual partiality. He cautions, therefore, both against one and the

other; and with reason; for excess of praise is the mark of a bad taste;

and excess of censure, of a bad digestion.

Ver. 394. _Some foreign writers, &c._] Having explained the disposition

of mind which produces an habitual partiality, he proceeds to expose

this partiality in all the shapes in which it appears both amongst the

unlearned and the learned.

I. In the unlearned it is seen, first, in an unreasonable fondness for,

or aversion to, our own or foreign, to ancient or modern writers. And as

it is the mob of unlearned readers he is here speaking of, he exposes

their folly in a very apposite similitude:

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied

To one small sect, and all are damned beside.

But he shows, from ver. 396 to 408, that these critics have as wrong

notions of reason as those bigots have of God; for that genius is not

confined to times or climates; but, as the common gift of nature, is

extended throughout all ages and countries; that indeed this

intellectual light, like the material light of the sun, may not shine at

all times, and in every place with equal splendour, but be sometimes

clouded with popular ignorance, and sometimes again eclipsed by the

discountenance of the great; yet it shall still recover itself, and, by

breaking through the strongest of these impediments, manifest the

eternity of its nature.

Ver. 408. _Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own_,] A second

instance of unlearned partiality is (as he shows from ver. 407 to 424)

men's going always along with the cry, as having no fixed nor

well-grounded principles whereon to raise any judgment of their own. A

third is reverence for names, of which sort, as he well observes, the

worst and vilest are the idolizers of names of quality; whom therefore

he stigmatises as they deserve. Our author's temper as well as his

judgment is here seen, in throwing this species of partiality amongst

the unlearned critics. His affection for letters would not suffer him to

conceive, that any learned critic could ever fall into so low a

prostitution.

Ver. 424. _The vulgar thus--As oft the learned_--] II. He comes in the

second place, from ver. 423 to 452, to consider the instances of

partiality in the learned. 1. The first is singularity. For, as want of

principles, in the unlearned, necessitates them to rest on the common

judgment as always right, so adherence to false principles (that is, to

notions of their own) mislead the learned into the other extreme of

supposing the common judgment always wrong. And as, before, our author

compared those to bigots, who made true faith to consist in believing

after others, so he compares these to schismatics, who make it to

consist in believing as no one ever believed before, which folly he

marks with a lively stroke of humour in the turn of the thought:

So schismatics the plain believers quit,

And are but damned for having too much wit.

2. The second is novelty. And as this proceeds sometimes from fondness,

sometimes from vanity, he compares the one to the passion for a

mistress, and the other to the pride of being in fashion; but the excuse

common to both is, the daily improvement of their judgment:

Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;

And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.

Now as this is a plausible pretence for their inconstancy, and our

author has himself afterwards approved of it, as a remedy against

obstinacy and pride, where he says, ver. 570,

But you with pleasure own your errors past,

And make each day a critique on the last,

he has been careful, by the turn of the expression in this place, to

show the difference between the pretence and the remedy. For time,

considered only as duration, vitiates as frequently as it improves.

Therefore to expect wisdom as the necessary attendant of length of days,

unrelated to long experience, is vain and delusive. This he illustrates

by a remarkable example, where we see time, instead of becoming wiser,

destroying good letters, to substitute school divinity in their place;

the genius of which kind of learning, the character of its professors,

and the fate, which, sooner or later, always attends whatsoever is wrong

or false, the poet sums up in those four lines:

Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, &c.

And in conclusion he observes, that perhaps this mischief, from love of

novelty, might not be so great, did it not, along with the critic,

infect the writer likewise, who, when he finds his readers disposed to

take ready wit on the standard of current folly, never troubles himself

to think of better payment.

Ver. 452. _Some valuing those of their own side or mind, &c._] 3. The

third and last instance of partiality in the learned, is party and

faction, which is considered from ver. 451 to 474, where he shows how

men of this turn deceive themselves, when they load a writer of their

own side with commendation. They fancy they are paying tribute to merit,

when they are only sacrificing to self-love. But this is not the worst.

He further shows, that this party spirit has often very ill effects on

science itself, while, in support of faction, it labours to depress some

rising genius, that was, perhaps, raised by nature to enlighten his age

and country. By which he would insinuate, that all the baser and viler

passions seek refuge, and find support in party madness.

Ver. 474. _Be thou the first, &c._] The poet having now gone through the

last cause of wrong judgment, and the root of all the rest, partiality,

and ended his remarks upon it with a detection of the two rankest kinds,

those which arise out of party rage and envy, takes the occasion, which

this affords him, of closing his second division in the most graceful

manner, from ver. 473 to 560, by concluding from the premises, and

calling upon the true critic to be careful of his charge, which is the

protection and support of wit; for, the defence of it from malevolent

censure is its true protection, and the illustration of its beauties, is

its true support.

He first shows, the critic ought to do this service without loss of

time, and on these motives:--1. Out of regard to himself, for there is

some merit in giving the world notice of an excellence, but little or

none, in pointing, like an index, to the beaten road of admiration. 2.

Out of regard to the poem, for the short duration of modern works

requires that they should begin to live betimes. He compares the life of

modern wit (which in a changeable dialect, must soon pass away), and

that of the ancient (which survives in an universal language), to the

difference between the patriarchal age and our own, and observes, that

while the ancient writings live for ever, as it were, in brass and

marble, the modern are but like paintings, which, of how masterly a hand

soever, have no sooner gained their requisite perfection by the

softening and ripening of their tints, which they do in a very few

years, but they begin to fade and die away. 3. Lastly, our author shows

that the critic ought in justice to do this service out of regard to the

poet, when he considers the slender dowry the muse brings along with

her. In youth it is only a vain and short-lived pleasure; and in maturer

years, an accession of care and labour, in proportion to the weight of

reputation to be sustained, and of the increase of envy to be opposed:

and therefore, concludes his reasoning on this head with that pathetic

and insinuating address to the critic, from ver. 508 to 526.

Ah! let not learning, &c.

Ver. 526. _But if in noble minds some dregs remain, &c._] So far as to

what ought to be the true critic's principal study and employment. But

if the sour critical humour abounds, and must therefore needs have vent,

he directs to its proper object, and shows, from ver. 525 to 556, how it

may be innocently and usefully pointed. This is very observable; our

author had made spleen and disdain the characteristic of the false

critic, and yet here supposes them inherent in the true. But it is done

with judgment, and a knowledge of nature. For as bitterness and

astringency in unripe fruits of the best kind are the foundation and

capacity of that high spirit, race, and flavour which we find in them,

when perfectly concocted by the warmth and influence of the sun, and

which, without those qualities, would gain no more by that influence

than only a mellow insipidity, so spleen and disdain in the true critic,

when improved by long study and experience, ripen into an exactness of

judgment and an elegance of taste, although, in the false critic, lying

remote from the influence of good letters, they remain in all their

first offensive harshness and acerbity. The poet therefore shows how,

after the exaltation of these qualities into their state of perfection,

the very dregs (which, though precipitated, may possibly, on some

occasions, rise and ferment even in a noble mind) may be usefully

employed, that is to say, in branding obscenity and impiety. Of these,

he explains the rise and progress, in a beautiful picture of the

different geniuses of the two reigns of Charles II. and William III. The

former of which gave course to the most profligate luxury; the latter to

a licentious impiety. These are the crimes our author assigns over to

the caustic hand of the critic; but concludes however, from ver. 555 to

560, with this necessary admonition, to take care not to be misled into

unjust censure, either on the one hand, by a pharisaical niceness, or on

the other by a self-consciousness of guilt. And thus the second division

of his Essay ends: the judicious conduct of which is worthy our

observation. The subjects of it are the causes of wrong judgment. These

he derives upwards from cause to cause, till he brings them to their

source, an immoral partiality: for as he had, in the first part,

traced the Muses upward to their spring,

and shown them to be derived from heaven, and the offspring of virtue,

so hath he here pursued this enemy of the muses, the bad critic, to his

low original, in the arms of his nursing mother immorality. This order

naturally introduces, and at the same time shows the necessity of, the

subject of the third and last division, which is, on the morals of the

critic.

Ver. 560. _Learn then, &c._] We enter now on the third part, the morals

of the critic. There seemed a peculiar necessity of inculcating precepts

of this sort to the critic, by reason of that native acerbity so often

found in the profession; of which, a short memorial will soon convince

the reader, and at the same time inform him why our author has here

included all critical morals in candour, modesty, and good breeding.

When, in these latter ages, human learning reared its head in the West,

and its tail, verbal criticism, was of course to rise with it, the

madness of critics presently became so offensive, that the sober

stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J.

Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy after

the sacking of Constantinople by the Turk, used to maintain that Cicero

understood neither philosophy nor Greek; while another of his

countrymen, J. Lascaris by name, threatened to demonstrate that Virgil

was no poet. However, these men raised in the west of Europe an appetite

for the Greek language. So that Hermolaus Barbarus, a noted critic and

most passionate admirer of it, used to boast that he had invoked and

raised the devil, about the meaning of the Aristotelian εντελεχεια. As

this man was famous for his enchantments, so one, whom Balzac speaks of,

was as useful to letters by his revelations, and was wont to say, that

the meaning of such a verse in Persius, no one knew but God and himself.

But they were not all so modest. The celebrated Pomponius Lætus, in

excess of veneration for antiquity, became a real pagan, raised altars

to Romulus, and sacrificed to the gods of Greece. But if the Greeks

cried down Cicero, the Italian critics knew how to support his credit.

Every one has heard of the childish excesses into which the fondness for

being thought Ciceronians carried the most celebrated Italians of this

time. They generally abstained from reading the scripture for fear of

spoiling their style, and Cardinal Bembo used to call the epistles of

St. Paul by the contemptuous name of epistolaccias,--great overgrown

epistles. But Erasmus cured this frenzy in that masterpiece of good

sense, entitled Ciceronianus, for which, as lunatics treat their

physicians, the elder Scaliger insulted him with all the brutal fury

peculiar to his family and profession. His son Joseph and Salmasius had

such endowments of art and nature as might have made them public

blessings; yet how did these savages tear and worry one another. The

choicest of Joseph's flowers of speech were _stercus diaboli_, and

_lutum stercore maceratum_. It is true these were strewn upon his

enemies. He treated his friends better; for in a letter to Thuanus,

speaking of two of them, Clavius and Lipsius, he calls the first "a

monster of ignorance," and the other "a slave to the Jesuits" and an

"idiot." But so great was his love of sacred amity, that he says, at the

same time, "I still keep up a correspondence with him, notwithstanding

his idiotry, for it is my principle to be constant in my

friendships.--Je ne reste de lui écrire nonobstant son idioterie,

d'autant que je suis constant en amitié." The character he gives of his

own work, in the same letter, is no less extraordinary: "Vous vous

pouvez assurer que nostre Eusebe sera un tresor des merveilles de la

doctrine chronologique." But this modest account of his chronology is a

trifle in comparison of the just esteem Salmasius conceived of himself,

as Mr. Colomies tells the story: This critic one day meeting two of his

brethren, Messrs. Gaulmin and Maussac, in the royal library at Paris,

Gaulmin, in a virtuous consciousness of their importance, told the

other two that he believed they three could make head against all the

learned in Europe. To which the great Salmasius fiercely replied, "Do

you and Mr. Maussac join yourselves to all that is learned in the world,

and you shall find that I alone am a match for you all." Vossius tells

us that, when Laur. Valla had snarled at every name of the first order

in antiquity, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and one whom I should have

thought this critic was likeliest to pass by, the redoubtable Priscian,

he impiously boasted that he had arms even against Christ himself. But

Codrus Urcæus went further, and actually used those arms the other only

threatened with. This man while he was preparing some trifling piece of

criticism for the press, had the misfortune to hear his papers were

burned, on which he is reported to have broke out, "Quodnam ego tantum

scelus concepi, O Christe; quem ego tuorum unquam læsi, ut ita

inexpiabili in me odio debaccheris? Audi ea, quæ tibi mentis compos et

ex animo dicam. Si forte, cum ad ultimam vitæ finem pervenero, supplex

accedam ad te oratum, neve audias, neve inter tuos accipias oro; cum

infernis Diis in æternum vitam agere decrevi." Whereupon, says my

author, he quitted the converse of men, threw himself into the thickest

of a forest, and there wore out the wretched remains of life in all the

agonies of despair.

But to return to the poem. This third and last part is in two divisions.

In the first of which, from ver. 559 to 631, our author inculcates the

morals by precept. In the second, from ver. 630 to the end, by example.

His first precept, from ver. 561 to 566, recommends candour, for its use

to the critic, and to the writer criticised.

2. The second, from ver. 565 to 572, recommends modesty, which manifests

itself in these four signs: 1. Silence where it doubts,

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;

2. A seeming diffidence where it knows,

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence;

3. A free confession of error where wrong,

But you with pleasure own your errors past;

4. And a constant review and scrutiny even of those opinions which it

still thinks right.

And make each day a critique on the last.

