In the person of this Mr. Schlosser is exemplified a common abuse, not
confined to literature. An artist from the Italian opera of London and
Paris, making a professional excursion to our provinces, is received
according to the tariff of the metropolis; no one being bold enough to
dispute decisions coming down from the courts above. In that particular
case there is seldom any reason to complain--since really out of Germany
and Italy there is no city, if you except Paris and London, possessing
_materials_, in that field of art, for the composition of an audience
large enough to act as a court of revision. It would be presumption in the
provincial audience, so slightly trained to good music and dancing, if it
should affect to reverse a judgment ratified in the supreme capital. The
result, therefore, is practically just, if the original verdict was just;
what was right from the first cannot be made wrong by iteration. Yet, even
in such a case, there is something not satisfactory to a delicate sense of
equity; for the artist returns from the tour as if from some new and
independent triumph, whereas, all is but the reverberation of an old one;
it seems a new access of sunlight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination
from satellites.
In literature the corresponding case is worse. An author, passing by means
of translation before a foreign people, ought _de jure_ to find himself
before a new tribunal; but _de facto_, he does not. Like the opera artist,
but not with the same propriety, he comes before a court that never
interferes to disturb a judgment, but only to re-affirm it. And he returns
to his native country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new
trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact, they are due to
servile ratifications of old ones. When Sue, or Balzac, Hugo, or George
Sand, comes before an English audience--the opportunity is invariably lost
for estimating them at a new angle of sight. All who dislike them lay them
aside--whilst those only apply themselves seriously to their study, who
are predisposed to the particular key of feeling, through which originally
these authors had prospered. And thus a new set of judges, that might
usefully have modified the narrow views of the old ones, fall by mere
_inertia_ into the humble character of echoes and sounding-boards to swell
the uproar of the original mob.
In this way is thrown away the opportunity, not only of applying
corrections to false national tastes, but oftentimes even to the unfair
accidents of _luck_ that befall books. For it is well known to all
who watch literature with vigilance, that books and authors have their
fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from
those that measure their merits. Not even the caprice or the folly of the
reading public is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, the
whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book, and none
at all for another of about equal merit, belongs to no particular
blindness in men, but to the simple fact, that the one _has_, whilst
the other has _not_, been brought effectually under the eyes of the
public. By far the greater part of books are lost, not because they are
rejected, but because they are never introduced. In any proper sense of
the word, very few books are published. Technically they are published;
which means, that for six or ten times they are _advertised_, but they are
not made known to _attentive_ ears, or to ears _prepared_ for attention.
And amongst the causes which account for this difference in the fortune of
books, although there are many, we may reckon, as foremost, _personal_
accidents of position in the authors. For instance, with us in England it
will do a bad book no _ultimate_ service, that it is written by a lord, or
a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or a member of Parliament--though,
undoubtedly, it will do an _instant_ service--it will sell an edition or
so. This being the case, it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad
writer from _final_ condemnation, the sycophantic glorifier of the public
fancies his idol justified; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not
be saved by advantages of position in the author; but a book moderately
good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages. Lectures on
_Christianity_, that happened to be respectably written and delivered, had
prodigious success in my young days, because, also, they happened to be
lectures of a prelate; three times the ability would not have procured
them any attention had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet on
the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, if written with three
times _less_ ability, lawn-sleeves would not have given them buoyancy,
but, on the contrary, they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably;
whilst the curate, favored by obscurity, would have survived for another
chance. So again, and indeed, more than so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle,
of the last generation, wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord
Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, the judicious public
has allowed the booksellers to incorporate, along with other refuse of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of the
'British Poets.' And really, if you _will_ insist on odious comparisons,
they were not so very much below the verses of an amiable prime minister
known to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital _stamina_, not only they
fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to reel much more than any
commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord
Carlisle, viz., Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and power to
the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage in a peerage and a very
ancient descent. On these double wings he soared into a region of public
interest, far higher than ever he _would_ have reached by poetic power
alone. Not only all his rubbish--which in quantity is great--passed for
jewels, but also what _are_ incontestably jewels have been, and will be,
valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less
aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so gracious for real power,
is any adventitious distinction from birth, station, or circumstances of
brilliant notoriety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to-be-
respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds
dropped their rheum upon. She is always ready for jacobinical scoffs at a
man for being a lord, if he happens to fail; she is always ready for
toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. Ah, dear sycophantic old
lady, I kiss your sycophantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke
for your sake!
It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to confound real merit
and its accidents of position is at all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr.
Sacheverell, by embarking his small capital of talent on the springtide of
a furious political collision, brought back an ampler return for his
little investment than ever did Wickliffe or Luther. Such was his
popularity in the heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would
have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal progresses through
England, had he not been canonized by the Tories. He was a dead man if he
had not been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither is the case
peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the _ci-devant_ Romish priest (whose
name pronounce as you would the English word _wrong_, supposing that it
had for a second syllable the final _a_ of 'sopha,' _i.e._, _Wronguh_),
has been found a wrong-headed man by _all_ parties, and in a venial degree
is, perhaps, a stupid man; but he moves about with more _eclat_ by far
than the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the man that burned
down a miracle of beauty, viz., the temple of Ephesus, protesting, with
tears in his eyes, that he had no other way of getting himself a name,
_has_ got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride down all history,
whether you and I like it or not. Every pocket dictionary knows that
Erostratus was that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or par-
roasted York Minster some ten or twelve years back; that fellow will float
down to posterity with the annals of the glorious cathedral: he will
'Pursue the triumph and partake the gale,'
whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are practically
forgotten.
