_Boileau_.--Mr. Pope, you have done me great honour. I am told that you
made me your model in poetry, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths
which I had trod.
_Pope_.--We both followed Horace, but in our manner of imitation, and in
the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance.
We both were too irritable and too easily hurt by offences, even from the
lowest of men. The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against
those whom it was more a shame to contend with than an honour to
vanquish.
_Boileau_.--Yes. But in general we were the champions of good morals,
good sense, and good learning. If our love of these was sometimes heated
into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger
to be blamed?
_Pope_.--It would have been nobler if we had not been parties in the
quarrel. Our enemies observe that neither our censure nor our praise was
always impartial.
_Boileau_.--It might perhaps have been better if in some instances we had
not praised or blamed so much. But in panegyric and satire moderation is
insipid.
_Pope_.--Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue. Mere historical truth
is better written in prose. And, therefore, I think you did judiciously
when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted
his fame to your poems.
_Boileau_.--When those poems were published that monarch was the idol of
the French nation. If you and I had not known, in our occasional
compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober
reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in
the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe
of poets in England and France. Besides, sharp satirists want great
patrons.
_Pope_.--All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought.
In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau.
_Boileau_.--A pension in France was an honourable distinction. Had you
been a Frenchman you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an
Englishman I should have proudly declined it. If our merit in other
respects be not unequal, this difference will not set me much below you
in the temple of virtue or of fame.
_Pope_.--It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works. But,
if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject,
my "Rape of the Lock" is not inferior to your "Lutrin;" and my "Art of
Criticism" may well be compared with your "Art of Poetry;" my "Ethic
Epistles" are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my "Satires" much
better.
_Boileau_.--Hold, Mr. Pope. If there is really such a sympathy in our
natures as you have supposed, there may be reason to fear that, if we go
on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good
friendship.
_Pope_.--No, no; the mild air of the Elysian Fields has mitigated my
temper, as I presume it has yours. But, in truth, our reputations are
nearly on a level. Our writings are admired, almost equally (as I hear)
for energy and justness of thought. We both of us carried the beauty of
our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection
that our languages would admit. Our poems were polished to the utmost
degree of correctness, yet without losing their fire, or the agreeable
appearance of freedom and ease. We borrowed much from the ancients,
though you, I believe, more than I; but our imitations (to use an
expression of your own) had still an original air.
_Boileau_.--I will confess, sir (to show you that the Elysian climate has
had its effects upon me), I will fairly confess, without the least ill
humour, that in your "Eloisa to Abelard," your "Verses to the Memory of
an Unfortunate Lady," and some others you wrote in your youth, there is
more fire of poetry than in any of mine. You excelled in the pathetic,
which I never approached. I will also allow that you hit the manner of
Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any
other man who has written since his time. Nor could I, nor did even
Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with
such charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more
properly) of some of his modern disciples, in your celebrated "Essay on
Man."
_Pope_.--What do you think of my "Homer?"
_Boileau_.--Your "Homer" is the most spirited, the most poetical, the
most elegant, and the most pleasing translation that ever was made of any
ancient poem, though not so much in the manner of the original, or so
exactly agreeable to the sense in all places, as might perhaps be
desired. But when I consider the years you spent in this work, and how
many excellent original poems you might, with less difficulty, have
produced in that time, I can't but regret that your talents were thus
employed. A great poet so tied down to a tedious translation is a
Columbus chained to an oar. What new regions of fancy, full of treasures
yet untouched, might you have explored, if you had been at liberty to
have boldly expanded your sails, and steered your own course, under the
conduct and direction of your own genius! But I am still more angry with
you for your edition of Shakespeare. The office of an editor was below
you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires. Would anybody
think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture?
_Pope_.--The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the
honour of Shakespeare; and, if you knew all his beauties as well as I,
you would not wonder at this zeal. No other author had ever so copious,
so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the
passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind. He painted all
characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal
force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it
except his works, other beings might know what man was from those
writings.
