At last it is—

“Who but must laugh if such a man there he?

Who would not weep if Atticus were he?”

He was at this time at open war with Lord Hervey, who had distinguished

himself as a steady adherent to the ministry, and being offended with a

contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets, had summoned Pulteney to a

duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack perhaps cannot now be

easily known. He had written an invective against Pope, whom he calls,

“Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;” and hints that his father

was a hatter. To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and prose. The verses

are in this poem, and the prose, though it was never sent, is printed

among his letters; but to a cool reader of the present time exhibits

nothing but tedious malignity.

His last “Satires” of the general kind, were two Dialogues, named, from

the year in which they were published, “Seventeen hundred and

thirty-eight.” In these poems many are praised and many reproached.

Pope was then entangled in the opposition, a follower of the Prince of

Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and

censured the conduct of the ministers. His political partiality was too

plainly shown; he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his

earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent

conflicts of faction. In the first Dialogue, having an opportunity of

praising Allen of Bath, he asked his leave to mention him as a man not

illustrious by any merit of his ancestors, and called him in his verses

“low-born Allen.” Men are seldom satisfied with praise introduced or

followed by any mention of defect. Allen seems not to have taken any

pleasure in his epithet, which was afterwards softened into “humble

Allen.” In the second Dialogue he took some liberty with one of the

Foxes among others; which Fox in a reply to Lyttelton, took an

opportunity of repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a

lampooner, who scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against

whom he hoped the resentment of the Legislature would quickly be

discharged.

About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the

Lords for a poem called “Manners,” together with Dodsley, his publisher.

Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped, but

Dodsley’s shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was,

however, soon dismissed, and the whole process was probably intended

rather to intimidate Pope than to punish Whitehead.

Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor

drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of

reformation is imputed by his commentator to his despair of prevailing

over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of

opinion that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of power

or of money; he pleased himself with being important and formidable, and

gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his resentment, till at last

he began to think he should be more safe if he were less busy.

The “Memoirs of Scriblerus,” published about this time, extend only to

the first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and

Arbuthnot, who used to meet on the time of Queen Anne, and denominated

themselves the “Scriblerus Club.” Their purpose was to censure the

abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They

were dispersed; the design was never completed, and Warburton laments its

miscarriage as an event very disastrous to polite letters. If the whole

may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the production of

Arbuthnot, with a few touches perhaps by Pope, the want of more will not

be much lamented; for the follies which the writer ridicules are so

little practised that they are not known; nor can the satire be

understood but by the learned. He raises phantoms of absurdity, and then

drives them away. He cures diseases that were never felt. For this

reason this joint production of three great writers has never obtained

any notice from mankind. It has been little read, or when read has been

forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering

it. The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its

general resemblance to “Don Quixote,” there will be found in it

particular imitations of the “History of Mr. Ouffle.”

Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for

his “Travels;” and with those the world might have been contented, though

the rest had been suppressed.

Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have

been explored by many other of the English writers. He had consulted the

modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau

endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.

Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for

the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection

from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London,

about the latter end of the last century, by a man who concealed his

name, but whom his preface shows to have been qualified for his

undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and

(1740) published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his

predecessor’s preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere

text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the

editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness;

he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his “Essay on

Man,” of which he has given this account to Dr. Swift:—

“March 25, 1736.

“If ever I write any more Epistles in verse, one of them shall be

addressed to you. I have long concerted it and begun it; but I would

make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to be,

that is to say, more finished than any of the rest. The subject is

large, and will divide into four Epistles, which naturally follow the

‘Essay on Man,’ viz: 1. Of the Extent and Limits of Human Reason and

Science. 2. A view of the useful and therefore attainable, and of

the unuseful and therefore unattainable Arts. 3. Of the Nature,

Ends, Application, and Use, of different Capacities. 4. Of the Use

of Learning, of the Science, of the World, and of Wit. It will

conclude with a satire against the misapplication of all these,

exemplified by Pictures, Characters, and Examples.”

This work in its full extent—being now afflicted with an asthma, and

finding the powers of life gradually declining—he had no longer courage

to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added, at

Warburton’s request, another book to the “Dunciad,” of which the design

is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either

pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.

When this book was printed (1742) the laurel had been for some time upon

the head of Cibber, a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope could

regard with much kindness or esteem, though in one of the imitations of

Horace he has liberally enough praised the “Careless Husband.” In the

“Dunciad,” among other worthless scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber,

who, in his “Apology,” complains of the great Poet’s unkindness as more

injurious, “because,” says he, “I never have offended him.”

It might have been expected that Pope should have been in some degree

mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence

appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned

him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his

“Epistle to Arbuthnot,” and in the fourth book of the “Dunciad” attacked

him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.

Perhaps he imagined that, in ridiculing the Laureate, he satirised those

by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance

with which he affected to insult the great. The severity of this satire

left Cibber no longer any patience. He had confidence enough in his own

powers to believe that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and

doubtless did not want instigators, who, without any care about the

victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He

therefore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his resolution

from that time never to bear another blow without returning it, and to

tire out his adversary by perseverance if he cannot conquer him by

strength.

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very

distant cause. After the _Three Hours After Marriage_ had been driven

off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the

audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened

that Cibber played Bayes in the _Rehearsal_; and, as it had been usual to

enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions, he

said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a

mummy and a crocodile. “This,” says he, “was received with loud claps,

which indicated contempt for the play.” Pope, who was behind the scenes,

meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the

virulence of a “wit out of his senses;” to which he replied, “that he

would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than

to declare, that as often as he played that part he would repeat the same

provocation.” He shows his opinion to be that Pope was one of the

authors of the play which he so zealously defended, and adds an idle

story of Pope’s behaviour at a tavern.

The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or language, and,

if suffered to remain without notice, would have been very soon

forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know,

if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding, that,

from a contention like his with Cibber, the world seeks nothing but

diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher character. When

Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited. What Pope would say of

Cibber nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope’s asperity might betray his

pain and lessen his dignity. He should therefore have suffered the

pamphlet to flutter and die, without confessing that it stung him. The

dishonour of being shown as Cibber’s antagonist could never be

compensated by the victory. Cibber had nothing to lose. When Pope had

exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of

his friends and his enemies. Silence only could have made him

despicable; the blow which did not appear to be felt would have been

struck in vain. But Pope’s irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to

tell the whole English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show

that he thought him to common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance.

He published a new edition of the “Dunciad,” in which he degraded

Theobald from his painful pre-eminence, and enthroned Cibber in his

stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope

was unwilling to lose what he had already written. He has therefore

depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the old pedantry,

and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest to make another change, and

introduced Osborne contending for a prize among the booksellers. Osborne

was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any disgrace but

that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which raised Pope’s

resentment, that he should be put into the “Dunciad;” but he had the fate

of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till in time I saw it

accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against

Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one,

and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his

own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him.

He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule

from one to another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own

magpie, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture.

Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the “Dunciad” with another

pamphlet, which, Pope said, “would be as good as a dose of hartshorn to

him;” but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have heard Mr.

