Learn, then, what morals critics ought to show,
For 'tis but half a judge's task to know.
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candor shine:
That not alone what to your sense is due
All may allow, but seek your friendship too.
Be silent always, when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:
Some positive persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong will needs be always so;
But you, with pleasure, own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last.
'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Without good breeding truth is disapproved;
That only makes superior sense beloved.
Be niggards of advice on no pretense;
For the worst avarice is that of sense
With mean complacence, ne'er betray your trust,
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise,
Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak, [585]
And stares, tremendous with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry
Fear most to tax an honorable fool
Whose right it is uncensured to be dull
Such, without wit are poets when they please,
As without learning they can take degrees
Leave dangerous truths to unsuccessful satires,
And flattery to fulsome dedicators
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.
'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,
And charitably let the dull be vain
Your silence there is better than your spite,
For who can rail so long as they can write?
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lashed so long like tops are lashed asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Even to the dregs and squeezing of the brain;
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence!
Such shameless bards we have, and yet, 'tis true,
There are as mad abandoned critics, too
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always listening to himself appears
All books he reads and all he reads assails
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales [617]
With him most authors steal their works or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary [619]
Name a new play, and he's the poets friend
Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard: [623]
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead,
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And, never shocked, and never turned aside.
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide,
But where's the man who counsel can bestow,
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiased, or by favor, or in spite,
Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;
Though learned, well-bred, and though well bred, sincere,
Modestly bold, and humanly severe,
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?
Blessed with a taste exact, yet unconfined;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Generous converse, a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?
Such once were critics such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagirite first left the shore, [645]
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;
He steered securely, and discovered far,
Led by the light of the Maeonian star. [648]
Poets, a race long unconfined and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty,
Received his laws, and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit. [652]
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense;
Will like a friend familiarly convey
The truest notions in the easiest way.
He who supreme in judgment as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judged with coolness though he sung with fire;
His precepts teach but what his works inspire
Our critics take a contrary extreme
They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits than critics in as wrong quotations.
See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine, [665]
And call new beauties forth from every line!
Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, [667]
The scholar's learning with the courtier's ease.
In grave Quintilian's copious work we find [669]
The justest rules and clearest method joined:
Thus useful arms in magazines we place,
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,
But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,
Still fit for use, and ready at command.
Thee bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire, [675]
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:
Whose own example strengthens all his laws;
And is himself that great sublime he draws.
Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,
License repressed, and useful laws ordained.
Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;
And arts still followed where her eagles flew,
From the same foes at last, both felt their doom,
And the same age saw learning fall, and Rome. [686]
With tyranny then superstition joined
As that the body, this enslaved the mind;
Much was believed but little understood,
And to be dull was construed to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o'errun,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun. [692]
At length Erasmus, that great injured name [693]
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage. [696]
But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days, [697]
Starts from her trance and trims her withered bays,
Rome's ancient genius o'er its ruins spread
Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverent head
Then sculpture and her sister arts revive,
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung,
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung [704]
Immortal Vida! on whose honored brow
The poets bays and critic's ivy grow
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!
But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banished muses passed.
Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,
But critic-learning flourished most in France,
The rules a nation born to serve, obeys;
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways [714]
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquered and uncivilized,
Fierce for the liberties of wit and bold,
We still defied the Romans as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presumed and better knew,
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restored wit's fundamental laws.
Such was the muse, whose rule and practice tell
"Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."
Such was Roscommon, not more learned than good,
With manners generous as his noble blood,
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And every author's merit, but his own
Such late was Walsh--the muse's judge and friend,
Who justly knew to blame or to commend,
To failings mild, but zealous for desert,
The clearest head, and the sincerest heart,
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,
This praise at least a grateful muse may give.
The muse whose early voice you taught to sing
Prescribed her heights and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries,
Content if hence the unlearned their wants may view,
The learned reflect on what before they knew
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame,
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame,
Averse alike to flatter, or offend,
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.
* * * * *
LINE NOTES
[Line 17: Wit is used in the poem in a great variety of
meanings (1) Here it seems to mean _genius_ or _fancy_,
(2) in line 36 _a man of fancy_, (3) in line 53 _the
understanding_ or _powers of the mind_, (4) in line 81 it
means _judgment_.]
[Line 26: Schools--Different systems of doctrine or
philosophy as taught by particular teachers.]
[Line 34: Maevius--An insignificant poet of the Augustan age,
ridiculed by Virgil in his third Eclogue and by Horace in his tenth
Epode.]
