Chapter XXIX: Appendix (5)

It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs, which he found above his years, and descended, first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, and afterwards to copy Homer in heroic poetry.--POPE.

The second line of the couplet in the note was copied, as Mr. Carruthers points out, from Milton's Lycidas:

Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears.

The couplet in the text, with the variation of "great Maro" for "young Maro," was Pope's original version, but Dennis having asked whether he intended "to put that figure called a bull upon Virgil" by saying that he designed a work "to outlast immortality," the poet wrote in the margin of his manuscript "alter the seeming inconsistency," which he did, by substituting the lines in the note. In the last edition, he reinstated the "bull." The objection of Dennis was hypercritical. The phrase only expresses the double fact that the city was destroyed, and that its fame was durable. The manuscript supplies another various reading, which avoids both the alleged bull in the text, and the bad rhyme of the couplet in the note:

When first his voice the youthful Maro tried,
Ere Phœbus touched his ear and checked his pride.

[102]

And did his work to rules as strict confine.--POPE.

[103] Aristotle, born at _Stagyra_, B.C. 384.--CROKER.

[104] In the manuscript a couplet follows which was added by Pope in the margin, when he erased the expression "a work t' outlast immortal Rome:"

"Arms and the Man," then rung the world around,
And Rome commenced immortal at the sound

[105] When Pope supposes Virgil to have properly "checked in his bold design of drawing from nature's fountain," and in consequence to have confined his work within rules as strict,

As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line,

how can he avoid the force of his own ridicule, where a little further, in this very piece, he laughs at Dennis for

Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.--DR. AIKIN.

The argument of Pope is sophistical and inconsistent. It is inconsistent, because if Virgil found Homer and nature the same, his work would not have been confined within stricter rules when he copied Homer than when he copied nature. It is sophistical, because though Homer may be always natural, all nature is not contained in his works.

[106] Rapin's Critical Works, vol. ii. p. 173: "There are no precepts to teach the hidden graces, and all that secret power of poetry which passes to the heart."

[107] Neque enim rogationibus plebisve scitis sancta sunt ista præcepta, sed hoc, quicquid est, utilitas excogitavit. Non negabo autem sic utile esse plerumque; verum si eadem illa nobis aliud suadebit utilitas, hanc, relictis magistrorum auctoritatibus, sequemur. Quintil. lib. ii. cap. 13.--POPE.

[108] Dryden's Aurengzebe:

Mean soul, and dar'st not gloriously offend!--STEEVENS.

[109] This couplet, in the quarto of 1743, was for the first time placed immediately after the triplet which ends at ver. 160. The effect of this arrangement was that "Pegasus," instead of the "great wits," became the antecedent to the lines, "From vulgar bounds," &c., and the poetic steed was said to "snatch a grace." Warton commented upon the absurdity of using such language of a horse, and since it is evident that Pope must have overlooked the incongruity, when he adopted the transposition, the lines were restored to their original order in the editions of Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe.

[110] So Soame and Dryden of the Ode, in the Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:

Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.

And again:

A generous Muse,
When too much fettered with the rules of art,
May from her stricter bounds and limits part.--WAKEFIELD.

[111] This allusion is perhaps inaccurate. The shapeless rock, and hanging precipice do not rise out of nature's common order. These objects are characteristic of some of the features of nature, of those especially that are picturesque. If he had said that amid cultivated scenery we are pleased with a hanging rock, the allusion would have been accurate.--BOWLES.

The criticism of Bowles does not apply to the passage in Sprat's Account of Cowley, from which Pope borrowed his comparison: "He knew that in diverting men's minds there should be the same variety observed as in the prospects of their eyes, where a rock, a precipice, or a rising wave is often more delightful than a smooth even ground, or a calm sea."

[112] Another couplet originally followed here:

But care in poetry must still be had;
It asks discretion ev'n in running mad:
And though, &c.

which is the _insanire cum ratione_ taken from Terence by Horace, at Sat. ii. 3, 271.--WAKEFIELD.

[113] "Their" means "their own."--WARTON.

[114] Dryden in his dedication to the Æneis: "Virgil might make this anachronism by superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the same reason that a monarch may dispense with or suspend his own laws."

[115] Pope's manuscript supplies two omitted lines:

The boldest strokes of art we may despise,
Viewed in false lights with undiscerning eyes.

[116] A violation of grammatical propriety, into which many of our first and most accurate writers have fallen. "Mishapen" is doubtless the true participle.--WAKEFIELD.

[117] Pope took his imagery from Horace, Ars Poet., 361:

Ut pictura, poesis erit: quæ, si propiùs stes,
Te capiat magis; et quædam, si longiùs abstes:
Hæc amat obscurum; volet hæc sub luce videri.

He was also indebted to the translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dryden and Soame:

Each object must be fixed in the due place,
And diff'ring parts have corresponding grace.

[118] Οιυν τι ποιουσιν οι φρονιμοι στρατηλαται κατα τας ταζεις των στρατευματων. Dion. Hal. De Struct. Orat.--WARBURTON.

[119] It may be pertinent to subjoin Roscommon's remark on the same subject:

----Far the greatest part
Of what some call neglect is studied art.
When Virgil seems to trifle in a line,
'Tis but a warning piece which gives the sign,
To wake your fancy and prepare your sight
To reach the noble height of some unusual flight.--WARTON.

Variety and contrast are necessary, and it is impossible all parts should be equally excellent. Yet it would be too much to recommend introducing trivial or dull passages to enhance the merit of those in which the whole effort of genius might be employed.--BOWLES.

[120] Modeste, et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent quod non intelligunt. Ac si necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia eorum legentibus placere, quam multa displicere maluerim. Quint.--POPE.