Richardson relate that he attended his father the painter on a visit,

when one of Cibber’s pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said,

“These things are my diversion.” They sat by him while he perused it,

and saw his features writhing with anguish: and young Richardson said to

his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such

diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope. From this time, finding

his diseases more oppressive, and his vital powers gradually declining,

he no longer strained his faculties with any original composition, nor

proposed any other employment for his remaining life than the revisal and

correction of his former works, in which he received advice and

assistance from Warburton, whom he appears to have trusted and honoured

in the highest degree. He laid aside his Epic Poem, perhaps without much

loss to mankind; for his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a

ridiculous fiction, established a colony in Britain. The subject,

therefore, was of the fabulous age; the actors were a race upon whom

imagination has been exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the

mind will not easily be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse,

which Pope had adopted with great imprudence, and, I think, without due

consideration of the nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in

part, preserved by Ruffhead, by which it appears that Pope was

thoughtless enough to model the names of his heroes with terminations not

consistent with the time or country in which he places them. He lingered

through the next year, but perceived himself, as he expresses it, “going

down the hill.” He had for at least five years been afflicted with an

asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians were unable to relieve.

Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr. Thomson, a man who had, by

large promises, and free censures of the common practice of physic,

forced himself up into sudden reputation. Thomson declared his distemper

to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the water by tincture of jalap, but

confessed that his belly did not subside. Thomson had many enemies, and

Pope was persuaded to dismiss him.

While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one day

sitting in the air with Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Marchmont, he saw his

favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked Lord

Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand,

crossed his legs and sat still; but Lord Marchmont, who was younger and

less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked,

“What, is he not dead yet?” She is said to have neglected him with

shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little

which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance

began early; the life of each was pictured on the other’s mind; their

conversation therefore was endearing, for when they met, there was an

immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her

unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or

human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and

impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet

consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered his

heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that might

fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself. It was too

late to transfer his confidence or fondness.

In May, 1744, his death was approaching. On the 6th he was all day

delirious, which he mentioned for days afterwards as a sufficient

humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing

things as through a curtain, and in false colours, and one day, its the

presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came from the wall. He

said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think. Bolingbroke

sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and being told

by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his deliriousness, was

always saying something kind either of his present or absent friends, and

that his humanity seemed to have survived his understanding, answered,

“It has so.” And added, “I never in my life knew a man that had so

tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for

mankind.” At another time he said, “I have known Pope these thirty

years, and value myself more in his friendship than—” His grief then

suppressed his voice.

Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by

his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father

and mother, and whether a priest should not be called, he answered, “I do

not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you for

putting me in mind of it.” In the morning, after the priest had given

him the last sacraments, he said “There is nothing that is meritorious

but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of

virtue.” He died in the evening of the 30th day of May 1744, so

placidly, that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his

expiration. He was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother,

where a monument has been erected to him by his commentator, the Bishop

of Gloucester.

He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to Lord

Bolingbroke, and, if he should not be living, to the Earl of Marchmont,

undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and eager to extend

his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his life. After a

decent time Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit preference as the

publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been yet inspected; and,

whatever was the reason, the world has been disappointed of what was

“reserved for the next age.” He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke

by a kind of posthumous offence. The political pamphlet called “The

Patriot King” had been put into his hands that he might procure the

impression of a very few copies, to be distributed, according to the

author’s direction, among his friends, and Pope assured him that no more

had been printed than were allowed; but, soon after his death, the

printer brought and resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred

copies, which Pope had ordered him to print and retain in secret. He

kept, as was observed, his engagement to Pope better than Pope had kept

it to his friend; and nothing was known of the transaction till, upon the

death of his employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to

the right owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard,

and delivered the whole impression to the flames.

Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by

resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the

violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might

have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from

the example. Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied. His thirst of

vengeance excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had

wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of

Pope, to tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations.

Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy and tender by the recent

separation, thought it proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not

indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something

criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot

be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the

motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced

Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by usurping

the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shown to a number

more than sufficient to preserve the author’s claim; he could not gratify

his avarice, for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke was dead;

and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud would be

defeated, and if left to himself would be useless.

Warburton therefore supposes, with great appearance of reason, that the

irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for

Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope

thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author’s approbation.

To this apology an answer was written in “A letter to the most impudent

man living.” He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the

petulant and contemptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen and an

affected repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known friend

and favourite of Pope, had been invited to the house of Allen, where she

comported herself with such indecent arrogance that she parted from Mrs.

Allen in a state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for ever

barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much bitterness

as to refuse any legacy from Pope unless he left the world with a

disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her dominion,

now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence

of her temper, or perhaps, with the prejudice of a lover, persuaded that

she had suffered improper treatment, he complied with her demand, and

polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted the legacy,

which he gave to the hospital at Bath, observing that Pope was always a

bad accountant, and that if to £150 he had put a cipher more he had come

nearer to the truth.

The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed by the nicest

model. He has, in his account of the “Little Club,” compared himself to

a spider, and by another is described as protuberant behind and before.

He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy, but he was of a

constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender frame

are easily distorted, his deformity was probably in part the effect of

his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him to a level

with common tables, it was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was

not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid. By natural

deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were so much

disordered, that his life was “a long disease.” His most frequent

assailant was the headache, which he used to relieve by inhaling the

steam of coffee, which he very frequently required.

Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was

communicated by a female domestic of the Earl of Oxford, who knew him

perhaps after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in

perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that

he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of a very coarse warm linen

with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in bodice made of stiff

canvas, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were laced,

and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His

legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of

stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid, for he was not able

to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without

help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean. His hair

had fallen almost all away, and he used to dine sometimes with Lord

Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was black,

with a tie-wig, and a little sword. The indulgence and accommodation

which his sickness required, had taught him all the unpleasing and

unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man. He expected that everything

should give way to his ease or humour, as a child, whose parents will not

hear her cry, has an unresisted dominion in the nursery.

“C’est que l’enfant toujours est homme,

C’est que l’homme est toujours enfant.”

When he wanted to sleep he “nodded in company,” and once slumbered at his

own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of poetry.

The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many invitations,

but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no servant, and had so

many wants, that a numerous attendance was scarcely able to supply them.

Wherever he was, he left no room for another, because he exacted the

attention, and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands

were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen in time avoided and

neglected him, and the Earl of Oxford discharged some of his servants for

their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had

neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr.

Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the

woman that waited on him in his chamber he was very burthensome. But he

was careful to recompense her want of sleep, and Lord Oxford’s servant

declared, that in the house where her business was to answer his call,

she would not ask for wages. He had another fault, easily incident to

those who, suffering much pain, think themselves entitled to what

pleasures they can snatch. He was too indulgent to his appetite: he

loved meat highly seasoned and of strong taste; and, at the intervals of

the table, amused himself with biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat

down to a variety of dishes, he would oppress his stomach with repletion;

and though he seemed angry when a dram was offered him, did not forbear

to drink it. His friends, who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered

him with presents of luxury, which he did not suffer to stand neglected.