[Lines 80, 81: There is here a slight inaccuracy or inconsistency,
since "wit" has a different meaning in the two lines: in 80, it means
_fancy,_ in 81, _judgment_.]
[Line 86: The winged courser.--Pegasus, a winged horse which
sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. As soon
as born he left the earth and flew up to heaven, or, according to Ovid,
took up his abode on Mount Helicon, and was always associated with the
Muses.]
[Line 94: Parnassus.--A mountain of Phocis, which received
its name from Parnassus, the son of Neptune, and was sacred to the
Muses, Apollo and Bacchus.]
[Line 97: Equal steps.--Steps equal to the undertaking.]
[Line 129: The Mantuan Muse--Virgil called Maro in the next
line (his full name being, Virgilius Publius Maro) born near Mantua,
70 B.C.]
[Lines 130-136: It is said that Virgil first intended to write a poem
on the Alban and Roman affairs which he found beyond his powers, and
then he imitated Homer:
Cum canerem reges et proelia Cynthius aurem
Vellit--_Virg. Ecl. VI_]
[Line 138: The Stagirite--Aristotle, born at the Greek town of
Stageira on the Strymonic Gulf (Gulf of Contessa, in Turkey) 384 B.C.,
whose treatises on Rhetoric and the Art of Poetry were the earliest
development of a Philosophy of Criticism and still continue to be
studied.
The poet contradicts himself with regard to the principle he is here
laying down in lines 271-272 where he laughs at Dennis for
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.]
[Line 180: Homer nods--_Quandoque bonus dormitat
Homerus_, 'even the good Homer nods'--Horace, _Epistola ad
Pisones_, 359.]
[Lines 183, 184: Secure from flames.--The poet probably
alludes to such fires as those in which the Alexandrine and Palatine
Libraries were destroyed. From envy's fiercer rage.--Probably he
alludes to the writings of such men as Maevius (see note to line 34) and
Zoilus, a sophist and grammarian of Amphipolis, who distinguished
himself by his criticism on Isocrates, Plato, and Homer, receiving the
nickname of _Homeromastic_ (chastiser of Homer). Destructive
war--Probably an allusion to the irruption of the barbarians into
the south of Europe. And all-involving age; that is, time. This is
usually explained as an allusion to 'the long reign of ignorance and
superstition in the cloisters,' but it is surely far-fetched, and more
than the language will bear.]
[Lines 193, 194:
'Round the whole world this dreaded name shall sound,
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found,"--COWLEY.]
[Line 216: The Pierian spring--A fountain in Pieria, a district round
Mount Olympus and the native country of the Muses.]
[Line 248: And even thine, O Rome.--The dome of St Peter's
Church, designed by Michael Angelo.]
[Line 267: La Mancha's Knight.--Don Quixote, a fictitious
Spanish knight, the hero of a book written (1605) by Cervantes, a
Spanish writer.]
[Line 270: Dennis, the son of a saddler in London, born 1657,
was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom
Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of _Cato_,
for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis.
Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be
written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled _The
Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D._ Dennis replied
to it by his _Character of Mr. Pope_. Ultimately Pope gave him a
place in his _Dunciad_, and wrote a prologue for his benefit.]
[Line 308: On content.--On trust, a common use of the word in
Pope's time.]
[Lines 311, 312: Prismatic glass.--A glass prism by which
light is refracted, and the component rays, which are of different
colors being refracted at different angles show what is called a
spectrum or series of colored bars, in the order violet, indigo, blue,
green, yellow, orange, red.]
[Line 328: Fungoso--One of the characters in Ben Jonson's
_Every Man out of his Humor_ who assumed the dress and tried to
pass himself off for another.]
[Line 356: Alexandrine--A line of twelve syllables, so called
from a French poem on the Life of Alexander the Great, written in that
meter. The poet gives a remarkable example in the next line.]
[Line 361: Sir John Denham, a poet of the time of Charles I. (1615-1668).
His verse is characterized by considerable smoothness and ingenuity of
rhythm, with here and there a passage of some force--Edmund Waller
(1606-1687) is celebrated as one of the refiners of English poetry.
His rank among English poets, however, is very subordinate.]
[Line 366: Zephyr.--Zephyrus, the west wind personified by the
poets and made the most mild and gentle of the sylvan deities.]
