About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first

ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and

vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful

extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his

imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a

memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original

combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the

reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be

always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His

abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal

or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his

adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers

commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of

some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman

emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements

of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.

His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;

he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and

impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice

of inferiour wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A

letter[133] as produced, when he had, perhaps, himself forgotten it, in

which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of

leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison

out of modesty." And when Theobald published Shakespeare, in opposition

to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and

Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to the

exaltation of his rival.

The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of

offence, and, therefore, it may be supposed that his union with Pope was

censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to think differently,

at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily allowed. Such

opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, without nice examination.

Who is there that has not found reason for changing his mind about

questions of greater importance?

Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to

rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the

imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from

month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man, in the

literary journal of that time, called the Republick of Letters.

Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad

that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full

meaning, could, by any mode of interpretation, be made to mean well. How

much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender, the following letter

evidently shows:

"April 11, 1732.

"Sir,--I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your

letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write

this; but I cannot help thanking you in particular for your

third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that

I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and

deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much

honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems;

for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done,

and could not. It is, indeed, the same system as mine, but

illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body

is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it

better than I did before, and so will every man else. I know I

meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own

meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do

myself; but you express me better than I could express myself.

Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish

these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with

your leave) to procure a translation of part at least, or of all

of them, into French; but I shall not proceed a step without

your consent and opinion, &c."

By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope

testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the

principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not

intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to make

him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found him now

engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth.

It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He

once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, and

was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what he heard;

and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an

explanation, declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.

Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a

little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from which they parted

with mutual aversion.

From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator,

and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to

Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's inn; and

to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and, by

consequence, a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of

his works; a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four thousand

pounds.

Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its

propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of Prior's

Solomon, was employed by him to translate it into Latin verse, and was,

for that purpose, some time at Twickenham; but he left his work,

whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson's invitation,

undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend

to find a scholar who should turn his essay into Latin prose; but no

such performance has ever appeared.

Pope lived at this time "among the great," with that reception and

respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired

by any private misconduct or factious partiality. Though Bolingbroke was

his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; but treated him with so much

consideration as, at his request, to solicit and obtain from the French

minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he considered himself as

obliged to reward, by this exertion of his interest, for the benefit

which he had received from his attendance in a long illness.

It was said, that, when the court was at Richmond, queen Caroline had

declared her intention to visit him. This may have been only a careless

effusion, thought on no more: the report of such notice, however, was

soon in many mouths; and, if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's

account, Pope, pretending to decline what was not yet offered, left his

house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than lest he

should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which

would not be conferred. He was, therefore, angry at Swift, who

represents him as "refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that

what had never been offered had never been refused.

Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the

Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the

different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the epistle to

lord Bathurst, 1733, on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared

great labour to have been bestowed[134].

Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known

characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say

how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the man of

Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous

enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have

diffused all those blessings from "five hundred a year." Wonders are

willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man

of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the

wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes;

this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the

utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he

had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place:

and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man, being made more

credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable

virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is

recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to

be possible.

This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his

religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by

mentioning, with some indignation, the inscription on the monument.

When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of

direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no

very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which

Bathurst is introduced as speaking.

He afterwards, 1734, inscribed to lord Cobham his Characters of Men,

written with close attention to the operations of the mind and

modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and

exemplify his favourite theory of the "ruling passion," by which he

means an original direction of desire to some particular object; an

innate affection, which gives all action a determinate and invariable

tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or

more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate

propension.

Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may

reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men

change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one

time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed,

who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit: for

excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular

species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or

predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early

conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and

emulation.

It must be, at least, allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to

reason and observation, must have an object independent on human

contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No

man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of

money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be

born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically

regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and

any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness

of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have

enabled to comprehend it.

This doctrine is, in itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency

is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or

overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is

prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall

excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful

dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his "ruling

passion[135]."

Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples

by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions,

appetites, and habits.

To the Characters of Men, he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to

have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has

taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured

with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great success,

was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,

because the publick was informed, by an advertisement, that it contained

"no character drawn from the life;" an assertion which Pope probably did

not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his

readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them, in a note, that

the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was "vice too high"

to be yet exposed.

The time, however, soon came, in which it was safe to display the

dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was

inserted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.