Lord Roscommon was not disposed to be so diffident in those excellent verses of his Essay:

For who, without a qualm, hath ever looked
On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked?
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods,
Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope originally wrote in his manuscript,

Nor Homer nods so often as we dream,

which was followed by this couplet:

In sacred writ where difficulties rise,
'Tis safer far to fear than criticise.

[121] So Roscommon's epilogue to Alexander the Great:

Secured by higher pow'rs exalted stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.--WAKEFIELD.

[122] The poet here alludes to the four great causes of the ravage amongst ancient writings. The destruction of the Alexandrine and Palatine libraries by fire; the fiercer rage of Zoilus, Mævius, and their followers, against wit; the irruption of the barbarians into the empire; and the long reign of ignorance and superstition in the cloisters.--WARBURTON.

I like the original verse better--

Destructive war, and all-devouring age,--

as a metaphor much more perspicuous and specific.--WAKEFIELD.

In his epistle to Addison, Pope has "all-devouring age," but the epithet here is more original and striking, and admirably suited to the subject. This shows a nice discrimination. "All-involving" would be as improper in the Essay on Medals as "all-devouring" would be in this place.--BOWLES.

A couplet in Cooper's Hill suggested the couplet of Pope:

Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire.

[123] Thus in a poem on the Fear of Death, ascribed to the Duke of Wharton:

----There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen'ral chorus of her reign.--WAKEFIELD.

[124] Cowley on the death of Crashaw:

Hail, bard triumphant.

Virg. Æn. vi. 649:

Magnanimi heroes! nati melioribus annis.--WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's Religio Laici:

Those giant wits in happier ages born.

From Pope's manuscript it appears that he had originally written:

Hail, happy heroes, born in better days.

In a note he gave the line from Virgil of which his own was a translation.

[125] An imitation of Cowley, David. ii. 833:

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.--WAKEFIELD.

[126] Oldham's Elegies:

What nature has in bulk to me denied.

[127] "Everybody allows," says Malebranche, "that the animal spirits are the most subtle and agitated parts of the blood. These spirits are carried with the rest of the blood to the brain, and are there separated by some organ destined to the purpose." Pope adopted the doctrine "allowed by everybody," but which consisted of assumptions without proof. The very existence of these fluid spirits had never been ascertained. The remaining physiology of Pope's couplet was erroneous. When there is a deficiency of blood, its place is not supplied by wind. The grammatical construction, again, is vicious, and ascribes "blood and spirits" to souls as well as to bodies. The moral reflection illustrated by the simile is but little more correct. Men in general are not proud in proportion as they have nothing to be proud of.

[128] Pope is commonly considered to have laid down the general proposition that total ignorance was preferable to imperfect knowledge. The context shows that he was speaking only of conceited critics, who were presumptuous because they were ill-informed. He tells such persons that the more enlightened they become the humbler they will grow.

[129] In the early editions,

Fired with the charms fair science does impart.

Though "does" is removed, "with what" is less dignified and graceful than "with the charms." The diction of the couplet is prosaic and devoid of elegance.--WAKEFIELD.

[130] Dryden, in the State of Innocence, Act i. Sc. i.:

Nor need we tempt those heights which angels keep.--WAKEFIELD.

[131] The proper word would have been "beyond."

[132]

[Much we begin to doubt and much to fear
Our sight less trusting as we see more clear.]
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try,
Filled with ideas of fair Italy,
The traveller beholds with cheerful eyes
The less'ning vales, and seems to tread the skies.--POPE.

The couplet between brackets is from the manuscript. The next couplet, with a variation in the first line, was transferred to the epistle to Jervas.

[133] This is, perhaps, the best simile in our language--that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly unrelated to each other.--JOHNSON.

I will own I am not of this opinion. The simile appears evidently to have been suggested by the following one in the works of Drummond:

All as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass,
Or Atlas' temples crowned with winter's glass,
The airy Caucasus, the Apennine,
Pyrene's cliffs where sun doth never shine,
When he some heaps of hills hath overwent,
Begins to think on rest, his journey spent,
Till mounting some tall mountain he doth find
More heights before him than he left behind.--WARTON.

The simile is undoubtedly appropriate, illustrative, and eminently beautiful, but evidently copied.--BOWLES.

[134] Diligenter legendum est ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem: nec per partes modo scrutanda sunt omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus. Quint.--POPE.

[135] The Bible never descends to the mean colloquial preterites of "chid" for "did chide," or "writ" for "did write," but always uses the full-dress word "chode" and "wrote." Pope might have been happier had he read his Bible more, but assuredly he would have improved his English.--DE QUINCEY.

[136] Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dryden and Soame, canto i.:

A frozen style, that neither ebbs or flows,
Instead of pleasing makes us gape and doze.

[137] Much in the same strain Garth's Dispensary, iv. 24:

So nicely tasteless, so correctly dull.--WAKEFIELD.

[138] This is an adaptation of a couplet in Dryden's Eleonora:

Nor this part musk, or civet can we call,
Or amber, but a rich result of all.

[139] It is impossible to determine whether he refers to St. Peter's or the Pantheon.

[140] An impropriety of the grossest kind is here committed. Grammar requires "appears."--WAKEFIELD.

[141] Dryden's translation of Ovid's Met. book xv.

Greater than whate'er was, or is, or e'er shall be.--HOLT WHITE.

Epilogue to Suckling's Goblins:

Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor ne'er will be.--ISAAC REED.

[142] Horace, Ars Poet. 351:

Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis.

[143] _Lays_ for _lays down_, but, as Warton remarks, the word thus used is very objectionable.