[Lines 366-373: In this passage the poet obviously intended to make
"the sound seem an echo to the sense". The success of the attempt has
not been very complete except in the second two lines, expressing the
dash and roar of the waves, and in the last two, expressing the skimming,
continuous motion of Camilla. What he refers to is the onomatopoeia of
Homer and Virgil in the passages alluded to. Ajax, the son of
Telamon, was, next to Achilles, the bravest of all the Greeks in the
Trojan war. When the Greeks were challenged by Hector he was chosen
their champion and it was in their encounter that he seized a huge stone
and hurled it at Hector.
Thus rendered by Pope himself:
"Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock
Applied each nerve, and swinging round on high,
With force tempestuous let the ruin fly
The huge stone thundering through his buckler broke."
Camilla, queen of the Volsci, was brought up in the woods, and,
according to Virgil, was swifter than the winds. She led an army to
assist Turnus against Aeneas.
"Dura pan, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos.
Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
Gramina nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas;
Vel mare per medium fluctu suspensa tumenti,
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret aequore plantas."
_Aen_. vii 807-811.
Thus rendered by Dryden.
"Outstripped the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flew o'er the fields, nor hurt the bearded grain;
She swept the seas, and as she skimmed along,
Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung"]
[Lines 374-381: This passage refers to Dryden's ode, _Alexander's
Feast_, or _The Power of Music_. Timotheus, mentioned in it, was
a musician of Boeotia, a favorite of Alexander's, not the great musician
Timotheus, who died before Alexander was born, unless, indeed, Dryden
have confused the two.]
[Line 376: The son of Libyan Jove.--A title arrogated to
himself by Alexander.]
[Line 393: Dullness here 'seems to be incorrectly used.
Ignorance is apt to magnify, but dullness reposes in stolid
indifference.']
[Line 441: Sentences--Passages from the Fathers of the Church
who were regarded as decisive authorities on all disputed points of
doctrine.]
[Line 444: Scotists--The disciples of Duns Scotus, one of the
most famous and influential of the scholastics of the fourteenth
century, who was opposed to Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), another famous
scholastic, regarding the doctrines of grace and the freedom of the
will, but especially the immaculate conception of the Virgin. The
followers of the latter were called Thomists, between whom and the
Scotists bitter controversies were carried on.]
[Line 445: Duck Lane.--A place near Smithfield where old
books were sold. The cobwebs were kindred to the works of these
controversialists, because their arguments were intricate and obscure.
Scotus is said to have demolished two hundred objections to the doctrine
of the immaculate conception, and established it by a cloud of proofs.]
[Line 459: Parsons.--This is an allusion to Jeremy Collier,
the author of _A Short View etc, of the English Stage_. Critics,
beaux.--This to the Duke of Buckingham, the author of _The
Rehearsal_.]
[Line 463: Blackmore, Sir Richard (1652-1729), one of the
court physicians and the writer of a great deal of worthless poetry. He
attacked the dramatists of the time generally and Dryden individually,
and is the Quack Maurus of Dryden's prologue to _The Secular
Masque_. Millbourn, Rev. Luke, who criticised Dryden; which
criticism, although sneered at by Pope, is allowed to have been judicious
and decisive.]
[Line 465: Zoilus. See note on line 183.]
[Line 479: Patriarch wits--Perhaps an allusion to the great
age to which the antediluvian patriarchs of the Bible lived.]
[Line 536: An easy monarch.--Charles II.]
[Line 541: At that time ladies went to the theater in masks.]
[Line 544: A foreign reign.--The reign of the foreigner,
William III.]
[Line 545: Socinus.--The reaction from the fanaticism of the
Puritans, who held extreme notions of free grace and satisfaction, by
resolving all Christianity into morality, led the way to the
introduction of Socinianism, the most prominent feature of which is the
denial of the existence of the Trinity.]
[Line 552: Wit's Titans.--The Titans, in Greek mythology,
were the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (earth), and of gigantic
size. They engaged in a conflict with Zeus, the king of heaven, which
lasted ten years. They were completely defeated, and hurled down into a
dungeon below Tartarus. Very often they are confounded with the Giants,
as has apparently been done here by Pope. These were a later progeny of
the same parents, and in revenge for what had been done to the Titans,
conspired to dethrone Zeus. In order to scale heaven, they piled Mount
Ossa upon Pelion, and would have succeeded in their attempt if Zeus had
not called in the assistance of his son Hercules.]
[Line 585: Appius.--He refers to Dennis (see note to verse
270) who had published a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_. He
retaliated for these remarks by coarse personalities upon Pope, in his
criticism of this poem.]
[Line 617: Durfey's Tales.--Thomas D'Urfey, the author (in
the reign of Charles II.) of a sequel in five acts of _The
Rehearsal_, a series of sonnets entitled _Pills to Purge
Melancholy_, the Tales here alluded to, etc. He was a very inferior
poet, although Addison pleaded for him.]