3. The third, from ver. 571 to 584, recommends good-breeding, which will

not force truth dogmatically upon men, as ignorant of it, but gently

insinuates it to them, as not sufficiently attentive to it. But as men

of breeding are apt to fall into two extremes, he prudently cautions

against them. The one is a backwardness in communicating their

knowledge, out of a false delicacy, and for fear of being thought

pedants: the other, and much more common extreme, is a mean

complaisance, which those who are worthy of your advice do not need, to

make it acceptable; for such can best bear reproof in particular points,

who best deserve commendation in general.

Ver. 584. _'Twere well might critics, &c._] The poet having thus

recommended in his general rules of conduct for the judgment, these

three critical virtues to the heart, shows next, from ver. 583 to 631,

upon what three sorts of writers these virtues, together with the advice

conveyed under them, would be thrown away; and which is worse, be repaid

with obloquy and scorn. These are the false critic, the dull man of

quality, and the bad poet, each of which species of incorrigible writers

he hath very exactly painted. But having drawn the last of them at full

length, and being always attentive to the two main branches of his

subject, which are, of writing and judging well, he re-assumes the

character of the bad critic (whom he had touched upon before), to

contrast him with the other; and makes the characteristic common to

both, to be a never-ceasing repetition of their own impertinence.

_The poet_--still runs on in a raging vein, &c. ver. 606, &c.

_The critic_--with his own tongue still edifies his ears, 614, &c.

Than which there cannot be an observation more just, or more grounded on

experience.

Ver. 631. _But where's the man, &c._] II. The second division of this

last part, which we now come to, is of the morals of critics, by

example. For, having in the first, drawn a picture of the false critic,

at large, he breaks out into an apostrophe, containing an exact and

finished character of the true, which, at the same time, serves for an

easy and proper introduction to this second division. For having asked,

from ver. 630 to 643, _Where's the man, &c._, he answers, from ver. 642

to 681, that he was to be found in the happier ages of Greece and Rome;

in the characters of Aristotle and Horace, Dionysius and Petronius,

Quintilian and Longinus, whose several excellencies he has not only well

distinguished, but has contrasted them with a peculiar elegance. The

profound science and logical method of Aristotle is opposed to the plain

common sense of Horace, conveyed in a natural and familiar negligence;

the study and refinement of Dionysius, to the gay and courtly ease of

Petronius; and the gravity and minuteness of Quintilian, to the vivacity

and general topics of Longinus. Nor has the poet been less careful in

these examples, to point out their eminence in the several critical

virtues he so carefully inculcated in his precepts. Thus in Horace he

particularizes his candour; in Petronius, his good-breeding; in

Quintilian, his free and copious instruction; and in Longinus, his great

and noble spirit.

Ver. 681. _Thus long succeeding critics, &c._] The next period in which

the true critic, he tells us, appeared, was at the revival and

restoration of letters in the West. This occasions his giving a short

history, from ver. 682 to 709, of the decline and re-establishment of

arts and sciences in Italy. He shows that they both fell under the same

enemy, despotic power; and that when both had made some little efforts

to recover themselves, they were soon again overwhelmed by a second

deluge of another kind, namely, superstition; and a calm of dulness

finished upon Rome and letters what the rage of barbarism had begun:

A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,

And the monk finished what the Goth begun.

When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of

recovery now seemed desperate, it was a critic, our author shows us, for

the honour of the art he here teaches, who at length broke the charm of

dulness, who dissipated the enchantment, and, like another Hercules,

drove those cowled and hooded serpents from the Hesperian tree of

knowledge, which they had so long guarded from human approach.

Ver. 697. _But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days_,] This presents us

with the second period in which the true critic appeared, of whom he has

given us a complete idea in the single example of Marcus Hieronymus

Vida; for his subject being poetical criticism, for the use principally

of a critical poet, his example is an eminent poetical critic, who had

written of the Art of Poetry in verse.

Ver. 709. _But soon by impious arms, &c._] This brings us to the third

period, after learning had travelled still further West, when the arms

of the Emperor, in the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, had driven

it out of Italy, and forced it to pass the mountains. The examples he

gives in this period, are of Boileau in France, and of the Lord

Roscommon and the Duke of Buckingham in England: and these were all

poets, as well as critics in verse. It is true, the last instance is of

one who was no eminent poet, the late Mr. Walsh. This small deviation

might be well overlooked, were it only for its being a pious office to

the memory of his friend. But it may be further justified, as it was an

homage paid in particular to the morals of the critic, nothing being

more amiable than the character here drawn of this excellent person. He

being our author's judge and censor, as well as friend, it gives him a

graceful opportunity to add himself to the number of the later critics;

and with a character of his own genius and temper sustained by that

modesty and dignity which it is so difficult to make consistent, this

performance concludes.

I have here given a short and plain account of the Essay on Criticism,

concerning which, I have but one thing more to say, that when the reader

considers the regularity of the plan, the masterly conduct of each part,

the penetration into nature, and the compass of learning so conspicuous

throughout, he should at the same time know, it was the work of an

author who had not attained the twentieth year of his age.

NOTES.

Ver. 28. _In search of wit, these lose their common sense_,] This

observation is extremely just. Search of wit is not only the occasion,

but the efficient cause of the loss of common sense; for wit consisting

in choosing out, and setting together such ideas from whose assemblage

pleasant pictures may be drawn on the fancy, the judgment, through an

habitual search of wit, loses, by degrees, its faculty of seeing the

true relation of things; in which consists the exercise of common sense.

Ver. 32. _All fools have still an itching to deride,

And fain would lie upon the laughing side._]

The sentiment is just, and if Hobbes's account of laughter be true, that

it arises from a silly pride, we see the reason of it. The expression

too is fine; it alludes to the condition of idiots and natural fools,

who are observed to be ever on the grin.

Ver. 43. _Their generation's so equivocal._] It is sufficient that a

principle of philosophy has been generally received, whether it be true

or false, to justify a poet's use of it to set off his wit. But to

recommend his argument, he should be cautious how he uses any but the

true; for falsehood, when it is set too near the truth, will tarnish

what it should brighten up. Besides, the analogy between natural and

moral truth makes the principles of true philosophy the fittest for this

use. Our poet has been pretty careful in observing this rule.

Ver. 51. _And mark that point where sense and dulness meet._] Besides

the peculiar sense explained in the comment, the words have still a more

general meaning, and caution us against going on, when our ideas begin

to grow obscure, as we are then most apt to do, though that obscurity be

an admonition that we should leave off, for it arises, either from our

small acquaintance with the subject, or the incomprehensibility of its

nature, in which circumstances a genius will always write as badly as a

dunce. An observation well worth the attention of all profound writers.

Ver. 56. _Thus in the soul while memory prevails,

The solid pow'r of understanding fails;

Where beams of warm imagination play,

The memory's soft figures melt away._]

These observations are collected from an intimate knowledge of human

nature. The cause of that languor and heaviness in the understanding,

which is almost inseparable from a very strong and tenacious memory,

seems to be a want of the proper exercise of that faculty, the

understanding being in a great measure unactive, while the memory is

cultivating. As to the other appearance, the decay of memory by the

vigorous exercise of fancy, the poet himself seems to have intimated the

cause of it in the epithet he has given to the imagination. For if,

according to the atomic philosophy, the memory of things be preserved in

a chain of ideas, produced by the animal spirits moving in continued

trains, the force and rapidity of the imagination, breaking and

dissipating the links of this chain by forming new associations, must

necessarily weaken, and disorder the recollective faculties.

Ver. 67. _Would all but stoop to what they understand._] The expression

is delicate, and implies what is very true, that most men think it a

degradation of their genius to employ it in what lies level to their

comprehension, but had rather exercise their talents in the ambition of

subduing what is placed above it.

Ver. 80. _Some, to whom heaven, &c._] Here the poet (in a sense he was

not, at first, aware of) has given an example of the truth of his

observation, in the observation itself. The two lines stood originally

thus:

There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,

Yet want as much again to manage it.

In the first line, wit is used, in the modern sense, for the effort of

fancy; in the second line it is used in the ancient sense, for the

result of judgment. This trick, played the reader, he endeavoured to

keep out of sight, by altering the lines as they now stand,

Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse,

Want as much more, to turn it to its use.

For the words, "to manage it," as the lines were at first, too plainly

discovered the change put upon the reader, in the use of the word "wit."

This is now a little covered by the latter expression of "turn it to its

use." But then the alteration, in the preceding line, from "store of

wit," to "profuse," was an unlucky change. For though he who has "store

of wit" may want more, yet he to whom it was given in "profusion" could

hardly be said to want more. The truth is, the poet had said a lively

thing, and would, at all hazards, preserve the reputation of it, though

the very topic he is upon obliged him to detect the imposition, in the

very next lines, which show he meant two very different things, by the

very same term, in the two preceding:

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

Ver. 88. _Those rules of old, &c._] Cicero has, best of any one I know,

explained what that thing is which reduces the wild and scattered parts

of human knowledge into arts. "Nihil est quod ad artem redigi possit,

nisi ille prius, qui illa tenet, quorum artem instituere vult, habeat

illam scientiam, ut ex iis rebus, quarum ars nondum sit, artem efficere

possit.--Omnia fere, quæ sunt conclusa nunc artibus, dispersa et

dissipata quondam fuerunt, ut in musicis, &c. Adhibita est igitur ars

quædam extrinsecus ex alio genere quodam, quod sibi totum PHILOSOPHI

assumunt, quæ rem dissolutam divulsamque conglutinaret, et ratione

quadam constringeret." De Orat. l. i. c. 41, 42.

Ver. 112, 114. _Some on the leaves--Some dryly plain._] The first are

the apes of those learned Italian critics who at the restoration of

letters, having found the classic writers miserably deformed by the

hands of monkish librarians, very commendably employed their pains and

talents in restoring them to their native purity. The second, the

plagiarists from the French critics, who had made some admirable

commentaries on the ancient critics. But that acumen and taste, which

separately constitute the distinct value of those two species of Italian

and French criticism, make no part of the character of these paltry

mimics at home described by our poet in the following lines,

These leave the sense, their learning to display,

And those explain the meaning quite away.

Which species is the least hurtful, the poet has enabled us to determine

in the lines with which he opens his poem,

But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.

From whence we conclude that the Reverend Mr. Upton was much more

innocently employed, when he quibbled upon Epictetus, than when he

commented upon Shakespeare.[299]

Ver. 150. _Thus Pegasus, &c._] We have observed how the precepts for

writing and judging are interwoven throughout the whole poem. The

sublime flight of a poet is first described, soaring above all vulgar

bounds, to snatch a grace directly which lies beyond the reach of a

common adventurer; and afterwards, the effect of that grace upon the

true critic; whom it penetrates with an equal rapidity, going the

nearest way to his heart, without passing through his judgment. By which

is not meant that it could not stand the test of judgment; but that, as

it was a beauty uncommon, and above rule, and the judgment habituated to

determine only by rule, it makes its direct appeal to the heart, which,

when once gained, soon brings over the judgment, whose concurrence (it

being now enlarged and set above forms) is easily procured. That this is

the poet's sublime conception appears from the concluding words:

And all its end at once attains.

For poetry doth not attain all its end, till it hath gained the judgment

as well as heart.

Ver. 209. _Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense._]

A very sensible French writer makes the following remark on this species

of pride: "Un homme qui sçait plusieurs langues, qui entend les auteurs

grecs et latins, qui s'élève même jusqu'à la dignité de scholiaste; si

cet homme venoit à peser son véritable mérite, il trouveroit souvent

qu'il se réduit avoir eu des yeux et de la mémoire; il se garderoit bien

de donner le nom respectable de science à une érudition sans lumière. Il

y a une grande différence entre s'enrichir des mots ou des choses, entre

alléguer des autorités ou des raisons. Si un homme pouvoit se surprendre

à n'avoir que cette sorte de mérite, il en rougiroit plutôt que d'en

être vain."

Ver. 235. _Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find

Where Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind_;]

The second line, in apologizing for those faults which the first says

should be overlooked, gives the reason of the precept. For when a great

writer's attention is fixed on a general view of nature, and his

imagination becomes warmed with the contemplation of great ideas, it can

hardly be, but that there must be small irregularities in the

disposition both of matter and style, because the avoiding these

requires a coolness of recollection, which a writer so qualified and so

busied is not master of.

