We find by the first edition of Lintot's "Miscellaneous Poems," that
the anonymous lines "To the Author of a Poem called _Successio_," was
a literary satire by Pope, written when he had scarcely attained his
fourteenth year. This satire, the first probably he wrote for the
press, and in which he has succeeded so well, that it might have
induced him to pursue the bent of his genius, merits preservation. The
juvenile composition bears the marks of his future excellences: it has
the tune of his verse, and the images of his wit. Thirty years
afterwards, when occupied by the _Dunciad_, he transplanted and pruned
again some of the original images.
The hero of this satire is Elkanah Settle. The subject is one of those
Whig poems, designed to celebrate the happiness of an uninterrupted
"Succession" in the Crown, at the time the Act of Settlement passed,
which transferred it to the Hanoverian line. The rhymer and his theme
were equally contemptible to the juvenile Jacobite poet.
The hoarse and voluminous Codrus of Juvenal aptly designates this
eternal verse-maker;--one who has written with such constant
copiousness, that no bibliographer has presumed to form a complete
list of his works.[247]
When Settle had outlived his temporary rivalship with Dryden, and was
reduced to mere Settle, he published party-poems, in folio, composed
in Latin, accompanied by his own translations. These folio poems,
uniformly bound, except that the arms of his patrons, or rather his
purchasers, richly gilt, emblazon the black morocco, may still be
found. These presentation-copies were sent round to the chiefs of the
party, with a mendicant's petition, of which some still exist. To have
a clear conception of the _present views_ of some politicians, it is
necessary to read their history backwards. In 1702, when Settle
published "Successio," he must have been a Whig. In 1685 he was a
Tory, commemorating, by a heroic poem, the coronation of James II.,
and writing periodically against the Whigs. In 1680 he had left the
Tories for the Whigs, and conducted the whole management of burning
the Pope, then a very solemn national ceremony.[248] A Whig, a
pope-burner, and a Codrus, afforded a full draught of inspiration to
the nascent genius of our youthful satirist.
Settle, in his latter state of wretchedness, had one standard _elegy_
and _epithalamium_ printed off with _blanks_. By the ingenious
contrivance of inserting the name of any considerable person who died
or was married, no one who had gone out of the world or was entering
into it but was equally welcome to this dinnerless livery-man of the
draggled-tailed Muses. I have elsewhere noticed his last exit from
this state of poetry and of pauperism, when, leaping into a green
dragon which his own creative genius had invented, in a theatrical
booth, Codrus, in hissing flames and terrifying-morocco folds,
discovered "the fate of talents misapplied!"