Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.'
All fools have still an itching to deride,

And fain would be upon the laughing side.'
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,'

There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets passed,
Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass."
Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle,
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;"
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,'
Their generation's so equivocal :'

1 The couplet ran thus in the first edition, with less neatness and perspicuity:

Those hate as rivals all that write; and others

But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers.

The inaccuracy of the rhymes excited him to alteration, which occasioned a fresh inconvenience, that of similar rhymes in the next couplet but one.-Wakefield.

Dryden's Prologue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada :

They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,

Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

2 In the manuscript there are two more lines, of which the second was afterwards introduced into the Dunciad:

Though such with reason men of sense abhor;

Fool against fool is barb'rous civil war. Though Mævius scribble and the city knight, &c.

The city knight was Sir Richard Blackmore, who resided in Cheapside. "In the early part of Blackmore's time," says Johnson, " a citizen was a term of reproach, and his place of abode was a topic to which his adver

saries, had recourse in the penury of
scandal."

3

Dryden's Persius, Sat. î. 100 :
Who would be poets in Apollo's spite.

4 "The simile of the mule," says
Warton, "heightens the satire, and is
new," but the comparison fails in the
essential point. Pope's "half-learn'd
witlings," who aim at being wit and but sterk - huh?
critic, are inferior to both, whereas
the mule, to which he likens the
literary pretender, is in speed and
strength superior to the ass.

5 "I am confident," says Dryden in the dedication of his Virgil, "that you will look on those half-lines hereafter as the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed, unanimated mud."

6 The diction of this line is coarse, and the construction defective.WAKEFIELD.

The omission of "them" after "call" exceeds the bounds of poetic licence.

7 Equivocal generation is the production of animals without parents. Many of the creatures on the

To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.'
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;'
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;3
Where beams of warm imagination play,'
The memory's soft figures melt away.'

Nile were supposed to be of this
class, and it was believed that they
were fashioned by the action of the
sun upon the slime. The notion was
purely fanciful, as was the idea that
the insects were half-formed--a com-
pound of mud and organisation.

1 Dryden's Persius, v. 36: For this a hundred voices I desire

To tell thee what an hundred tongues would tire.

"I have often thought," says the author of the Supplement to the Profound, speaking of Pope's couplet, "that one pert fellow's tongue might tire a hundred pair of attending ears; but I never conceived that it could communicate any lassitude to the tongues of the bystanders before." The evident meaning of Pope is that it would tire a hundred ordinary tongues to talk as much as one vain wit, but the construction is faulty.

This is a palpable imitation of
Horace's Art of Poetry, 38:
Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis,
aquam

Viribus; et versate diu, quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.-WAKEFIELD.

3 Pope is unfortunate in his selection of instances to illustrate his position that the various mental faculties are never concentrated in the same individual. Men of great intellect have sometimes bad memories, and a good memory is sometimes found in persons of a feeble intellect; but it is a monstrous paradox to assert that a retentive memory and a powerful understanding cannot go together. No one will deny that Dr. Johnson and Lord Macaulay were gifted with vigorous, brilliant minds; yet the memory of the first was extraordinary, and that of the second prodigious. In general, men of tran scendent abilities have been reniarkable for their knowledge.

Dryden, in his Character of a
Good Parson :

But when the milder beams of mercy play.
-WAKEFIELD.

5 From the second couplet, apparently meant to be the converse of the first, one would suppose that he

One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:'
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts.

Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his sev'ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.

First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard,' which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,'
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,*
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

60

65

70

this reason men can rarely attain to the highest skill in more than one department, however many accomplishments they may possess in a minor degree. The native power to shine in various callings-may exist, but the practice which can alone make perfect, is wanting.

2 These are the words of Lord Shaftesbury in his Advice to an Author: Frame taste by the just standard of nature." The principle is as old as poetry, and has been laid down by multitudes of writers; but the difficulty, as Bowles remarks, is to determine what is " nature," and what is "her just standard." "Nature" with Pope meant Homer. 3 Roscommon's Essay:

Truth still is one: Truth is divinely bright;
No cloudy doubts obscure her native light.
-WAKEFIELD.

Translation of Boileau's Art of
Poetry by Sir William Soame and
Dryden, canto i.

Love reason then, and let whate'er you
write
[light.
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and

Art from that fund each just supply provides;
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,'
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects remains.3
Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;"
For wit and judgment often are at strife,'

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;

The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,"
Shows most true mettle when check his course.

you

Those rules of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodised;"

1 In the early editions,

That art is best which most resembles her, Which still presides, yet never does appear. 2 Dryden's Virgil, En. vi. 982 :

one common soul Inspires, and feeds, and animates the whole.-WAKEFIELD.

3 So Ovid, exactly, Metam. iv. 287: causa latet; vis est notissima.-WAKEFIELD, Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Poetry :

A spirit which inspires the work through-
out,

As that of nature moves the world about;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown.

4 In all editions before the quarto of 1743, it was,

There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,

Yet want as much again to manage it.

The idea was suggested by a sentence in Sprat's Account of Cowley: "His fancy flowed with great speed, and therefore it was very fortunate to him that his judgment was equal to manage it." Pope gave a false sparkle to his couplet by first using "wit" in one sense and then in another. "Wit to manage wit," says the

author of the Supplement to the Profound, "is full as good as one tongue's tiring another. Any one may perceive that the writer meant that judgment should manage wit; but as it stands it is pert." Warburton observes that Pope's later version magnified the contradiction; for he who had already "a profusion of wit," was the last person to need

more.

5 "Ever are at strife," was the reading till the quarto of 1743.

6 We shall destroy the beauty of the passage by introducing a most insipid parallel of perfect sameness, if we understand the word "like" as introducing a simile. It is merely as if he had said: "Pegasus, as a generous horse is accustomed to do, shows his spirit most under restraint." Our author might have in view a couplet of Waller's, in his verses on Roscommon's Poetry:

Direct us how to back the winged horse,
Favour his flight, and moderate his force.
-WAKEFIELD.

7 Dryden's preface to Troilus and

8

Nature, like liberty,' is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.
L

Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,'
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,'

95

She drew from them what they derived from heav'n.ʻ
The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,

100

And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,

To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:
But following wits from that intention strayed,
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid;"
Against the poets their own arms they turned,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned."

Cressida: "If the rules be well considered, we shall find them to be made only to reduce nature into method."

It was "monarchy " until the edition of 1743.

2 Translation of Boileau's Art of
Poetry, by Dryden and Soame:
And afar off hold up the glorious prize.―
WAKEFIELD.

3 Nec enim artibus editis factum est ut argumenta inveniremus, sed dicta sunt omnia antequam præciperentur; mox ea scriptores observata et collecta ediderunt. Quintil.-POPE.

4 This seems to have been suggested by a couplet in the Court Prospect of Hopkins:

How are these blessings thus dispensed and
giv'n?
[heav'n.

To us from William, and to him from

3 After this verse followed another, to complete the triplet, in the first impressions:

105

Set up themselves, and drove a sep'rate trade.-WAKEFIELD.

6 A feeble line of monosyllables, consisting of ten low words.-WAR

TON.

The entire passage seems to be constructed on some remarks of Dryden in his Dedication to Ovid: "For-、 merly the critics were quite another species of men. They were defender's of poets, and commentators on their works, to illustrate obscure beauties, to place some passages in a better light, to redeem others from malicious interpretations. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? Are they from our seconds become principals against us?" The truth of Pope's assertion, as to the matter of fact, will not bear a rigorous inquisition, as I believe these critical persecutors of good poets to have been extremely few, both in ancient and modern times.-WAKEFIELD.