Ver. 248. _The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!_] The

Pantheon I would suppose; perhaps St. Peter's; no matter which; the

observation is true of both. There is something very Gothic in the taste

and judgment of a learned man, who despises the masterpiece of art, the

Pantheon, for those very qualities which deserve our admiration. "Nous

esmerveillons comme l'on fait si grand cas de ce Pantheon, veu que son

edifice n'est de si grande industrie comme l'on crie: car chaque petit

masson peut bien concevoir la maniere de sa façon tout en un instant:

car estant la base si massive, et les murailles si espaisses, ne nous a

semblé difficile d'y adjouster la vonte à claire voye."--Pierre Belon's

Observations, &c. The nature of the Gothic structures apparently led him

into this mistake of the architectonic art in general; that the

excellency of it consists in raising the greatest weight on the least

assignable support, so that the edifice should have strength without the

appearance of it, in order to excite admiration. But to a judicious eye

such a building would have a contrary effect, the appearance (as our

poet expresses it) of a monstrous height, or breadth, or length. Indeed,

did the just proportions in regular architecture take off from the

grandeur of a building, by all the single parts coming united to the

eye, as this learned traveller seems to insinuate, it would be a

reasonable objection to those rules on which this masterpiece of art was

constructed. But it is not so. The poet tells us truly,

The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Ver. 267. _Once on a time, &c._] This tale is so very apposite, that one

would naturally take it to be of the poet's own invention; and so much

in the spirit of Cervantes, that we might easily mistake it for one of

the chief beauties of that incomparable satire. Yet, in truth it is

neither; but a story taken by our author from the spurious Don Quixote,

which shows how proper an use may be made of general reading, when if

there be but one good thing in a book (as in that wretched performance

there scarce was more) it may be picked out, and employed to an

excellent purpose.

Ver. 285. _Thus critics, &c._] In these two lines the poet finely

describes the way in which bad writers are wont to imitate the qualities

of good ones. As true judgment generally draws men out of popular

opinions, so he who cannot get from the crowd by the assistance of this

guide, willingly follows caprice, which will be sure to lead him into

singularities. Again, true knowledge is the art of treasuring up only

that which, from its use in life, is worthy of being lodged in the

memory, and this makes the philosopher; but curiosity consists in a vain

attention to every thing out of the way, and which for its inutility the

world least regards, and this makes the antiquarian. Lastly, exactness

is the just proportion of parts to one another, and their harmony in a

whole; but he who has not extent of capacity for the exercise of this

quality, contents himself with nicety, which is a busying oneself about

points and syllables, and this makes the grammarian.

Ver. 297. _True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c._] This

definition is very exact. Mr. Locke had defined wit to consist "in the

assemblage of ideas, and putting those together, with quickness and

variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, whereby to

make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy." But that

great philosopher, in separating wit from judgment, as he does in this

place, has given us (and he could therefore give us no other) only an

account of wit in general, in which false wit, though not every species

of it, is included. A striking image, therefore, of nature is, as Mr.

Locke observes, certainly wit; but this image may strike on several

other accounts, as well as for its truth and beauty, and the philosopher

has explained the manner how. But it never becomes that wit which is the

ornament of true poesy, whose end is to represent nature, but when it

dresses that nature to advantage, and presents her to us in the

brightest and most amiable light. And to know when the fancy has done

its office truly, the poet subjoins this admirable test, viz. When we

perceive that it gives us back the image of our mind. When it does that,

we may be sure it plays no tricks with us; for this image is the

creature of the judgment, and whenever wit corresponds with judgment, we

may safely pronounce it to be true.

Ver. 311. _False eloquence, &c._] This simile is beautiful. For the

false colouring given to objects by the prismatic glass is owing to its

untwisting, by its obliquities, those threads of light which nature had

put together, in order to spread over its work an ingenious and simple

candour, that should not hide but only heighten the native complexion of

the objects. And false expression is nothing else but the straining and

divaricating the parts of true expression; and then daubing them over

with what the rhetoricians very properly term colours, in lieu of that

candid light, now lost, which was reflected from them in their natural

state, while sincere and entire.

Ver. 364. _'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense._]

The judicious introduction of this precept is remarkable. The poets, and

even some of the best of them, have been so fond of the beauty arising

from this trivial observance, that their practice has violated the very

end of the precept, which is the increase of harmony; and so they could

but raise an echo, did not care whose ears they offended by its

dissonance. To remedy this abuse therefore, our poet, by the

introductory line, would insinuate, that harmony is always to be

presupposed as observed, though it may and ought to be perpetually

varied, so as to produce the effect here recommended.

Ver. 365. _The sound must seem an echo to the sense._] Lord Roscommon

says,

The sound is still a comment to the sense.

They are both well expressed, although so differently; for Lord

Roscommon is showing how the sense is assisted by the sound; Mr. Pope,

how the sound is assisted by the sense.

Ver. 402. _Which, from the first, &c._] Genius is the same in all ages;

but its fruits are various, and more or less excellent as they are

checked or matured by the influence of government or religion upon them.

Hence in some parts of literature the ancients excel; in others, the

moderns, just as those accidental circumstances occurred.

Ver. 444. _Scotists._] So denominated from Johannes Duns Scotus. Erasmus

tells us, an eminent Scotist assured him, that it was impossible to

understand one single proposition of this famous Duns, unless you had

his whole metaphysics by heart. This hero of incomprehensible fame

suffered a miserable reverse at Oxford in the time of Henry VIII. That

grave antiquary, Mr. Antony Wood (in the vindication of himself and his

writings from the reproaches of the Bishop of Salisbury), sadly laments

the deformation, as he calls it, of that university, by the King's

commissioners; and even records the blasphemous speeches of one of them,

in his own words: "We have set Duns in Boccardo, with all his blind

glossers, fast nailed up upon posts in all common houses of easement."

Upon which our venerable antiquary thus exclaims: "If so be, the

commissioners had such disrespect for that most famous author, J. Duns,

who was so much admired by our predecessors, and so difficult to be

understood, that the doctors of those times, namely, Dr. William Roper,

Dr. John Keynton, Dr. William Mowse, &c. professed that, in twenty-eight

years' study, they could not understand him rightly, what then had they

for others of inferior note?" What indeed! But if so be, that most

famous J. Duns was so difficult to be understood (for that this is a

most theologic proof of his great worth is past all doubt), I should

conceive our good old antiquary to be a little mistaken, and that the

nailing up this Proteus of the schools was done by the commissioners in

honour of the most famous Duns, there being no other way of catching the

sense of so slippery and dodging an author, who had eluded the pursuit

of three of their most renowned doctors in full cry after him, for eight

and twenty years together. And this Boccardo in which he was confined,

seemed very fit for the purpose, it being observed that men are never

more serious and thoughtful than in that place of retirement.--Scribl.

Ver. 444. _Thomists_,] From Thomas Aquinas, a truly great genius, who,

in those blind ages, was the same in theology, that our Friar Bacon was

in natural philosophy; less happy than our countryman in this, that he

soon became surrounded with a number of dark glossers, who never left

him till they had extinguished the radiance of that light, which had

pierced through the thickest night of monkery, the thirteenth century,

when the Waldenses were suppressed, and Wickliffe not yet risen.

Ver. 445. _Amidst their kindred cobwebs._] Were common sense disposed to

credit any of the monkish miracles of the dark and blind ages of the

church, it would certainly be one of the seventh century recorded by

honest Bale. "In the sixth general council," says he, "holden at

Constantinople, Anno Dom 680, contra Monothelitas, where the Latin mass

was first approved, and the Latin ministers deprived of their lawful

wives, spiders' webs, in wonderfull copye were seen falling down from

above, upon the heads of the people, to the marvelous astonishment of

many." The justest emblem and prototype of school metaphysics, the

divinity of Scotists and Thomists, which afterwards fell, in wonderfull

copye on the heads of the people, in support of transubstantiation, to

the marvelous astonishment of many, as it continues to do to this day.

Ver. 450. _And authors think, &c._] This is an admirable satire on those

called authors in fashion, the men who get the laugh on their side. He

shows on how pitiful a basis their reputation stands,--the changeling

disposition of fools to laugh, who are always carried away with the last

joke.

Ver. 463. _Milbourn_] The Rev. Mr. Luke Milbourn. Dennis served Mr. Pope

in the same office. But these men are of all times, and rise up on all

occasions. Sir Walter Raleigh had Alexander Ross; Chillingworth had

Cheynel; Milton a first Edwards; and Locke a second; neither of them

related to the third Edwards of Lincoln's Inn. They were divines of

parts and learning: this a critic without one or the other. Yet (as Mr.

Pope says of Luke Milbourn) the fairest of all critics; for having

written against the editor's remarks on Shakspear, he did him justice

in printing, at the same time, some of his own.[300]

Ver. 468. _For envied wit, &c._] This similitude implies a fact too

often verified; and of which we need not seek abroad for examples. It is

this, that frequently those very authors, who have at first done all

they could to obscure and depress a rising genius, have at length been

reduced to borrow from him, imitate his manner, and reflect what they

could of his splendour, merely to keep themselves in some little credit.

Nor hath the poet been less artful, to insinuate what is sometimes the

cause. A youthful genius, like the sun rising towards the meridian,

displays too strong and powerful beams for the dirty temper of inferior

writers, which occasions their gathering, condensing, and blackening.

But as he descends from the meridian (the time when the sun gives its

gilding to the surrounding clouds) his rays grow milder, his heat more

benign, and then

ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,

Reflect new glories, and augment the day.

484. _So when, &c._] This similitude from painting, in which our author

discovers (as he always does on that subject) real science, has still a

more peculiar beauty, as at the same time that it confesses the just

superiority of ancient writings, it insinuates one advantage the modern

have above them, which is this, that in these latter, our more intimate

acquaintance with the occasion of writing, and with the manners

described, lets us into those living and striking graces which may be

well compared to that perfection of imitation given only by the pencil,

while the ravages of time, amongst the monuments of former ages, have

left us but the gross substance of ancient wit,--so much only of the

form and fashion of bodies as may be expressed in brass or marble.

Ver. 507.--_by knaves undone!_] By which the poet would insinuate a

common but shameful truth, that men in power, if they got into it by

illiberal arts, generally left wit and science to starve.

Ver. 545. _Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;_] The seeds of this

religious evil, as well as of the political good from whence it sprung

(for good and evil are incessantly arising out of one another) were sown

in the preceding fat age of pleasure. The mischiefs done during

Cromwell's usurpation, by fanaticism, inflamed by erroneous and absurd

notions of the doctrine of grace and satisfaction, made the loyal

latitudinarian divines (as they were called) at the restoration, go so

far into the other extreme of resolving all Christianity into morality,

as to afford an easy introduction to socinianism, which in that reign

(founded on the principles of liberty) men had full opportunity of

propagating.

Ver. 561. _For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know._] The critic acts

in two capacities, of assessor and of judge: in the first, science alone

is sufficient; but the other requires morals likewise.

Ver. 631. _But where's the man, &c._] The poet, by his manner of asking

after this character, and telling us, when he had described it, that

such once were critics, does not encourage us to search for it amongst

modern writers. And indeed the discovery of him, if it could be made,

would be but an invidious affair. However, I will venture to name the

piece of criticism in which all these marks may be found. It is

entitled, Q. Hor. Fl. Ars Poetica, et ejusd. Ep. ad Aug. with an English

Commentary and Notes.[301]

Ver. 642. _with reason on his side?_] Not only on his side, but in

actual employment. The critic makes but a mean figure, who when he has

found out the beauties of his author, contents himself with showing them

to the world in only empty exclamations. His office is to explain their

nature, show from whence they arise, and what effects they produce, or

in the better and fuller expression of the poet,

To teach the world with reason to admire.

Ver. 652. _Who conquered nature, &c._] By this we must not understand

physical nature, but moral. The force of the observation consists in

giving it this sense. The poet not only uses the word nature, for human

nature, throughout this poem; but also, where in the beginning of it, he

lays down the principles of the arts he treats of, he makes the

knowledge of human nature the foundation of all criticism and poetry.

Nor is the observation less true than apposite. For Aristotle's natural

inquiries were superficial and ill made, though extensive; but his

logical and moral works are supremely excellent. In his moral, he has

unfolded the human mind, and laid open all the recesses of the heart and

understanding; and in his logical, he has not only conquered nature, but

by his categories, has kept her in tenfold chains; not as dulness kept

the muses in the Dunciad, to silence them; but as Aristæus held Proteus

in Virgil, to deliver oracles.

Ver. 665. _See Dionysius, &c._] In the first of these lines, on which

the other depends, the peculiar excellence of this critic, and indeed

the most material and useful part of a critic's office, is touched upon,

who, like the refiner, purifies the rich ore of an original writer; for

such a one busied in creating, often neglects to separate and refine the

mass, pouring out his riches rather in bullion than in sterling.

Ver. 667. _Fancy and art, &c._] "The chief merit of Petronius," says an

objector,[302] "is that of telling a story with grace and ease." But the

poet is not here speaking, nor was it his purpose to speak, of the chief

merit of Petronius, but of his merit as a critic, which consisted, he

tells us, in softening the art of a scholar with the ease of a courtier,

and whoever reads and understands the critical part of his abominable

story-telling will see that the poet has given his true character as a

critic, which was the only thing he had to do with.

Ver. 693. _At length Erasmus, &c._] Nothing can be more artful than the

application of this example, or more happy than the turn of the

compliment. To throw glory quite round the character of this admirable

person, he makes it to be (as in fact it really was) by his assistance

chiefly, that Leo was enabled to restore letters and the fine arts in

his pontificate.

Ver. 694. _The glory of the priesthood and the shame!_] Our author

elsewhere lets us know what he esteems to be the glory of the priesthood

as well as of a christian in general, where comparing himself to

Erasmus, he says,

In moderation placing all my glory,

and consequently what he regards as the shame of it. The whole of this

character belonged eminently and almost solely to Erasmus: for the other

reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and their followers, understood so

little in what true christian liberty consisted, that they carried with

them, into the reformed churches, that very spirit of persecution, which

had driven them from the church of Rome.

