[Footnote 1: The Recommendatory poems addressed to Pope are without
exception dull, insipid productions, which never rise above mediocrity,
and sometimes fall below it. Only those are reprinted here which he
himself prefixed to his works. The first seven appeared in the quarto of
1717, and the remaining two in the octavo of 1736.]
[Footnote 2: Legally speaking, of Buckingham_shire_; for he would not
take the title of Buckingham, under a fear that there was lurking
somewhere or other a claim to that title amongst the connections of the
Villiers family. He was a pompous grandee, who lived in uneasy
splendour, and, as a writer, most extravagantly overrated: accordingly,
he is now forgotten. Such was his vanity, and his ridiculous mania for
allying himself with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption
to court the Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne. Being rejected, he then
offered himself to the illegitimate daughter of James II. by the
daughter of Sir Charles Sedley. She was as ostentatious as himself, and
accepted him.--DE QUINCEY.
Pope commenced the interchange of praise with the Duke of Buckingham by
celebrating him in the Essay on Criticism. The return verses of the Duke
are little better than drivelling. His Essay on Satire and Essay on
Poetry are his principal works, but though one was retouched by Dryden
and the other by Pope, they are very second-rate performances. The Duke
died in February, 1721, aged 72.]
[Footnote 3: Anne, wife of Heneage, fifth Earl of Winchelsea, and
daughter of Sir William Kingsmill. She died on Aug. 5, 1720.--CROKER.
She wrote a tragedy called Aristomenes, or the Royal Shepherd, to which
Pope may be supposed to allude in his letter to Caryll of Dec. 15, 1713,
where he says, "I was invited to dinner to my Lady Winchelsea, and after
dinner to hear a play read, at both which I sat in great disorder with
sickness at my head and stomach." Pope omitted her rugged, bald, prosaic
verses in 1736, probably because they were intrinsically worthless, and
because the name of the author had ceased to carry any weight. In 1727
and 1732 they were printed with Pope's poems in Lintot's Miscellany, and
doubtless with the sanction of Pope himself.]
[Footnote 4: These verses, with the heading, "To my friend Mr. Pope, on
his Pastorals," originally appeared in 1709, in the same volume of
Tonson's Miscellany which contained the Pastorals themselves. In the
fifth edition of Lintot's Miscellany, 1727, and in the sixth edition,
1732, the poem of Wycherley, who was then dead, is prefixed to Pope's
pieces, and bears the title, "To Mr. Pope at sixteen years old, on
occasion of his Pastorals." This was untrue, and seems designed to
convey a false idea of Pope's precocity. The lines were not addressed to
him till he was twenty, as appears from Wycherley's letter of May 18,
1708, in which he says, "I have made a compliment in verse upon the
printing your Pastorals which you shall see when you see me." Dennis,
and others, accused Pope of being the author of the flattering tribute.
The poet appealed in refutation of the charge to Wycherley's letters,
and added that the first draught, and corrected copy of the panegyric,
which were still extant in the Harley library in Wycherley's
handwriting, would show "that if they received any alteration from Mr.
Pope it was in the omission of some of his own praises." Documents to
which nobody had access proved nothing. Mr. Croker considered that there
was strong internal evidence from the smoothness of the rhythm, the
antithetical style, and the nature of the commendation, that Pope must
have assisted in reducing the lines to their present shape. The
mannerism of both authors can be clearly traced in them. They have the
stamp of Wycherley, improved by Pope.]
[Footnote 5: If Wycherley had been capable of anything of the kind,
this, and the previous couplet, might have been written after the Essay
on Criticism, but surely could not have been inspired by a perusal of
the manuscript of the Pastorals.--CROKER.]
[Footnote 6: This line was omitted by Pope in 1736.]
[Footnote 7: From Boileau's Art of Poetry, Chant ii. v. 1.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 8: This triplet was omitted by Pope in the edition of 1736.]
[Footnote 9: Francis Knapp, of Chilton, in Berkshire, Gent. He was of
St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards demy of Magdalen
College.--CUNNINGHAM.
He graduated M.A. April 30, 1695, and as he could hardly have been an
M.A. before he was twenty-five, he would have been forty-five at the
date of these verses. There is a rhyming "Epistle to Mr. B----, by Mr.
