admirable for his judgment in the proper application of them; I cannot help remarking the resemblance betwixt him and our author, in qualities, fame, and fortune; in the distinctions shown them by their superiors, in the general esteem of their equals, and in their extended reputation amongst foreigners; in the latter of which ours has met with the better fate, as he has had for his translators persons of the most eminent rank and abilities in their respective nations'. But the resemblance holds in nothing more, than in their being equally abused by the ignorant pretenders to poetry of their times; of which not the least memory will remain but in their own writings, and in the notes made upon them. What BOILEAU has done in almost all his poems, our author has only in this I dare answer for him he will do it in no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had slandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from censuring obscure and worthless persons, for scarce any other were his enemies. However, as the parity is so remarkable, I hope it will continue to the last; and if ever he shall give us an edition of this poem himself, I may see some of them treated as gently, on their repentance or better merit, as Perrault and Quinault were at last by BOILEAU. In one point I must be allowed to think the character of our English poet the more amiable. He has not been a follower of fortune or success; he has lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power, without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received no favour, but what was done him in his friends. As his satires were the more just for being delayed, so were his panegyrics; bestowed only on such persons as he had familiarly known, only for such virtues as he had long observed in them, and only at such times as others cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean when out of power or out of fashion. A satire, therefore, on writers so notorious for the contrary practice, became no man so well as himself; as none, it is plain, was so little in their friendships, or so much in that of those whom they had most abused, namely, the greatest and best of all parties. Let me add a further reason, that, though engaged in their friendships, he never espoused their animosities; and can almost singly challenge this honour, not to have written a line of any man, which, through guilt, through shame, or through fear, through variety 1 Essay on Criticism, in French verse, by General Hamilton; the same, in verse also, by Monsieur Roboton, counsellor and privy secretary to king George I., after by the Abbé Reynel, in verse, with notes. Rape of the Lock, in French, by the princess of Conti, Paris 1728, and in Italian verse, by the Abbé Conti, a noble Venetian; and by the Marquis Rangoni, envoy extraordinary from Modena to king George IL Others of his works by Salvini of Florence, &c. His Essays and Dissertations on Homer, several times translated in French. Essay on Man, by the Abbé Reynel, in verse, by Monsieur Silhouet, in prose, 1737, and since by others in French, Italian, and Latin. 2 As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the town declaimed against his book of poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death: Sir William Trumbull, when he had resigned the office of secretary of state; Lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England after the queen's death; Lord Oxford, in his last decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the South Sea year, and after his death: others only in epitaphs. of fortune, or change of interests, he was ever unwilling to own. I shall conclude with remarking what a pleasure it must be to every reader of humanity, to see all along, that our author in his very laughter is not indulging his own ill-nature, but only punishing that of others. As to his poem, those alone are capable of doing it justice, who, to use the words of a great writer, know how hard it is (with regard both to his subject and his manner) VETUSTIS DARE NOVITATEM, OBSOLETIS NITOREM, OBSCURIS LUCEM, FASTIDITIS GRATIAM. I am, St. James's, Dec. 22, 1728. Your most humble servant, WILLIAM CLELAND 3. DENNIS, REMARKS ON PRINCE ARTHUR. I cannot but think it the most reasonable thing in the world, to distinguish good writers by discouraging the bad. Nor is it an ill-natured thing, in relation even to the very persons upon whom the reflections are made. It is true, it may deprive them, a little the sooner, of a short profit and a transitory reputation; but then it may have a good effect, and oblige them (before it be too late) to decline that for which they are so very unfit, and to have recourse to something in which they may be more successful. CHARACTER OF MR. P. 1716. The persons whom Boileau has attacked in his writings, have been for the most part authors, and most of those authors, poets: and the censures he hath passed upon them have been confirmed by all Europe. GILDON, PREFACE TO HIS NEW REHEARSAL. It is the common cry of the poetasters of the town, and their fautors, that it is an ill-natured thing to expose the pretenders to wit and poetry. The judges and magistrates may with full as good reason be reproached with ill-nature for putting the laws in execution against a thief or impostor. -The same will hold in the republic of letters, if the critics and judges will let every ignorant pretender to scribbling pass on the world. THEOBALD, LETTER TO MIST, JUNE 22, 1728. Attacks may be leveled, either against failures in genius, or against the pretensions of writing without one. CONCANEN, DEDICATION TO THE AUTHOR OF THE DUNCIAD. A satire upon dullness is a thing that has been used and allowed in all ages. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, wicked scribbler! This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the university of Utrecht, with the earl of Mar. He served in Spain under earl Rivers. After the peace, he was made one of the commissioners of the customs in Scotland, and then of taxes in England, in which having shown himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible, though without any other assistance of fortune, he was suddenly displaced by the minister in the sixty-eighth year of his age; and died two months after, in 1741. He was a person of universal learning, and an enlarged conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his friend, or a sincerer attachment to the constitution of his country. TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS CONCERNING OUR POET AND HIS WORKS. M. SCRIBLERUS Lectori S. BEFORE we present thee with our exercitations on this most delectable poem (drawn from the many volumes of our Adversaria on modern authors) we shall here, according to the laudable usage of editors, collect the various judgments of the learned concerning our poet: various indeed, not only of different authors, but of the same author at different seasons. Nor shall we gather only the testimonies of such eminent wits, as would of course descend to posterity, and consequently be read without our collection; but we shall likewise with incredible labour seek out for divers others, which, but for this our diligence, could never at the distance of a few months appear to the eye of the most curious. Hereby thou may'st not only receive the delectation of variety, but also arrive at a more certain judgment, by a grave and circumspect comparison of the witnesses with each other, or of each with himself. Hence also thou wilt be enabled to draw reflections, not only of a critical, but a moral nature, by being let into many particulars of the person as well as genius, and of the fortune as well as merit, of our author: In which if I relate some things of little concern peradventure to thee, and some of as little even to him; I entreat thee to consider how minutely all true critics and commentators are wont to insist upon such, and how material they seem to themselves, if to none other. Forgive me, gentle reader, if (following learned example) I ever and anon become tedious: allow me to take the same pains to find whether my author were good or bad, well or ill-natured, modest or arrogant; as another, whether his author was fair or brown, short or tall, or whether he wore a coat or a cassock. We purposed to begin with his life, parentage, and education: but as to these, even his contemporaries do exceedingly differ. One saith', he was educated at home; another2, that he was bred at St. Omer's by Jesuits; a third3, not at St. Omer's, but at Oxford; a fourth, that he had no university education at all. Those who allow him to be bred at home, differ as much concerning his tutor : one saith, he was kept by his father on purpose; a second, that he was an itinerant priest; a third', that he was a parson; one calleth him a secular clergyman of the church of Rome; another", a monk. As little do they agree about his father, whom one 10 supposeth, like the father of Hesiod, a tradesman or merchant; another", a husbandman; another 12, a hatter, &c. Nor has an author been wanting to give our poet such a father as Apuleius hath to Plato, Jamblicus to Pythagoras, and divers to Homer, namely a demon: for thus Mr. Gildon 13: "Certain it is, that his original is 1 Giles Jacob's Lives of Poets, vol. ii. in his life. * Dennis's Reflections on the Essay on Criticism. 3 Dunciad dissected, p. 4. > Jacob's Lives, &c. vol. ii. • Characters of the Times, p. 10 Female Dunciad, p. ult. 4 Guardian, No. 40. 6 Dunciad dissected, p. 4. 8 Dunciad dissected. 45. 11 Dunciad dissected. 12 Roome, paraphrase on the fourth of Genesis, printed 1729. not from Adam, but the devil; and that he wanteth nothing but horns and tail to be the exact resemblance of his infernal father." Finding, therefore, such contrariety of opinions, and (whatever be ours of this sort of generation) not being fond to enter into controversy, we shall defer writing the life of our poet, until authors can determine among themselves what parents or education he had, or whether he had any education or parents at all. Proceed we to what is more certain, his works, though not less uncertain the judgments concerning them; beginning with his ESSAY on CRITICISM, of which hear first the most ancient of critics, MR. JOHN DENNIS. "His precepts are false, or trivial, or both; his thoughts are crude and abortive, his expressions absurd, his numbers harsh and unmusical, his rhymes trivial and common;-instead of majesty, we have something that is very mean; instead of gravity, something that is very boyish; and instead of perspicuity and lucid order, we have but too often obscurity and confusion." And in another place: "What rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated muse, who had sued out a divorce from some superannuated sinner, upon account of impotence, and who, being poxed by