"--------'tis thy skill
To strike the vice, and spare the person still;
As he who, when he saw the serpent wreath'd
About his sleeping son, and as he breathed,
Drink in his soul, did so the shot contrive,
To kill the beast, but keep the child alive."
[200] Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, published a letter in Mist's
Journal, insisting that Pope had _mistaken the whole character
of Thersites_, from ignorance of the language. I regret I have
not drawn some notes from that essay. The subject might be
made curious by a good Greek scholar, if Pope has really erred
in the degree Cooke asserts. Theobald, who seems to have been
a more classical scholar than has been allowed, besides some
versions from the Greek tragic bards, commenced a translation
of the _Odyssey_ as soon as Pope's _Iliad_ appeared.
[201] In one of these situations, Pope issued a very grave, but very
ludicrous, advertisement. They had the impudence to publish an
account of Pope having been flagellated by two gentlemen in
Ham Walks, during his evening promenade. This was avenging
Dennis for what he had undergone from the narrative of his
madness. In "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. i. p. 96, this
tingling narrative appears to have been the ingenious forgery
of Lady Mary! On this occasion, Pope thought it necessary to
publish the following advertisement in the _Daily Post_, June
14, 1728:--
"Whereas, there has been a scandalous paper cried aloud about
the streets, under the title of 'A Pop upon Pope,' insinuating
that I was whipped in Ham Walks on Thursday last:--This is to
give notice, that I did not stir out of my house at Twickenham
on that day; and the same is a malicious and ill-founded
report.--A. P."
[Spence, on the authority of Pope's half-sister, says: "When
some of the people that he had put into the _Dunciad_ were so
enraged against him, and threatened him so highly, he loved to
walk alone to Richmond, only he would take a large faithful
dog with him, and pistols in his pocket. He used to say to us
when we talked to him about it, that 'with pistols the least
man in England was above a match for the largest.'"]
It seems that Phillips hung up a birchen-rod at Button's.
Pope, in one of his letters, congratulates himself that he
never attempted to use it. [His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett,
testifies to Pope's courage; she says, "My brother never knew
what fear was."]
[202] According to the scandalous chronicle of the day, Pope, shortly
after the publication of the _Dunciad_, had a tall Irishman to
attend him. Colonel Duckett threatened to cane him, for a
licentious stroke aimed at him, which Pope recanted. Thomas
Bentley, nephew to the doctor, for the treatment his uncle had
received, sent Pope a challenge. The modern, like the ancient
Horace, was of a nature liable to panic at such critical
moments. Pope consulted some military friends, who declared
that his _person_ ought to protect him from any such
redundance of valour as was thus formally required; however,
one of them accepted the challenge for him, and gave Bentley
the option either of fighting or apologising; who, on this
occasion, proved, what is usual, that the easiest of the two
was the quickest done.
[203] I shall preserve one specimen, so classically elegant, that Pope
himself might have composed it. It is from the pen of that
Leonard Welsted whose "Aganippe" Pope has so shamefully
characterised--
"Flow, Welsted, flow, like thine inspirer, beer!"
Can the reader credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk
in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and
independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who
considered poetry only as a passing amusement? He has,
however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his
muse, some passages wrought up with equal felicity and power.
There are several original poetical views of nature scattered
in his works, which have been collected by Mr. Nichols, that
would admit of a comparison with some of established fame.
Welsted imagined that the spirit of English poetry was on its
decline in the age of Pope, and allegorises the state of our
poetry in a most ingenious comparison. The picture is
exquisitely wrought, like an ancient gem: one might imagine
Anacreon was turned critic:--
"A flask I rear'd whose sluice began to fail,
And told, from Phaerus, this facetious tale:--
Sabina, very old and very dry,
Chanced, on a time, an EMPTY FLASK to spy:
The flask but lately had been thrown aside,
With the rich grape of Tuscan vineyards dyed;
But lately, gushing from the slender spout,
Its life, in purple streams, had issued out.
_The costly flavour still to sense remain'd_,
And still its sides the violet colour stain'd:
A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile;
Pleased, she imbibes the generous fumes awhile,
Then, downwards turn'd, the vessel gently props,
And drains with patient care the lucid drops:
O balmy spirit of Etruria's vine!