These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as Ephesus or York; but
not one of us can tell, without humming and hawing, who it was that
rebuilt the Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the time-
honored Minster. Equally in literature, not the weight of service done, or
the power exerted, is sometimes considered chiefly--either of these must
be very conspicuous before it will be considered at all--but the splendor,
or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or even the scandalousness of the
circumstances [1] surrounding the author.
Schlosser must have benefitted in some such adventitious way before he
ever _could_ have risen to his German celebrity. What was it that
raised him to his momentary distinction? Was it something very wicked that
he did, or something very brilliant that he said? I should rather
conjecture that it must have been something inconceivably absurd which he
proposed. Any one of the three achievements stands good in Germany for a
reputation. But, however it were that Mr. Schlosser first gained his
reputation, mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivocal
reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London. There he thrives, not by
any approving experience or knowledge of his works, but through blind
faith in his original German public. And back he flies afterwards to
Germany, as if carrying with him new and independent testimonies to his
merit, and from two nations that are directly concerned in his violent
judgments; whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a careless
reverberation of his first German character, from those who have far too
much to read for declining aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare
that effort to themselves. Thus it is that German critics become audacious
and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, Dr. Carus, physician to the King of
Saxony, by means of introductory letters floating them into circles far
above any they had seen in homely Germany, are qualified by our own
negligence and indulgence for mounting a European tribunal, from which
they pronounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels present arms
to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he rides in a carriage of Queen
Adelaide's; and Von Raumer immediately conceives himself the Chancellor of
all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to universal Europe, upon all
questions of art, manners, politics, or any conceivable intellectual
relations of England. Schlosser meditates the same career.
But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words from an English
translation? I do so only because this happens to be at hand, and the
German not. German books are still rare in this country, though more (by
one thousand to one) than they were thirty years ago. But I have a full
right to rely on the English of Mr. Davison. 'I hold in my hand,' as
gentlemen so often say at public meetings, 'a certificate from Herr
Schlosser, that to quote Mr. Davison is to quote _him_.' The English
translation is one which Mr. Schlosser '_durchgelesen hat, und fur deren
genauigkeit und richtigkeit er burgt_ [has read through, and for the
accuracy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. Mr. Schossler was so
anxious for the spiritual welfare of us poor islanders, that he not only
read it through, but he has even _aufmerksam durchgelesen_ it [read
it through wide awake] _und gepruft_ [and carefully examined it]; nay, he
has done all this in company with the translator. 'Oh ye Athenians! how
hard do I labor to earn your applause!' And, as the result of such
herculean labors, a second time he makes himself surety for its precision;
'_er burgt also dafur wie fur seine eigne arbeit_' [he guarantees it
accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were it not for this
unlimited certificate, I should have sent for the book to Germany. As it
is, I need not wait; and all complaints on this score I defy, above all
from Herr Schlosser. [2]
In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr. Schlosser, the critic has a
right to an _extra_ allowance of desultoriness for his own share; so
excuse me, reader, for rushing at once _in medias res_.
Of Swift, Mr. Schlosser selects for notice three works--the 'Drapier's
Letters,' 'Gulliver's Travels,' and the 'Tale of a Tub.' With respect to
the first, as it is a necessity of Mr. S. to be forever wrong in his
substratum of facts, he adopts the old erroneous account of Wood's
contract as to the copper coinage, and of the imaginary wrong which it
inflicted on Ireland. Of all Swift's villainies for the sake of
popularity, and still more for the sake of wielding this popularity
vindictively, none is so scandalous as this. In any new life of Swift the
case must be stated _de novo_. Even Sir Walter Scott is not impartial; and
for the same reason as now forces me to blink it, viz., the difficulty of
presenting the details in a readable shape. 'Gulliver's Travels' Schlosser
strangely considers 'spun out to an intolerable extent.' Many evil things
might be said of Gulliver; but not this. The captain is anything but
tedious. And, indeed, it becomes a question of mere mensuration, that can
be settled in a moment. A year or two since I had in my hands a pocket
edition, comprehending all the four parts of the worthy skipper's
adventures within a single volume of 420 pages. Some part of the space was
also wasted on notes, often very idle. Now the 1st part contains _two_
separate voyages (Lilliput and Blefuscu), the 2d, _one_, the 3d, _five_,
and the 4th, _one_; so that, in all, this active navigator, who has
enriched geography, I hope, with something of a higher quality than your
old muffs that thought much of doubling Cape Horn, here gives us _nine_
great discoveries, far more surprising than the pretended discoveries of
Sinbad (which are known to be fabulous), averaging _quam proxime_, forty-
seven small 16mo pages each. Oh you unconscionable German, built round in
your own country with circumvallations of impregnable 4tos, oftentimes
dark and dull as Avernus--that you will have the face to describe dear
excellent Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff, and subsequently of Newark,
that 'darling of children and men,' as tedious. It is exactly because he
is _not_ tedious, because he does not shoot into German foliosity, that
Schlosser finds him '_intolerable_.' I have justly transferred to
Gulliver's use the words originally applied by the poet to the robin-
redbreast, for it is remarkable that _Gulliver_ and the _Arabian Nights_
are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting
and jostling each other. This was the case from its first publication,
just one hundred and twenty years since. 'It was received,' says Dr.
Johnson, 'with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was
raised before the second could be made--it was read by the high and the
low, the learned and the illiterate. Criticism was lost in wonder. Now, on
the contrary, Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises; which
we could bear, if the criticism were even ingenious. Whereas, he utterly
misunderstands Swift, and is a malicious calumniator of the captain who,
luckily, roaming in Sherwood, and thinking, often with a sigh, of his
little nurse, [3] Glumdalclitch, would trouble himself slightly about what
Heidelberg might say in the next century. There is but one example on our
earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate applause as 'Gulliver;'
and _that_ was 'Don Quixote.' Many have been welcomed joyfully by a class
--these two by a people. Now, could that have happened had it been
characterized by dulness? Of all faults, it could least have had _that_.