The death of great men is not always proportioned to the lustre of their

lives. Hannibal, says Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the

sword, the slaughters of Cannæ were revenged by a ring. The death of

Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it

was his delight to eat potted lampreys. That he loved too well to eat is

certain; but that his sensuality shortened his life will not be hastily

concluded, when it is remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted

six-and-fifty years, notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study

and meditation. In all his intercourse with mankind he had great delight

in artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and

unsuspected methods. “He hardly drank tea without a stratagem.” If at

the house of friends he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to

ask for it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as something

convenient; though when it was procured, he soon made it appear for whose

sake it had been recommended. Thus he teased Lord Orrery till he

obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions, that

Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that “he played the

politician about cabbages and turnips.” His unjustifiable impression of

the “Patriot King,” as it can be attributed to no particular motive, must

have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught

an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of

outwitting Bolingbroke. In familiar or convivial conversation, it does

not appear that he excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as

being not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is

remarkable that, so near his time, so much should be known of what he has

written, and so little of what he has said: traditional memory retains no

sallies of raillery, nor sentences of observation: nothing either pointed

or solid, either wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record.

When an objection, raised against his inscription for Shakespeare, was

defended by the authority of Patrick, he replied, _horresco referens_,

that he “would allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of

a single word, but not of two words put together.”

He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be

capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave Lord Oxford silently,

no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and

messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was indeed

infested by Lady Mary Wortley, who was the friend of Lady Oxford, and

who, knowing his peevishness, could by no entreaties be restrained from

contradicting him, till their disputes were sharpened to such asperity,

that one or the other quitted the house. He sometimes condescended to be

jocular with servants or inferiors; but by no merriment, either of others

or his own, was he ever seen excited to laughter.

Of his domestic character, frugality was a part eminently remarkable.

Having determined not to be dependent, he determined not to be in want,

and therefore wisely and magnanimously rejected all temptations to

expense unsuitable to his fortune. This general care must be universally

approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such

as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as

may be seen in the remaining copy of the “Iliad,” by which perhaps in

five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his

friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in

his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and

having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say,

“Gentlemen. I leave you to your wine.” Yet he tells his friends that

“he has a heart for all, a house for all, and whatever they may think, a

fortune for all.” He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is

said to have wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such

performances require. That this magnificence should be often displayed,

that obstinate prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not

permit; for his revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to about eight

hundred pounds a year, of which, however, he declares himself able to

assign one hundred to charity. Of this fortune, which, as it arose from

public approbation, was very honourably obtained, his imagination seems

to have been too full: it would be hard to find a man so well entitled to

notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money.

In his Letters and in his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx

and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always to be found.

The great topic of his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he

reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint,

and their want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very

uncommon in the world, that to want money is to want everything. Next to

the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that of

enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and whose

notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any practices of

meanness or servility; a boast which was never denied to be true, and to

which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set genius to sale;

he never flattered those whom he did not love, nor praised those whom he

did not esteem. Savage, however, remarked that he began a little to

relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for “his Highness’s dog.”

His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of

life. He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his “Iliad” to

Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had

his friend’s virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so

great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in

literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of

Congreve appears in the Letters among those of his other friends, but

without any observable distinction or consequence. To his latter works,

however, he took care to annex names dignified with titles, but was not

very happy in his choice; for, except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble

friends were such as that a good man would wish to have his intimacy with

them known to posterity; he can derive little honour from the notice of

Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.

Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his Letters, an

opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual

and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence, and particular fondness.

There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.

It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true

characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes

to his friend lays his heart open before him. But the truth is that such

were the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the

friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they

dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed,

they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, who we

hide from ourselves we do not show to our friend. There is, indeed, no

transaction which offers strange temptations to fallacy and

sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of

conversation the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they

are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have

their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate

performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and

surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.

Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so

much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he

desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less

constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his

chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a

letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and

partialities are known; and must therefore please, if not by favouring

them, by forbearing to oppose them. To charge those favourable

representations, which men give of their own minds, with the guilt of

hypocritical falsehood, would show more severity than knowledge. The

writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man’s thoughts, while

they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure while temptation is

away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise

death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is

nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt; and

self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy.

If the Letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem

to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write because

there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, and another to

solicit the imagination because ceremony or vanity requires something to

be written. Pope confesses his early Letters to be vitiated with

_affectation and ambition_: to know whether he disentangled himself from

these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life must be

set in comparison. One of his favourite topics is contempt of his own

poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation;

and in this he was certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself

was sufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his

poetry? He writes, he says, when “he has just nothing else to do;” yet

Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation, because he

“had always some poetical scheme in his head.” It was punctually

required that his writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose;

and Lord Oxford’s domestic related that, in the dreadful winter of Forty,

she was called from her bed by him four times in one night, to supply him

with paper, lest he should lose a thought. He pretends insensibility to

censure and criticism, though it was observed by all who knew him that

every pamphlet disturbed his quiet, and that his extreme irritability

laid him open to perpetual vexation; but he wished to despise his

critics, and therefore hoped that he did despise them. As he happened to

live in two reigns when the court paid little attention to poetry, he

nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings, and proclaims that “he

never sees courts.” Yet a little regard shown him by the Prince of Wales

melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was asked by his

Royal Highness, “How he could love a prince while he disliked kings?”

He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents

himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as on

emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes with

gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than pity.

These were dispositions apparently counterfeited. How could he despise

those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation his esteem of

himself was superstructed? Why should he hate those to whose favour he

owed his honour and his ease? Of things that terminate in human life,

the world is the proper judge: to despise its sentence, if it were

possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was

far enough from this unreasonable temper; he was sufficiently _a fool to

fame_, and his fault was that he pretended to neglect it. His levity and

his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common life,

sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions of

common men. His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no

man thinks much of that which he despises; and as falsehood is always in

danger of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time that he

lives among them. It is evident that his own importance swells often in

his mind. He is afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the post-office

should know his secrets; he has many enemies; he considers himself as

surrounded by universal jealousy: “After many deaths, and many

dispersions, two or three of us,” says he, “may still be brought

together, not to plot, but to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it

pleases;” and they can live together, and “show what friends wits may be,

in spite of all the fools in the world.” All this while it was likely

that the clerks did not know his hand; he certainly had no more enemies

than a public character like his inevitably excites; and with what degree

of friendship the wits might live, very few were so much fools as ever to

inquire. Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift,

and expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with

him. Swift’s resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere; Pope’s was

the mere mimicry of his friend, a fictitious part which he began to play

before it became him. When he was only twenty-five years old, he related

that “a glut of study and retirement had thrown him on the world,” and

that there was danger lest “a glut of the world should throw him back

upon study and retirement.” To this Swift answered with great propriety,

that Pope had not yet acted or suffered enough in the world to have

become weary of it. And, indeed, it must have been some very powerful

reason that can drive back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the

pleasures of society.

In the Letters both of Swift and Pope there appears such narrowness of

mind as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some

affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation to so

small a number, that whoever should form his opinion of their age from

their representation, would suppose them to have lived amidst ignorance

and barbarity, unable to find among their contemporaries either virtue or

intelligence, and persecuted by those that could not understand them.