_Boileau_.--You say he painted all characters, from kings down to
peasants, with equal truth and equal force. I can't deny that he did so;
but I wish he had not jumbled those characters together in the
composition of his pictures as he has frequently done.
_Pope_.--The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same
play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite
inexcusable. But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote.
_Boileau_.--A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the
taste of his contemporaries.
_Pope_.--Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of
Shakespeare broke forth! What were the English, and what, let me ask
you, were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he nourished?
The advances he made towards the highest perfection, both of tragedy and
comedy, are amazing! In the principal points, in the power of exciting
terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has
excelled him, and very few have equalled.
_Boileau_.--Do you think that he was equal in comedy to Moliere?
_Pope_.--In comic force I do; but in the fine and delicate strokes of
satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to
that admirable writer. There is nothing in him to compare with the
_Misanthrope_, the _Ecole des Femmes_, or _Tartuffe_.
_Boileau_.--This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to
acknowledge. A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your
national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are
fanatics.
_Pope_.--He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the
accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste.
_Boileau_.--I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius,
though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays--absurdities
which no critic of my nation can pardon.
_Pope_.--We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his
beauties. But you would admire him still more if you could see the chief
characters in all his test tragedies represented by an actor who appeared
on the stage a little before I left the world. He has shown the English
nation more excellencies in Shakespeare than the quickest wits could
discern, and has imprinted them on the heart with a livelier feeling than
the most sensible natures had ever experienced without his help.
_Boileau_.--The variety, spirit, and force of Mr. Garrick's action have
been much praised to me by many of his countrymen, whose shades I
converse with, and who agree in speaking of him as we do of Baron, our
most natural and most admired actor. I have also heard of another, who
has now quitted the stage, but who had filled, with great dignity, force,
and elevation, some tragic parts, and excelled so much in the comic, that
none ever has deserved a higher applause.
_Pope_.--Mr. Quin was, indeed, a most perfect comedian. In the part of
Falstaff particularly, wherein the utmost force of Shakespeare's humour
appears, he attained to such perfection that he was not an actor; he was
the man described by Shakespeare; he was Falstaff himself! When I saw
him do it the pleasantry of the fat knight appeared to me so bewitching,
all his vices were so mirthful, that I could not much wonder at his
having seduced a young prince even to rob in his company.
_Boileau_.--That character is not well understood by the French; they
suppose it belongs, not to comedy, but to farce, whereas the English see
in it the finest and highest strokes of wit and humour. Perhaps these
different judgments may be accounted for in some measure by the diversity
of manners in different countries. But don't you allow, Mr. Pope, that
our writers, both of tragedy and comedy, are, upon the whole, more
perfect masters of their art than yours? If you deny it, I will appeal
to the Athenians, the only judges qualified to decide the dispute. I
will refer it to Euripides, Sophocles, and Menander.
_Pope_.--I am afraid of those judges, for I see them continually walking
hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with
Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. Our dramatic writers seem, in general,
not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and
give themselves airs of superiority. They slight their reprimands, and
laugh at their precepts--in short, they will be tried by their country
alone; and that judicature is partial.
_Boileau_.--I will press this question no further. But let me ask you to
which of our rival tragedians, Racine and Corneille, do you give the
preference?
_Pope_.--The sublimest plays of Corneille are, in my judgment, equalled
by the _Athalia_ of Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched
by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand. I need
not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more
harmonious and noble in his versification. Corneille formed himself
entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil. How much
better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing his model!
_Boileau_.--My friendship with Racine, and my partiality for his
writings, make me hear with great pleasure the preference given to him
above Corneille by so judicious a critic.
_Pope_.--That he excelled his competitor in the particulars I have
mentioned, can't, I think, be denied. But yet the spirit and the majesty
of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has
any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works,
shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the
swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings
and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the
eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears
not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the
lightning of the god.