As to the 'Tale of a Tub,' Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapors that no
system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube through which he might
gain a glimpse of the English truth and daylight. It is useless talking to
such a man on such a subject. I consign him to the attentions of some
patriotic Irishman.
Schlosser, however, is right in a graver reflection which he makes upon
the prevailing philosophy of Swift, viz., that 'all his views were
directed towards what was _immediately_ beneficial, which is the
characteristic of savages.' This is undeniable. The meanness of Swift's
nature, and his rigid incapacity for dealing with the grandeurs of the
human spirit, with religion, with poetry, or even with science, when it
rose above the mercenary practical, is absolutely appalling. His own
_yahoo_ is not a more abominable one-sided degradation of humanity,
than is he himself under this aspect. And, perhaps, it places this
incapacity of his in its strongest light, when we recur to the fact of his
_astonishment_ at a religious princess refusing to confer a bishoprick
upon one that had treated the Trinity, and all the profoundest mysteries
of Christianity, not with mere scepticism, or casual sneer, but with set
pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. This dignitary of the church,
Dean of the most conspicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full
canonicals, made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake of giving
fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the silliest of jests directed
against all that was most inalienable from Christianity. Ridiculing such
things, could he, in any just sense, be thought a Christian? But, as
Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing the peculiarities of Luther and
Calvin as he _did_ ridicule them, Swift could not be thought other
than constitutionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philosopher, if
made to understand the case, would be incapable of scoffing at any
_form_, natural or casual, simple or distorted, which might be
assumed by the most solemn of problems--problems that rest with the weight
of worlds upon the human spirit--
'Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.'
the destiny of man, or the relations of man to God. Anger, therefore,
Swift _might_ feel, and he felt it [7] to the end of his most wretched
life; but what reasonable ground had a man of sense for _astonishment_--
that a princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sincerely pious,
should decline to place such a man upon an Episcopal throne? This argues,
beyond a doubt, that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion,
irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes to everybody else its
own plebeian feelings. People differed, he fancied, not by more and less
religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed
to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart
regard (in common with himself) all mysteries as solemn masques and
mummeries, should pretend in a case of downright serious business, to pump
up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid objection to a man of his
shining merit. '_The Trinity_,' for instance, _that_ he viewed as the
password, which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the
sentinel; but, as soon as it had obtained admission for the party within
the gates of the camp, it was rightly dismissed to oblivion or to
laughter. No case so much illustrates Swift's essential irreligion; since,
if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such subjects, not only he
could not have been surprised at his own exclusion from the bench of
bishops, _after_ such ribaldries, but originally he would have abstained
from them as inevitable bars to clerical promotion, even upon principles
of public decorum.
As to the _style_ of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows himself without
sensibility in his objections, as the often hackneyed English reader shows
himself without philosophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosser
thinks the style of Gulliver 'somewhat dull.' This shows Schlosser's
presumption in speaking upon a point where he wanted, 1st, original
delicacy of tact; and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English. Gulliver's
style is _purposely_ touched slightly with that dulness of
circumstantiality which besets the excellent, but 'somewhat dull' race of
men--old sea captains. Yet it wears only an aerial tint of dulness; the
felicity of this coloring in Swift's management is, that it never goes the
length of wearying, but only of giving a comic air of downright Wapping
and Rotherhithe verisimilitude. All men grow dull, and ought to be dull,
that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger, one inch only of plank
(often worm-eaten) between themselves and the grave; and, also, that see
for ever one wilderness of waters--sublime, but (like the wilderness on
shore) monotonous. All sublime people, being monotonous, have a tendency
to be dull, and sublime things also. Milton and Aeschylus, the sublimest
of men, are crossed at times by a shade of dulness. It is their weak side.
But as to a sea captain, a regular nor'-nor'-wester, and sou'-sou'-easter,
he ought to be kicked out of the room if he is _not_ dull. It is not
'ship-shape,' or barely tolerable, that he should be otherwise. Yet, after
all, considering what I have stated about Captain Gulliver's nine voyages
crowding into one pocket volume, he cannot really have much abused his
professional license for being dull. Indeed, one has to look out an excuse
for his being so little dull; which excuse is found in the fact that he
had studied three years at a learned university. Captain Gulliver, though
a sailor, I would have you to know, was a gownsman of Cambridge: so says
Swift, who knew more about the Captain than anybody now-a-days. Cantabs
are all horsemen, _ergo_, Gulliver was fit for any thing, from the
_wooden shoon_ of Cambridge up to the Horse Marines.
Now, on the other hand, you, common-place reader, that (as an old
tradition) believe Swift's style to be a model of excellence, hereafter I
shall say a word to you, drawn from deeper principles. At present I
content myself with these three propositions, which overthrow if you
can;--
1. That the merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, is
_vernacularity_; he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms,
unless we may call Irish exotic; for Hibernicisms he certainly has. This
merit, however, is exhibited--not, as _you_ fancy, in a graceful
artlessness, but in a coarse inartificiality. To be artless, and to be
inartificial, are very different things; as different as being natural and
being gross; as different as being simple and being homely.