Ver. 696. _And drove those holy Vandals off the stage._] In this attack

on the established ignorance of the times, Erasmus succeeded so well as

to bring good letters into fashion, to which he gave new splendour, by

preparing for the press correct editions of many of the best ancient

writers, both ecclesiastical and profane. But having laughed and shamed

his age out of one folly, he had the mortification of seeing it run

headlong into another. The virtuosi of Italy, in a superstitious dread

of that monkish barbarity which he had so severely handled, would use no

term (for now almost every man was become a Latin writer), not even when

they treated of the highest mysteries of religion, which had not been

consecrated in the capitol, and dispensed unto them from the sacred hand

of Cicero. Erasmus observed the growth of this classical folly with the

greater concern, as he discovered under all their attention to the

language of old Rome, a certain fondness for its religion, in a growing

impiety which disposed them to think irreverently of the christian

faith. And he no sooner discovered it than he set upon reforming it;

which he did so effectually in the dialogue, entitled Ciceronianus, that

he brought the age back to that just temper, which he had been all his

life endeavouring to mark out to it,--purity, but not pedantry in

letters, and zeal, but not bigotry, in religion. In a word, by employing

his great talents of genius and literature on subjects of general

importance; and by opposing the extremes of all parties in their turns;

he completed the real character of a true critic and an honest man.

RAPE OF THE LOCK.

AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1712.

* * * * *

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM.

Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos,

Sed juvat hoc præcibus me tribuisse tuis.

MART. LIB. 12. Ep. 86.

Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT. 1712. 8vo.

This is the title-page of the original Rape of the Lock, in two cantos,

which appeared anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany. The poem begins on p.

353 of the volume, and the previous piece ends at p. 320. What purported

to be a second edition of the Miscellany came out in 1714, but except

that the gap between p. 320 and p. 353 had been filled up, and that the

Essay on Criticism is inserted at the end of the book, the work is

merely a reissue, with a new title-page, of the first edition, and the

Rape of the Lock, like the rest, is the old impression of 1712. Even the

primitive "Table of Contents" was retained, though it omits the

additional pieces, which were chiefly poems by Pope. His contributions

to the Miscellany are, however, enumerated on the title-page of the

second edition.

* * * * *

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM. IN FIVE CANTOS.

Written by Mr. POPE.

----A tonso est hoc nomen adepta capillo.--OVID.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross Keys in Fleet Street.

1714. 8vo.

The first enlarged edition. A second and third edition followed in the

same year. After the Rape of the Lock had been included in the quarto of

1717, it was still printed in a separate form, and a "fifth edition

corrected" was published by Lintot in 1718. He also inserted the work in

the four editions of his Miscellanies, which appeared in the twelve

years from 1720 to 1732. Lintot paid Pope £7 on March 21, 1712, for the

Rape of the Lock in its first form, and gave £15 for the enlarged poem

on February 20, 1714.

The first sketch of this poem was written in less than a fortnight's

time in 1711, in two cantos, and so printed in a Miscellany, without the

name of the author. The machines were not inserted till a year after,

when he published it, and annexed the dedication.--POPE, 1736.

The stealing of Miss Belle Fermor's hair was taken too seriously, and

caused an estrangement between the two families, though they had lived

so long in great friendship before. A common acquaintance, and

well-wisher to both, desired me to write a poem to make a jest of it,

and laugh them together again. It was with this view that I wrote the

Rape of the Lock, which was well received, and had its effect in the two

families. Nobody but Sir George Brown was angry, and he was a good deal

so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk

nothing but nonsense. Copies of the poem got about, and it was like to

be printed, on which I published the first draught of it (without the

machinery) in a Miscellany of Tonson's. The machinery was added

afterwards to make it look a little more considerable, and the scheme of

adding it was much liked and approved of by several of my friends, and

particularly by Dr. Garth, who, as he was one of the best natured men in

the world, was very fond of it. The making the machinery, and what was

published before, hit so well together is, I think, one of the greatest

proofs of judgment of anything I ever did.--POPE in SPENCE.

It appears by the motto "Nolueram," etc., that the following poem was

written or published at the lady's request. But there are some further

circumstances not unworthy relating. Mr. Caryll (a gentleman who was

secretary to Queen Mary, wife of James II., whose fortunes he followed

into France, author of the comedy of Sir Solomon Single, and of several

translations in Dryden's Miscellanies) originally proposed the subject

to him, in a view of putting an end, by this piece of ridicule, to a

quarrel that was risen between two noble families, those of Lord Petre

and of Mrs. Fermor, on the trifling occasion of his having cut off a

lock of her hair. The author sent it to the lady, with whom he was

acquainted; and she took it so well as to give about copies of it. That

first sketch, we learn from one of his letters, was written in less than

a fortnight, in 1711, in two cantos only, and it was so printed; first,

in a Miscellany of Bern. Lintot's, without the name of the author. But

it was received so well, that he made it more considerable the next

year by the addition of the machinery of the sylphs, and extended it to

five cantos. We shall give the reader the pleasure of seeing in what

manner these additions were inserted, so as to seem not to be added, but

to grow out of the poem. See Notes, Cant. I. ver. 9, etc. This insertion

he always esteemed, and justly, the greatest effort of his skill and art

as a poet.--WARBURTON.

I hope it will not be thought an exaggerated panegyric to say that the

Rape of the Lock is the best satire extant; that it contains the truest

and liveliest picture of modern life; and that the subject is of a more

elegant nature, as well as more artfully conducted than that of any

other heroi-comic poem. If some of the most candid among the French

critics begin to acknowledge that they have produced nothing, in point

of sublimity and majesty, equal to the Paradise Lost, we may also

venture to affirm that in point of delicacy, elegance, and fine-turned

raillery, on which they have so much valued themselves, they have

produced nothing equal to the Rape of the Lock. It is in this

composition Pope principally appears a poet, in which he has displayed

more imagination than in all his other works taken together. It should,

however, be remembered, that he was not the first former and creator of

those beautiful machines, the sylphs, on which his claim to imagination

is chiefly founded. He found them existing ready to his hand; but has,

indeed, employed them with singular judgment and artifice.--WARTON.

The Rape of the Lock is the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most

delightful of all Pope's compositions. At its first appearance it was

termed by Addison "merum sal." Pope, however, saw that it was capable of

improvement; and having luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from

the Rosicrucians, imparted the scheme, with which his head was teeming,

to Addison, who told him that his work, as it stood, was "a delicious

little thing," and gave him no encouragement to retouch it. This has

been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's jealousy; for as

he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or the possibilities

of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there had been no examples,

he might very reasonably and kindly persuade the author to acquiesce in

his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which he considered as an

unnecessary hazard. Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw

the future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and

resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance

of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction

were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it. His attempt was

justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands forward, in the

classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous

poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers more truly

poetical than he had shown before. With elegance of description and

justness of precepts he had now exhibited boundless fertility of

invention. He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with

the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He indeed

could never afterwards produce anything of such unexampled excellence.

Those performances which strike with wonder are combinations of skilful

genius with happy casualty; and it is not likely that any felicity, like

the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should happen twice

to the same man.

Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a

long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis published

some remarks upon it with very little force and with no effect; for the

opinion of the public was already settled, and it was no longer at the

mercy of criticism.[303]

To the praises which have been accumulated on the Rape of the Lock by

readers of every class, from the critic to the waiting-maid, it is

difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally allowed to

be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it rather be

now inquired from what sources the power of pleasing is derived. Dr.

Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked that the

preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the

poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention: we should have

turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana. The employment of

allegorical persons always excites conviction of its own absurdity; they

may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions: when the phantom is put

in motion it dissolves. Thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord

cannot conduct a march, nor besiege a town. Pope brought in view a new

race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their

operation. The sylphs and gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-table,

what more terrific and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy

ocean or the field of battle; they give their proper help and do their

proper mischief. Pope is said by an objector,[304] not to have been the

inventor of this petty nation; a charge which might with more justice

have been brought against the author of the Iliad, who doubtless adopted

the religious system of his country; for what is there but the names of

his agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them

characters and operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least,

given them their first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to

denominate his work original, nothing original ever can be written.

In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging

powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things

are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard of before, is

presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the reader seeks for

no further information, but immediately mingles with his new

acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves

a sylph and detests a gnome. That familiar things are made new, every

paragraph will prove. The subject of the poem is an event below the

common incidents of common life; nothing real is introduced that is not

seen so often as to be no longer regarded; yet the whole detail of a

female day is here brought before us, invested with so much art of

decoration, that, though nothing is disguised, everything is striking,

and we feel all the appetite of curiosity for that from which we have a

thousand times turned fastidiously away.

The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at "the little

unguarded follies of the female sex." It is therefore without justice

that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, and

for that reason sets it below the Lutrin, which exposes the pride and

discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the

world much better than he found it, but, if they had both succeeded, it

were easy to tell who would have deserved most from public gratitude.

The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity of women, as they

embroil families in discord, and fill houses with disquiet, do more to

obstruct the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy

in many centuries. It has been well observed, that the misery of man

proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small

vexations continually repeated.

It is remarked by Dennis likewise that the machinery is superfluous;

that by all the bustle of preternatural operation the main event is

neither hastened nor retarded. To this charge an efficacious answer is

not easily made. The sylphs cannot be said to help or to oppose, and it

must be allowed to imply some want of art, that their power has not

been sufficiently intermingled with the action. Other parts may likewise

be charged with want of connection; the game at ombre might be spared;

but if the lady had lost her hair while she was intent upon her cards,

it might have been inferred that those who are too fond of play will be

in danger of neglecting more important interests. These perhaps are

faults, but what are such faults to so much excellence?--JOHNSON.

The Rape of the Lock at once placed Pope higher than any modern writer,

and exceeded everything of the kind that had appeared in the republic of

letters. Dr. Johnson truly says that it is the most airy, the most

ingenious, and the most delightful of all Pope's compositions. Indeed,

upon this subject there cannot be two opinions. This poem is founded,

however, upon local manners. And of all poems of that kind it is

undoubtedly far the best, whether we consider the exquisite tone of

raillery, a certain musical sweetness and suitableness in the

versification, the management of the story, or the kind of fancy and

airiness given to the whole. But what entitles it to its high claim of

peculiar poetic excellences?--the powers of imagination, and the

felicity of invention displayed in adopting, and most artfully

conducting, a machinery so fanciful, so appropriate, so novel, and so

poetical. The introduction of Discord, &c., as machinery in the Lutrin,

&c., is not to be mentioned at the same time. Such a being as Discord

will suit a hundred subjects; but the elegant, the airy sylph,

Loose to the wind, whose airy garments flew,

Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew,

Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies,

Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes:

such a being as this, is suited alone to the identical and peculiar poem

in which it is employed. I will now go a step farther in appreciating

the elegance and beauty of this poem, and I would ask the question, Let

any other poet,--Dryden, Waller, Cowley, or Gray,--be assigned this

subject, and this machinery: could they have produced a work altogether

so correct and beautiful from the same given materials? Let us, however,

still remember, that this poem is founded on local manners, and the

employment of the sylphs is in artificial life. For this reason the poem

must have a secondary rank, when considered strictly and truly with

regard to its poetry. Whether Pope would have excelled as much in

loftier subjects of a general nature, in the "high mood" of Lycidas, the

rich colourings of Comus, and the magnificent descriptions and sublime

images of Paradise Lost; or in painting the characters and employments

of aerial beings,

That tread the ooze of the salt deep,

Or run upon the sharp wind of the north,

is another question. He has not attempted it: I have no doubt he would

have failed. But to have produced a poem, infinitely the highest of its

kind, and which no other poet could perhaps altogether have done so

well, is surely very high praise. The excellence is Pope's own, the

inferiority is in the subject. No one understood better that excellent

rule of Horace:

Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam

Viribus.[305]--BOWLES.

From the statement of Pope in the edition of 1736, it would be inferred

that the Rape of the Lock in its second form was prepared and published

in 1712. As usual he ante-dated his work. The original sketch came out

in 1712; the machinery was added in 1713, and the enlarged poem was not

published till the spring of 1714. Warburton's narrative, which in some

editions had Pope's initial affixed by an error of the press,[306] is in

part derived from Pope, and the rest is erroneous. The person who

bespoke the Rape of the Lock was not Mr. Secretary Caryll, but his

nephew, the Sussex squire, and for years the correspondent of Pope. The

assertion of Warburton, that Pope, when he wrote the work, was

acquainted with his heroine, is discredited by his letter to Caryll on

May 28, 1712. "Mr. Bedingfield," he there says, "has done me the favour

to send some books of the Rape to my Lord Petre and Mrs. Fermor," and

unless the poet had been a total stranger to them he would have

presented the copies himself. The language of the motto can only bear

the interpretation of Warburton, that the Rape of the Lock "was written

or published at the lady's request," but Warburton ought to have seen

that the motto was a deception. The piece was not _written_ at Miss

Fermor's request, for it was absurd to imagine that she would ask any

one to compose a poem to allay her own resentment against Lord Petre,

and there is the direct statement of Pope in the body of the work, and

in his conversation with Spence, that the suggestion did not come from

her.[307] The piece was not _published_ at her request, for in the

Dedication of the second edition to Miss Fermor, Pope says of the first

edition, "An imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had

the good nature for my sake to consent to the publication of one more

correct. This I was forced to before I had executed half my design, for

the machinery was entirely wanting to complete it." Warburton reversed

the parts. The requester was Pope, and Miss Fermor gave a consent which

it was vain to refuse when the sole alternative presented to her was

whether the poem should be printed surreptitiously, or under the

supervision of its author. The miserable farce of circulating copies of

a work, and then alleging that the publication had become a necessary

measure of self-defence, was one of those transparent pretences which

deceived no one except the person who fancied that he was deceiving.