_Boileau_.--I am glad to find, Mr. Pope, that in praising Corneille you
run into poetry, which is not the language of sober criticism, though
sometimes used by Longinus.
_Pope_.--I caught the fire from the idea of Corneille.
_Boileau_.--He has bright flashes, yet I think that in his thunder there
is often more noise than fire. Don't you find him too declamatory, too
turgid, too unnatural, even in his best tragedies?
_Pope_.--I own I do; yet the greatness and elevation of his sentiments,
and the nervous vigour of his sense, atone, in my opinion, for all his
faults. But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic
poet, Milton.
_Boileau_.--Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for
he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require
variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and
judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant
fictions, would place him far below Virgil.
_Pope_.--His genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his poem seems
beyond the limits of criticism, as his subject is beyond the limits of
nature. The bright and excessive blaze of poetical fire, which shines in
so many parts of the "Paradise Lost," will hardly permit the dazzled eye
to see its faults.
_Boileau_.--The taste of your countrymen is much changed since the days
of Charles II., when Dryden was thought a greater poet than Milton!
_Pope_.--The politics of Milton at that time brought his poetry into
disgrace, for it is a rule with the English, they see no good in a man
whose politics they dislike; but, as their notions of government are apt
to change, men of parts whom they have slighted become their favourite
authors, and others who have possessed their warmest admiration are in
their turn undervalued. This revolution of favour was experienced by
Dryden as well as Milton; he lived to see his writings, together with his
politics, quite out of fashion. But even in the days of his highest
prosperity, when the generality of the people admired his _Almanzor_, and
thought his _Indian Emperor_ the perfection of tragedy, the Duke of
Buckingham and Lord Rochester, the two wittiest noblemen our country has
produced, attacked his fame, and turned the rants of his heroes, the
jargon of his spirits, and the absurdity of his plots into just ridicule.
_Boileau_.--You have made him good amends by the praise you have given
him in some of your writings.
_Pope_.--I owed him that praise as my master in the art of versification,
yet I subscribe to the censures which have been passed by other writers
on many of his works. They are good critics, but he is still a great
poet. You, sir, I am sure, must particularly admire him as an excellent
satirist; his "Absalom and Achitophel" is a masterpiece in that way of
writing, and his "Mac Flecno" is, I think, inferior to it in nothing but
the meanness of the subject.
_Boileau_.--Did not you take the model of your "Dunciad" from the latter
of those very ingenious satires?
_Pope_.--I did; but my work is more extensive than his, and my
imagination has taken in it a greater scope.
_Boileau_.--Some critics may doubt whether the length of your poem was so
properly suited to the meanness of the subject as the brevity of his.
Three cantos to expose a dunce crowned with laurel! I have not given
above three lines to the author of the "Pucelle."
_Pope_.--My intention was to expose, not one author alone, but all the
dulness and false taste of the English nation in my times. Could such a
design be contracted into a narrower compass?
_Boileau_.--We will not dispute on this point, nor whether the hero of
your "Dunciad" was really a dunce. But has not Dryden been accused of
immorality and profaneness in some of his writings?
_Pope_.--He has, with too much reason: and I am sorry to say that all our
best comic writers after Shakespeare and Johnson, except Addison and
Steele, are as liable as he to that heavy charge. Fletcher is shocking.
Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar have painted the
manners of the times in which they wrote with a masterly hand; but they
are too often such manners that a virtuous man, and much more a virtuous
woman, must be greatly offended at the representation.
_Boileau_.--In this respect our stage is far preferable to yours. It is
a school of morality. Vice is exposed to contempt and to hatred. No
false colours are laid on to conceal its deformity, but those with which
it paints itself are there taken off.
_Pope_.--It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be
the gravest lady in the nation. Of late she is so grave, that one might
almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene. Moliere made her indeed a
good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with
a merry, laughing face. Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to
mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights.