2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort of excellence, or the
value of the excellence, in the style of Swift, he had it in common with
multitudes beside of that age. De Foe wrote a style for all the world the
same as to kind and degree of excellence, only pure from Hibernicisms. So
did every honest skipper [Dampier was something more] who had occasion to
record his voyages in this world of storms. So did many a hundred of
religious writers. And what wonder should there be in this, when the main
qualification for such a style was plain good sense, natural feeling,
unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting together the
clockwork of sentences, so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of
construction, but above all the advantage of a _subject_, such in its
nature as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw off
attention from itself? Such subjects are common; but grand impassioned
subjects insist upon a different treatment; and _there_ it is that
the true difficulties of style commence.
3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark.] That nearly all the
blockheads with whom I have at any time had the pleasure of conversing
upon the subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most
sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk
_most_ like blockheads), have invariably regarded Swift's style not
as if _relatively_ good [_i.e. given_ a proper subject], but as if
_absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. Now,
my friend, suppose the case, that the Dean had been required to write a
pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal apostrophe to Death, or to many
passages that I will select in Sir Thomas Brown's 'Religio Medici,' and
his 'Urn-burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural sections of his 'Holy
Living and Dying,' do you know what would have happened? Are you aware
what sort of ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would have cut?
About the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from
a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to
act as seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before a thousand
of his lords.
Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and he really did say
the true thing about Swift's _essential_ irreligion), usually becomes
exhausted, like a boa-constrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The
boa gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of dyspepsy, in
which the horns and hoofs that he has swallowed may chance to avenge the
poor goat that owned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retires into a
corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking nonsense, until the gong
sounds again for a slight refection of sense. Accordingly he likens Swift,
before he has done with him, to whom? I might safely allow the reader
three years for guessing, if the greatest of wagers were depending between
us. He likens him to Kotzebue, in the first place. How faithful the
resemblance! How exactly Swift reminds you of Count Benyowski in Siberia,
and of Mrs. Haller moping her eyes in the 'Stranger!' One really is
puzzled to say, according to the negro's logic, whether Mrs. Haller is
more like the Dean of St. Patrick's, or the Dean more like Mrs. Haller.
Anyhow, the likeness is prodigious, if it is not quite reciprocal. The
other _terminus_ of the comparison is Wieland. Now there _is_ some shadow
of a resemblance there. For Wieland had a touch of the comico-cynical in
his nature; and it is notorious that he was often called the German
Voltaire, which argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his features
at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was far more playful and genial
than Swift's; something of this is shown in his romance of 'Idris,' and
oftentimes in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is his
'Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of Sir Huon and his enchanted
horn, with its gleams of voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any
suggestion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross the festal scenes?
From Swift the scene changes to Addison and Steele. Steele is of less
importance; for, though a man of greater intellectual activity [4] than
Addison, he had far less of genius. So I turn him out, as one would turn
out upon a heath a ram that had missed his way into one's tulip preserve;
requesting him to fight for himself against Schlosser, or others that may
molest him. But, so far as concerns Addison, I am happy to support the
character of Schlosser for consistency, by assuring the reader that, of
all the monstrosities uttered by any man upon Addison, and of all the
monstrosities uttered by Schlosser upon any man, a thing which he says
about Addison is the worst. But this I reserve for a climax at the end.
Schlosser really puts his best leg foremost at starting, and one thinks
he's going to mend; for he catches a truth, viz., the following--that all
the brilliances of the Queen Anne period (which so many inconsiderate
people have called the Augustan age of our literature) 'point to this--
that the reading public wished to be entertained, not roused to think; to
be gently moved, not deeply excited.' Undoubtedly what strikes a man in
Addison, or _will_ strike him when indicated, is the coyness and
timidity, almost the girlish shame, which he betrays in the presence of
all the elementary majesties belonging to impassioned or idealized nature.
Like one bred in crowded cities, when first left alone in forests or
amongst mountains, he is frightened at their silence, their solitude,
their magnitude of form, or their frowning glooms. It has been remarked by
others that Addison and his companions never rise to the idea of
addressing the 'nation' or the 'people;' it is always the 'town.' Even
their audience was conceived of by _them_ under a limited form. Yet
for this they had some excuse in the state of facts. A man would like at
this moment to assume that Europe and Asia were listening to him; and as
some few copies of his book do really go to Paris and Naples, some to
Calcutta, there is a sort of legal fiction that such an assumption is
steadily taking root. Yet, unhappily, that ugly barrier of languages
interferes. Schamyl, the Circassian chief, though much of a savage, is not
so wanting in taste and discernment as to be backward in reading any book
of yours or mine. Doubtless he yearns to read it. But then, you see, that
infernal _Tchirkass_ language steps between our book, the darling,
and _him_, the discerning reader. Now, just such a barrier existed
for the Spectator in the travelling arrangements of England. The very few
old heavies that had begun to creep along three or four main roads,
depended so much on wind and weather, their chances of foundering were so
uncalculated, their periods of revolution were so cometary and uncertain,
that no body of scientific observations had yet been collected to warrant
a prudent man in risking a heavy bale of goods; and, on the whole, even
for York, Norwich, or Winchester, a consignment of '_Specs_' was not
quite a safe spec. Still, I could have told the Spectator who was anxious
to make money, where he might have been sure of a distant sale, though
returns would have been slow, viz., at Oxford and Cambridge. We know from
Milton that old Hobson delivered his parcels pretty regularly eighty years
before 1710. And, one generation before _that_, it is plain, by the
interesting (though somewhat Jacobinical) letters [5] of Joseph Mede, the
commenter on the Apocalypse, that news and politics of one kind or other
(and scandal of _every_ kind) found out for themselves a sort of
contraband lungs to breathe through between London and Cambridge; not
quite so regular in their _systole_ and _diastole_ as the tides of ebb and
flood, but better than nothing. If you consigned a packet into the proper
hands on the 1st of May, 'as sure as death' to speak _Scottice_, it would
be delivered within sixty miles of the capital before mid-summer. Still
there were delays; and these forced a man into carving his world out of
London. That excuses the word _town_.