[144] To the same effect Quintilian, lib. i. Ex quo mihi inter virtutes grammatici habebitur, aliqua nescire.--WAKEFIELD.

[145] The incident is taken from the Second Part of Don Quixote, first written by Don Alonzo Fernandez de Avellanada, and afterwards translated, or rather imitated and new-modelled, by no less an Author than the celebrated Le Sage. "But, Sir, quoth the Bachelor, if you would have me adhere to Aristotle's rules, I must omit the combat. Aristotle, replied the Knight, I grant was a man of some parts; but his capacity was not unbounded; and, give me leave to tell you, his authority does not extend over combats in the list, which are far above his narrow rules. Believe me the combat will add such grace to your play, that all the rules in the universe must not stand in competition with it. Well, Sir Knight, replied the Bachelor, for your sake, and for the honour of chivalry, I will not leave out the combat. But still one difficulty remains, which is, that our common theatres are not large enough for it. There must be one erected on purpose, answered the Knight; and in a word, rather than leave out the combat, the play had better be acted in a field or plain."--WARTON.

[146] In all editions till the quarto of 1743,

As e'er could D----s of the laws o' th' stage.

[147] In the manuscript the reply of the knight is continued through another couplet:

In all besides let Aristotle sway,
But knighthood's sacred, and he must give way.

[148] The phrase "curious not knowing," is from Petronius, and Pope has written the words of his original on the margin of the manuscript: Est et alter, non quidem doctus, sed curiosus, qui plus docet quam scit.

[149] The conventionalities of foppery and ceremony are always changing, and what Pope says of manners may have been extensively true of his own generation. At present bad manners commonly proceed either from defective sensibility, or from men having more regard to themselves than to their company.

[150] This had been the practice of some artists. "Their heroes," says Reynolds, speaking of the French painters in 1752, "are decked out so nice and fine that they look like knights-errant just entering the lists at a tournament in gilt armour, and loaded most unmercifully with silk, satin, velvet, gold, jewels, &c." Pope had in his mind a passage of Cowley's Ode on Wit:

Yet 'tis not to adorn, and gild each part;
That shows more cost than art.
Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;
Rather than all things wit, let none be there.

[151] Naturam intueamur, hanc sequamur: id facillimè accipiunt animi quod agnoscunt. Quint. lib. 8, c. 3.--POPE.

Dryden's preface to the State of Innocence: "The definition of wit, which has been so often attempted, and ever unsuccessfully, by many poets, is only this, that it is a propriety of thoughts and words."

[152] Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous; he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.--JOHNSON.

The error was in stating a partial as an universal truth; for the second line of the couplet correctly describes the quality which gives the charm to numberless passages both in prose and verse. Instead of "ne'er so well," the reading of the first edition was "ne'er before," which was not equally true. But Pope followed the passage in Boileau, from which the line in the Essay on Criticism was derived: "Qu'est-ce qu'une pensée neuve, brillante, extraordinaire? Ce n'est point, comme se le persuadent les ignorants, une pensée que personne n'a jamais eu, ni dû avoir. C'est au contraire une pensée qui a dû venir à tout le monde, et que quelqu'un s'avise le premier d'exprimer. Un bon mot n'est bon mot qu'en ce qu'il dit une chose que chacun pensoit, et qu'il la dit d'une manière vive, fine et nouvelle."

[153] Light "sweetly recommended" by shades, is an affected form of speech. "Does 'em good," in the next couplet, offends in the opposite direction, and is meanly colloquial.

[154] Two lines, which follow in the manuscript, are, from such a poet, worth quoting as a curiosity, since in the ruggedness of the metre, the badness of the rhyme, and the grossness of the metaphor, they are among the worst that were ever written:

Justly to think, and readily express,
A full conception, and brought forth with ease.

[155] "Let us," says Mr. Webb, in a passage quoted by Warton, "substitute the definition in the place of the thing, and it will stand thus: 'A work may have more of nature dressed to advantage than will do it good.' This is impossible, and it is evident that the confusion arises from the poet having annexed different ideas to the same word."

[156] "Take upon content" for "take upon trust" was a form of speech sanctioned by usage in Pope's day. Thus Rymer says of Hart the actor, "What he delivers every one takes upon content. Their eyes are prepossessed and charmed by his action."

[157] Nothing can be more just, or more ably and eloquently expressed than this observation and illustration respecting the character of false eloquence. Fine words do not make fine poems, and there cannot be a stronger proof of the want of real genius than those high colours and meretricious embellishments of language, which, while they hide the poverty of ideas, impose on the unpractised eye with a gaudy semblance of beauty.--BOWLES.

[158] "Decent" has not here the signification of modest, but is used in the once common sense of becoming, attractive.

[159] Dryden's preface to All for Love: "Expressions are a modest clothing of our thoughts, as breeches and petticoats are for our bodies." Pope's couplet should have been more in accordance with his precept. "Still" is an expletive to piece out the line, and upon this superfluous word, he has thrown the emphasis of the rhyme, which, in its turn, is mean and imperfect.

[160] Abolita et abrogata retinere, insolentiæ cujusdam est, et frivolæ in parvis jactantiæ. Quint. lib. i. c. 6.

Opus est, ut verba a vetustate repetita neque crebra sint, neque manifesta, quia nil est odiosius affectatione, nec utique ab ultimis repetita temporibus. Oratio cujus summa virtus est perspicuitas, quam sit vitiosa, si egeat interprete? Ergo ut novorum optima erunt maxime vetera, ita veterum maxime nova. Idem.--POPE.

[161] See Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour.--POPE.