Pope never wrote a line of the smallest value which was not intended for

the printer.

The motto from Martial was doubtless attached to the Rape of the Lock in

the belief that Miss Fermor would be proud to countenance the

misrepresentation. The poet was mistaken. "A few years ago," says Dr.

Johnson, "a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent at

Paris, mentioned Pope's work with very little gratitude, rather as an

insult than an honour; and she may be supposed to have inherited the

opinion of her family."[308] Pope told Spence that "nobody but Sir

George Brown was angry," and Warburton says that Miss Fermor "took the

poem so well as to give about copies of it," but we now know that

Johnson was right in his inference. "Sir Plume blusters, I hear," wrote

Pope to the younger Caryll, Nov. 8, 1712, five months after the Rape of

the Lock appeared; "nay, the celebrated lady herself is offended, and,

which is stranger, not at herself, but me. Is not this enough to make a

writer never be tender of another's character or fame?" Respect for the

fame and feelings of his heroine was not an act of grace; it was an

imperious duty. At the request of a common friend he had composed a poem

for an amiable purpose upon an incident of private life, and it would

have been a hateful abuse of his commission, a slanderous violation of

domestic sanctities, if he had penned a word which could sully the

reputation of an innocent maiden. He is not free from reproach. Without

intending to transgress he offended from inherent want of delicacy. He

made Belinda the subject of some gross double meanings, which provoked

the ribald comments of the critics, and, unless a morbid love of

notoriety had extinguished feminine purity, she must have been deeply

outraged by being associated with these licentious allusions. Her

indignation may appear to have come too late, for though her consent to

the publication of the work, when there was no real choice, does not

involve approval, she might, through her friends, have effectually

demanded the suppression of degrading couplets. Her very resentment,

however, when she read the work in print, is a presumption that they

were not in the manuscript which was sent her, and indeed it is

incredible that she, or her family, could ever have sanctioned such

revolting personalities. They are a sad exhibition of the ingrained

coarseness of Pope's taste,--of his incapacity to conceive the idea of

womanly homage to outward decency, to say nothing of innate refinement

and modesty.

In the interval between the first and second edition of the Rape of the

Lock, Pope was compelled to acknowledge that he had inflicted an injury

on Miss Fermor. "I have some thoughts," he wrote to Caryll, Dec. 15,

1713, "of dedicating the poem to her by name, as a piece of justice in

return to the wrong interpretations she has suffered under on the score

of that piece." He tried a preface "which salved the lady's honour

without affixing her name," but she preferred the dedication. She wished

to be dissociated from his heroine, and he propitiated her by saying,

all the incidents are "fabulous except the loss of your hair; and the

character of Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but

beauty." "I believe," he wrote to Caryll, January 9, 1714, "I have

managed the dedication so nicely that it can neither hurt the lady nor

the author. I writ it very lately, and upon great deliberation. The

young lady approves of it, and the best advice in the kingdom, of the

men of sense, has been made use of in it, even to the treasurer's."

Plainer understandings will be puzzled to discover what scope there

could be for the "great deliberation" of the poet, and the advice of all

the ablest men throughout the kingdom, including the prime minister,

Lord Oxford, in making a simple declaration of a simple fact. To

complete the absolution of Miss Fermor, Pope substituted another motto

for the lines from Martial, and when their temporary withdrawal had

answered his purpose he restored them in the quarto edition of his

works.

A more celebrated feud, if we are to trust the account of Warburton,

took its rise from the Rape of the Lock. The success of the first

edition "encouraged the author to give it a more important air" by the

addition of the supernatural machinery. "Full," says Warburton, "of this

noble conception he communicated it to Mr. Addison, who he imagined

would have been equally delighted with the improvement. On the contrary,

he had the mortification to see his friend receive it coldly; and even

to advise him against any alteration, for that the poem in its original

state was a delicious little thing, and, as he expressed it, _merum

sal_. Mr. Pope was shocked for his friend, and then first began to open

his eyes to his character."[309] The charge has been exposed by Johnson,

Macaulay, and Croker. Mr. Croker denies that the machinery was a

plausible suggestion. "I believe Addison's advice," he says, "to have

been a sincere and just opinion, and such as I should have expected from

the purity of his taste. The original poem tells the actual story and

exhibits a picture of real manners with so much wit and poetry, but also

with so much simplicity and clearness, that I can well imagine that

Addison might be alarmed at the proposition of introducing sylphs and

gnomes into a scene of common life already so admirably described. Even

now, with the advantage of seeing all the brilliancy with which Pope has

worked out what Addison thought an unfortunate conception, I will not

deny that such is the charm of truth that I have lately read the first

sketch with more interest, though certainly with less admiration than

its more fanciful and more gorgeous successor, which really seems

something like a beauty oppressed with the weight and splendour of her

ornaments. The game at cards, the most ingenious and beautiful of all

the additions, is only reality splendidly embellished, and would have

been equally well placed in the first sketch." Macaulay vindicates the

counsel of Addison upon a general principle, irrespective of the

apparent want of fitness between supernatural agents and the frivolities

of fashion,--a principle "the result of wide and long experience," which

is, that a successful work of imagination is injured by being recast.

"We cannot at this moment," he says, "call to mind a single instance in

which this rule has been transgressed with happy effect, except the

instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his Jerusalem. Akenside

recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. Pope

himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with which he had expanded

and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the same experiment on the

Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would

once in his life be able to do what he could not himself do twice, and

what nobody else has ever done? Addison's advice was good, but if it had

been bad, why should we pronounce it dishonest? Scott tells us that one

of his best friends predicted the failure of Waverley. Herder adjured

Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. Hume tried to

dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles the Fifth. Nay

Pope himself was one of those who prophesied that Cato would never

succeed on the stage, and advised Addison to print it without risking a

representation.[310] But Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the

good sense and generosity to give their advisers credit for the best

intentions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with theirs."[311] Of

the examples, which Macaulay quotes, of poems marred in the attempt to

mend them, the Jerusalem of Tasso was the only one which existed in the

days of Addison; and the Jerusalem was not a parallel case, for the mind

of Tasso was diseased when he remodelled his work, and he yielded,

against his judgment, to the cavils of critics instead of obeying the

self-born calls of imagination. Most men nevertheless would

instinctively recommend that whatever was beautiful should be let alone,

lest it should be deteriorated in the effort to make it better. When

Pope boasted that the adaptation of the new parts to the old, in the

Rape of the Lock, was the greatest triumph of his skill, he himself

confessed the risk and difficulty of the process, and justified the

misgivings of Addison. But besides the general hazard, we should expect,

with Mr. Croker, that Addison would have thought the particular project

for improving the poem to be essentially bad. Pope had shown a

predilection for heathen mythology, and his management of it had been

clumsy and lifeless. His scheme would have called up to Addison's mind

the interposition of the gods and goddesses in Homer and Virgil. The

conjunction of these obsolete figments, under new names, with the

trivialities of modern society, would have seemed incongruous and

pedantic,[312] and the previous works of Pope would have compelled the

conclusion that he had not the skill to deal with ethereal fiction.

Addison could neither have divined from a conversational description how

perfectly the agents would be adapted to their office, nor from Pope's

existing poetry how delicious they would be rendered by the felicity of

the execution. Unless there was the strongest presumption that the

recommendation to leave the poem unaltered was made in good faith, we

should not be warranted in believing the story, for no reliance could be

placed on the unsupported testimony of Pope when he was safe from

contradiction, and his object was to damage the reputation of a rival.

Pope is convicted on his own evidence. He admits that the incident

"_first_ opened his eyes to the character of Addison," and by

consequence that Addison's conduct had been hitherto blameless. He thus

bears witness against himself of his readiness to impute the basest

motives upon the most trumpery pretexts. Being "_shocked_" at the moral

turpitude of "his friend," he could never again have treated him with

cordiality and confidence, and the alienation which ensued, must, on

Pope's own showing, have had its origin in Pope's morbid suspicions. But

there was an earlier transaction, which turns the tables with fatal

force upon Pope. Anterior to the conversation on the Rape of the

Lock,[313] he urged Lintot the bookseller to persuade Dennis to

criticise Addison's Cato.[314] Dennis published his Remarks, and Pope

followed with his anonymous pamphlet, Dr. Norris's Narrative of the

Phrenzy of J.D.,--a coarse, dull production, consisting of nothing but

low, intemperate abuse. Pope's device pointed to three results. He would

damage the reputation of Addison's play; he would provoke him into

turning his wrath upon Dennis; and he would secure an opening for

venting his own spleen against the critic without seeming to be actuated

by personal spite. Addison was disgusted with the pamphlet; and,

ignorant probably of its parentage, he let Dennis know that he

repudiated and condemned it.[315] The worst was to come. More than

twenty years afterwards Pope dressed up a letter which he had written to

Caryll, on the occasion of an attack in the Flying Post, and pretended

that it had been written to Addison when his play was assailed by

Dennis. In this fraudulent document Pope congratulates him on his share

in "the envy and calumny, which is the portion of all good and great

men," and declares that "he felt more warmth" at the Remarks on Cato

than when he read the Reflections on the Essay on Criticism.[316] Having

prompted the abuse, he published a fictitious letter to persuade the

world that he had overflowed with generous indignation. He wanted

posterity to believe that he had poured out these magnanimous sentiments

to Addison, who returned him envy and malice. His object was to magnify

his own virtues, and transfer his meanness and jealousy to the amiable

genius he had formerly wronged. "Addison," he said, "was very kind to me

at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards,"[317] and with the

consciousness of guilt, he tried to conceal that he had forfeited the

kindness by misconduct. He was bold with his forgeries and falsehoods in

the confidence that a dead man could tell no tales. Happily there are

flaws in the best-laid dishonest plots, and the hour of retribution

comes at last. At what period or in what degree Addison himself detected

Pope's practices is not definitely known, but he discovered enough to

avoid him. "Leave him as soon as you can," he said to Lady Mary W.

Montagu; "he will certainly play you some devilish trick else. He has an

appetite to satire."

Up to the Rape of the Lock, Pope had only put borrowed thoughts into

verse. He now broke out into originality, but not without some

obligation to his predecessors. In one place De Quincey maintains that

the Rape of the Lock was not suggested by the Lutrin, because Pope did

not read French with ease to himself, and in another place that Voltaire

must have been wrong in saying that "Pope could hardly read French,"

inasmuch as there are "numerous proofs that he had read Boileau with so

much feeling of his peculiar merit that he has appropriated and

naturalised some of his best passages."[319] The second statement of De

Quincey was the latest and the truest. Pope refers to the Lutrin in his

manuscript notes on the Remarks of Dennis, and certainly had it in his

mind when he framed the scheme of his poem. "The treasurer," it is said,

in the summary prefixed to Boileau's work, "is the highest dignitary in

the chapter. The precentor is the second dignitary. In front of the seat

of the latter there was formerly an enormous reading-desk, which almost

concealed him. He had it removed, and the treasurer wanted to put it

back. Hence arose the dispute which is the subject of the present poem."

Boileau converted the squabble into a satire on the indolence, the

sensuality, and pride of the cathedral clergy in the licentious reign of

Louis XIV. Pope converted the quarrel between Miss Fermor and Lord Petre

into a satire on the frivolities of a young lady of fashion from her

morning toilet to the close of her giddy day. Boileau called the Lutrin

a new species of burlesque, "because," he said, "in other burlesques

Dido and Æneas speak like fishwomen and scavengers; here a barber and

his wife speak like Dido and Æneas." Pope adopted a similar vein, and

invested the trifles of a gay and frivolous life with an adventitious

importance. Boileau parodied some well-known passages of Virgil. Pope

parodied both Virgil and Homer. The Lutrin opens with Discord appearing

to the sleeping treasurer, and warning him against the encroachments of

the rebellious precentor. The enlarged Rape of the Lock opens with Ariel

appearing, in a dream, to Belinda, and beseeching her to beware of some

disastrous impending event. The raillery on the foibles of women, which

is the central idea in Pope's poem, was caught up from the exquisite

pleasantry of Addison, who, in the Tatlers and Spectators, had

endeavoured to laugh the fair sex out of their levities of behaviour,

and extravagances of dress. Through his delicate humour, it had become

the popular topic in the light literature of the day.