Inexcusable, however, were many other forms of expression in those days,
which argued cowardly feelings. One would like to see a searching
investigation into the state of society in Anne's days--its extreme
artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impassioned grandeurs,
its shameless outrages upon all the decencies of human nature. Certain it
is, that Addison (because everybody) was in that meanest of conditions
which blushes at any expression of sympathy with the lovely, the noble, or
the impassioned. The wretches were ashamed of their own nature, and
perhaps with reason; for in their own denaturalized hearts they read only
a degraded nature. Addison, in particular, shrank from every bold and
every profound expression as from an offence against good taste. He durst
not for his life have used the word 'passion' except in the vulgar sense
of an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced a hornpipe on the top
of the 'monument' as have talked of a 'rapturous emotion.' What _would_ he
have said? Why, 'sentiments that were of a nature to prove agreeable after
an unusual rate.' In their odious verses, the creatures of that age talk
of love as something that 'burns' them. You suppose at first that they are
discoursing of tallow candles, though you cannot imagine by what
impertinence they address _you_, that are no tallow-chandler, upon such
painful subjects. And, when they apostrophize the woman of their heart
(for you are to understand that they pretend to such an organ), they
beseech her to 'ease their pain.' Can human meanness descend lower? As if
the man, being ill from pleurisy, therefore had a right to take a lady for
one of the dressers in an hospital, whose duty it would be to fix a
burgundy-pitch plaster between his shoulders. Ah, the monsters! Then to
read of their Phillises and Strephons, and Chloes, and Corydons--names
that, by their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood, proclaim
the fantasticalness of the life with which they are poetically connected--
it throws me into such convulsions of rage, that I move to the window, and
(without thinking what I am about) throwing it up, calling, '_Police!
police!_' What's _that_ for? What can the police do in the business? Why,
certainly nothing. What I meant in my dream was, perhaps [but one forgets
_what_ one meant upon recovering one's temper], that the police should
take Strephon and Corydon into custody, whom I fancied at the other end of
the room. And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recalling such
abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such abominable language,
sometimes transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one
hundred and thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John and
Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, with many others beside,
all cudgelled in a round robin, none claiming precedency of another, none
able to shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to recall me to
milder thoughts by saying, 'But surely, my friend, you never could wish to
see Addison cudgelled? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end,
if the police can show any warrant for doing it But Addison was a man of
great genius.' True, he was so. I recollect it suddenly, and will back out
of any angry things that I have been misled into saying by Schlosser, who,
by-the-bye, was right, after all, for a wonder.
But now I will turn my whole fury in vengeance upon Schlosser. And,
looking round for a stone to throw at him, I observe this. Addison could
not be so entirely careless of exciting the public to think and feel, as
Schlosser pretends, when he took so much pains to inoculate that public
with a sense of the Miltonic grandeur. The 'Paradise Lost' had then been
published barely forty years, which was nothing in an age without reviews;
the editions were still scanty; and though no Addison could eventually
promote, for the instant he quickened, the circulation. If I recollect,
Tonson's accurate revision of the text followed immediately upon Addison's
papers. And it is certain that Addison [6] must have diffused the
knowledge of Milton upon the continent, from signs that soon followed. But
does not this prove that I myself have been in the wrong as well as
Schlosser? No: that's impossible. Schlosser's always in the wrong; but
it's the next thing to an impossibility that I should be detected in an
error: philosophically speaking, it is supposed to involve a
contradiction. 'But surely I said the very same thing as Schlosser by
assenting to what he said.' Maybe I did: but then I have time to make a
distinction, because my article is not yet finished; we are only at page
six or seven; whereas Schlosser can't make any distinction now, because
his book's printed; and his list of _errata_ (which is shocking though he
does not confess to the thousandth part), is actually published. My
distinction is--that, though Addison generally hated the impassioned,
and shrank from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined
with forms of life and fleshy realities (as in dramatic works), but not
when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence, he did
not read, and did not like Shakspeare; the music was here too rapid and
life-like: but he sympathized profoundly with the solemn cathedral
chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick
changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more stationary
_key_ of solemnity he _could_. Indeed, this difference is illustrated
daily. A long list can be cited of passages in Shakspeare, which have been
solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all blockheads) as ridiculous: and
if a man _does_ find a passage in a tragedy that displeases him, it is
sure to seem ludicrous: witness the indecent exposures of themselves made
by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people.
Whereas, of all the shameful people (equally billions and not less
bilious) that have presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought
him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In 'Lear' and in 'Hamlet,' as
in a human face agitated by passion, are many things that tremble on the
brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy
or intellect. But no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous, though
many find them dull, and prefer a near view of a brandy flask. So in the
solemn wheelings of the Miltonic movement, Addison could find a sincere
delight. But the sublimities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were
for him a book sealed. Beside all which, Milton, renewed the types of
Grecian beauty as to _form_, whilst Shakspeare, without designing at all
to contradict these types, did so, in effect, by his fidelity to a new
nature, radiating from a Gothic centre.
In the midst, however, of much just feeling, which one could only wish a
little deeper, in the Addisonian papers on 'Paradise Lost,' there are some
gross blunders of criticism, as there are in Dr. Johnson, and from the
self-same cause--an understanding suddenly palsied from defective passion,
A feeble capacity of passion must, upon a question of passion, constitute
a feeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst thing uttered by
Addison in these papers is, not _against_ Milton, but meant to be
complimentary. Towards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, he tells
us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude, symmetry, and
architectural skill: but being in the English language, it is to be
regarded as if built in brick; whereas, had it been so happy as to be
written in Greek, then it would have been a palace built in Parian marble.