Dryden's Dedication to the Assignation: "He is only like Fungoso in the play, who follows the fashion at a distance."

[162] If Pope's maxim was universally obeyed no new word could be introduced. Dryden was more judicious. "When I find," he said, "an English word significant and sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin nor any other language; but when I want at home I must seek abroad."

[163]

Quis populi sermo est? quis enim? nisi carmina molli
Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per læve severos
Effundat junctura ungues: scit tendere versum
Non secus ac si oculo rubricam dirigat uno.--Pers., Sat. i.--POPE.

Garth in the Dispensary:

Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear;
None please the fancy who offend the ear.

[164] "There" is a feeble excrescence to force a rhyme.

[165] Fugiemus crebras vocalium concursiones, quæ vastam atque hiantem orationem reddunt. Cic. ad Heren. lib. iv. Vide etiam Quintil. lib. ix. c. 4.--POPE.

Vowels were said to open on each other when two words came together of which the first ended, and the second commenced with a vowel. Pope has illustrated the fault by crowding three consecutive instances into his verse. The poets diminished the conflict of vowels by a free recourse to elisions. The most usual were the cutting off the "e" in "the," as "th' unlearned," ver. 327; and the "o" in "to," as "t' outlast," ver. 131, "t' examine," ver. 134, "t' admire," ver. 200. The two words were thus fused into one, and the old authors combined them in writing as well as in the pronunciation. The manuscripts of Chaucer have "texcuse," not "t' excuse;" "thapostle," not "th' apostle." The custom has not kept its ground. Whatever might be supposed to be gained in harmony by the conversion of "to examine" into "texamine," or of "the unlearned" into "thunlearned" was more than lost by the departure from the common forms of speech.

[166] "The characters of bad critic and bad poet are grossly confounded; for though it be true that vulgar readers of poetry are chiefly attentive to the melody of the verse, yet it is not they who admire, but the paltry versifier who employs monotonous syllables, feeble expletives, and a dull routine of unvaried rhymes." Essays Historical and Critical.--WARTON.

[167] "Low" in contradistinction to lofty. The phrase would now mean coarse and vulgar words.

[168] From Dryden. "He creeps along with ten little words in every line, and helps out his numbers with _for_, _to_, and _unto_, and all the pretty expletives he can find, while the sense is left half-tired behind it." Essay on Dram. Poetry.--WARBURTON.

A collection of monosyllables when it arises from a correspondence of subject is highly meritorious. Let a single example from Milton suffice:

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death.

How successfully does this range of little words represent to our imaginations,

The growing labours of the lengthened way.--WAKEFIELD.

"It is pronounced by Dryden," says Johnson, "that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This is evidently true, because our monosyllables commonly begin and end with consonants." As Dryden expressed it, "they are clogged with consonants," and "it seldom," he says, "happens but a monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and inharmonious." The authority of Dryden has led many persons to mistrust their own ears, and imagine, like Johnson and Wakefield, that monosyllables were only fitted at best to produce some special effect. Numerous examples in Dryden's poetry contradict his criticism, and Milton abounds in sweet and sonorous monosyllabic lines, as Par. Lost, v. 193:

His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With ev'ry plant, in sign of worship wave.

And ver. 199:

ye birds,
That singing up to heaven gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.

Melodious lines, such as the first verse in the first of these passages, which have the monosyllables relieved but by a single dissyllable, are past counting up. Addison praised Pope for exemplifying the faults in the language which condemned them. "The gaping of the vowels in the second line, the expletive 'do' in the third line, and the ten monosyllables in the fourth, give such a beauty to this passage, as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet." The feat was too easy to call for much admiration. There was more difficulty in eschewing than in mimicking the vicious style of bad versifiers. Pope himself has not avoided the frequent use of "low words" and "feeble expletives."

[169] Atterbury's Preface to Waller's Poems: "He had a fine ear, and knew how quickly that sense was cloyed by the same round of chiming words still returning upon it."

[170] Hopkins's translation of Ovid's Met., book xi.:

No tame nor savage beast dwells there; no breeze
Shakes the still boughs, or whispers thro' the trees:
Here easy streams with pleasing murmurs creep,
At once inviting and assisting sleep.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope uses these trite ideas and "unvaried chimes" himself. In the fourth Pastoral we have "gentle breeze, trembling trees, whispering breeze, dies upon the trees," and in Eloisa we have "the curling breeze, panting on the trees."--CROKER.

Pope took the idea from Boileau:

Si je louois Philis "en miracles féconde,"
Je trouverois bientôt, "à nulle autre seconde;"
Si je voulois vanter un objet "nonpareil,"
Je mettrois à l'instant, "plus beau que le soleil;"
Enfin, parlant toujours d' "astres" et de "merveilles,"
De "chefs-d'oeuvres des cieux," de "beautés sans pareilles."

[171] Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, stanza 123:

So glides the trodden serpent on the grass,
And long behind his wounded volume trails.--WAKEFIELD.

[172] Boileau's Art of Poetry translated by Soame and Dryden:

Those tuneful readers of their own dull rhymes.

[173] The construction might be for anything that the composition shows to the contrary, "leave such to praise," which is subversive of the poet's meaning.--WAKEFIELD.

[174] Sufficient justice is not done to Sandys, who did more to polish and tune the English versification by his Psalms and his Job, than those two writers, who are usually applauded on this subject.--WARTON.

Bowles adds his testimony to "the extraordinary melody and vigour" of the versification of Sandys. Ruffhead, in his life of Pope, having called the Ovid of Sandys an "indifferent translation," Warburton has written on the margin, "He was not an indifferent, but a very fine translator and versifier."