He published, from time to time, between 1730 and 1740, imitations of

different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was

suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own,

he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the

dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and, perhaps, had

been long in his hands.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarized, by

adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of

Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his

satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of

our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the second, by

Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient. It

is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design,

which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the

parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement; for

he has carried it farther than any former poet.

He published, likewise, a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's

satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the

earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems

to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he

was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he

thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to

himself.

The epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived, in its first

design, from Boileau's Address _à son Esprit_, was published in January,

1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It

is to be regretted, that either honour or pleasure should have been

missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his

life, and venerable for his piety.

Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession,

versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to

animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a

scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who, in the crowd of life,

retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates

himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces

his own claims to kindness and respect.

Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before

printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,

of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first,

Who would not smile if such a man there be?

Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

Then,

Who would not grieve if such a man there be?

Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

At last it is,

Who but must laugh if such a man there be?

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[136], 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_[137]. 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 are 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[138] 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 in 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[139] who concealed

his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well 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 satirized

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 of 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 no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he

published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded

Theobald from his painful preeminence, 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 cold pedantry,

and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

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

and introduced Osborne contending for the 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 destroyed its

efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to

say of 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[141], 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 epick 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 physick, 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[142]?" 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[143]; on the 6th, he was all day

delirious, which he mentioned four 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, in the

presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out 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 thirtieth 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[144], 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 to 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 publick 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 a 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 accomptant, and that, if to 150_l_. he had put a cipher

more, he had come nearer to the truth[145].

The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on 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 domestick 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 very coarse warm linen

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

stiff canvass, 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 pair 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 every thing 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 i'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 the 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 burdensome; but he

was careful to recompense her want of sleep; and lord Oxford's servant

declared, that in a 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 whatever 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

Cannae 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

heat 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

his 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 imputed 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[146].

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 inferiours; but

by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited

to laughter.

Of his domestick 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[147].

Of this fortune, which, as it arose from publick 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 topick 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 every thing.

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 his

genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or

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, what we

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

transaction which offers stronger 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 topicks 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

domestick 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 criticks, 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 of 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 super-structed? 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 too often repeated 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 publick

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 mimickry 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 either acted or suffered enough in the world to

have become weary of it. And, indeed, it must be 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 the 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 sentiments, 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 charity

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; be 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 intrusted 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 something 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 meditation 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 any thing 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 fabrick 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 topick: 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 scholastick, 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 obeys 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 sithe, 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 domestick 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

subtile 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 want 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 his 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 inferiour; 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[148].

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 vigour,

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 musick, 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 criticks and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode

of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactick 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 so 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 didactick poetry, of which the great purpose is

instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does

not ennoble; in heroicks, 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 aggrandized; 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 dactylick 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 a _soft_ couch, or between _hard_ syllables

and _hard_ fortune.

Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet it may be

suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear,

and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the 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,

Cheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long.

The rough road then, returning in a round,

Mock'd 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, 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 majestick 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 Lock by

readers of every class, from the critick 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, or besiege a town. Pope brought into 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 terrifick 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 inventer of this

petty nation; 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, every thing 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 publick 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

vexations 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 to 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 connexion; 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 mystick writers by the

learned author of the Essay 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

every thing in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little that 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 pedantick; 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 arduous 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 heroick 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 elegancies 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 publick 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 characteristick manner of

the father of poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless

grandeur, his unaffected majesty[149]. 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 fabrick 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 awhile 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 criticks 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

Shakespeare, 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 publick.

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 errour and improves judgment; he that refines

the publick taste is a publick 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 place," it had been 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 were 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 embellishment, 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 critick, I should not

select the Essay on Man; for it contains more lines unsuccessfully

laboured, more harshness of diction, 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 shall be found inferiour. 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 Elogy

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 work will be generally

uncouth and party-coloured; neither original nor translated, neither

ancient nor modern[150].

Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the

qualities that constitute genius. He had invention, by which new trains

of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the

Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick 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 Ethick 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; "Musick," says

Dryden, "is inarticulate poetry;" among the excellencies of Pope,

therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perusing the

works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick 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 his

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 advantageous to a scribbler to be

improved in his judgment, than to be soothed 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

criticks 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 the invention and

design, which are not at all confined to the language: for the

distinguishing excellencies of Homer are (by the consent of the

best criticks 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;

whereas, 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, [151] which was printed in the

Universal Visiter, 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 modify it,

except this, that it ought not to be longer than common beholders may

be expected to have leisure and patience to peruse.