Johnson says of the sylphs that they are "a new race of beings," and

that there is nothing "but the names of his agents which Pope has not

invented." This is an exaggeration. The names were a considerable part

of the novelty; for, in the fundamental conception, the sylphs in the

Rape of the Lock were the time-honoured fairies of English literature.

Their immediate prototypes are the elves of Shakespeare. The sprites of

Pope belong to the same family with the diminutive, joyous, ethereal

creatures which anciently crept into acorn cups, couched in the bells of

cowslips, or lived under blossoms; who sported in air, rode on the

curled clouds, and flitted with the swiftness of thought over land and

sea; who hung dew-drops on flowers, fetched jewels from the deep, shaded

sleeping eyes from moonbeams with wings plucked from painted

butterflies, and who mingled, benignly or maliciously, in all but the

graver varieties of human affairs. Pope acknowledges the ancestry of his

newly-named race when Ariel,--whose own name confesses his

parentage,--addressing his subjects, says,

Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear;

Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons hear.

The benevolent and mischievous fairies of old days were, in their turn,

little more than the good and evil angels dwarfed to suit their lighter

functions. For the precise outward aspect which Pope assigned to the

sylphs, he was beholden to Spenser, with whose works he was well

acquainted:

And all about her neck and shoulders flew

A flock of little loves, and sports, and joys,

With nimble wings of gold and purple hue,

Whose shapes seemed not like to terrestrial boys,

But like to angels playing heav'nly toys.

These are just the beings who hover round Belinda. But though Johnson's

claim for Pope is over-stated, his supernatural agents are the product

of genius. The vividness with which they are described, the novel

offices they fulfil, the poetic beauty with which they are invested,

even when engaged in employments not in their nature poetic, constitute

them a distinct variety, and they rise up before our minds like a fresh

creation, and not as the reflection of antecedent familiar forms. The

remark is true of the work throughout. What Pope borrowed he varied,

embellished, and combined in a manner which leaves the poem unique. Some

of the parts may be traced to earlier sources, but few master-pieces

have more originality in the aggregate.

"The Rape of the Lock," says De Quincey, "is the most exquisite monument

of playful fancy that universal literature offers."[320] "The Rape of

the Lock," says Hazlitt, "is the most exquisite specimen of filigree

work ever invented. It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most

glittering appearance is given to everything--to paste, pomatum,

billets-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around; the

atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilet is described with the

solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history

of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are

spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction to set

off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the

assumed gravity is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe.

The little is made great and the great little. You hardly know whether

to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of

foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic."[321] The

world of fashion is displayed in its most gorgeous and attractive hues,

and everywhere the emptiness is visible beneath the outward splendour.

The beauty of Belinda, the details of her toilet, her troops of

admirers, her progress up the Thames, the game at cards, the aerial

escort which attend upon her, are all set forth with unrivalled grace

and fascination, and all bear the impress of vanity and vexation.

Nothing can exceed the art with which the satire is blended with the

pomp, mocking without disturbing the unsubstantial gewgaw. The double

vein is kept up with sustained skill in the picture of the outward

charms and inward frivolity of women. Ariel, describing the influence of

the sylphs upon them, says, that

With varying vanities from ev'ry part,

They shift the moving toy-shop of their heart.

This is the tone throughout. Their hearts are toy-shops. They reverse

the relative importance of things, and, as Hazlitt says, the "little"

with them "is great, and the great little." The Bible is mixed up with

"files of pins, puffs, powders, patches, billets-doux." Chastity and

china, prayers and masquerades, love and jewellery are put upon a

nominal equality, but with a manifest preponderance in favour of the

china, masquerades, and jewellery. The female passion is for carriages,

dress, cards, rank, and it is an insoluble mystery that "a belle should

reject a lord." The "grave Clarissa," who rebukes the "airs and flights"

of Belinda, can offer no higher motive for intermixing solid with

trifling qualities than

That _men_ may say, when we the front-box grace,

"Behold the first in virtue as in face!"

The continuous raillery against female foibles is playful in its

poignancy. The whole wears a festive air, and has none of the ill-nature

and venom which marked Pope's later satire.

In allotting their several functions to the sylphs, Ariel reserves

Belinda's lap-dog for his own especial charge:

Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.

Dennis said it was "contrary to all manner of judgment and decorum" that

the chief of the aerial train should be "only the keeper of a vile

Iceland cur," instead of protecting "the lady's favourite lock."[322]

Ruffhead repeated the futile objection.[323] "Black omens" announced

that some misfortune would befall Belinda, but the precise calamity had

been "wrapped by the fates in night." For aught Ariel knew, the attack

might be directed against the favourite dog, which is neither "vile" nor

"a cur" in Pope's poem, and which we may do Belinda the justice to

believe was more precious in her eyes than even a favourite ringlet. She

would rather have sacrificed her lock than her dog. Dennis from

hostility, and Ruffhead from dullness, missed the meaning of the stroke.

The climax of the omens which prefigured the coming disaster was that

"Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind." The "shrieks" of the

heroine, when the catastrophe arrived, were such as "when husbands or

when lap-dogs breathe their last." A gnome bent upon mischief made

pampered lap-dogs ill, and bright eyes wept over them. The undue

fondness for dogs and parrots, to the depreciation of the higher claims

of humanity, was no uncommon failing, and Pope's design was to ridicule

it. Locks of hair did not usurp the same supreme dominion, and Ariel,

ignorant where the danger would light, is properly represented as

guarding the pet dog, which had the first place in the affections of

heartless women of fashion.

To the distempered mind of Dennis the sylphs appeared an absurd

excrescence. "They neither promote," he says, "nor retard the danger of

Belinda."[324] Johnson admits the force of the observation, and thinks

it "implies some want of art that their power has not been sufficiently

intermingled with the action." The criticism seems hasty. The sylphs

have a large share in the fascination of Belinda. Their province is to

heighten and protect her charms,--to preside at her toilet, to imprison

essences, to save the powder from too rude a gale, to steal washes from

the rainbow, to assist her blushes, and inspire her airs. They perform

these offices up to the fatal moment, and are not an incumbrance to the

narrative merely because they cannot avert the final stroke. Nay, their

impotence to stay the crisis is in keeping with the general spirit of

the poem. Belinda leads a life of vanity, and the sylphs are the

ministers of vanity. They are lustrous with a butterfly beauty, the

patrons of ephemeral folly, and it would be inconsistent with the moral

if they could have ensured a perpetual triumph to weaknesses which

inevitably terminate in mortification. Pope accounts for the failure of

the watchful legion to turn aside the catastrophe. Ariel recognises that

his power is gone when he perceives "an earthly lover lurking at

Belinda's heart,"--an intimation, perhaps, that lovers are headstrong

and incapable of guidance. Johnson asserts, and with as little reason,

that the game of cards, like the machinery, has no connection with the

subject of the poem. That subject is the exaltation of a beautiful young

lady throughout a day of glittering fashion, till the hollow pomp ends

in humiliation, anger, and tears. Whatever amusements and pageantry

entered into a day of the kind belonged directly to the theme, provided

they could be made subservient to poetic effect.

When Ariel, baffled and weeping, is compelled to resign his charge, the

gnomes rush upon the scene, and retain their ascendancy till near the

end. They are but slightly sketched, and all we hear of the appearance

they present is that they have "a dusky, melancholy" aspect, and "sooty

pinions." Their functions are the opposite to those of the sylphs,--they

give lap-dogs diseases, discompose head-dresses, raise pimples on

beauteous faces, engender pride, and spoil graces. Dennis detected a

flaw. Umbriel descends to the Cave of Spleen, and procures from the

goddess a bag filled with the impetuous, and a phial with the depressing

passions. The gnome empties the bag of "sighs, sobs, and the war of

tongues" on Belinda, who immediately "burns with more than mortal ire."

The gnome next breaks over her the phial of "fainting fears and soft

sorrows," when she exchanges her expression of rage for "eyes

half-languishing, half-drowned in tears." "Now," says Dennis, "what could

be more useless, whether we look upon the bag or the bottle?"[325]

Without any assistance from the contents of the bag the "livid

lightning had flashed from Belinda's eyes," and she had "rent the

affrighted skies with her screams of horror." Without any assistance

from the bottle she was found, on the gnome's return, sunk in the arms

of a friend, "her hair unbound, and her eyes dejected." Pope replied on

the margin of his copy of Dennis's pamphlet, that Juno in the Æneid

summons Alecto from the infernal regions to stir up Amata, who was

already burning with anger. This was no answer if the cases had been

parallel, which they were not, for Amata's anger was only a passive

irritation, and Alecto was sent to goad her into active fury. A few

words would have obviated the criticism of Dennis, but the Cave of

Spleen would still be out of place. The personifications of ill-nature,

affectation, and diseased fancies are literal descriptions of men and

women transferred from the surface of the globe to a pretended world at

its centre. Where no invention is displayed, where there is nothing to

gratify and beguile the imagination, the departure from fact is

distasteful to the mind. Instead of copying classic fables, unsuited to

modern times, Pope might have exhibited the inhabitants of his Cave of

Spleen in the midst of that society to which they belonged, and ascribed

their repulsive qualities to the instigation of the gnomes. These rather

nugatory beings would have gained in importance, and the pictures of the

peevish, the affected, and the splenetic would have gained in force and

truth.

Dennis justly found fault with particular passages, which are equally

false to social usages, and the general conception of the poem. The

exultation of Belinda at winning a game of cards takes the form of

"shouts which fill the sky," and which are echoed back from "the woods

and long canals." The impertinence of the baron in cutting off her curl

required a strong expression of indignation, but not that "the

affrighted skies should be rent with screams of horror." At the

conclusion of the battle, which in some of its incidents is a mere

vulgar brawl, Belinda again manifests her stentorian propensities by

"roaring in a louder strain than fierce Othello." There is no affinity

between Belinda gentle, graceful, and captivating, and Belinda shouting,

screaming, and roaring. Pope called his poem "heroi-comical," and it is

evident that he attached different meanings to the word. It was

"heroi-comical" to bring supernatural machinery to bear upon

common-place life, and surround the toilet and card-table with a fairy

brilliancy. It was equally "heroi-comical" to give vent to the

ebullitions of tragic or jovial frenzy on trivial occasions. The first

species of the "heroi-comical" lent a borrowed splendour to its objects;

the second species was burlesque, and reduced the heroine in her angry

moods, to the level of a coarse, plebeian termagant, and in her joyous

moments to that of an unmannerly, low-bred romp. The two species of the

"heroi-comical" could not be applied to the same person without jarring

discordance, and fortunately the burlesque and disenchanting element is

only sparingly introduced.

"The Rape of the Lock," said Dennis, "is an empty trifle, which cannot

have a moral." The Lutrin, he maintains, on the contrary, is "an

important satirical poem upon the luxury, pride, and animosities of the

_popish clergy_, and the moral is, that when christians, and especially

the _clergy_, run into great heats about _religious_ trifles, their

animosity proceeds from the want of that _religion_ which is the

pretence of their quarrel."[326] Pope erased the epithet "religious,"

and substituting "female sex" for "popish clergy," "ladies" for

"clergy," and "sense" for "religion," claimed the description for the

Rape of the Lock. Dennis quotes some lines in which Boileau, he says,

gives "broad hints of his real meaning," and Pope writes on the margin

the words, "Clarissa's speech,"--a speech which is more definite than

any of the hints in the Lutrin. In delicious verse Clarissa dwells on

the transitory power of a handsome face, insists on the superior

influence of good humour, and concludes with the couplet,--

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll!

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

The moral here summed up pervades the poem, which is a continuous satire

on a tinsel existence. The injunction to be sweet-tempered is

indignantly rejected by Belinda, for the piece was professedly founded

on a subsisting feud, but the common sense of the admonitions shames the

folly which rejects them. Dennis undertook an impossible task when he

laboured to demonstrate the superiority of Boileau. The Lutrin is

stilted, extravagant, and prosaic by the side of the Rape of the Lock.

Dennis's pamphlet against the Rape of the Lock consisted of seven

letters and a preface. Of four of these letters, Pope has written, in

his copy, sarcastic summaries, which throw no light on his poem, but

which betray by their exaggeration, his soreness at the criticisms.

Letter 1. "Proving that Boileau did not call his Lutrin, Poeme

Héroi-Comique, that Bossu does not say [anything of] the machines, and

that Butler [wrote][327] the notes to his own Hudibras." Letter 2. "Mr.

Dennis's positive word that the Rape of the Lock _can_ be nothing but a

trifle, and that the Lutrin cannot be so, however it may appear." Letter

3. "Where it appears to demonstration that no handsome lady ought to

dress herself, and no modest one to cry out or be angry." Letter 5.