[175] Writers who seem to have composed with the greatest ease have exerted much labour in attaining this facility. It is well known that the writings of La Fontaine were laboured into that facility for which they are so famous, with repeated alterations and many erasures. Moliere is reported to have passed whole days in fixing upon a proper epithet or rhyme, although his verses have all the flow and freedom of conversation. I have been informed that Addison was so extremely nice in polishing his prose compositions that when almost a whole impression of a Spectator was worked off he would stop the press to insert a new preposition or conjunction.--WARTON.

[176] Lord Roscommon says:

The sound is still a comment to the sense.--WARBURTON.

The whole of this passage on the adaptation of the sound to the sense is imitated, and, as may be seen by the references of Warburton, is in part translated, from Vida's Art of Poetry.

[177]

Tum is læta canunt, &c. Vida, Poet. 1. iii. ver. 403.--WARBURTON.

[178]

Tum longe sale saxa sonant, &c. Vida, Poet. 1. iii. v. 388.--WARBURTON.

[179]

Atque ideo si quid geritur molimine magno,
Adde moram et pariter tecum quoque verba laborent
Segnia. Vida, ib. 417.--WARBURTON.

[180]

At mora si fuerit damno, properare jubebo, &c. Vida, ib.
420.--WARBURTON.

[181] Our poet here endeavours to fasten on Virgil a most insufferable absurdity, which no poetical hyperbole will justify, namely, the reality of these wonderful performances, a flight over the unbending corn, and across the sea with unbathed feet. Virgil only puts the supposition, and speaks of her extraordinary velocity in the way of comparison, that she seemed capable of accomplishing so much had she made the attempt. She could fly, if she had chosen, nor would have injured, in that case, the tender blades of corn.--WAKEFIELD.

[182] The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze must surely be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent is, indeed, distinctly imaged; for it requires very little skill to make our language rough. But in the lines which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness or delay. The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified. Why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls, used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they therefore naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the Alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word "unbending," one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.--JOHNSON.

Wakefield says that "the tripping word _labours_, in ver. 371, is unhappy," and Aaron Hill contended that three at least of the five concluding words of the line "danced away upon the tongue with a tripping and lyrical lightness."

[183] See Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music; an Ode by Mr. Dryden.--POPE.

[184] This resembles a line in Hughes's Court of Neptune:

Beholds th' alternate billows all and rise.--WAKEFIELD.

[185]

And now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.

[186] Pope confounds vocal and instrumental with poetical harmony. Timotheus owed his celebrity to his music, and Dryden never wrote a note.

[187] Creech's translation of Horace's Art of Poetry:

men of sense retire,
The boys abuse, and only fools admire.

Aaron Hill says, that Pope was very fond of the line in the text, and often repeated it. Hill, who "abhorred the sentiment," once asked him if he still adhered to the opinion of Longinus, that the true sublime thrilled and transported the reader. On Pope replying in the affirmative, his interrogator pressed him with the contradiction, and the perplexed poet, according to Hill's report, took refuge in nonsense, and made this unintelligible answer,--"that Longinus's remark was truth, but that, like certain truths of more importance, it required assent from faith, without the evidence of demonstration." It must be evident that Shakespeare, Milton, and scores besides, are worthy of admiration; and no man would show his sense by protesting that he did not admire but only approved of them. Pope is inconsistent, for at ver. 236 he speaks of "_rapture_ warming the mind," and of "the generous pleasure to be _charmed_ with wit."

[188] In all editions before the quarto of 1743, "Some the French writers."

[189] This was directed against Pope's co-religionists, and greatly annoyed them. The offence was not that he had misrepresented their views, but that he had denounced a doctrine which all zealous papists maintained. "Nothing," he said, when writing in vindication of the passage to Caryll, "has been so much a scarecrow to our opponents as that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves. I own to you I was glad of any opportunity to express my dislike of so shocking a sentiment as those of the religion I profess are commonly charged with, and I hoped a slight insinuation, introduced by a casual similitude only, could never have given offence, but on the contrary, must needs have done good in a nation wherein we are the smaller party, and consequently most misrepresented, and most in need of vindication." The Roman Catholics took to themselves the couplet "Meanly they seek," which followed the simile, but Pope pointed out that the plural "some," and not the singular "each man," was the antecedent to "they." The comparison was not kept up throughout the paragraph, and the lines after ver. 397 refer solely to the critics.

[190] The word "enlights" is, I believe, of our poet's coinage, analogically formed from "light," as "enlighten" from "lighten."--WAKEFIELD.

[191] Sir Robert Howard's poem against the Fear of Death:

And neither gives increase, nor brings decay.

[192] There is very little poetical expression from this line to ver. 450. It is only mere prose fringed with rhyme. Good sense in a very prosaic style; reasoning, not poetry.--WARTON.

[193] "Joins with quality" for "joins with men of rank" is a vulgar colloquialism.

[194]

In sing-song Durfey, Oldmixon or me,

was the original reading of the manuscript.

[195] This couplet is succeeded by two more lines in the manuscript:

And while to thoughts refined they make pretence,
Hate all that's common, ev'n to common sense.

[196] In the first edition the reading was "dull believers," which Pope in the second edition altered to "plain." The change was occasioned by the outcry against the couplet. "An ordinary man," he wrote to Caryll, "would imagine the author plainly declared against these schismatics for quitting the true faith out of contempt of the understanding of some few of its believers. But these believers are called 'dull,' and because I say that these schismatics think some believers dull, therefore these charitable well-disposed interpreters of my meaning say that I think all believers dull." There is a culpable levity in the language of Pope's lines, but he could not intend to espouse the cause of the sceptics when he selects them as an instance of people who "purposely go wrong" because "the crowd go right."