her former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepid age, which makes her hobble so damnably." No less peremptory is the censure of our hypercritical historian MR. OLDMIXON. "I dare not say any thing of the Essay on Criticism in verse; but if any more curious reader has discovered in it something new which is not in Dryden's prefaces, dedications, and his essay on dramatic poetry, not to mention the French critics, I should be very glad to have the benefit of the discovery 15." He is followed (as in fame, so in judgment) by the modest and simple-minded MR. LEONARD WELSTED ; Who, out of great respect to our poet not naming him, doth yet glance at his Essay, together with the duke of Buckingham's, and the criticisms of Dryden, and of Horace, which he more openly taxeth 16: "As to the numerous treatises, essays, arts, &c. both in verse and prose, that have been written by the moderns on this ground-work, they do but hackney the same thoughts over again, making them still more trite. Most of their pieces are nothing but a pert, insipid heap of commonplace. Horace has even in his Art of Poetry thrown out several things which plainly show, he thought an art of poetry was of no use, even while he was writing one." To all which great authorities, we can only oppose that of 13 Character of Mr. P. and his Writings, in a letter to a friend, printed for S. Popping, 1716. p. 10. Curll, in his Key to the Dunciad (first edition, said to be printed for A. Dedd) in the tenth page, declared Gildon to be author of that libel; though in the subsequent editions of his Key he left out this assertion, and affirmed (in the Curliad, pages 4 and 8) that it was writ by Dennis only. 14 Reflections critical and satirical on a rhapsody called an Essay on Criticism Printed for Bernard Lintot, octavo. 15 Essay on Criticism in prose, 8vo., 1728, by the author of the Critical History of England. 16 Preface to his poems, p. 18, 53. MR. ADDISON 1. "The Art of Criticism (saith he) which was published some months since, is a master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another, like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that ease and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty; and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so well enlarged upon in the preface to his works: That wit and fine writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others; we have little else left us, but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but few precepts in it, which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing, and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire. "Longinus, in his reflections, has given us the same kind of sublime, which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them: I cannot but take notice that our English author has after the same manner exemplified several of the precepts in the very precepts themselves." He then produces some instances of a particular beauty in the numbers, and concludes with saying, that "there are three poems in our tongue of the same nature, and each a master-piece in its kind; the Essay on Translated Verse; the Essay on the Art of Poetry; and the Essay on Criticism." Of WINDSOR FOREST, positive is the judgment of the affirmative MR. JOHN DENNIS2, "That it is a wretched rhapsody, impudently written in emulation of the Cooper's Hill of Sir John Denham: the author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is temerarious, is barbarous3." But the author of the Dispensary DR. GARTH, in the preface to his poem of Claremont, differs from this opinion: "those who have seen these two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill, and Windsor Forest, the one written by Sir John Denham, the other by Mr. Pope, will show a great deal of candour if they approve of this." Of the epistle of ELOISA, we are told by the obscure writer of a poem called Sawney, "that 1 Spectator, No. 253. 2 Letter to B. B. at the end of the remarks on Pope's Homer, 1717. 3 Printed 1728, p. 12. because Prior's Henry and Emma charmed the finest tastes, our author writ his Eloise, in opposition to it; but forgot innocence and virtue: if you take away her tender thoughts, and her fierce desires, all the rest is of no value." In which, methinks, his judgment resembleth that of a French tailor on a villa and gardens by the Thames: "All this is very fine, but take away the river, and it is good for nothing." But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of MR. PRIOR himself, saying in his Alma', O Abelard! ill fated youth, Dan Pope, for thy misfortune grieved, A silken web; and ne'er shall fade Its colours: gently has he laid The mantle o'er thy sad distress, And Venus shall the texture bless, &c. Come we now to his translation of the ILIAD, celebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to mention the indefatigable SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, KT. who (though otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a "laudable translation "." That ready writer MR. OLDMIXON, in his forementioned Essay, frequently commends the same. And the painful MR. LEWIS THEOBALD thus extols it", "The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation. I am in doubt, whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers: but when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, That he alone raised and flung with ease