"Showeth that the Rosicrucian doctrine is not the christian, and that

Callimachus and Catullus were a couple of fools." Catullus and

Callimachus are not mentioned by Dennis. He had only condemned a

passage in Pope which was imitated from these poets. In the third letter

Dennis said nothing against handsome women dressing themselves, or

against modest women crying out, but maintained that simplicity of dress

was more becoming than lavish adornments, and that "well-bred ladies,"

when joyful or angry, did not fill the skies and surrounding country

with their shoutings and roarings. In the first letter the note of some

commentator on Hudibras was ascribed by Dennis to Butler, and in the

second letter he asserted that Boileau showed more judgment in styling

the Lutrin an "heroic poem" than did Pope in terming the Rape of the

Lock "heroi-comical." Dennis was not aware that Boileau in 1709 had

replaced "héroique" by "héroi-comique," and that the English poet

borrowed the epithet from his French precursor. Pope's manuscript

annotations are not behind Dennis's text in petty cavils. The combatants

were both too angry to be candid; or if Dennis shows candour, it is in

his undisguised disregard of it. He fulminated against Pope for calling

the objects of his dislike "fool, dunce, blockhead, scoundrel."

"Nothing," he continues, "incapacitates a man so much for using foul

language as good sense, good-nature, and good-breeding; and nothing

qualifies a man more for it than his being a clown, a fool, and a

barbarian." Therefore, said he, "I shall call A. P----E neither fool nor

dunce, nor blockhead; but I shall prove that he is all these in a most

egregious manner."[328] For boasting a virtue in the act of violating it

Dennis had no competitor.

Wordsworth, writing to Mr. Dyce says, "Pope, in that production of his

boyhood, the Ode to Solitude, and in his Essay on Criticism, has

furnished proofs that at one period of his life he felt the charm of a

sober and subdued style, which he afterwards abandoned for one that is,

to my taste at least, too pointed and ambitious, and for a versification

too timidly balanced."[329] Southey and Coleridge accused Pope of

debasing the public taste, but they agreed in laying the blame on his

"meretricious" Homer, and excepted from their condemnation works which

Wordsworth included in his censure. "The mischief," says Southey, "was

effected not by Pope's satirical and moral pieces, for these entitle him

to the highest place among poets of his class; it was by his Homer. No

other work in the language so greatly vitiated the diction of English

poetry."[330] "In the course of one of my lectures," says Coleridge, "I

had occasion to point out the almost faultless position and choice of

words in Pope's original compositions, particularly in his Satires, and

Moral Essays, for the purpose of comparing them with his translation of

Homer, which I do not stand alone in regarding as the main source of our

pseudo-poetic diction."[331] Wordsworth loved simplicity of composition,

and language not ornate. His preference for the Essay on Criticism would

be intelligible if the piece had been free from adorned passages, and

the strained attempt to be pointed in some of the similes; or if the

style, in the quieter passages, had been consummate of its kind. Cowper

has described the qualities which are essential to the highest

excellence in this species of poetry. "Every man," he says, "conversant

with verse-making, knows by painful experience that the familiar style

is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak

the language of prose, without being prosaic, to marshal the words of it

in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips

of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously,

elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of

rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake."[332]

Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, did not reach Cowper's standard, and

far happier specimens of the style will be found in some of his Satires.

The Rape of the Lock greatly surpasses in execution the Essay on

Criticism; and austere, indeed, must be the taste which could condemn

it. The "position of the words" is not always "faultless," for Pope

admitted too many of his usual inversions, but the phraseology is

beautiful in itself, and exquisitely adapted to the subject. The

language, simple in its units, is rich in combination, without ever

being florid or profuse. The poet had to depict empty glories made up of

outward pageantry, and as rainbows cannot be painted with grey, so Pope

dipped his pen in the glowing colours which represented the things. He

could not have employed his radiant tints with greater delicacy and

power. Few as are the details, the scenic effect is complete. He

displayed his judgment in eschewing minuteness which would have been

tedious and prosaic; the frail, superficial show could only be imposing

in a general view. The pointed lines which offended Wordsworth, are not

more numerous than befit the theme. A certain sparkle of style accorded

best with the glitter of the world described. Dennis denounced the

"puns." He said, "they shocked the rules of true pleasantry, and bore

the same proportion to thought which bubbles held to bodies."[333] Two

or three of the double-meanings are offensive from that grossness which

is the single serious flaw in the brilliant gem. The few which remain

are legitimate in a lively poem, when thus sparingly introduced. Nor

are they common puns, but words used at once in their literal and

metaphorical sense:

Or stain her honour or her new brocade.

Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball.

He first the snuff-box opened then the case.

Johnson has pointed out that Denham's verses on the Thames, "O! could I

flow like thee," are marked by the same property, and no one would call

them punning lines.[334]

The enlarged edition of the Rape of the Lock had a rapid popularity. "It

has in four days' time," wrote Pope to Caryll, March 12, 1714, "sold to

the number of three thousand, and is already reprinted." "The sylphs and

the gnomes," says Tyers, "were the deities of the day."[335] Much of the

relish, with the herd of readers, has passed away with the novelty. "Of

the Rape of the Lock," says Professor Reed, "I acknowledge my inability

of admiration,"[336] and numbers who admire would qualify the

superlative language of De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Bowles. The

conventional elegancies of a particular class do not appeal to universal

sympathy. Many persons can enter no better into the fanciful beauty

which is thrown around routine trivialities. The facts with them are too

strong to admit of fiction. To these inaptitudes it must be added that

the subtle delicacies of humour, satire, language, and invention, which

mingle largely with the obvious beauties of the Rape of the Lock, can

only be perceived when the taste has been quickened by the early culture

of letters. De Quincey remarks that, with all orders of men, the

elementary passions and principles are easiest understood, for the seeds

of them are sown in every mind, and Milton and Shakespeare speak to

understandings which are impervious to the refined and airy graces of

Pope's artificial world.[337]

A few have gone into the opposite extreme, and placed Pope on a level

with Shakespeare and Milton themselves. His strongest claim to the

distinction is the Rape of the Lock, but wide is the interval, whether

the test is character, passions, manners, descriptions, or machinery.

The characters in Pope's poem are slight and superficial. There is a

miniature sketch of an empty-headed fop, and an outside view of a

beautiful young lady fond of dress, amusements, and admiration; the rest

of the human personages are shadows. Passions, says Bowles, are the soul

of poetry, and in poetry of the highest order they are grand, terrible,

pathetic, or lovely; the grovelling, ludicrous, and trivial passions

are of a less poetical species. The passions of Belinda belong to this

lower class. Her grief and anger at the loss of her curl are professedly

mock-heroic. They are disproportioned to the frivolous cause, and

neither kindle, nor are meant to kindle, sympathy. The manners are not

the index to inner depths,--the outward expression of the noble, the

awful, or the tender. They are an exterior varnish, the mere formalities

of fashion. The descriptions, apart from the sylphs, are chiefly of the

toilet, the card-table, and such-like things, which have no kin-ship

with the strong, abiding emotions. The very sylphs, by their

employments, are, poetically, of an inferior race to the fairies who met

on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

Or on the beached margin of the sea,

To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.[338]

The beings who luxuriate in the everlasting beauties of nature have a

deeper charm for us than creatures whose chief delight is in the little

artifices of a woman's toilet. The skill is exquisite by which the

ephemeral nothings of gay fashion are coloured with the hues of poetic

fancy, but in spite of the brilliancy they remain nothings still, and

cannot compete with strains which are struck from the profoundest chords

in the heart and mind of man. Lord Byron, to save the supremacy of Pope,

asserted that "the poet is always ranked according to his

execution."[339] Bowles maintained that the test of poetical excellence

was the subject and execution combined.[340] He admitted that the

loftiest theme in feeble hands would be eclipsed by insignificant topics

when treated by a master, but he said that no genius could render

subordinate topics equal in poetry to the highest where the execution,

as in Shakespeare and Milton, was worthy of the subject. Lord Byron

stultified himself. He had no sooner completed his proof that execution

was the sole criterion of poetry, than he went on to argue that "the

highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly

objects must be moral truth."[341] His paradox did not deserve a reply,

even if he had not contradicted it the moment it was uttered. Hume

wisely recommended that words should not be wasted upon theories which

it is inconceivable that any human being could believe.

In his Observations on the Poetry of Pope, Bowles put the modes and

incidents of artificial life, the secondary passions, and descriptions

of outward objects in a lower grade than the development of the

impressive passions.[342] What he said of manners and passions was

suppressed by Campbell, who based his reply upon his own misstatements,

and proceeded to protest against "trying Pope exclusively by his powers

of describing inanimate phenomena."[343] No one could be more emphatic

than Bowles in placing souls before things. Of "inanimate phenomena," he

had said that "all images drawn from what is beautiful or sublime in the

works of nature, are more beautiful and sublime than any images drawn

from art." Again, his antagonists misrepresented him, and arguing as

though he had asserted that all images drawn from nature were beautiful,

and that there was no beauty in any image drawn from art, they imagined

they refuted him by adducing natural objects which were unsightly, and

artificial objects which were the reverse. The canal at Venice, without

the buildings and gondolas "would be nothing," said Lord Byron, "but a

clay-coloured ditch."[344] The illustration did not touch the position

of Bowles, who had never pretended that the ugly in nature eclipsed the

beautiful in art. His principle was that, beauty for beauty, Solomon in

the richest products of the loom was not arrayed like the flowers of the

field. Campbell did not reason better than Byron. He selected the

launching of a ship of the line for an instance of the sublime.

Admitting, what nobody could deny, that his ship was poetical, it did

not follow that the wooden structure had the grandeur of the ocean. His

language was a virtual confession that it was inferior. He endowed his

"vast bulwark" with attributes borrowed from nature, human and

inanimate. He thought "of the stormy element on which the vessel was

soon to ride, of the days of battle and nights of danger she had to

encounter, of the ends of the earth which she had to visit, of all that

she had to do and suffer for her country." He found the sublimity, not

in the ship, but in the associations,--in the stormy waves of the mighty

deep which was to be her home; in the terrors of darkness when she was

tempest-driven; in the vast distances she had to traverse; in the perils

and patriotism of the crew; in the fierce heroic contention of the

battle. Campbell was self-refuted. He fell into the same error with

respect to some fragments he quoted from the poets. Images derived from

nature and art were mixed together, and he did not perceive that the

passages owed their principal beauty to the nature. The fallacies of

disputants who wrote without thinking were easily exposed, and Bowles

got a signal victory over the whole of his numerous opponents.

Many a work of man, like the ship, impresses us less by its intrinsic

qualities than by the train of ideas it suggests. Until the errors of

controversialists called for fuller explanations Bowles did not draw the

distinction, and Lord Byron was misled by overlooking it. "The

Parthenon," he said, "is more poetical than the rock on which it

stands."[345] "Not," replied Hazlitt, "because it is a work of art, but

because it is a work of art o'erthrown."[346] Prostrate and broken

columns, rent walls, and mouldering stone, exercise a more potent sway

over the feelings than temples in the freshness of their artistic

beauty. Hazlitt tells the obvious cause. Relics of departed glory,

dilapidated monuments of intellectual splendour, are mementos of the

fate which awaits the proudest works of man. With the thoughts of mighty

reverses mingle the reflections which are always engendered by

antiquity. The imagination reverts to shadowy, remote generations, to a

people and power long ago laid in dust, and the ruins have a pathos

which is the result of the centuries that have swept over them,--of the

mysteries, vicissitudes, and havoc of time. When Lord Byron asked if

there was an image in Gray's Elegy more striking than his "shapeless

sculptures," his own question might have revealed the truth to him.[347]

Whatever poetry may be embodied in the matchless art of Greece, there

can be none in the "shapeless sculptures" of country tomb-stones; but

they are memorials set up by poor cottagers to protect the bones of

kindred from insult, and the whole force of the phrase in the Elegy

arises from the prominence given to the tenderness and affection of

which "the shapeless sculptures" are the symbols. The emotion is

extrinsic to the rude, prosaic, and often ludicrous art. The same image

becomes poetical or unpoetical according to the associations with which

it is linked. The rusting, disused needles of Cowper's Mary, stricken by

paralysis, are associated, Byron says, "with the darning of stockings,

the hemming of shirts, and the mending of breeches."[348] This is the

ordinary, mechanic association, and had it been the association called

up by Cowper's lines they would not have been, what Byron pronounced

them, "eminently poetical and pathetic." The associations are of another

kind. The thousands who have shed tears over the lines to Mary did not

pay a tribute to the needles, or the uses to which the needles were

applied. They were melted by the representation--true and strong as the

living facts--of love, of decay, of desolation, and of anguish. The

different aspect of the same incident through the influence of

association is exemplified in the description of the tea in the Rape of

the Lock, and in the Task. The passage of Pope is not united to any

sentiment, and only pleases from the elegance of the verse and

language. Cowper sets the heart in a glow with the delicious picture he

presents of "fire-side enjoyments, and home-born happiness."