[197] If this couplet is interpreted by the grammatical construction, the "unfortified towns daily changed their sides" in consequence of vacillating "betwixt sense and nonsense." Of course Pope only meant that in war weak towns frequently changed sides, but not for the same reason that weak heads changed their opinions.

[198] The Book of Sentences was a work of Peter Lombard, which consisted of subtle disquisitions on theology. Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary upon it.

[199] St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. Scotus, who died in 1308, disputed the doctrines of his predecessor, and their respective disciples divided for a century the theological world.--CROKER.

[200] Cowley speaks of "the cobwebs of the schoolmen's trade," and says in a note, "the distinctions of the schoolmen may be likened to cobwebs either because of the too much fineness of the work, or because they take not the materials from nature, but spin it out of themselves."

[201] A place where old and second-hand books were sold formerly, near Smithfield.--POPE.

[202] Between this and verse 448:

The rhyming clowns that gladded Shakespear's age,
No more with crambo entertain the stage.
Who now in anagrams their patron praise,
Or sing their mistress in acrostic lays?
Ev'n pulpits pleased with merry puns of yore;
Now all are banished to th' Hibernian shore!
[And thither soon soft op'ra shall repair,
Conveyed by Sw----y to his native air.
There, languishing awhile, prolong its breath,
Till like a swan it sings itself to death.]
Thus leaving what was natural and fit,
The current folly proved their ready wit:
And authors thought their reputation safe,
Which lived as long as fools were pleased to laugh.--POPE.

The lines between brackets are from the manuscript, and were not printed by Pope. The whole passage was probably written after the poem was first published, since the topics seem to have been suggested by Addison's papers upon false wit in the Spectator of May, 1711, where the anagrams, acrostics, and punning sermons of the reign of James I. are all enumerated. Swiney was the director of the Italian opera, which, at the commencement of 1712, failed to meet with adequate support, and he withdrew, not to Ireland, but to the continent. "He remained there," says Cibber, "twenty years, an exile from his friends and country."

[203] An additional couplet follows in the manuscript:

To be spoke ill of, may good works befall,
But those are bad of which none speak at all.

[204] The parson alluded to was Jeremy Collier; the critic was the Duke of Buckingham; the first of whom very powerfully attacked the profligacy, and the latter the irregularity and bombast of some of Dryden's plays. These attacks were much more than merry jests.--WARTON.

[205] Dryden himself, Virg. Geor. iv. 729:

But she returned no more to bless his longing eyes.--WAKEFIELD.

[206] Blackmore's attack upon Dryden occurs in a poem which appeared in 1700, called a Satire against Wit. The author treats wit as money, and proposes that the whole should be recoined for the purpose of separating the base metal from the pure.

Into the melting pot when Dryden comes
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
How will he shrink when all his lewd allay
And wicked mixture shall be purged away!
When once his boasted heaps are melted down,
A chestful scarce will yield one sterling crown.

This is exaggerated, but the censure is directed against the indecency which was really infamous. The invectives of Milbourne in his Notes on Dryden's Virgil, 1698, had not the same excuse. The strictures are confined to the translation of the Eclogues and Georgics, and are throughout rabid, insolent, coarse, and contemptible. To demonstrate his own superiority, Milbourne inserted specimens of a rival translation, which is on a par with his criticisms. He was in orders, and acknowledges that one of his reasons for not sparing Dryden was that Dryden never spared a clergyman. "I am only," replied the poet, with exquisite sarcasm, "to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little." Dryden retaliated upon both antagonists together in the couplet,

Wouldst thou be soon dispatched, and perish whole?
Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul.

Pope's line in the first edition was

New Bl----s and new M----s must arise.

In the second edition he substituted S----s, which meant Shadwells, for Bl----s, but in the quarto of 1717 he again coupled Blackmore with Milbourne, and printed both names at full length. Blackmore was living, and the changes indicate Pope's varying feelings towards him.

[207] In the fifth book of Vitruvius is an account of Zoilus's coming to the court of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and presenting to him his virulent and brutal censures of Homer, and begging to be rewarded for his work; instead of which, it is said, the king ordered him to be crucified, or, as some said, stoned. His person is minutely described in the eleventh book of Ælian's various History.--WARTON.

Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden:

Let mighty Spenser raise his reverend head,
Cowley and Denham start up from the dead.

[208] A beautiful and poetical illustration. Pope has the art of enlivening his subject continually by images and illustrations drawn from nature, which by contrast have a particularly pleasing effect, and which are indeed absolutely necessary in a didactic poem.--BOWLES.

The passage originally stood thus in the manuscript:

Wit, as the sun, such pow'rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours that obscures its rays,
But, like the sun eclipsed, makes only known
The shadowing body's grossness, not its own;
And all those clouds that did at first invade
The rising light, and interposed a shade,
When once transpierced with its prevailing ray
Reflect its glories, and augment the day.

[209] His instance refuted his position that "bare threescore" was the duration of modern fame. "It is now a hundred years," said Dennis in 1712, "since Shakespeare began to write, more since Spenser flourished, and above three hundred years since Chaucer died. And yet the fame of none of these is extinguished." Another century and a half has elapsed, and the reputation of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare is greater than ever. The notion of the "failing language" is not more sound. Though it is a hundred and fifty years since the Essay on Criticism was published, there is not a line which has an antiquated air.

[210]

The treach'rous colours in few years decay.--POPE.

The next line is from Addison:

And all the pleasing landscape fades away.

[211] That is, of which those, who do not possess it, form an erroneous estimate, as productive of more happiness and enjoyment to the owner, than he really receives from it.--WAKEFIELD.