a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation, what I once despaired to have seen done by the force of several masterly hands." Indeed the same gentleman appears to have changed his sentiment in his Essay on the Art of Sinking in Reputation, (printed in Mist's Journal, March 30, 1728) where he says thus: "In order to sink in reputation, let him take it into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder, as it will, how the devil he got there) and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how." Strange variation! We are told in MIST'S JOURNAL, June 8. "That this translation of the Iliad was not in all respects conformable to the fine taste of his friend Mr. Addison; insomuch that he employed a younger muse, in an undertaking of this kind, which he supervised himself." Whether Mr. Addison did find it conformable to his taste, or 4 Alma, canto ii. 5 In his Essays, vol. i., printed for E. Curll. 6 Censor, vol. ii. n. 33. not, best appears from his own testimony the year following its publication, in these words: MR. ADDISON, FREEHOLDER, No. 40. "When I consider myself as a British freeholder, I am in a particular manner pleased with the labours of those who have improved our language with the translations of old Greek and Latin authors. We have already most of their historians in our own tongue, and what is more for the honour of our language, it has been taught to express with elegance the greatest of their poets in each nation. The illiterate among our own Countrymen may learn to judge from Dryden's Virgil of the most perfect epic performance. And those parts of Homer which have been published already by Mr. Pope, give us reason to think that the Iliad will appear in English with as little disadvantage to that immortal poem." As to the rest, there is a slight mistake, for this younger muse was an elder: nor was the gentleman (who is a friend of our author) employed by Mr. Addison to translate it after him, since he saith himself that he did it before1. Contrariwise that Mr. Addison engaged our author in this work appeareth by declaration thereof in the preface to the Iliad, printed some time before his death, and by his own letters of October 26, and November 2, 1713, where he declares it is his opinion, that no other person was equal to it. Next comes his Shakspeare on the stage: "Let him (quoth one, whom I take to be Gentle MR. THEOBALD, MIST'S JOURNAL, June 8, 1728.) publish such an author as he has least studied, and forget to discharge even the dull duty of an editor. In this project let him lend the bookseller his name (for a competent sum of money) to promote the credit of an exorbitant subscription." reader, be pleased to cast thine eye on the proposal below quoted, and on what follows (some months after the former assertion) in the same Journalist of June 8. "The bookseller proposed the book by subscription, and raised some thousands of pounds for the same: I believe the gentleman did not share in the profits of this extravagant subscription. "After the Iliad, he undertook (saith MIST'S JOURNAL, June 8, 1728,) the sequel of that work, the Odyssey; and having secured the success by a numerous subscription, he employed some underlings to perform what, according to his proposals, should come from his own hands." To which heavy charge we can in truth oppose nothing but the words of MR. POPE'S PROPOSAL FOR THE ODYSSEY. (Printed by J. Watts, Jan. 10, 1724.) "I take this occasion to declare that the subscription for Shakspeare belongs wholly to Mr. Tonson: And that the benefit of this proposal is not solely for my own use, but for that of two of my friends, who have assisted me in this work." But these very gentlemen are extolled above our poet himself in another of Mist's Journals, March 30, 1728, saying, "That he would not advise Mr. Pope to try the experiment again of getting a 1 Vide preface to Mr. Tickell's Translation of the First Book of the Iliad. 4to. great part of a book done by assistants, lest those extraneous parts should unhappily ascend to the sublime, and retard the declension of the whole." Behold! these underlings are become good writers! If any say, that before the said proposals were printed, the subscription was begun without declaration of such assistance; verily, those who set it on foot, or (as their term is) secured it, to wit, the right honourable the Lord Viscount HARCOURT, were he living, would testify, and the right honourable the Lord BATHURST, now living, doth testify, the same is a falsehood. Sorry I am, that persons professing to be learned, or of whatever rank of authors, should either falsely tax, or be falsely taxed. Yet let us, who are only reporters, be impartial in our citations, and proceed. MIST'S JOURNAL, June 8, 1728. "Mr. Addison raised this author from obscurity, obtained him the acquaintance and friendship of the whole body of our nobility, and transferred his powerful interests with those great men to this rising bard, who frequently levied by that means Which unusual contributions on the public." surely cannot be, if, as the author of the Dunciad Dissected reporteth; "Mr. Wycherley had before introduced him into a familiar acquaintance with the greatest peers and brightest wits then living." "No sooner (saith the same Journalist) was his body lifeless, but this author, reviving his resentment, libeled the memory of his departed friend; and, what was still more heinous, made the scandal public." Grievous the accusation! unknown the accuser! the person accused no witness in his own cause; the person, in whose regard accused, dead! But if there be living any one nobleman whose friendship, yea any one gentleman whose subscription Mr. Addison procured to our author; let him stand forth, that truth may appear! Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas. In verity, the whole story of the libel is a lie; witness those persons of integrity, who several years before Mr. Addison's decease, did see and approve of the said verses, in no wise a libel, but a friendly rebuke sent privately in our author's own hand to Mr. Addison himself, and never made public, until after their own journal and Curl had printed the same. One name alone, which I am here authorized to declare, will sufficiently evince this truth, that of the right honourable the Earl of BURLINGTON. Next is he taxed with a crime (in the opinion of some authors, I doubt, more heinous than any in morality) to wit, plagiarism, from the inventive and quaint-conceited JAMES MOORE SMITH, GENT.2 "Upon reading the third volume of Pope's Miscellanies, I found five lines which I thought excellent; and happening to praise them, a gentleman produced a modern comedy (the Rival Modes) published last year, where were the same verses to a tittle. "These gentlemen are undoubtedly the first plagiaries, that pretend to make a reputation by stealing from a man's works in his own life-time, and out of a public print." Let us join to this what is written by the author of the Rival Modes, 2 Daily Journal, March 18, 1728. K the said Mr. James Moore Smith, in a letter to our author himself, who had informed him, a month before that play was acted, Jan. 27, 1726-7, that "These verses, which he had before given him leave to insert in it, would be known for his, some copies being got abroad. He desires, nevertheless, that, since the lines had been read in his comedy to several, Mr. P. would not deprive it of them," &c. Surely if we add the testimonies of the Lord BOLINGBROKE, of the Lady to whom the said verses were originally addressed, of Hugh Bethel, Esq., and others, who knew them as our author's, long before the said gentleman composed his play; it is hoped, the ingenuous that affect not error, will rectify their opinion by the suffrage of so honourable personages. And yet followeth another charge, insinuating no less than his enmity both to Church and State, which could come from no other informer than the said MR. JAMES MOORE SMITH. "The Memoirs of a Parish Clerk was a very dull and unjust abuse of a person who wrote in defence of our religion and constitution, and who has been dead many years 1." This seemeth also most untrue; it being known to divers that these memoirs were written at the seat of the Lord Harcourt in Oxfordshire, before that excellent person (bishop Burnet's) death, and many years before the appearance of that history, of which they are pretended to be an abuse. Most true it is, that Mr. Moore had such a design, and was himself the man who pressed Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Pope to assist him therein; and that he borrowed those Memoirs of our author, when that history came forth, with intent to turn them to such abuse. But being able to obtain from our author but one single hint, and either changing his mind, or having more mind than ability, he contented himself to keep the said Memoirs, and read them as his own to all his acquaintance. A noble person there is, into whose company Mr. Pope once chanced to introduce him, who well remembereth the conversation of Mr. Moore to have turned upon the "contempt he had for the work of that reverend prelate, and how full he was of a design he declared himself to have of exposing it." This noble person is the Earl of PETERBOROUGH. Here in truth should we crave pardon of all the foresaid right honourable and worthy personages, for having mentioned them in the same that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv. "Now, fired by Pope and Virtue, leave the age, In his elegant and philosophical poem of The "Although not sweeter his own Homer sings, Yet is his life the more endearing song.", page with such weekly riff-raff railers and rhymers; To the same tune also singeth that learned clerk but that we had their ever-honoured commands for the same; and that they are introduced, not as witnesses in the controversy, but as witnesses that cannot be controverted; not to dispute, but to decide. Certain it is, that dividing our writers into two classes, of such who were acquaintance, and of such who were strangers, to our author; the former are those who speak well, and the other those who speak evil of him. Of the first class, the most noble JOHN, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, sums up his character in these lines: "And yet so wonderous, so sublime a thing, Daily Journal, April 3, 1728. of Suffolk, MR. WILLIAM BROOME : "Thus, nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause, From thy own life transcribe the unerring laws.” And, to close all, hear the reverend Dean of St. Patrick's: "A soul with every virtue fraught, A genius for each business fit, Whose meanest talent is his wit," &c. 2 Verses to Mr. P. on his translation of Homer. 3 Poem prefixed to his works. 4 In his Poems, printed for B. Lintot. 5 Universal Passion, satire i. • In his poems, and at the end of the Odyssey. |