[Line 619: Garth, Dr., afterwards Sir Samuel (born 1660) an
eminent physician and a poet of considerable reputation He is best known
as the author of _The Dispensary_, a poetical satire on the
apothecaries and physicians who opposed the project of giving medicine
gratuitously to the sick poor. The poet alludes to a slander current at
the time with regard to the authorship of the poem.]
[Line 623: St Paul's Churchyard, before the fire of London, was
the headquarters of the booksellers.]
[Lines 645, 646: See note on line 138.]
[Line 648: The Maeonian star.--Homer, supposed by some to have been
born in Maeonia, a part of Lydia in Asia Minor, and whose poems were the
chief subject of Aristotle's criticism.]
[Line 652: Who conquered nature--He wrote, besides his other
works, treatises on Astronomy, Mechanics, Physics, and Natural History.]
[Line 665: Dionysius, born at Halicarnassus about 50 B.C., was
a learned critic, historian, and rhetorician at Rome in the Augustan
age.]
[Line 667: Petronius.--A Roman voluptuary at the court of
Nero whose ambition was to shine as a court exquisite. He is generally
supposed to be the author of certain fragments of a comic romance called
_Petronii Arbitri Satyricon_.]
[Line 669: Quintilian, born in Spain 40 A.D. was a celebrated
teacher of rhetoric and oratory at Rome. His greatwork is _De
Institutione Oratorica_, a complete system of rhetoric, which is here
referred to.]
[Line 675: Longinus, a Platonic philosopher and famous
rhetorician, born either in Syria or at Athens about 213 A.D., was
probably the best critic of antiquity. From his immense knowledge, he
was called "a living library" and "walking museum," hence the poet speaks
of him as inspired by _all the Nine_--Muses that is. These were
Clio, the muse of History, Euterpe, of Music, Thaleia, of Pastoral and
Comic Poetry and Festivals, Melpomene, of Tragedy, Terpsichore, of
Dancing, Erato, of Lyric and Amorous Poetry, Polyhymnia, of Rhetoric and
Singing, Urania, of Astronomy, Calliope, of Eloquence and Heroic
Poetry.]
[Line 686: Rome.--For this pronunciation (to rhyme with _doom_)
he has Shakespeare's example as precedent.]
[Line 692: Goths.--A powerful nation of the Germanic race,
which, originally from the Baltic, first settled near the Black Sea, and
then overran and took an important part in the subversion of the Roman
empire. They were distinguished as Ostro Goths (Eastern Goths) on the
shores of the Black Sea, the Visi Goths (Western Goths) on the Danube,
and the Moeso Goths, in Moesia ]
[Line 693: Erasmus.--A Dutchman (1467-1536), and at one time
a Roman Catholic priest, who acted as tutor to Alexander Stuart, a
natural son of James IV. of Scotland as professor of Greek for a short
time at Oxford, and was the most learned man of his time. His best known
work is his _Colloquia_, which contains satirical onslaughts on
monks, cloister life, festivals, pilgrimages etc.]
[Line 696: Vandals.--A race of European barbarians, who first
appear historically about the second century, south of the Baltic. They
overran in succession Gaul, Spain, and Italy. In 455 they took and
plundered Rome, and the way they mutilated and destroyed the works of
art has become a proverb, hence the monks are compared to them in their
ignorance of art and science.]
[Line 697: Leo.--Leo X., or the Great (1513-1521), was a
scholar himself, and gave much encouragement to learning and art.]
[Line 704: Raphael (1483-1520), an Italian, is almost
universally regarded as the greatest of painters. He received much
encouragement from Leo. Vida--A poet patronised by Leo. He was
the son of poor parents at Cremona (see line 707), which therefore the
poet says, would be next in fame to Mantua, the birthplace of Virgil as
it was next to it in place.
"Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremona."--Virg.]
[Line 714: Boileau.--An illustrious French poet (1636-1711),
who wrote a poem on the Art of Poetry, which is copiously imitated by
Pope in this poem.]
[Lines 723, 724: Refers to the Duke of Buckingham's _Essay on
Poetry_ which had been eulogized also by Dryden and Dr. Garth.]
[Line 725: Roscommon, the Earl of, a poet, who has the honor
to be the first critic who praised Milton's _Paradise Lost_, died
1684.]
[Line 729: Walsh.--An indifferent writer, to whom Pope owed a
good deal, died 1710.]