Out-door nature, and the imposing or beautiful passions, were not "the

haunt and main region of Pope's song," and Bowles, after saying that the

representation of nature demanded a susceptible heart, and an observing

eye, goes on to state that "the weak eyes and tottering strength" of

Pope were the reason that he seldom excelled in depicting natural

appearances. His legs would not serve him to walk nor his eyes to see,

and he was limited to the particulars which "could be gained by books,

or suggested by imagination." "From his infirmities," Bowles continues,

"he must have been chiefly conversant with artificial life, but if he

had been gifted with the same powers of observing outward nature, I have

no doubt he would have evinced as much accuracy in describing the

appropriate and peculiar beauties such as nature exhibits in the Forest

where he lived, as he was able to describe in a manner so novel, and

with colours so vivid, a game of cards."[349] The premises are

erroneous. Pope's vision was not bad; his eyes, says Warburton, were

"fine, sharp, and piercing;"[350] and though he was too feeble for long

walks, he could, and did, ramble through woods and meadows, and along

the banks of streams. Nine-tenths of the finest descriptions from nature

in the poets are of sights and sounds which were within the range of his

common experience. The decision of Bowles must be reversed, and we must

ascribe the little nature in Pope's works to his want of mental

"susceptibility," and not to physical infirmity. His love of the country

was the cursory admiration which is seldom wanting. He had none of the

exceptional enthusiasm which could lead him to revel in nature, to

scrutinise it, and enrich his mind with its memories. His strongest

sympathies and antipathies were directed to the society of his day,--to

the men who praised or abused, caressed or defied him.

The object of Bowles in setting forth his critical principles, was not

to condemn descriptions of artificial life or images taken from art, but

to single out the circumstances which render one class of poetry more

exalted than another. The bulk of Pope's works were satirical and

didactic: and the affinity to the highest species of poetry in the Rape

of the Lock, and the Epistle of Eloisa, was not so complete as to place

him on a level with the mightiest masters. Warton and Bowles united in

ranking him before Dryden and next to Milton.[351] Johnson doubtfully,

and Cowper unhesitatingly, put Dryden before him.[352] Cowper states

that he had "known persons of taste and discernment who would not allow

that Pope was a poet at all," and the language of some writers implies

that his claim to be called a poet was a serious moot-point with

critics. Johnson gravely replied to the question "whether Pope was a

poet," and Hazlitt said in 1818, that it was "a question which had

hardly yet been settled."[353] Who the sceptics were does not appear,

and it is probable that the opinion was never maintained by a single

person of reputation. Pope was placed higher by Warton and Bowles, who

were accused of depreciating, than by Johnson who defended him. Southey,

Wordsworth, and Coleridge had "an antipathy to him," according to

Byron;[354] but this was a false charge, originating in his own

antipathy to Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. They all admitted that

Pope had a brilliant poetical genius, and that many of his poems were of

extraordinary excellence. Wordsworth, the one perhaps of the three who

held him the cheapest, said he was "a man most highly gifted, who

unluckily took to the plain when the heights were within his reach."

Yet, while thinking that his poetry was not of the most poetical kind

"he committed much of him to memory," acknowledged that "he succeeded as

far as he went," and in mentioning the persons, dramatists omitted, who

were the representatives of the "poetic genius of England," he specially

named "Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope."[355] The real Pope

controversy was with the zealots who maintained that he was of the same

flight with Shakespeare and Milton. Their lofty estimate of his

comparative excellence, did not arise from their keener appreciation of

his merits; they were simply men of cold, unimaginative minds, who were

insensible to merits which were greater still.

"Pope," said Hazlitt, "had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in

poetry what the sceptic is in religion."[356] This was a creed he

sometimes avowed. "Poetry and criticism," he said in the preface to his

works, "are only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and

of idle men who read there."[357] He talked later of his "idle songs,"

but in the same breath, with characteristic inconsistency, he set up to

be the moral reformer of his age, and had undertaken a little before "to

vindicate" in verse "the ways of God to man."[358] His views of his art

are contradictory and irreconcileable. His disparagement of it was an

affectation founded upon a common definition of poetry, that its end was

to please. The premise, false from its incompleteness, led to degrading

conclusions. Hurd, who studied poetry for the purpose of analysing its

ingredients, and who should have known its true properties, adopted the

usual pleasure theory, and at thirty-seven he was naturally ashamed of

his frivolous pursuit. "He must not," he said, "pass more of his life in

these flowery regions; the light food was not the proper nourishment of

age." Verse was the amusement of youth, and unless very sparingly used,

was unbecoming the gravity of mature minds.[359] Milton had another

conception of the office of poetry, and he avowed that his purpose was

"to inbreed and cherish in a great people whatsoever in religion is holy

and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave." Wordsworth was of Milton's

school. His aim was, "to make men wiser, better, and happier." "Every

great poet," he said, "is a teacher; I wish to be considered as a

teacher or as nothing."[360] The right doctrine was enforced by a critic

whom Pope despised. "Poetry," wrote Dennis, "has two ends,--a

subordinate and a final one: the subordinate one is pleasure, and the

final one is instruction."[361] He had the sanction of Lord Bacon, who

declared that "poesy" had three uses, of which two were to inculcate

morality and heroism; the third alone was for "delectation."[362]

Aristotle long before had contended that poetry was a more effective

school of virtue than philosophy, and Horace avowed his conviction that

right and wrong were taught better by Homer than by the sages. The least

reflection upon the range of the noblest poetry must satisfy anybody

that entertainment is its smallest function. The poet has the world of

external things from which to cull his pictures. He gives definiteness

to what was vague, fixes what was transitory, detects delightful

resemblances, and brings to view unnoticed beauties. He invests the

realities with the thoughts of his impassioned mind, creating in us

sentiments, and supplying us with associations which we should not have

derived from the actual objects. Nature, in itself enchanting, has

meanings for us which were never dreamt of till we saw it through the

medium of the poet's representations. He has the world of mankind for

his province. He can take us the circuit of the passions; he can summon

them from the inner recesses of the soul, and set them in open array;

he can assign to each its rightful force, stripping corruption of its

disguises, and displaying what is lovely in its unadulterated lustre. He

can soar at pleasure into loftier regions, and when his main theme lies

in a lower sphere can link it, openly or by implication, to the world of

spirits,--to the divinity and the divine. Verse abounds in the strains

which lift the soul to heaven, or bring down heaven to glorify earth,

and sustain its weakness and woes. In a word, the poet treats of nature,

man, the superhuman, and treats of them in a way which dilates our

faculties and feelings, till through the contemplation of the ideal we

attain to a grander real. "Poesy," says Lord Bacon, "was ever thought to

have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect

the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind,

whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of

things."[363] The domain of high poetry is the sublime, the solemn, the

terrible, the pathetic, the tender, the sweet, and the tranquil; the

office of poetry is to purify, to ennoble, to humanise, to soften, to

soothe, and to delight. Poetry is great, and participates of divineness

in proportion as it employs these means, and attains these ends. The dry

unprofitable seeds which lurk in the heart, are by poetry quickened into

a resplendent growth. Through poetry, obscure vestiges of truth start

into distinctness, and flash upon the inward eye. Through poetry, the

ethereal elements of the mind, incessantly dissipated and deadened by

common concerns, are renewed in their sanctity. In the reach and

importance of the lessons no hard prosaic facts can go beyond exalted

poetry. The lesser kinds have their lesser uses, and chiefly in this

that they are often more attractive in youth than healthier

inspirations, and prepare the way for them. Wordsworth, in his boyhood,

was entranced by the false glitter of famous poems which in his manhood

seemed to him "dead as a theatre fresh emptied of spectators."[364]

Thrown aside when they had served their purpose, they were the initial

sparks which kindled a spirit that took precedence even of Milton in the

depth and compass of thoughts and feelings almost deserving the name of

revelations.

TO MRS.[365] ARABELLA FERMOR.

MADAM,

It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since

I dedicate it to you. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only

to divert a few young ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough

to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their

own. But as it was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found

its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offered to a

bookseller, you had the good-nature, for my sake, to consent to the

publication of one more correct. This I was forced to, before I had

executed half my design, for the machinery was entirely wanting to

complete it.

The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics, to signify that

part which the deities, angels, or demons, are made to act in a poem.

For the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies, let an

action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the

utmost importance. These machines I determined to raise on a very new

and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits.

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady;

but it is so much the concern of a poet to have his works understood,

and particularly by your sex, that you must give me leave to explain two

or three difficult terms.[366]

The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The

best account I know of them is in a French book, called Le Comte de

Gabalis, which both in its title and size is so like a novel, that many

of the fair sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these

gentlemen the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they call

sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes or demons of earth

delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are

the best conditioned creatures imaginable. For they say, any mortals may

enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle spirits, upon a

condition very easy to all true adepts, an inviolate preservation of

chastity.

As to the following cantos, all the passages of them are as fabulous, as

the vision at the beginning, or the transformation at the end, except

the loss of your hair, which I always mention with reverence. The human

persons are as fictitious as the airy ones; and the character of

Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but in beauty.

If this poem had as many graces as there are in your person, or in your

mind, yet I could never hope it should pass through the world half so

uncensured as you have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine

is happy enough, to have given me this occasion of assuring you that I

am, with the truest esteem,

Madam,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

A. POPE.

THE

RAPE OF THE LOCK.

CANTO I.

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things,

I sing--This verse to Caryll,[367] Muse! is due:

This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:[368]

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 5

If she inspire, and he approve my lays.[369]

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel[370]

A well-bred lord[371] t' assault a gentle belle?

O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,

Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? 10

In tasks so bold, can little men engage,

And in soft bosoms, dwells such mighty rage?[372]

Sol through white curtains shot a tim'rous[373] ray,[374]

And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day:

Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15

And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake:

Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground,[375]

And the pressed watch returned a silver sound.

Belinda still her downy pillow pressed,[376]

Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest: 20

'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed

The morning dream that hovered o'er her head,

A youth more glitt'ring than a birth-night beau,[377]

(That ev'n in slumber caused her cheek to glow)

Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, 25

And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say.

"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care

Of thousand bright inhabitants of air!

If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought,

Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught; 30

Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen,

The silver token, and the circled green,[378]

Or virgins visited by angel-pow'rs

With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs;

Hear and believe! thy own importance know, 35

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.

Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed,

To maids alone and children are revealed.

What though no credit doubting wits may give?

The fair and innocent shall still believe. 40

Know then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,

The light militia of the lower sky:

These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,

Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring.[379]

Think what an equipage thou hast in air, 45

And view with scorn two pages and a chair.

As now your own, our beings were of old,

And once inclosed in woman's beauteous mould;

Thence, by a soft transition, we repair

From earthly vehicles to these of air. 50

Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled,

That all her vanities at once are dead;[380]

Succeeding vanities she still regards,

And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.

Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, 55

And love of ombre, after death survive.[381]

For when the fair in all their pride expire,

To their first elements, their souls retire:

The sprites of fiery termagants in flame

Mount up, and take a salamander's name. 60

Soft yielding minds to water glide away,

And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea.

The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome,

In search of mischief still on earth to roam.

The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 65

And sport and flutter in the fields of air.[382]

"Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste

Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced:

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease

Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.[383] 70

What guards the purity of melting maids,

In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,

Safe from the treach'rous friend, the daring spark,

The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,

When kind occasion prompts their warm desires, 75

When music softens, and when dancing fires?

'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know,

Though honour is the word with men below.[384]

"Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,[385]

For life predestined to the gnomes' embrace. 80

These[386] swell their prospects and exalt their pride,

When offers are disdained, and love denied:

Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain,

While peers and dukes, and all their sweeping train,

And garters, stars, and coronets appear, 85

And in soft sounds 'Your Grace' salutes their ear.

'Tis these that early taint the female soul,

Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll,

Teach infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,

And little hearts to flutter at a beau. 90

"Oft, when the world imagine women stray,

The sylphs through mystic mazes guide their way,

Through all the giddy circle they pursue,

And old impertinence expel by new.

What tender maid but must a victim fall 95

To one man's treat, but for another's ball?

When Florio speaks, what virgin could withstand,

If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?

With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,

They shift the moving toyshop of their heart; 100

Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,

Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.[387]

This erring mortals levity may call;

Oh blind to truth! the sylphs contrive it all.

"Of these am I, who thy protection claim,[388] 105

A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.

Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,

In the clear mirror of thy ruling star[389]

I saw, alas! some dread event impend,

Ere to the main this morning sun descend. 110

But heaven reveals not what, or how, or where:

Warned by the sylph, oh pious maid, beware!

This to disclose is all thy guardian can:

Beware of all, but most beware of man!"

He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long, 115

Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue;

'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true,

Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux;[390]

Wounds, charms, and ardours, were no sooner read,

But all the vision vanished from thy head. 120

And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,

Each silver vase in mystic order laid.

First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,

With head uncovered, the cosmetic pow'rs.

A heav'nly image in the glass appears, 125

To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;

Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side,

Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride.

Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here

The various off'rings of the world appear;[391] 130

From each she nicely culls with curious toil,

And decks the goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.

This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,

And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.

The tortoise here and elephant unite, 135

Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.

Here files of pins extend their shining rows,

Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billets-doux.

Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;

The fair each moment rises in her charms, 140

Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,

And calls forth all the wonders of her face;

Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,

And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes

The busy sylphs surround their darling care, 145

These set the head, and those divide the hair,[392]

Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;

And Betty's praised for labours not her own.