_Boileau_.--Her business is more with folly than with vice, and when she
attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But
sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual
smile into a frown of just indignation.
_Pope_.--I like her best when she smiles. But did you never reprove your
witty friend, La Fontaine, for the vicious levity that appears in many of
his tales? He was as guilty of the crime of debauching the Muses as any
of our comic poets.
_Boileau_.--I own he was, and bewail the prostitution of his genius, as I
should that of an innocent and beautiful country girl. He was all
nature, all simplicity! yet in that simplicity there was a grace, and
unaffected vivacity, with a justness of thought and easy elegance of
expression that can hardly be found in any other writer. His manner is
quite original, and peculiar to himself, though all the matter of his
writings is borrowed from others.
_Pope_.--In that manner he has been imitated by my friend Mr. Prior.
_Boileau_.--He has, very successfully. Some of Prior's tales have the
spirit of La Fontaine's with more judgment, but not, I think, with such
an amiable and graceful simplicity.
_Pope_.--Prior's harp had more strings than La Fontaine's. He was a fine
poet in many different ways: La Fontaine but in one. And, though in some
of his tales he imitated that author, his "Alma" was an original, and of
singular beauty.
_Boileau_.--There is a writer of heroic poetry, who lived before Milton,
and whom some of your countrymen place in the highest class of your
poets, though he is little known in France. I see him sometimes in
company with Homer and Virgil, but oftener with Tasso, Ariosto, and
Dante.
_Pope_.--I understand you mean Spenser. There is a force and beauty in
some of his images and descriptions, equal to any in those writers you
have seen him converse with. But he had not the art of properly shading
his pictures. He brings the minute and disagreeable parts too much into
sight; and mingles too frequently vulgar and mean ideas with noble and
sublime. Had he chosen a subject proper for epic poetry, he seems to
have had a sufficient elevation and strength in his genius to make him a
great epic poet: but the allegory, which is continued throughout the
whole work, fatigues the mind, and cannot interest the heart so much as
those poems, the chief actors in which are supposed to have really
existed. The Syrens and Circe in the "Odyssey" are allegorical persons;
but Ulysses, the hero of the poem, was a man renowned in Greece, which
makes the account of his adventures affecting and delightful. To be now
and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and
helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be
always there is irksome.
_Boileau_.--Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the
Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem?
_Pope_.--Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and
with Camoens.
_Boileau_.--Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom
I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem
resembling the "Georgics"? On his head was a garland of the several
kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed.
_Pope_.--Your description points out Thomson. He painted nature exactly,
and with great strength of pencil. His imagination was rich, extensive,
and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and
affected. Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject.
_Boileau_.--I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek
model. For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides.
_Pope_.--He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a
moralist. For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is
the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the
fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart.
_Boileau_.--St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller. I was
surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the
French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs. His genius was a
composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the
agreeable. In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of
Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is a _finesse_
and delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never
exceeded. Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly
the ladies they admired. But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on
the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and
greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first
class.
_Pope_.--Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer. His Muse was
as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he
could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful
wreaths. But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably
mixed with the elegant and the noble, like schoolboys or a mob admitted
into a palace. There was also an intemperance and a luxuriancy in his
wit which he did not enough restrain. He wrote little to the
understanding, and less to the heart; but he frequently delights the
imagination, and sometimes strikes it with flashes of the highest
sublime. We had another poet of the age of Charles I., extremely admired
by all his contemporaries, in whose works there is still more affectation
of wit, a greater redundancy of imagination, a worse taste, and less
judgment; but he touched the heart more, and had finer feelings than
Waller. I mean Cowley.
_Boileau_.--I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his
learned friend, Dr. Spratt. He seems to me a great wit, and a very
amiable man, but not a good poet.
_Pope_.--The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the
art of poetry he is always extremely deficient.
_Boileau_.--I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the
opinion of the English. Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate
portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of
their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse,
without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one
enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and
do them more service than all the rules laid down in my "Art of Poetry"
and yours of "Criticism."