When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when

he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with

negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his habitual and

settled resentments, but either wilfully disguises his own character, or,

what is more likely, invests himself with temporary qualities, and

sallies out in the colours of the present moment. His hopes and fears,

his joys and sorrows, acted strongly upon his mind, and if he differed

from others it was not by carelessness; he was irritable and resentful;

his malignity to Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous and then

hated for being angry continued too long. Of his vain desire to make

Bentley contemptible I never heard any adequate reason. He was sometimes

wanton in his attacks, and before Chandos, Lady Wortley, and Hill, was

mean in his retreat. The virtues which seem to have had most of his

affection were liberality and fidelity of friendship, in which it does

not appear that he was other than he describes himself. His fortune did

not suffer his character to be splendid and conspicuous, but he assisted

Dodsley with a hundred pounds that he might open a shop, and of the

subscription of forty pounds a year that he raised for Savage twenty were

paid by himself. He was accused of loving money, but his love was

eagerness to gain, not solicitude to keep it. In the duties of

friendship he was zealous and constant; his early maturity of mind

commonly united him with men older than himself, and therefore, without

attaining any considerable length of life, he saw many companions of his

youth sink into the grave; but it does not appear that he lost a single

friend by coldness or by injury; those who loved him once continued their

kindness. His ungrateful mention of Allen in his will was the effect of

his adherence to one whom he had known much longer, and whom he naturally

loved with greater fondness. His violation of the trust reposed in him

by Bolingbroke could have no motive inconsistent with the warmest

affection; he either thought the action so near to indifferent that he

forgot it, or so laudable that he expected his friend to approve it. It

was reported with such confidence as almost to enforce belief, that in

the papers entrusted to his executors was found a defamatory Life of

Swift, which he had prepared as an instrument of vengeance, to be used if

any provocation should be ever given. About this I inquired of the Earl

of Marchmont, who assured me that no such piece was among his remains.

The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of Rome,

to which, in his correspondence with Racine, he professes himself a

sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in some part of his

life is known by many idle and indecent applications of sentences taken

from the Scriptures, a mode of merriment which a good man dreads for its

profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.

But to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that

his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of

revelation. The positions which he transmitted from Bolingbroke he seems

not to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation that made

them orthodox.

A man of such exalted superiority and so little moderation would

naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those who

could not deny that he was excellent would rejoice to find that he was

not perfect. Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which

the same man is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has

been depreciated. He certainly was in his early life a man of great

literary curiosity, and when he wrote his “Essay on Criticism,” had, for

his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the

living world it seems to have happened to him, as to many others, that he

was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of

Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume. He gathered his

notions fresh from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the

originals of Nature. Yet there is no reason to believe that literature

ever lost his esteem; he always professed to love reading, and Dobson,

who spent some time at his house translating his “Essay on Man,” when I

asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, “More than I

expected.” His frequent references to history, his allusions to various

kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his

observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an

intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent,

eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it. From this

curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes in his

verses to Jervas, and which, though he never found an opportunity to

gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined.

Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental principle

was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of consonance and

propriety. He saw immediately of his own conceptions what was to be

chosen and what to be rejected, and, in the works of others, what was to

be shunned and what was to be copied. But good sense alone is a sedate

and quiescent quality, which manages its possessions well, but does not

increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and

preserves safety, but never gains supremacy. Pope had likewise genius; a

mind active, ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always

aspiring; in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its

highest flights still wishing to be higher, always imagining some thing

greater than it knows, always endeavouring more than it can do. To

assist these powers he is said to have had great strength and exactness

of memory. That which he had heard or read was not easily lost, and he

had before him not only what his own meditations suggested, but what he

had found in other writers that might be accommodated to his present

purpose. These benefits of Nature he improved by incessant and unwearied

diligence; he had recourse to every source of intelligence, and lost no

opportunity of information; he consulted the living as well as the dead;

he read his compositions to his friends, and was never content with

mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He considered poetry as

the business of his life, and however he might seem to lament his

occupation he followed it with constancy; to make verses was his first

labour, and to mend them was his last. From his attention to poetry he

was never diverted. If conversation offered anything that could be

improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an

expression, more happy than was common, rose to his mind, he was careful

to write it; an independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of

insertion, and some little fragments have been found containing lines, or

parts of lines, to be wrought upon at some other time. He was one of

those few whose labour is their pleasure; he was never elevated to

negligence nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a fault unamended

by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works first

to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it.

Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at once memory

and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and

polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions

only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related

of Virgil that his custom was to pour out a great number of verses in the

morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting

inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his

translation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and

gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them. With such

faculties and such dispositions he excelled every other writer in

poetical prudence; he wrote in such a manner as might expose him to few

hazards. He used almost always the same fabric of verse, and, indeed, by

those few essays which he made of any other, he did not enlarge his

reputation. Of this uniformity the certain consequence was readiness and

dexterity. By perpetual practice language had, in his mind, a

systematical arrangement; having always the same use for words, he had

words so selected and combined as to be ready at his call. This increase

of facility he confessed himself to have perceived in the progress of his

translation. But what was yet of more importance, his effusions were

always voluntary, and his subjects chosen by himself. His independence

secured him from drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren topic;

he never exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop of condolence or

congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarcely ever temporary. He

suffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a song, and

derived no opportunities from recent events, nor any popularity from the

accidental disposition of his readers. He was never reduced to the

necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a birthday, of calling the

graces and virtues to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes have said

before him. When he could produce nothing new he was at liberty to be

silent.

His publications were for the same reason never hasty. He is said to

have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his

inspection: it is at least certain that he ventured nothing without nice

examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and the

novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is always

enamoured of its own productions, and did not trust his first fondness.

He consulted his friends, and listened with great willingness to

criticism; and, what was of more importance, he consulted himself, and

let nothing pass against his own judgment. He professed to have learned

his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he

praised through his whole life with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his

character may receive some illustration if he be compared with his

master.

Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in

a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden’s mind

was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and

the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never

desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed

to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others, he contented

himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never

attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend

what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with

very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he

poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it

had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for, when he had no

pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore

always endeavoured to do his best; he did not court the candour, but

dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from

others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with

minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with

indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. For

this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he

considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed

to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their

publication, were the two satires of “Thirty-eight;” of which Dodsley

told me that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be

fairly copied. “Almost every line,” he said, “was then written twice

over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time afterwards

to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second

time.” His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their

publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never

abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently

corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the

“Iliad,” and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the “Essay on

Criticism” received many improvements after its first appearance. It

will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance,

or vigour. Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly

wanted the diligence of Pope.

In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose

education was more scholastic, and who before he became an author had

been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His

mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations

from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man

in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of

Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by

minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and

more certainty in that of Pope. Poetry was not the sole praise of

either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his

prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and

varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden observes the

motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of

composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always

smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden’s page is a natural field, rising

into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant

vegetation; Pope’s is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled

by the roller.

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without

which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which

collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with

some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of

this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for

every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of

Dryden it must be said that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not

better poems. Dryden’s performances were always hasty, either excited by

some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed

without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind

could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought,

and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to

condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all

that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of

Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of

Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope’s the heat is more regular

and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls

below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with

perpetual delight. This parallel will, I hope, when it is well

considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I

suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let

him not too hastily condemn me; for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps,

show him the reasonableness of my determination.