Indeed! that's smart--'that's handsome, I calculate.' Yet, before a man
undertakes to sell his mother-tongue, as old pewter trucked against gold,
he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic skill; because else, the
gold may happen to be copper, and the pewter to be silver. Are you quite
sure, my Addison, that you have understood the powers of this language
which you toss away so lightly, as an old tea-kettle? Is it a ruled case
that you have exhausted its resources? Nobody doubts your grace in a
certain line of composition, but it is only one line among many, and it is
far from being amongst the highest. It is dangerous, without examination,
to sell even old kettles; misers conceal old stockings filled with guineas
in old tea-kettles; and we all know that Aladdin's servant, by exchanging
an old lamp for a new one, caused an Iliad of calamities: his master's
palace jumped from Bagdad to some place on the road to Ashantee; Mrs.
Aladdin and the piccaninies were carried off as inside passengers; and
Aladdin himself only escaped being lagged, for a rogue and a conjuror, by
a flying jump after his palace. Now, mark the folly of man. Most of the
people I am going to mention subscribed, generally, to the supreme
excellence of Milton; but each wished for a little change to be made--
which, and which only was wanted to perfection. Dr. Johnson, though he
pretended to be satisfied with the 'Paradise Lost,' even in what he
regarded as the undress of blank verse, still secretly wished it in rhyme.
That's No. 1. Addison, though quite content with it in English, still
could have wished it in Greek. That's No. 2. Bentley, though admiring the
blind old poet in the highest degree, still observed, smilingly, that
after all he _was_ blind; he, therefore, slashing Dick, could have
wished that the great man had always been surrounded by honest people;
but, as that was not to be, he could have wished that his amanuensis has
been hanged; but, as that also had become impossible, he could wish to do
execution upon him in effigy, by sinking, burning, and destroying his
handywork--upon which basis of posthumous justice, he proceeded to
amputate all the finest passages in the poem. Slashing Dick was No. 3.
Payne Knight was a severer man even than slashing Dick; he professed to
look upon the first book of 'Paradise Lost' as the finest thing that earth
had to show; but, for that very reason, he could have wished, by your
leave, to see the other eleven books sawed off, and sent overboard;
because, though tolerable perhaps in another situation, they really were a
national disgrace, when standing behind that unrivalled portico of book 1.
There goes No. 4. Then came a fellow, whose name was either not on his
title page, or I have forgotten it, that pronounced the poem to be
laudable, and full of good materials; but still he could have wished that
the materials had been put together in a more workmanlike manner; which
kind office he set about himself. He made a general clearance of all
lumber: the expression of every thought he entirely re-cast: and he fitted
up the metre with beautiful patent rhymes; not, I believe, out of any
consideration for Dr. Johnson's comfort, but on principles of mere
abstract decency: as it was, the poem seemed naked, and yet was not
ashamed. There went No. 5. _Him_ succeeded a droller fellow than any
of the rest. A French book-seller had caused a prose French translation to
be made of the 'Paradise Lost,' without particularly noticing its English
origin, or at least not in the title page. Our friend, No. 6, getting hold
of this as an original French romance, translated it back into English
prose, as a satisfactory novel for the season. His little mistake was at
length discovered, and communicated to him with shouts of laughter; on
which, after considerable kicking and plunging (for a man cannot but turn
restive when he finds that he has not only got the wrong sow by the ear,
but actually sold the sow to a bookseller), the poor translator was tamed
into sulkiness; in which state ho observed that he could have wished his
own work, being evidently so much superior to the earliest form of the
romance, might be admitted by the courtesy of England to take the
precedency as the original 'Paradise Lost,' and to supersede the very rude
performance of 'Milton, Mr. John.' [7]
Schlosser makes the astounding assertion, that a compliment of Boileau to
Addison, and a pure compliment of ceremony upon Addison's early Latin
verses, was (_credite posteri!_) the making of Addison in England.
Understand, Schlosser, that Addison's Latin verses were never heard of by
England, until long after his English prose had fixed the public attention
upon him; his Latin reputation was a slight reaction from his English
reputation: and, secondly, understand that Boileau had at no time any such
authority in England as to _make_ anybody's reputation; he had first
of all to make his own. A sure proof of this is, that Boileau's name was
first published to London, by Prior's burlesque of what the Frenchman had
called an ode. This gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the Rhine in
1672, and the capture of that famous fortress called _Skink_ ('le fameux
fort de'), by Louis XIV., known to London at the time of Prior's parody by
the name of 'Louis Baboon.' [8] _That_ was not likely to recommend Master
Boileau to any of the allies against the said Baboon, had it ever been
heard of out of France. Nor was it likely to make him popular in England,
that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of laughter and mockery.
It is another argument of the slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in
England--that no attempt was ever made to translate even his satires,
epistles, or 'Lutrin,' except by booksellers' hacks; and that no such
version ever took the slightest root amongst ourselves, from Addison's day
to this very summer of 1847. Boileau was essentially, and in two senses,
viz., both as to mind and as to influence, _un homme borne_.
Addison's 'Blenheim' is poor enough; one might think it a translation from
some German original of those times. Gottsched's aunt, or Bodmer's wet-
nurse, might have written it; but still no fibs even as to 'Blenheim.' His
'enemies' did not say this thing against 'Blenheim' 'aloud,' nor his
friends that thing against it 'softly.' And why? Because at that time
(1704-5) he had made no particular enemies, nor any particular friends;
unless by friends you mean his Whig patrons, and by enemies his tailor and
co.
