[Footnote 1: Johnson was mistaken. Pope states in a note that the
addition commenced at ver. 291.]
[Footnote 2:
When actions, unadorned, are faint and weak,
Cities and countries must be taught to speak;
Gods may descend in factions from the skies,
And rivers from their oozy beds arise.]
[Footnote 3: "Denham," says Johnson, "seems to have been, at least among
us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated
_local poetry_, of which the fundamental subject is some particular
landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such
embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or
incidental meditation."]
[Footnote 4: Critics differ. "Nothing," says Warton, "can be colder and
more prosaic than the manner in which Denham has spoken of the distant
prospect of London and St. Paul's."]
[Footnote 5: Singer's Spence, p. 153.]
[Footnote 6: Autobiography of Mrs. Delany, vol. i. p. 20, 82.]
[Footnote 7: Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 307.]
[Footnote 8: Memoires, Col. Michaud, 3rd Series, tom. viii. p. 731;
Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 315, Philadelphia, 1841.]
[Footnote 9: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. ii. p. 315, 317, 320. "The sole
question," says Bolingbroke, "is, who caused this disunion?--and that
will be easily decided by every impartial man, who informs himself
carefully of the public anecdotes of that time. If the private anecdotes
were to be laid open as well as those, and I think it almost time they
should, the whole monstrous scene would appear, and shock the eye of
every honest man." The prediction has been fulfilled, and the vaunting
prophet consigned to infamy through the evidence he invoked.]
[Footnote 10: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. i. p. 123.]
[Footnote 11: Bolingbroke's Works, vol. i. p. 124.]
[Footnote 12: Gibber's Apology, 4th ed. vol. ii. p. 11.]
[Footnote 13: Warburton's Pope, ed. 1760, vol. iv. p. 172; Spence, p.
148.]
[Footnote 14: Hurd's Addison, vol. i. p. 299.]
[Footnote 15: Pope related, perhaps truly, that Addison objected to the
phrase "Britons _arise_!" in the Prologue to Cato, and said, "it would
be called stirring the people to rebellion." Warburton holds this
incident to be a proof that Addison "was exceedingly afraid of party
imputations throughout the carriage of the whole affair," as if, because
he did not wish to be considered an instigator to rebellion, it followed
that he shrunk from seeming an advocate for whig principles.]
[Footnote 16: Pope to Caryll, April 30, 1713.]
[Footnote 17: Scott's Life of Swift, p. 139.]
[Footnote 18: Pope to Caryll, May 1, 1714.]
[Footnote 19: Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 29.]
[Footnote 20: Spectator, No. 523.]
[Footnote 21: Pope to Caryll, Nov. 29, 1712.]
[Footnote 22: Spectator, No. 523, Oct. 30, 1712.]
[Footnote 23: Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1836, vol. iii. p. 316.]
[Footnote 24: Epilogue to the Satires; Dialog. 2, ver. 182.]
[Footnote 25: Essay on Criticism, ver. 418.]
[Footnote 26: Pope to Lord Lansdowne, Jan. 10, 1712 [13].]
[Footnote 27: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 75.]
[Footnote 28: Oldham's Elegies.]
[Footnote 29: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 213.]
[Footnote 30: A Version of the Psalms: Preface.]
[Footnote 31: Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 27; Pepys's Diary, 4th ed.,
vol. iii. p. 219.]
[Footnote 32: Account of the Life of Cowley, prefixed to his works, ed.
1688]
[Footnote 33: Wordsworth's Works, vol. iii. p. 333.]
[Footnote 34: Prior's Preface to Solomon.]
[Footnote 35: Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 77.]
[Footnote 36: Dryden maintains, in his Dedication to the AEneis, that the
triplet, conjoined with the Alexandrine, is "the _magna charta_ of
heroic poetry." "Besides," he says, "the majesty which it gives, it
confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would
languish if it were lengthened into four." Johnson, while granting that
the variety arising from triplets was desirable, wished that there
should "be some stated mode of admitting them," in order to prevent
their coming upon the reader by surprise, and to keep up the constancy
of metrical laws. Such a rule would introduce a new species of monotony,
and do away with the benefit which principally recommended triplets to
Dryden. Ideas which were not enough for four lines, and over-much for
two, would not recur at stages fixed beforehand. Swift thought triplets
and Alexandrines "a corruption," and boasted that he had "banished them"
by a triplet in his City Shower. "I absolutely," he adds, "did prevail
with Mr. Pope, and Gay, and Dr. Young, and one or two more to reject
them. Mr. Pope never used them till he translated Homer, which was too
long a work to be so very exact in; and I think in one or two of his
last poems he has, out of laziness, done the same thing, though very
seldom." Swift was mistaken in his assertion that Pope never used
triplets till he translated the Iliad. They occur in the Essay on
Criticism, the Temple of Fame, and other pieces, and not only did these
works appear before the Homer, but they appeared after the triplet in
the City Shower, which Swift flattered himself had banished all triplets
from poetry. Nor had he any need to persuade Young and Gay to reject
them if they had been exploded by his triplet of 1710, for it was two or
three years later before either Young or Gray printed their first
rhymes. They contained, however, triplets in spite of his City Shower,
which had none of the effect he imagined. It merely proved, what no one
doubted, that a metre proper to serious subjects was ludicrous in a
burlesque. Swift's dislike to triplets and Alexandrines was a prejudice,
and he did not pretend to offer any reason for his decree.]