O fragrant flask, she said, too lately mine!
_If such delights, THOUGH EMPTY, thou canst yield_,
What wondrous raptures hadst thou given if filled!"
_Paloemon to Coelia at Bath, or the Triumvirate._
"The empty flask" only retaining "the costly flavour," was the
verse of Pope.
[204] Pope was made to appear as ridiculous as possible, and often
nicknamed "Poet Pug," from the frontispiece to an attack in
reply to his own, termed "Pope Alexander's Supremacy and
Infallibility examined." It represents Pope as a misshapen
monkey leaning on a pile of books, in the attitude adopted by
Jervas in his portrait of the poet.--ED.
[205] Dennis tells the whole story. "At his first coming to town he
was importunate with Mr. Cromwell to introduce him to me. The
recommendation engaged me to be about thrice in company with
him; after which I went to the country, till I found myself
most insolently attacked in his very superficial 'Essay on
Criticism,' by which he endeavoured to destroy the reputation
of a man who had published pieces of criticism, and to set up
his own. I was moved with indignation to that degree, that I
immediately writ remarks on that essay. I also writ upon part
of his translation of 'Homer,' his 'Windsor Forest,' and his
infamous 'Temple of Fame.'" In the same pamphlet he
says:--"Pope writ his 'Windsor Forest' in envy of Sir John
Denham's 'Cooper's Hill;' his infamous 'Temple of Fame' in
envy of Chaucer's poem upon the same subject; his 'Ode on St.
Cecilia's Day,' in envy of Dryden's 'Feast of Alexander.'" In
reproaching Pope with his peculiar rhythm, that monotonous
excellence, which soon became mechanical, he has an odd
attempt at a pun:--"Boileau's Pegasus has all his paces; the
Pegasus of Pope, like a _Kentish post-horse_, is always upon
the _Canterbury_."--"Remarks upon several Passages in the
Preliminaries to the _Dunciad_," 1729.
[206] Two parties arose in the literary republic, the _Theobaldians_
and the _Popeians_. The "Grub-street Journal," a kind of
literary gazette of some campaigns of the time, records the
skirmishes with tolerable neutrality, though with a strong
leaning in favour of the prevailing genius.
The _Popeians_ did not always do honour to their great leader;
and the _Theobaldians_ proved themselves, at times, worthy of
being engaged, had fate so ordered it, in the army of their
renowned enemy. When Young published his "Two Epistles to
Pope, on the Authors of the Age," there appeared "One Epistle
to Mr. A. Pope, in Answer to two of Dr. Young's." On this, a
Popeian defends his master from some extravagant accusations
in "The Grub-street Memoirs." He insists, as his first
principle, that all accusations against a man's character
without an attestor are presumed to be slanders and lies, and
in this case every gentleman, though "Knight of the Bathos,"
is merely a liar and scoundrel.
"You assure us he is not only a bad poet, but a stealer from
bad poets: if so, you have just cause to complain of invasion
of property. You assure us he is not even a versifier, but
steals the _sound_ of his verses; now, to _steal a sound_ is
as ingenious as to _paint an echo_. You cannot bear
_gentlemen_ should be treated as vermin and reptiles; now, to
be impartial, you were compared to _flying-fishes_,
_didappers_, _tortoises_, and _parrots_, &c., not vermin, but
curious and beautiful creatures"--alluding to the abuse, in
this "Epistle," on such authors as Atterbury, Arbuthnot,
Swift, the Duke of Buckingham, &c. The Popeian concludes:--
"After all, _your poem_, to comfort you, is more innocent than
the _Dunciad_; for in the one there's no man abused but is
very well pleased to be abused in such company; whereas in the
other there's no man so much as named, but is extremely
affronted to be ranked with such people as style each other
the _dullest of men_."
The publication of the _Dunciad_, however, drove the
_Theobaldians_ out of the field. Guerillas, such as the "One
Epistle," sometimes appeared, but their heroes struck and
skulked away. A _Theobaldian_, in an epigram, compared the
_Dunciad_ of Pope to the offspring of the celebrated Pope
Joan. The neatness of his wit is hardly blunted by a pun. He
who talks of Pope's "stealing a sound," seems to have
practised that invisible art himself, for the verse is musical
as Pope's.