The Works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much with

attention to slight faults or petty beauties, as to the general character

and effect of each performance.

It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals,

which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and,

exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no

subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope’s pastorals are not, however,

composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the

day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The last,

that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author’s

favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness

of futurity and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a

delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably just. I

wish, however, that his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the

Zephyrs are made to lament in silence. To charge these pastorals with

wane of invention, is to require what was never intended. The imitations

are so ambitiously frequent, that the writer evidently means rather to

show his literature than his wit. It is surely sufficient for an author

of sixteen, not only to be able to copy the poems of antiquity with

judicious selection, but to have obtained sufficient power of language,

and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of versification which had in

English poetry no precedent, nor has since had an imitation.

The design of “Windsor Forest” is evidently derived from “Cooper’s Hill,”

with some attention to Waller’s poem on “The Park;” but Pope cannot be

denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of

interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The objection made

by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts

terminating in the principal and original design. There is this want in

most descriptive poems, because as the scenes, which they must exhibit

successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which

they are shown must by necessity be arbitrary, and more is not to be

expected from the last part than from the first. The attention,

therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by

diversity, such as this poem offers to its reader. But the desire of

diversity may be too much indulged; the parts of “Windsor Forest” which

deserve least praise are those which were added to enliven the stillness

of the scene—the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of

Lodona. Addison had in his “Campaign” derided the rivers that “rise from

their oozy beds” to tell stories of heroes; and it is therefore strange

that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural, but lately censured.

The story of Lodona is told with sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a

ready and puerile expedient; nothing is easier than to tell how a flower

was once a blooming virgin, or a rock an obdurate tyrant.

The “Temple of Fame” has, as Steele warmly declared, a “thousand

beauties.” Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of

ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much

improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery is

properly selected, and learnedly displayed; yet, with all this

comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and its

sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little relation

to general manners or common life, it never obtained much notice, but is

turned silently over, and seldom quoted or mentioned with either praise

or blame.

That the “Messiah” excels the “Pollio” is no great praise, if it be

considered from what original the improvements are derived.

The “Verses on the Unfortunate Lady” have drawn much attention by the

illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect; and they must be

allowed to be written in some parts with vigorous animation, and in

others with gentle tenderness; nor has Pope produced any poem in which

the sense predominates more over the diction. But the tale is not

skilfully told; it is not easy to discover the character of either the

lady or her guardian. History relates that she was about to disparage

herself by a marriage with an inferior; Pope praises her for the dignity

of ambition, and yet condemns the uncle to detestation for his pride; the

ambitious love of a niece may be opposed by the interest, malice, or envy

of an uncle, but never by his pride. On such an occasion a poet may be

allowed to be obscure, but inconsistency never can be right.

The “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day” was undertaken at the desire of Steele:

in this the author is generally confessed to have miscarried, yet he has

miscarried only as compared with Dryden; for he has far outgone other

competitors. Dryden’s plan is better chosen; history will always take

stronger hold of the attention than fable: the passions excited by Dryden

are the pleasures and pains of real life, the scene of Pope is laid in

imaginary existence; Pope is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden with

turbulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the passes

of the mind. Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical

compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be

alleged that Pindar is said by Horace to have written _numeris lege

solutis_; but as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us,

the meaning of that expression cannot be fixed; and perhaps the like

return might properly be made to a modern Pindarist as Mr. Cobb received

from Bentley, who, when he found his criticisms upon a Greek exercise,

which Cobb had presented, refuted one after another by Pindar’s

authority, cried out at last, “Pindar was a bold fellow, but thou art an

impudent one.”

If Pope’s ode be particularly inspected, it will be found that the first

stanza consists of sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds. The

second consists of hyperbolical commonplaces, easily to be found, and

perhaps without much difficulty to be as well expressed. In the third,

however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and rigour, not unworthy the

antagonist of Dryden. Had all been like this—but every part cannot be

the best. The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal

regions of mythology, where neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow

can be found: the poet, however, faithfully attends us; we have all that

can be performed by elegance of diction or sweetness of versification;

but what can form avail without better matter? The last stanza recurs

again to commonplaces. The conclusion is too evidently modelled by that

of Dryden; and it may be remarked that both end with the same fault; the

comparison of each is literal on one side and metaphorical on the other.

Poets do not always express their own thoughts: Pope, with all this

labour in the praise of music, was ignorant of its principles and

insensible of its effects.

One of his greatest, though of his earliest works, is the “Essay on

Criticism,” which, if he had written nothing else, would have placed him

among the first critics and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of

excellence that can embellish or dignify didactic composition, selection

of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of

illustration, and propriety of digression. I know not whether it be

pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at twenty, and never

afterwards excelled it: he that delights himself with observing that such

powers may be soon attained, cannot but grieve to think that life was

ever after at a stand.

To mention the particular beauties of the essay would be unprofitably

tedious: but I cannot forbear to observe that the comparison of a

student’s progress in the sciences with the journey of a traveller in the

Alps is perhaps the best that English poetry can show. A simile, to be

perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show it to

the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with

greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to

recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great purpose is

instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does

not ennoble; in heroics, that may be admitted which ennobles, though it

does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit,

independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said

to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that

circumstances were sometimes added, which, having no parallels, served

only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously

called “comparisons with a long tail.” In their similes the greatest

writers have sometimes failed; the ship-race, compared with the

chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make

all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened to a

greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit

and flight are too plain to be made plainer; and a god and the daughter

of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and dog.

The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking

picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better understood, and

enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the

apprehension and elevates the fancy. Let me likewise dwell a little on

the celebrated paragraph in which it is directed that “the sound should

seem an echo to the sense;” a precept which Pope is allowed to have

observed beyond any other English poet.

This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering

frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my

opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish

this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly and the

time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed

to exhibit the noises which they express, as _thump_, _rattle_, _growl_,

_hiss_. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them more,

nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time

of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned languages

capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated

only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps

expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer,

when the image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having

little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence.

The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the

ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a

_soft_ line and _soft_ couch, or between _heard_ syllables and _hard_

fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet it

may be suspected that in such resemblances the mind often governs the

ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of their most

successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus:—

“With many a weary step, and many a groan,

Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.”

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll violently

back? But set the same numbers to another sense:—

“While many a merry tale, and many a song,

Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long.

The rough road, then, returning in a round,

Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.”

We have now surely lost much of the delay and much of the rapidity. But,

to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles

of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet

who tells us that—

“When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,

The line too labours, and the words move slow:

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main;”

when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla’s

lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon _sound_ and _time_,

and produced this memorable triplet:—

“Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join

The varying verse, the full resounding line,

The long majestic march, and energy divine.”

Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced

majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables,

except that the exact prosodist will find the line of _swiftness_ by one

time longer than that of _tardiness_. Beauties of this kind are commonly

fancied, and, when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected

and not to be solicited.

To the praises which have been accumulated on the “Rape of the Look” by

readers of every class, from the critic to the waiting-maid, it is

difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally allowed to

be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it rather be

now inquired from what sources the power of pleasing is derived.

Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked that

the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the

poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention; we should have

turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana. The employment of

allegorical persons always excites conviction of its own absurdity; they

may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put

in motion it dissolves; thus _Discord_ may raise a mutiny, but _Discord_

cannot conduct a march nor besiege a town. Pope brought in view a new

race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their

operation. The Sylphs and Gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-table

what more terrific and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy ocean

or the field of battle: they give their proper help and do their proper

mischief. Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventor of

this petty notion, a charge which might with more justice have been

brought against the author of the “Iliad,” who doubtless adopted the

religious system of his country; for what is there but the names of his

agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters

and operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them

their first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate

his work original, nothing original ever can be written.

In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most engaging

powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things

are made new. A race of aërial people never heard of before is presented

to us in a manner so clear and easy that the reader seeks for no further

information, but immediately mingles with his new acquaintance, adopts

their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves a Sylph, and detests a

Gnome. That familiar things are made new every paragraph will prove.

The subject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common

life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no

longer regarded; yet the whole detail of a female day is here brought

before us, invested with so much art of decoration that, though nothing

is disguised, everything is striking, and we feel all the appetite of

curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times turned

fastidiously away.

The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at “the little

unguarded follies of the female sex.” It is therefore without justice

that Dennis charges the “Rape of the Lock” with the want of a moral, and

for that reason sets it below the “Lutrin,” which exposes the pride and

discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the

world much better than he found it; but if they had both succeeded, it

were easy to tell who would have deserved most from public gratitude.

The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity of women as they embroil

families in discord, and fill houses with disquiet, do more to obstruct

the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy in many

centuries. It has been well observed that the misery of man proceeds not

from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexatious

continually repeated. It is remarked by Dennis, likewise, that the

machinery is superfluous; that, by all the bustle of preternatural

operation, the main event is neither hastened nor retarded. To this

charge an efficacious answer is not easily made. The Sylphs cannot be

said to help or oppose; and it must be allowed to imply some want of art

that their power has not been sufficiently intermingled with the action.

Other parts may likewise be charged with want of connection—the game at

_ombre_ might be spared; but if the lady had lost her hair while she was

intent upon her cards it might have been inferred that those who are too

fond of play will be in danger of neglecting more important interests.

Those, perhaps, are faults, but what are such faults to so much

excellence!

The Epistle of “Eloise to Abelard” is one of the most happy productions

of human wit; the subject is so judiciously chosen that it would be

difficult in turning over the annals of the world to find another which

so many circumstances concur to recommend. We regularly interest

ourselves most in the fortune of those who most deserve our notice.

Abelard and Eloise were conspicuous in their days for eminence of merit.

The heart naturally loves truth. The adventures and misfortunes of this

illustrious pair are known from undisputed history. Their fate does not

leave the mind in hopeless dejection, for they both found quiet and

consolation in retirement and piety. So new and so affecting is their

story that it supersedes invention, and imagination ranges at full

liberty without straggling into scenes of fable. The story thus

skilfully adopted has been diligently improved. Pope has left nothing

behind him which seems more the effect of studious perseverance and

laborious revisal. Here is particularly observable the _curiosa

felicitas_, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no

crudeness of sense nor asperity of language. The sources from which

sentiments which have so much vigour and efficacy have been drawn are

shown to be the mystic writers by the learned author of the “Essays on

the Life and Writings of Pope,” a book which teaches how the brow of

Criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her

severity, to attract and to delight.

The train of my disquisition has now conducted me to that poetical

wonder, the translation of the “Iliad,” a performance which no age or

nation can pretend to equal. To the Greeks translation was almost

unknown; it was totally unknown to the inhabitants of Greece. They had

no recourse to the barbarians for poetical beauties, but sought for

everything in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little which they might

not find. The Italians have been very diligent translators, but I can

hear of no version, unless, perhaps, Anguillara’s “Ovid” may be excepted,

which is read with eagerness. The “Iliad” of Salvini every reader may

discover to be punctiliously exact; but it seems to be the work of a

linguist skilfully pedantic; and his countrymen, the proper judges of its

power to please, reject it with disgust. Their predecessors, the Romans,

have left some specimens of translation behind them, and that employment

must have had some credit in which Tully and Germanicus engaged; but

unless we suppose, what is perhaps true, that the plays of Terence were

versions of Menander, nothing translated seems ever to have risen to high

reputation. The French in the meridian hour of their learning were very

laudably industrious to enrich their own language with the wisdom of the

ancients; but found themselves reduced by whatever necessity to turn the

Greek and Roman poetry into prose. Whoever could read an author could

translate him. From such rivals little can be feared.

The chief help of Pope in this audacious undertaking was drawn from the

versions of Dryden. Virgil had borrowed much of his imagery from Homer;

and part of the debt was now paid by his translator. Pope searched the

pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroic diction, but it will not

be denied that he added much to what he found. He cultivated our

language with so much diligence and art, that he has left in his “Homer”

a treasure of poetical elegances to posterity. His version may be said

to have tuned the English tongue; for since its appearance no writer,

however deficient in other powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of

lines, so elaborately corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took

possession of the public ear; the vulgar was enamoured of the poem, and

the learned wondered at the translation. But in the most general

applause discordant voices will always be heard. It has been objected by

some who wish to be numbered among the sons of learning that Pope’s

version of Homer is not Homerical; that it exhibits no resemblance of the

original and characteristic manner of the Father of Poetry, as it wants

his artless grandeur, his unaffected majesty. This cannot be totally

denied; but it must be remembered that _necessitas quod cogit defendit_;

that may be lawfully done which cannot be forborne. Time and place will

always enforce regard. In estimating this translation, consideration

must be had of the nature of our language, the form of our metre, and,

above all, of the change which two thousand years have made in the modes

of life and the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the

same general fabric with that of Homer, in verses of the same measure,

and in an age nearer to Homer’s time by eighteen hundred years; yet he

found even then the state of the world so much altered, and the demand

for elegance so much increased, that mere nature would be endured no

longer; and, perhaps, in the multitude of borrowed passages, very few can

be shown which he has not embellished.

There is a time when nations, emerging from barbarity, and falling into

regular subordination, gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the shame of

ignorance and the craving pain of unsatisfied curiosity. To this hunger

of the mind plain sense is grateful; that which fills the void removes

uneasiness, and to be free from pain for a while is pleasure; but

repletion generates fastidiousness; a saturated intellect soon becomes

luxurious, and knowledge finds no willing reception till it is

recommended by artificial diction. Thus it will be found, in the

progress of learning, that in all nations the first writers are simple,

and that every age improves in elegance. One refinement always makes way

for another; and what was expedient to Virgil was necessary to Pope. I

suppose many readers of the English “Iliad,” when they have been touched

with some unexpected beauty of the lighter kind, have tried to enjoy it

in the original, where, alas! it was not to be found. Homer doubtless

owes to his translator many Ovidian graces not exactly suitable to his

character; but to have added can be no great crime, if nothing be taken

away. Elegance is surely to be desired, if it be not gained at the

expense of dignity. A hero would wish to be loved, as well as to be

reverenced. To a thousand cavils one answer is sufficient; the purpose

of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the

power of pleasing must be blown aside. Pope wrote for his own age and

his own nation: he knew that it was necessary to colour the images and

point the sentiments of his author; he therefore made him graceful, but

lost him some of his sublimity. The copious notes with which the version

is accompanied, and by which it is recommended to many readers, though

they were undoubtedly written to swell the volumes, ought not to pass

without praise: commentaries which attract the reader by the pleasure of

perusal have not often appeared; the notes of others are read to clear

difficulties; those of Pope to vary entertainment. It has, however, been

objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in the commentary too

much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that too many appeals

are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so carefully preserved is

sometimes the ease of a trifler. Every art has its terms, and every kind

of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common critics may be

tedious, but is less despicable than childish merriment.