[212] In the previous paragraph Pope admitted that the fame of a modern might last three-score years. Here, contradicting himself and the facts, he limits its duration to the youth of the author. He applies to poets in general what was only true of inferior writers. The ephemeral versifiers were examples of deficient "wit," and not of the unhappy consequences of genuine poetic power.

[213]

Like some fair flow'r that in the spring does rise.--POPE.

This line was an example both of the "feeble expletive" and of the "ten low words." "Supplies" in the amended version is, as Wakefield observes, a poor expression.

[214] The Duke of Buckingham's Vision:

The dearest care that all my thought employs.

[215] Wakefield objects to the "slovenly superfluity of words," and asks "to whom can a wife possibly belong but the owner?" He misunderstood Pope, who, by "the wife of the owner," meant the wife of the owner of the wit. The metaphor is coarse, and out of keeping with the theme.

[216] Thus in the first edition:

The more his trouble as the more admired,
Where wanted scorned, and envied where acquired.

Against this Pope wrote, "To be altered. See Dennis, p. 20." "How," said Dennis, "can wit be scorned where it is not? The person who wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but such a contempt declares the honour that the contemner has for wit." Pope, in a letter to Caryll, admitted that he had been guilty of a bull, and the reading in the second edition was,

'Tis most our trouble when 'tis most admired,
The more we give, the more is still required.

[217] In the first edition,

Maintained with pains, but forfeited with ease;

and in the second edition,

The fame with pains we gain, but lose with ease.

The original version appears better than the readings which successively replaced it.

[218] Another couplet follows in the manuscript:

Learning and wit were friends designed by heav'n;
Those arms to guard it, not to wound, were giv'n.

[219] Dryden's Prologue to the University of Oxford:

Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.

The feelings of antiquity were doubtless represented truly by Horace when he said that indifferent poets were not tolerated by anybody. There is not the least foundation for Pope's statement that it was the habit of old to praise bad authors for endeavouring well, and if it had been, the authors would not have cared for commendations on their abortive industry to the disparagement of their intellect.

[220] Wakefield remarks upon the unhappy effect of "crowns" and "crown" in consecutive lines, and thinks the phrase "some others" in the next verse too mean and elliptical. Soame and Dryden, in their translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, speak of the "base rivals" who

aspire to gain renown
By standing up and pulling others down.

[221] Mr. Harte related to me, that being with Mr. Pope when he received the news of Swift's death, Harte said to him, he thought it a fortunate circumstance for their friendship, that they had lived so distant from each other. Pope resented the reflection, but yet, said Harte, I am convinced it was true.--WARTON.

[222] That is, all the unsuccessful authors maligned the successful. The unsuccessful writers never said anything more slanderous.

[223] Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden:

Never debase yourself by treach'rous ways
Nor by such abject methods seek for praise.

Pope's own life is the strongest example upon record of the degradation he deplores.

[224] In the margin of the manuscript Pope has written the passages of Virgil from which he took his expressions. Æn. iii. 56:

quid non mortalia pectora cogis
Auri sacra fames?

Geor. i. 37:

Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido,

which Dryden translates,

Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move.

[225] Such a manly and ingenuous censure from a culprit in this way, as in the case of Pope, is entitled to great praise.--WAKEFIELD.

If his indecorums had been the failing of youth and thoughtlessness, and he had publicly recanted his errors, his self-condemnation would be meritorious. The larger portion of his offences were, on the contrary, committed after he had declared indecency to be unpardonable. Any man, however persistently reprobate, might earn "great praise" on terms like these.

[226] No one has expressed himself upon this subject so pithily as Cowley:

'tis just
The author blush, there where the reader must.

[227] Hamlet:

And duller shoulds't thou be than the fat weed.--BOWLES.

[228] Wits, says he, in Charles the Second's reign had pensions, when all the world knows that it was one of the faults of that reign that none of the politer arts were then encouraged. Butler was starved at the same time that the king had his book in his pocket. Another great wit [Wycherley] lay seven years in prison for an inconsiderable debt, and Otway dared not to show his head for fear of the same fate.--DENNIS.

[229] "The young lords who had wit in the court of Charles II. were," says Dennis, "Villiers Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, Lord Buckhurst afterwards Earl of Dorset, the Marquess of Halifax, the Earl of Rochester, Lord Vaughan, and several others." The jilts who ruled the state were the mistresses of the king. The Duke of Buckingham and his Rehearsal are chiefly aimed at in the expression "statesmen farces writ."--CROKER.

[230] Pepys, under the date of June 12, 1663, notices that wearing masks at the theatre had "of late become a great fashion among the ladies." Cibber states that the immorality of the plays was the cause of the usage. When he wrote in 1739 the custom had been abolished for many years in consequence of the ill effects which attended it.

[231] He must mean in everyday life. There was no use for the "modest fan" at the theatre after the ladies had adopted the more effectual plan of wearing masks. Pope, ver. 535, ascribes the introduction of "obscenity" to the Restoration. In the theatre the grossness was a legacy from the older drama, and particularly from the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, which were the most popular pieces on the stage.

[232] The author has omitted two lines which stood here as containing a national reflection, which in his stricter judgment he could not but disapprove, on any people whatever.--POPE.

The cancelled couplet was as follows:

Then first the Belgian morals were extolled,
We their religion had, and they our gold.

This sneer was dictated by the poet's dislike to William III. and the Dutch, for displacing the popish king James II.--CROKER.