Fr. Knapp, of Magdalen College, in Oxford," in Tonson's Fourth
Miscellany.--CROKER.
He died in, or before 1727; for in one of Lintot's advertisements of
that year he is described as the "_late_ Rev. Mr. Francis Knapp, Dean of
Killala."]
[Footnote 10: There are several lines in this copy of verses, which
could not be endured in a common magazine. So much is the public ear,
and public taste improved.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 11: The next six lines were left out by Pope in 1736.]
[Footnote 12: Hough was chosen president of Magdalen College in April,
1687, in defiance of the mandate sent by James II. to the fellows,
requiring them to elect Farmer, a profligate and a papist. The illegal
proceedings of the king in dispossessing the protestants, and filling
the college with romanists, alarmed and enraged the country, and
contributed largely to the Revolution of 1688. In May, 1690, Hough
became Bishop of Oxford. He was translated to Lichfield and Coventry in
1699, and to Worcester in 1717, where he remained till his death in May,
1743, at the age of ninety-three.]
[Footnote 13: By far the most elegant, and best turned compliment of all
addressed to our author, happily borrowed from a fine Greek epigram, and
most gracefully applied.--WARTON.
There is little merit in borrowing a compliment from the Anthology, and
the felicity of its application in the present instance may be
questioned, notwithstanding the emphatic praise of Warton. The
mythological basis of the lines, which is appropriate in the Greek,
becomes childish when adopted by an English poet, and the point of the
piece, which turns upon the assumption that Pope's translation was
vastly superior to the original, is too extravagant to be pleasing.
Fenton was a scholar, and could not have thought what he said.]
[Footnote 14: "I would add," says Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Parnell,
"that the description of barrenness in his verses to Pope was borrowed
from Secundus, but lately searching for the passage, which I had
formerly read, I could not find it." The borrowed description is the
only tolerable part of the poem, which is in a clumsy strain, unlike the
usual easy style of Parnell.]
[Footnote 15: He was only son to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, and died
in 1720.--ROSCOE.]
[Footnote 16: It was paying pitiful homage to rank to call an
indifferent versifier, like the Duke of Buckingham, "great Sheffield,"
and pretend that he was the instructor and model of Pope.]
[Footnote 17: The comparison of the three Graces, admiring the
reflection of themselves in Pope's works, to Narcissus enamoured of his
own face in the stream, is a ludicrous conceit, and the execution is on
a par with the idea.]
[Footnote 18: This paragraph refers to Pope's Temple of Fame.]
[Footnote 19: Pope's genius was not epic, and the only epic poem he
composed was his juvenile effort, Alcander, which he burnt because it
was too worthless to be preserved.]
[Footnote 20: This and the concluding verse are from the Temple of
Fame.]
[Footnote 21: These lines first appeared in 1726, in the translation of
the Odyssey, where they were appended by Broome to the final note. Pope
inserted them in the 8vo edition of his works in 1736.]
[Footnote 22: This was a compliment our author could not take much
pleasure in reading; for he could not value himself on his edition of
Shakespeare.--WARTON.]
[Footnote 23: The comparison on both sides is wanting in truth. The
superficial researches, and meagre notes of Pope did not renovate
Shakespeare, and no second Raphael has repainted the pictures of Raphael
the first. Fitness of praise was a merit which the writers of
commendatory verses commonly despised. Their study was to outvie each
other in the grossness, and insincerity of their flattery.]
[Footnote 24: Odyssey, lib. xvi.--BROOME.]
[Footnote 25: Pope inserted this tribute among the Recommendatory poems
prefixed to the 8vo edition of his works, 1736. Lyttelton was not raised
to the peerage till November, 1757, twenty-seven years after the date of
his verses.]
[Footnote 26: Warton prefers Fenton's verses, but in my opinion these
lines of Lord Lyttelton's are much superior to all the other
recommendatory verses. They are as elegant and correct in themselves, as
the sentiments they convey appear sincere, and worthy an ingenuous,
cultivated, and liberal mind. There is a small inaccuracy in one or two
expressions, and perhaps it would have been better if Virgil's speech,
which forms the conclusion, had been compressed.--BOWLES.]