As to 'Cato,' Schlosser, as usual, wanders in the shadow of ancient night.
The English 'people,' it seems, so 'extravagantly applauded' this wretched
drama, that you might suppose them to have 'altogether changed their
nature,' and to have forgotten Shakspeare. That man must have forgotten
Shakspeare, indeed, and from _ramollissement_ of the brain, who could
admire 'Cato.' 'But,' says Schlosser, 'it was only a 'fashion;' and the
English soon repented.' The English could not repent of a crime which they
had never committed. Cato was not popular for a moment, nor tolerated for
a moment, upon any literary ground, or as a work of art. It was an apple
of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess of faction between two
infuriated parties. 'Cato,' coming from a man without Parliamentary
connections, would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigs have
always affected a special love and favor for popular counsels: they have
never ceased to give themselves the best of characters as regards public
freedom. The Tories, as contradistinguished to the Jacobites, knowing that
without _their_ aid, the Revolution could not have been carried, most
justly contended that the national liberties had been at least as much
indebted to themselves. When, therefore, the Whigs put forth _their_
man Cato to mouth speeches about liberty, as exclusively _their_ pet,
and about patriotism and all that sort of thing, saying insultingly to the
Tories, 'How do you like _that_? Does _that_ sting?' 'Sting, indeed!'
replied the Tories; 'not at all; it's quite refreshing to us, that the
Whigs have not utterly disowned such sentiments, which, by their public
acts, we really thought they _had_.' And, accordingly, as the popular
anecdote tells us, a Tory leader, Lord Bolingbroke, sent for Booth
who performed Cato, and presented him (_populo spectante_) with fifty
guineas 'for defending so well the cause of the people against a perpetual
dictator.' In which words, observe, Lord Bolingbroke at once asserted the
cause of his own party, and launched a sarcasm against a great individual
opponent, viz., Marlborough. Now, Mr. Schlosser, I have mended your
harness: all right ahead; so drive on once more.
But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither--in what direction is it, that the man
is driving us? Positively, Schlosser, you must stop and let _me_ get
out. I'll go no further with such a drunken coachman. Many another absurd
thing I was going to have noticed, such as his utter perversion of what
Mandeville said about Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and
misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point-blank
misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his official character, which was
_not_ that 'he could not prepare despatches in a good style,' but
diametrically the opposite case--that he insisted too much on style, to
the serious retardation of public business. But all these things are as
nothing to what Schlosser says elsewhere. He actually describes Addison,
on the whole, as a 'dull prosaist,' and the patron of pedantry! Addison,
the man of all that ever lived most hostile even to what was good in
pedantry, to its tendencies towards the profound in erudition and the non-
popular; Addison, the champion of all that is easy, natural, superficial,
a pedant and a master of pedantry! Get down, Schlosser, this moment; or
let _me_ get out.
Pope, by far the most important writer, English or Continental, of his own
age, is treated with more extensive ignorance by Mr. Schlosser than any
other, and (excepting Addison) with more ambitious injustice. A false
abstract is given, or a false impression, of any one amongst his brilliant
works, that is noticed at all; and a false sneer, a sneer irrelevant to
the case, at any work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice. The three
works, selected as the gems of Pope's collection, are the 'Essay on
Criticism,' the 'Rape of the Lock,' and the 'Essay on Man.' On the first,
which (with Dr. Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting of
Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical
multiplication-table, of common-places the most mouldy with which
criticism has baited its rat-traps; since nothing is said worth answering,
it is sufficient to answer nothing. The 'Rape of the Lock' is treated with
the same delicate sensibility that we might have looked for in Brennus, if
consulted on the picturesque, or in Attila the Hun, if adjured to decide
aesthetically, between two rival cameos. Attila is said (though no doubt
falsely) to have described himself as not properly a man so much as the
Divine wrath incarnate. This would be fine in a melodrama, with Bengal
lights burning on the stage. But, if ever he said such a naughty thing, he
forgot to tell us what it was that had made him angry; by what
_title_ did _he_ come into alliance with the Divine wrath, which
was not likely to consult a savage? And why did his wrath hurry, by forced
marches, to the Adriatic? Now so much do people differ in opinion, that,
to us, who look at him through a telescope from an eminence, fourteen
centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of a Mahratta trooper,
painfully gathering _chout_, or a cateran levying black-mail, or a
decent tax-gatherer with an inkhorn at his button-hole, and supported by a
select party of constabulary friends. The very natural instinct which
Attila always showed for following the trail of the wealthiest footsteps,
seems to argue a most commercial coolness in the dispensation of his
wrath. Mr. Schlosser burns with the wrath of Attila against all
aristocracies, and especially that of England. He governs his fury, also,
with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun
coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops,
levying _chout_ upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the
Sylphs. Pope's 'duty it was,' says this demoniac, to 'scourge the follies
of good society,' and also 'to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely?
something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of
duty? Possibly; but it would not have satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's
guilt consists in having made his poem an idol or succession of pictures
representing the gayer aspects of society as it really was, and supported
by a comic interest of the mock-heroic derived from a playful machinery,
instead of converting it into a bloody satire. Pope, however, did not
shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy, if these made any part of
his duties. Such assaults he made twice at least too often for his own
peace, and perhaps for his credit at this day. It is useless, however, to
talk of the poem as a work of art, with one who sees none of its exquisite
graces, and can imagine his countryman Zacharia equal to a competition
with Pope. But this it may be right to add, that the 'Rape of the Lock'
was not borrowed from the 'Lutrin' of Boileau. That was impossible.