_Pope_.--I am much of your mind. But I left in England some poets whom
you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of
style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings.
_Boileau_.--France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since
the time of my death. Of one particularly I hear wonders. Fame to him
is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years. She brings his
praises to me from all parts of Europe. You know I speak of Voltaire.
_Pope_.--I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his
extensive genius. Other writers excel in some one particular branch of
wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to
Berlin, he had a whole academy of _belles lettres_ in him alone.
_Boileau_.--That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other
monarch in any age or country has ever possessed. What an astonishing
compass must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and
firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or
epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle
with the conduct of Caesar or Gustavus Adolphus!
_Pope_.--I envy Voltaire so noble a subject both for his verse and his
prose. But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want
no historian. I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his
pen, as Caesar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see
the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well
as the warrior, in that picture of himself. Voltaire has shown us that
the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of
good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human
society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there.
_Boileau_.--The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes
that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy
of a leader's attention than the revolutions of fortune. And it is
chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history.
_Pope_.--He has not only been the father of it among the moderns, but has
carried it himself to its utmost perfection.
_Boileau_.--Is he not too universal? Can any writer be exact who is so
comprehensive?
_Pope_.--A traveller round the world cannot inspect every region with
such an accurate care as exactly to describe each single part. If the
outlines are well marked, and the observations on the principal points
are judicious, it is all that can be required.
_Boileau_.--I would, however, advise and exhort the French and English
youth to take a fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to
remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is
a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide. To speak without a
metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a
critical and laborious investigation. The composer of a set of lively
and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, is not
an historian.
_Pope_.--We cannot, I think, deny that name to the author of the "Life of
Charles XII., King of Sweden."
_Boileau_.--No, certainly. I esteem it the very best history that this
age has produced. As full of spirit as the hero whose actions it
relates, it is nevertheless most exact in all matters of importance. The
style of it is elegant, perspicuous, unaffected; the disposition and
method are excellent; the judgments given by the writer acute and just.
_Pope_.--Are you not pleased with that philosophical freedom of thought
which discovers itself in all the works of Voltaire, but more
particularly in those of an historical nature?
_Boileau_.--If it were properly regulated, I should reckon it among their
highest perfections. Superstition, and bigotry, and party spirit are as
great enemies to the truth and candour of history as malice or adulation.
To think freely is therefore a most necessary quality in a perfect
historian. But all liberty has its bounds, which, in some of his
writings, Voltaire, I fear, has not observed. Would to Heaven he would
reflect, while it is yet in his power to correct what is faulty, that all
his works will outlive him; that many nations will read them; and that
the judgment pronounced here upon the writer himself will be according to
the scope and tendency of them, and to the extent of their good or evil
effects on the great society of mankind.
_Pope_.--It would be well for all Europe if some other wits of your
country, who give the tone to this age in all polite literature, had the
same serious thoughts you recommend to Voltaire. Witty writings, when
directed to serve the good ends of virtue and religion, are like the
lights hung out in a _pharos_, to guide the mariners safe through
dangerous seas; but the brightness of those that are impious or immoral
shines only to betray and lead men to destruction.
_Boileau_.--Has England been free from all seductions of this nature?
_Pope_.--No. But the French have the art of rendering vice and impiety
more agreeable than the English.
_Boileau_.--I am not very proud of this superiority in the talents of my
countrymen. But as I am told that the good sense of the English is now
admired in France, I hope it will soon convince both nations that true
wisdom is virtue, and true virtue is religion.
_Pope_.--I think it also to be wished that a taste for the frivolous may
not continue too prevalent among the French. There is a great difference
between gathering flowers at the foot of Parnassus and ascending the
arduous heights of the mountain. The palms and laurels grow there, and
if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer
enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling. I
would have them be perpetual competitors with the English in manly wit
and substantial learning. But let the competition be friendly. There is
nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy. True
wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it
is found.