This ingenious and religious author seems to have had two particular antipathies--one to grammatical and verbal criticism, the other to false doctrine and heresy. To the first we may ascribe his treating Bentley, Burman, Kuster, and Wasse with a contempt which recoiled upon himself. To the second we will impute his pious zeal against those divines of king William, whom he supposed to be infected with the infidel, or the socinian, or the latitudinarian spirit, and not so orthodox as himself, and his friends Swift, Bolingbroke, etc. Thus he laid about him, and censured men of whose literary, or of whose theological merits or defects, he was no more a judge than his footman John Searle.--DR. JORTIN.

[233] Jortin asserted that by the "unbelieving priests" Pope alluded to Burnet. If Jortin is right, the passage was not satire but falsehood. That there was, however, much infidelity and socinianism during the reign of William III. is proved by an address of the House of Commons to the king, quoted by Bowles, "beseeching his majesty to give effectual orders for suppressing all pernicious books and pamphlets which contained impious doctrines against the Holy Trinity, and other fundamental articles of the protestant faith, tending to the subversion of the christian religion." This address was presented in February 1698.

[234] In this line he had Kennet in view, who was accused of having said, in a funeral sermon on some nobleman, that converted sinners, if they were men of parts, repented more speedily and effectually than dull rascals.--JORTIN.

[235] The published sermons of the reign of William III. do not answer to this description, which is certainly a calumny.

[236] So Lucretius, iv. 333:

Lurida præterea fiunt quæcunque tuentur
Arquati.

Besides, whatever jaundice-eyes do view,
Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too.--Creech.

This notion of the transfusion of the colour to the object from a jaundiced eye, though current in all our authors, is, I believe, a mere vulgar error.--WAKEFIELD.

It is still a disputed point whether jaundice ever affects the eye in a degree to permit only the passage of the yellow rays. The instances are at least very rare; but popular belief is a sufficient ground for a poetical comparison. Pope had just exemplified his simile; for everything looked yellow to him in the reign of William III.

[237] In the first edition,

Speak when you're sure, yet speak with diffidence.

Dennis objected that a man when sure should speak "with a modest assurance," and Pope wrote on the margin of the manuscript, "Dennis, p. 21. Alter the inconsistency."

Pope's maxim was commended by Franklin. He found that his overbearing, dictatorial manner roused needless opposition, and he resolved never "to use a word that imported a fixed opinion," but he employed instead the qualifying phrases, "I conceive," "I imagine," or "it so appears to me at present." "To this," he says, "after my character of integrity, I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new institutions or alterations in the old; for I was but a bad speaker, subject to much hesitation, and yet I generally carried my point." He admits that his humility was feigned. Had it been real there would have been no need for "I conceive," "I imagine," which are implied without a tiresome, superfluous repetition. Unless the dogmatism is in the mind opinions have not the tone of decrees.

[238] Warton praises Pope for practising the precept in correcting the poems of Wycherley, and condemned Wycherley for ungenerously resenting the candour of his critic. Bowles extenuates the conduct of Wycherley, and says that "the superannuated bard" bore the corrections with "great temper till Pope seriously advised him to turn the whole into prose." Warton and Bowles were deceived by the printed correspondence of Pope and Wycherley, and were not aware that the letters were garbled in the very particulars which relate to the cause of the quarrel,--a quarrel so discreditable to Pope that he had recourse to forgery to shield himself and throw the blame upon Wycherley. It is certain that "the superannuated bard" did not take offence at the advice to turn his works into prose, and there is no reason to doubt the contemporaneous report that his anger arose from discovering that Pope, while professing unlimited friendship, had made him the subject of some satirical verses.

[239] This picture was taken to himself by John Dennis, a furious old critic by profession, who, upon no other provocation, wrote against this Essay and its author in a manner perfectly lunatic: for, as to the mention made of him in ver. 270, he took it as a compliment, and said it was treacherously meant to cause him to overlook this abuse of his person.--POPE.

Pope's acrimonious note on his early antagonist first appeared in the edition of 1743, when Dennis had been some years dead. "His book against me," the poet wrote to Caryll, Nov. 19, 1712, "made me very heartily merry in two minutes' time," and here we find him still smarting with resentment after thirty years and upwards had gone by, and his enemy was in the grave. The original reading in the manuscript of ver. 585 was "But D---- reddens." The substituted name is taken from Dennis's tragedy of "Appius and Virginia," which appeared in 1709. The stare was one of his characteristics. "He starts, stares, and looks round him at every jerk of his person forward," says Sir Richard Steele, when describing his walk. The "tremendous" was not only a sarcasm on his appearance, but on his partiality for the epithet, which was an old topic of ridicule. "If," said Gildon, in 1702, "there is anything of tragedy in the piece, it lies in the word 'tremendous,' for he is so fond of it he had rather use it in every page than slay his beloved Iphigenia." Gay, in 1712, jeeringly dedicated his Mohocks to Mr. D[ennis], and assigned, among the reasons for the selection, that his theme was "horrid and tremendous."

[240] This thought occurs also in Donne's fourth Satire, which our poet has modernised:

And though his face be as ill
As theirs, which in old hangings whip Christ, still
He strives to look worse.--WAKEFIELD.

[241] It may not be known to every reader that noblemen and the sons of noblemen are admitted of course at our universities to the degree of M.A., after keeping the terms of two years.--WAKEFIELD.

The privilege is now abolished.

[242] If Cibber was the dull fellow Pope would have had him thought, no conduct could have been more proper towards him than that which Pope here recommends. Pope seems to have anticipated Colley's subsequent resolution "to write as long" as Pope "could rail."--BOWLES.

[243] Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Satire,

But who can rail so long as he can sleep?

[244] Pope may have derived this comparison from the "Epilogue, written by a person of honour," to Dryden's Secret Love: