EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES. DIAL. I. 153

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

1738.

DIALOGUE I.

The first Dialogue, under the title of One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-eight,' came out on the same morning in May as Johnson's London. Though the idea of imitating Juvenal was a plagiarism from Pope's imitations of Horace, yet the copyist was more vigorous than his master, and London had a more rapid sale than Pope's Dialogue. Macaulay, Life of Johnson : 'Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope, in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He made enquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered, and Pope exerted himself to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar-school for the poor young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.'

The Friend is an impersonal interlocutor.

1. 3. You grow correct, that once with rapture writ. Here Pope seems to claim the merit of correctness only for the productions of his age, and to attribute a higher poetical inspiration to those of his youth. But the account he gave himself to Spence is the truth. He acted from the very first upon Walsh's suggestion to aim at correctness.' See Essay on Man, Introduction. 1. 7. Horace long before ye said. See Sat. and Ep. 1. 67.

1. 9. Peter. See Sat. and Ep. 1. 40.

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1. 12. Bubo observes. Pope's own note on this is, Some guilty person, very fond of making such an observation.' We may infer that we have here a favourite remark of Mr. Dodington- Horace's satire was reserved for follies and foibles, in contradistinction to that of Juvenal, who lashed vice.' 1. 13. Sir Billy. See below, 1. 68.

1. 14. Blunt. Sir John Blunt, one of the wealthiest Directors of the South Sea Company. His estate was valued for the liquidation at £183,000.

H-ggins. Huggins had been Warden of the Fleet Prison. He bought the wardenship of Lord Clarendon, the historian, for the sum of £5,000. He made as much per annum by extorting money from the wretched prisoners by ill-usage. This iniquitous system was brought before Parliament by General Oglethorpe; see Sat. and Ep. 6. 277, note, and though it was abated, the miscreants, being tried by a British jury, escaped punishment. A summary of the facts may be read in Wright's Life of Oglethorpe, 1867.

The

1. 17. And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing. Jenkins, master of a trading sloop, who had lost an ear, or part of one, it is not known how, pretended that it had been torn off by a Spanish officer of the customs, who bid him 'carry it to the king his master.' fable of Jenkins' ears,' as Burke, Thoughts on a Regicide Peace,' calls it, produced more effect than anything else in working up the country to take up the cause of the merchants against Spain.

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1. 24. Patriots there are, who wish you'd jest no more. Pope's own note here is, 'This appellation, Patriots, was generally given to those in opposition to the Court. Though some of them, which cur author hints at, had views too mean and interested to deserve that name.' Opposite this line Lord Marchmont, Pope's friend and executor, wrote Carteret and Pulteney, intimating that these two, after the Queen's death, were desirous of modifying their opposition to the Court.

1. 26. The great man. The familiar term for Sir Robert Walpole." 1. 30. bis happier bour. Horace Walpole describes the effect on his father of the ministerial struggle, which terminated in 1741, in Sir Robert's retirement; Walpole to Mann, Oct. 19, 1741: He who always was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, now never dozes above an hour without waking; and he who at dinner always forgot that he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all his company, now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour together. Judge if this is the Sir Robert you knew!'

1. 31. Seen him, uncumber'd with the venal tribe. Lord Hervey, Mem. 1. 24: There never was any minister to whom access was so easy and so frequent, nor whose answers were more explicit. He knew how to oblige when he bestowed, and not to shock when he denied; to govern without oppressing, and conquer without triumph.'

1. 34. He does not think me what he thinks mankind. Macaulay, Essays, I. 274: Sir Robert said after his fall that it was a dangerous thing to be a minister; that there were few minds which would not be injured by the constant spectacle of meanness and depravity.'

1. 37. with Scripture still you may be free. The inuendo is intended to be applied, by the reader, to the style of conversation prevalent at Court in the lifetime of Queen Caroline, who died November, 1737.

1. 38. A borse-laugh, if you please, at honesty. Pope's own note speaks of the laugh here described of ONE who bestowed it equally upon religion and honesty.' Mr. Croker inferred from the capital letters that the Queen was meant. But it seems rather, so far as such an allusion admits of being interpreted, to be aimed at Lord Hervey.

1. 46. His prince. At this date the Prince being in violent opposition to the Court, Pope was disposed to be complimentary. Glover, the poet, told

Warton of a visit paid by Frederick to Twickenham, when Lyttelton asked Pope to join him in dissuading the Prince from riding a vicious horse. 'I hope, Sir,' said Pope, 'the people of England will not be made miserable by a second horse.'

1. 47. Lyttelton. When the Prince discarded Dodington in 1734, Mr. (afterwards Sir George, and Lord) Lyttelton succeeded to the place of favourite. He was, of all the Prince's friends, the most violent in opposition to the Court-a circumstance which doubtless recommended him to Pope. For a portrait of Lyttelton as he appeared to his enemies, see Lord Hervey, Mem. 1. 433.

1. 51. Sejanus, Wolsey. The Opposition speakers in both Houses ransacked history for the most offensive names to heap upon Sir Robert Walpole. Cf. Sat. and Ep., Epilog. 2. 136:

But pray, when others praise him, do I blame?

Call Verres, Wolsey, any odious name?'

But

For Fleury, see Sat. and Ep. 1. 75, note. The comparison to Sejanus was made in a speech, in the Lords, in 1721, by the Duke of Wharton. the object of the invective on that occasion was Stanhope, not Walpole. 1. 64. distinction: used here for distinctness,' 'discrimination.' 1. 66. Henley. A graduate of Cambridge and ordained clergyman of the Church of England, who had set up an Oratory of his own in Newport Market about ten years previously, and attracted crowds to hear him. Dunciad, 3. 199.

Cf.

Osborne edited at this time a paper called The London Journal, which Lord Chesterfield says (Common Sense, Oct. 8, 1737) he used to take as a soporific every night, after he was in bed. In the coffee-house slang, the editor as well as his paper went by the name of 'Mother Osborne.'

1. 68. Y-ung. Sir William Yonge was so ready a speaker that Sir Robert often, when he did not care to enter early into the debate himself, gave Yonge his notes as the latter came late into the House, from which he could speak admirably and fluently, though he had missed the preceding discussion.

1. 75. Middleton. The Life of Cicero, Middleton's principal work, was not published till 1741. He was as yet only known as a writer by fugitive pamphlets against Bentley on the Origin of Printing, &c.

Bland. Master of Eton College and friend of Sir Robert Walpole. The point lies in coupling Middleton who was considered a very elegant writer, with Bland who was a very bad writer, with the object of disparaging Middleton. For Middleton was a friend of Lord Hervey.

1. 78. nation's sense. Here Pope has again preserved a cant term of the party politics of the time.

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1. 80. Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn, Queen Carolinc, died Nov. 30, 1737. Lord Stanhope, Hist. of England, 2. 314: The death-bed of this high-minded princess was not wholly free from blame, still less from the malignant exaggeration of party. She was accused as implacable in hatred, as refusing her pardon to her son. . . . . Unforgiving, unforgiven, dies," cries Chesterfield in some powerful lines circulated at the time. With still more bitterness, Pope veils his satire beneath pretended praise.' On the other hand, Sir R. Walpole told Horace, that she sent her forgiveness and her blessing to her worthless son. Horace Walpole's authority for a fact is not very good, but neither Pope nor Chesterfield, where the Queen is concerned, can be relied on.

Scandal of the time

1. 112. Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt. against Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. What little foundation there was for the libellous imputations may be seen in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of Lady Mary's Works, vol. 3, App. p. 432. Pope afterwards (Sat. and Ep., Epilog. 2. 20) pretended that his allusion had not been discovered:

'Who starv'd a sister, who forswore a debt,
I never nam'd, the Town's enquiring yet.'

1. 114. the dignity of vice. Cf. Juvenal, 11. 174:
'Namque ibi fortunæ veniam damus. Alea turpis,
Turpe et adulterium mediocribus; hæc eadem illi
Omnia cum faciant, hilares nitidique vocantur.'

Gifford compares Beaumont, Maid in the Mill:

In lords a wildness is a noble trick,

And cherish'd in them, and all men must love it.'

He

1. 123. Blount. Charles Blount, younger son of Sir Henry Blount of Tittenhanger. He was one of the earliest of the deistical writers. committed suicide in 1693.

1. 124. Passeran. Alberto Radicati, Conte de Passerani, a Piedmontese nobleman. He resided some time in England. The allusion in Pope's line is to his Dissertation sur la Mort,' Rotterdam, 1733, in which he is said to have attempted a justification of suicide.

1. 125.

But shall a printer, weary of his life,

Learn, from their books, to hang himself and wife? Warton refers to the Gentleman's Magazine, 1732, for an account of the suicide of Richard Smith, a bookbinder.

1. 131. modest Foster. Dr. James Foster, a Nonconformist preacher of great popularity in the city of London. The Sunday evening lecture, begun in 1728, which he carried on for twenty years at the Old Jewry, was resorted to by persons of every rank, station, and quality.

1. 134. Llandaff. Pope's note on this is, 'a poor bishopric in Wales, as poorly supplied.' The Bishop of Llandaff was Dr. John Harris, who died

August 28 in this year. Why Pope thought him worth launching this line at, I have not discovered.

1. 135. bumble Allen.

'Low-born Allen' in first edition, changed by Pope after he became acquainted with Allen, and had paid him a visit at Prior Park, near Bath, in November, 1741.

1. 144. Let greatness own ber, and she's mean no more. Gibbon, ch. 40: 'Without Warburton's critical telescope I should never have seen, in this general picture of triumphant vice, any personal allusion to Theodora.' We are to infer from Warburton's note on the line that Pope owned the allusion to the Empress Theodora. But it is possible that Warburton first suggested it to the poet. The mention of old England's genius,' l. 152, seems scarcely reconcilable with Warburton's interpretation. It may with more probability be conjectured that this lofty declamation, which is in the tone of the Craftsman, personifies Sir Robert Walpole's administration as triumphant vice.

DIALOGUE II.

1738.

1. 1. Paxton. Solicitor to the Treasury: see below, 1. 141, 'When Paxton gives him double pots and pay.'

1. 2. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow 'faith it may. Alluding to Walpole's Playhouse Act. The effect of this Act was to legalize the Lord Chamberlain's customary power of licensing plays. The opposition affected to think that this was only a first step towards the establishment of a censorship of the Press. Lord Chesterfield delivered, June 2, 1737, a brilliant harangue urging this argument. The speech is in print, in his Works, vol. 5. p. 2.

1. 11. Guthry. Pope, note: The Ordinary of Newgate, who published the Memoirs of the malefactors, and is often prevailed upon to be so tender of their reputation, as to set down no more than the initials of their names. 1. 20. Who starv'd a sister, who forswore a debt. See above, Sat. and Ep., Epilogue 1. 112, note.

1. 22. The poisoning dame. Bennet; 'Lady Betty Molineux, who married Dr. St. André, after poisoning her former husband, the friend of Locke.'

1. 39. wretched Wild. Jonathan Wild, hanged in 1725. His Life by Fielding is a romance, or rather a satire on 'greatness.' It was probably suggested to Fielding by an obscure pamphlet, entitled the Life and Glorious Actions of Jonathan Wilde, 1725.

1. 49. plums. Cf. Sat. and Ep. I. 103.