Of the “Odyssey” nothing remains to be observed; the same general praise

may be given to both translations, and a particular examination of either

would require a large volume. The notes were written by Broome, who

endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to imitate his master.

Of the “Dunciad” the hint is confessedly taken from Dryden’s “Mac

Flecknoe;” but the plan is so enlarged and diversified as justly to claim

the praise of an original, and affords the best specimen that has yet

appeared of personal satire ludicrously pompous. That the design was

moral, whatever the author might tell either his readers or himself, I am

not convinced. The first motive was the desire of revenging the contempt

with which Theobald had treated his Shakspeare, and regaining the honour

which he had lost, by crushing his opponent. Theobald was not of bulk

enough to fill a poem, and therefore it was necessary to find other

enemies with other names, at whose expense he might divert the public.

In this design there was petulance and malignity enough; but I cannot

think it very criminal. An author places himself uncalled before the

tribunal of criticism, and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.

Dulness or deformity are not culpable in themselves, but may be very

justly reproached when they pretend to the honour of wit or the influence

of beauty. If bad writers were to pass without reprehension, what should

restrain them? _impune diem consumpserit ingens Telephus_; and upon bad

writers only will censure have much effect. The satire which brought

Theobald and Moore into contempt dropped impotent from Bentley, like the

javelin of Priam. All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be

considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he

that refines the public taste is a public benefactor. The beauties of

this poem are well known; its chief fault is the grossness of its images.

Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such

as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear

shrinks from the mention. But even this fault, offensive as it is, may

be forgiven for the excellence of other passages; such as the formation

and dissolution of Moore, the account of the Traveller, the misfortune of

the Florist, and the crowded thoughts and stately numbers which dignify

the concluding paragraph. The alterations which have been made in the

“Dunciad,” not always for the better, require that it should be

published, as in the present collection, with all its variations.

The “Essay on Man” was a work of great labour and long consideration, but

certainly not the happiest of Pope’s performances. The subject is

perhaps not very proper for poetry; and the poet was not sufficiently

master of his subject; metaphysical morality was to him a new study; he

was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great

secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells

us, in the first Epistle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may

be deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because infinite

excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings must

be “somewhere;” and that “all the question is, whether man be in a wrong

place.” Surely if, according to the poet’s Leibnitzian reasoning, we may

infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his

place is the right place, because he has it. Supreme Wisdom is not less

infallible in disposing than in creating. But what is meant by

_somewhere_, and _place_, and _wrong piece_, it had been in vain to ask

Pope, who probably had never asked himself.

Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much that

every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that we see but

little, and that the order of the universe is beyond our comprehension;

an opinion not very uncommon; and that there is a chain of subordinate

beings “from infinite to nothing,” of which himself and his readers are

equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which without his help he

supposes unattainable, in the position “that though we are fools, yet God

is wise.”

This essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius,

the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence.

Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily

disguised. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns nothing;

and, when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his

mother and his nurse. When these wonder-working sounds sink into sense,

and the doctrine of the essay, disrobed of its ornaments, is left to the

powers of its naked excellence, what shall we discover? That we are, in

comparison with our Creator, very weak and ignorant; that we do not

uphold the chain of existence; and that we could not make one another

with more skill than we are made. We may learn yet more that the arts of

human life were copied from the instinctive operations of other animals;

that if the world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for

geese. To these profound principles of natural knowledge are added some

moral instructions equally new; that self-interest, well understood, will

produce social concord; that men are mutual gainers by mutual benefits;

that evil is sometimes balanced by good; that human advantages are

unstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration and doubtful effect; that

our true honour is not to have a great part, but to act it well; that

virtue only is our own; and that happiness is always in our power.

Surely a man of no very comprehensive search may venture to say that he

has heard all this before; but it was never till now recommended by such

a blaze of embellishments, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous

contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the

incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the

softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism, and

oppress judgment by overpowering pleasure. This is true of many

paragraphs; yet, if I had undertaken to exemplify Pope’s felicity of

composition before a rigid critic, I should not select the “Essay on

Man;” for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness

of diction, and more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without

elegance, and more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found

in all his other works.

The “Characters of Men and Women” are the product of diligent speculation

upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very

seldom laboured in vain. That his excellence may be properly estimated,

I recommend a comparison of his “Characters of Women” with Boileau’s

Satire; it will then be seen with how much more perspicacity female

nature is investigated, and female excellence selected; and he surely is

no mean writer to whom Boileau should be found inferior. The “Characters

of Men,” however, are written with more, if not with deeper, thought, and

exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful. The “Gem and the Flower”

will not easily be equalled. In the women’s part are some defects; the

character of Atossa is not so neatly finished as that of Clodio, and some

of the female characters may be found, perhaps, more frequently among

men; what is said of Philomede was true of Prior.

In the Epistles to Lord Bathurst and Lord Burlington, Dr. Warburton has

endeavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the writer’s

head, and, to support his hypothesis, has printed that first which was

published last. In one the most valuable passage is perhaps the Elegy on

Good Sense, and the other the end of the Duke of Buckingham.

The Epistle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the “Prologue to the

Satires,” is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments

wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered beauties,

contains more striking paragraphs than could probably have been brought

together into an occasional work. As there is no stronger motive to

exertion than self-defence, no part has more elegance, spirit, or

dignity, than the poet’s vindication of his own character. The meanest

passage is the satire upon Sporus.

Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which are

called the “Epilogue to the Satires,” it was very justly remarked by

Savage that the second was in the whole more strongly conceived, and more

equally supported, but that it had no single passages equal to the

contention in the first for the dignity of Vice and the celebration of

the triumph of Corruption.

The “Imitations of Horace” seem to have been written as relaxations of

his genius. This employment became his favourite by its facility; the

plan was ready to his hand, and nothing was required but to accommodate

as he could the sentiments of an old author to recent facts or familiar

images; but what is easy is seldom excellent. Such imitations cannot

give pleasure to common readers; the man of learning may be sometimes

surprised and delighted by an unexpected parallel, but the comparison

requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect

strained applications. Between Roman images and English manners there

will be an irreconcilable dissimilitude, and the works will be generally

uncouth and parti-coloured, neither original nor translated, neither

ancient nor modern.

Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the

qualities that constitute genius. He had _intention_, by which new

trains of events are formed and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in

the “Rape of the Lock,” and by which extrinsic and adventitious

embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as

in the “Essay on Criticism.” He had _imagination_, which strongly

impresses on the writer’s mind, and enables him to convey to the reader

the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion,

as in his “Eloisa,” “Windsor Forest,” and “Ethic Epistles.” He had

_judgment_, which selects from life or Nature what the present purpose

requires, and by separating the essence of things from its concomitants,

often makes the representation more powerful than the reality; and he had

colours of language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with

every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to

the wonderful multiplicity of Homer’s sentiments and descriptions.

Poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning. “Music,” says

Dryden, “is inarticulate poetry;” among the excellences of Pope,

therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perusing the

works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabric of English verse,

and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in

consequence of which restraint his poetry has been censured as too

uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I

suspect this objection to be the cant of those who judge by principles

rather than perception, and who would even themselves have less pleasure

in his works if he had tried to relieve attention by studied discords, or

affected to break his lines and vary his pauses. But though he was thus

careful of his versification, he did not oppress his powers with

superfluous rigour. He seems to have thought with Boileau that the

practice of writing might be refined till the difficulty should

overbalance the advantage. The construction of the language is not

always strictly grammatical; with those rhymes which prescription had

conjoined he contented himself, without regard to Swift’s remonstrances,

though there was no striking consonance, nor was he very careful to vary

his terminations or to refuse admission, at a small distance, to the same

rhymes. To Swift’s edict for the exclusion of alexandrines and triplets

he paid little regard; he admitted them, but, in the opinion of Fenton,

too rarely; he uses them more liberally in his translation than his

poems. He has a few double rhymes, and always, I think, unsuccessfully,

except once in the “Rape of the Lock.” Expletives he very early ejected

from his verses, but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious

than important. Each of the six first lines of the “Iliad” might lose

two syllables with very little diminution of the meaning, and sometimes,

after all his art and labour, one verse seems to be made for the sake of

another. In his latter productions the diction is sometimes vitiated by

French idioms, with which Bolingbroke had perhaps infected him.

I have been told that the couplet by which he declared his own ear to be

most gratified was this:—

“Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows

The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows.”

But the reason of this preference I cannot discover.

It is remarked by Watts that there is scarcely a happy combination of

words, or a phrase poetically elegant in the English language, which Pope

has not inserted into his version of Homer. How he obtained possession

of so many beauties of speech it were desirable to know. That he gleaned

from authors, obscure as well as eminent, what he thought brilliant or

useful, and preserved it all in a regular collection, is not unlikely.

When, in his last years, Hall’s “Satires” were shown him, he wished that

he had seen them sooner. New sentiments and new images others may

produce; but to attempt any further improvement of versification will be

dangerous. Art and diligence have now done their best, and what shall be

added will be the effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity. After

all this, it is surely superfluous to answer the question that has once

been asked, Whether Pope was a poet, otherwise than by asking in return,

If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe

poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer,

though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made.

Let us look round upon the present time and back upon the past; let us

inquire to whom the voice of mankind has decreed the wreath of poetry;

let their productions be examined, and their claims stated, and the

pretensions of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he given the world

only his version, the name of poet must have been allowed him: if the

writer of the “Iliad” were to class his successors he would assign a very

high place to his translator, without requiring any other evidence of

genius.

The following letter, of which the original is in the hands of Lord

Hardwicke, was communicated to me by the kindness of Mr. Jodrell:—

“_To_ MR. BRIDGES, _at the Bishop of London’s_, _at Fulham_.

“SIR,—The favour of your letter, with your remarks, can never be

enough acknowledged, and the speed with which you discharged so

troublesome a task doubles the obligation.

“I must own you have pleased me very much by the commendations so ill

bestowed upon me; but I assure you, much more by the frankness of

your censure, which I ought to take the more kindly of the two, as it

is more advantage to a scribbler to be improved in his judgment than

to be smoothed in his vanity. The greater part of those deviations

from the Greek which you have observed I was led into by Chapman and

Hobbes; who are, it seems, as much celebrated for their knowledge of

the original as they are decried for the badness of their

translations. Chapman pretends to have restored the genuine sense of

the author from the mistakes of all former explainers in several

hundred places; and the Cambridge editors of the large Homer, in

Greek and Latin, attributed so much to Hobbes, that they confess they

have corrected the old Latin interpretation very often by his

version. For my part, I generally took the author’s meaning to be as

you have explained it; yet their authority, joined to the knowledge

of my own imperfectness in the language, overruled me. However, sir,

you may be confident, I think you in the right, because you happen to

be of my opinion; for men (let them say what they will) never approve

any other’s sense but as it squares with their own. But you have

made me much more proud of and positive in my judgment, since it is

strengthened by yours. I think your criticisms which regard the

expression very just, and shall make my profit of them; to give you

some proof that I am in earnest, I will alter three verses on your

bare objection, though I have Mr. Dryden’s example for each of them.

And this, I hope, you will account no small piece of obedience, from

one who values the authority of one true poet above that of twenty

critics or commentators. But, though I speak thus of commentators, I

will continue to read carefully all I can procure, to make up that

way for my own want of critical understanding in the original

beauties of Homer. Though the greatest of them are certainly those

of invention and design, which are not at all confined to the

language; for the distinguishing excellences of Homer are (by the

consent of the best critics of all nations), first in the manners

(which include all the speeches, as being no other than the

representations of each person’s manners by his words): and then in

that rapture and fire, which carries you away with him, with that

wonderful force, that no man who has a true poetical spirit is master

of himself while he reads him. Homer makes you interested and

concerned before you are aware, all at once, where Virgil does it by

soft degrees. This, I believe, is what a translator of Homer ought

principally to imitate; and it is very hard for any translator to

come up to it, because the chief reason why all translations fall

short of their originals is, that the very constraint they are

obliged to renders them heavy and dispirited.

“The great beauty of Homer’s language, as I take it, consists in that

noble simplicity which runs through all his works (and yet his

diction, contrary to what one would imagine consistent with

simplicity, is at the same time very copious). I don’t know how I

have run into this pedantry in a letter, but I find I have said too

much, as well as spoken too inconsiderately; what farther thoughts I

have upon this subject I shall be glad to communicate to you (for my

own improvement) when we meet, which is a happiness I very earnestly

desire, as I do likewise some opportunity of proving how much I think

myself obliged to your friendship, and how truly I am, sir,

“Your most faithful humble servant,

“A. POPE.”

The criticism upon Pope’s Epitaphs, which was printed in “The Universal

Visitor,” is placed here, being too minute and particular to be inserted

in the Life.

Every art is best taught by example. Nothing contributes more to the

cultivation of propriety than remarks on the works of those who have most

excelled. I shall therefore endeavour at this _visit_ to entertain the

young students in poetry with an examination of Pope’s Epitaphs.

To define an epitaph is useless; every one knows that it is an

inscription on a tomb. An epitaph, therefore, implies no particular

character of writing, but may be composed in verse or prose. It is,

indeed, commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished with a

stone but by our friends; but it has no rule to restrain or mollify it

except this, that it ought not to be longer than common beholders may be

expected to have leisure and patience to peruse.