Neither was it suggested by the 'Lutrin.' The story in Herodotus of the
wars between cranes and pigmies, or the _Batrachomyomachia_ (so absurdly
ascribed to Homer) might have suggested the idea more naturally. Both
these, there is proof that Pope had read: there is none that he had
read the 'Lutrin,' nor did he read French with ease to himself. The
'Lutrin,' meantime, is as much below the 'Rape of the Lock' in brilliancy
of treatment, as it is dissimilar in plan or the quality of its pictures.
The 'Essay on Man' is a more thorny subject. When a man finds himself
attacked and defended from all quarters, and on all varieties of
principle, he is bewildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He must
not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose; he must not disown a
zealous defender, though making concessions on his own behalf not
agreeable to himself; he must not explain away ugly phrases in one
direction, or perhaps he is recanting the very words of his 'guide,
philosopher, and friend,' who cannot safely be taxed with having first led
him into temptation; he must not explain them away in another direction,
or he runs full tilt into the wrath of mother Church--who will soon bring
him to his senses by penance. Long lents, and no lampreys allowed, would
soon cauterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope did wisely,
situated as he was, in a decorous nation, and closely connected, upon
principles of fidelity under political suffering, with the Roman
Catholics, to say little in his own defence. That defence, and any
reversionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the Quixote undertaker,
he left--meekly but also slyly, humbly but cunningly--to those whom he
professed to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All parties
found their account in the affair. Pope slept in peace; several pugnacious
gentlemen up and down Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each
other's jackets; and Warburton, the attorney, finally earned his
bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a writer, who was aghast at
finding himself first trampled on as a deist, and then exalted as a
defender of the faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's courtesy,
when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord Bolingbroke sincere in their
whole extent.
Of Pope's 'Homer' Schlosser think fit to say, amongst other evil things,
which it really _does_ deserve (though hardly in comparison with the
German 'Homer' of the ear-splitting Voss), 'that Pope pocketed the
subscription of the "Odyssey," and left the work to be done by his
understrappers.' Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do _that_ any more.
True it is, and disgraceful enough, that Pope (like modern contractors for
a railway or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions of the
undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his contracts.
At least I know of people now-a-days (much better artists) that would
execute such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping time at
thirty per cent. less. But _navies_ and billbrokers, that are in excess
now, then were scarce. Still the affair, though not mercenary, was
illiberal in a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more pointedly
Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in which his own previous share of
the Homeric labor had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and needs
no exaggeration. Let it, therefore, be reported truly: Pope personally
translated one-half of the 'Odyssey'--a dozen books he turned out of his
own oven: and, if you add the _Batrachomyomachia_, his dozen was a baker's
dozen. The journeyman did the other twelve; were regularly paid; regularly
turned off when the job was out of hand; and never once had to 'strike for
wages.' How much beer was allowed, I cannot say. This is the truth of the
matter. So no more fibbing, Schlosser, if you please.
But there remains behind all these labors of Pope, the 'Dunciad,' which is
by far his greatest. I shall not, within the narrow bounds assigned to me,
enter upon a theme so exacting; for, in this instance, I should have to
fight not against Schlosser only, but against Dr. Johnson, who has
thoroughly misrepresented the nature of the 'Dunciad,' and, consequently,
could not measure its merits. Neither he, nor Schlosser, in fact, ever
read more than a few passages of this admirable poem. But the villany is
too great for a brief exposure. One thing only I will notice of
Schlosser's misrepresentations. He asserts (not when directly speaking of
Pope, but afterwards, under the head of Voltaire) that the French author's
trivial and random _Temple de Gout_ 'shows the superiority in this
species of poetry to have been greatly on the side of the Frenchman.'
Let's hear a reason, though but a Schlosser reason, for this opinion:
know, then, all men whom it concerns, that 'the Englishman's satire only
hit such people as would never have been known without his mention of
them, whilst Voltaire selected those who were still called great, and
their respective schools.' Pope's men, it seems, never _had_ been
famous--Voltaire's might cease to be so, but as yet they had _not_
ceased; as yet they commanded interest. Now mark how I will put three
bullets into that plank, riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped
by all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser will have to swim for his
life. First, he is forgetting that, by his own previous confession,
Voltaire, not less than Pope, had 'immortalized a great many
_insignificant_ persons;' consequently, had it been any fault to do
so, each alike was caught in that fault; and insignificant as the people
might be, if they _could_ be 'immortalized,' then we have Schlosser
himself confessing to the possibility that poetic splendor should create a
secondary interest where originally there had been none. Secondly, the
question of merit does not arise from the object of the archer, but from
the style of his archery. Not the choice of victims, but the execution
done is what counts. Even for continued failures it would plead
advantageously, much more for continued and brilliant successes, that Pope
fired at an object offering no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is
the grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire were obscure
by comparison with Voltaire's. True, the Frenchman's example of a scholar,
viz., the French Salmasius, was most accomplished. But so was the
Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each was absolutely
without a rival in his own day. But the day of Bentley was the very day of
Pope. Pope's man had not even faded; whereas the day of Salmasius, as
respected Voltaire had gone by for more than half a century. As to Dacier,
'_which_ Dacier, Bezonian?' The husband was a passable scholar--but
madame was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a boarding-
school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's two-fold ignorance--first,
of English authors; second, of the 'Dunciad;'--else he would have known
that even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer man than most of
those alluded to by Voltaire. Cibber, though slightly a coxcomb, was born
a brilliant man. Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom fell
off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a pheasant, leaving him
to 'mount far upwards with the swans of Thanes'--and, finally, let it not
be forgotten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, and Sir
Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting the knout; if _that_ rather
impeaches the equity, and sometimes the judgment of Pope, at least it
contributes to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection--that the
population of the Dunciad, the characters that filled its stage, were
inconsiderable.