Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own? I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. VARIATIONS. After 124. in the MS. C But, friend, this shape, which You and Curl admire, Had heir'd as well the virtues of the mind. * Curl set up his head for a fign. His Father was crooked. His Mother was much afflicted with head-achs. NOTES. VER. 127. As yet a child, &c.] He used to say, that he began to write verses further back than he could remember. When he was eight years old, Ogilby's Homer fell in his way, and delighted him extremely; it was followed by Sandys' Ovid; and the raptures these then gave him were so strong, that he spoke of them with pleasure ever after. About ten, being at school at Hide-park-corner, where he was much neglected, and fuffered to go to the Comedy with the greater boys, he turned the transactions of the Iliad into a play, made up of a number of speeches from Ogilby's tranflation, tacked together with verses of his own. He had the address to perfuade the upper boys to act it; he even prevailed on the Master's Gardener to represent Ajax; and contrived to have all the actors dressed after the pictures in his favourite Ogilby. At twelve he went with VOL. IV. C I left no calling for this idle trade, 130 No duty broke, no father disobey'd. But why then publish? Granville the polite, 1 35 And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise, And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays; The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head, 140 NOTES. his Father into the Forest: and then got first acquainted with the writings of Waller, Spencer, and Dryden; in the order I have named them. On the first sight of Dryden, he found he had what he wanted. His Poems were never out of his hands; they became his model; and from them alone he learnt the whole magic of his verfification. This year he began an epic Poem, the fame which Bp. Atterbury, long afterwards, perfuaded him to burn. Besides this, he wrote, in those early days, a Comedy and Tragedy, the latter taken from a story in the Legend of St. Genevieve. They both deservedly underwent the fame fate. As he began his Paftorals foon after, he used to say pleafantly, that he had literally followed the example of Virgil, who tells us, Cum canerem reges et pralia, &c. VER. 130. no father difobey'd.] When Mr. Pope was yet a Child, his Father, though no Poet, would set him to make English verses. He was pretty difficult to please, and would often fend the boy back to new turn them. When they were to his mind, he took great pleasure in them, and would say, These are good rhymes. VER. 139. Talbet, &c.] All these were Patrons or Admirers of Mr. Dryden; though a scandalous libel against him, entitled, And St. John's felf (great Dryden's friends before) NOTES. Dryden's Satyr to bis Muse, has been printed in the name of the Lord Sommers, of which he was wholly ignorant. These are the perions to whose account the Author charges the publication of his first pieces: perfons, with whom he was converfant (and he adds beloved) at 16 or 17 years of age; an early period for fuch acquaintance. The catalogue might be made yet more illustrious, had he not confined it to that tirae when he writ the Paftorals and Windsor Forest, on which he paffes a fort of Censure in the lines following, While pure Description held the place of Sense ? &c. P. VER. 146. Burnets, &c.] Authors of fecret and scandalous Hiftorv. Ibid. Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.) By no means Au thors of the fame class, though the violence of party might hurry them into the fame mistakes. But if the first offended this way, it was only through an honest warmth of temper, that allowed too little to an excellent understanding. The other two, with very bad heads, had hearts ftill worfe. VER. 148. While pure Description held the place of Sense?] He uses pure equivocally, to fignify either chafte or empty; and has given in this line what he efteemed the true Character of defcriptive poetry, as it is called. A composition, in his opinion, as absurd as a feaft made up of fauces. The use of a pictoresque imagination is to brighten and adorn good sense; fo that to employ it only in defcription, is like childrens delighting in a prism for the fake of its gaudy colours; which when frugally Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, 150 If want provok'd, or madness made them print, 155 I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint. Did fome more fober Critic come abroad; If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. 160 Comma's and points they set exactly right, And 'twere a fin to rob them of their mite. Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds, From flashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds: NOTES. managed, and artfully disposed, might be made to represent and illuftrate the noblest objects in nature. VER. 150. A painted meadow, or a purling stream. is a verfe of Mr. Addifon. P. VER. 163. these ribalds,] How deservedly this title is given to the genius of PHILOLOGY, may be seen by a short account of the manners of the modern Scholiafts. When in these latter ages, human learning raised its head in the Weft, and its tail, verbal criticism, was, of coursfe, to rife with it; the madness of Critics foon became fo offensive, that the fober stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J. Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach fchool in Italy, after the facking of Conftantinople by the Turks, Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each Word-catcher, that lives on fyllables, 166. NOTES. used to maintain that Cicero understood neither Philofophy nor Greek: while another of his Countrymen, J. Lafcaris by name, threatened to demonftrate that Virgil was no Poet. Coun-tenanced by such great examples, a French Critic afterwards un-dertook to prove that Aristotle did not understand Greek, nor Titus Livius, Latin. It was the fame difcernment of spirit, which has fince discovered that Jofephus was ignorant of He-brew; and Er smus so pitiful a Linguist, that, Burman affures us, were he now alive, he would not deserve to be put at the head of a country school. For though time has ftrip'd the present race of Pedants of all the real accomplishments of their predeceffors, it has conveyed down this spirit to them, unimpaired; it being found much easier to ape their manners, than to imitate their science. However, those earlier Ribalds raised an appetite for the Greek language in the Weft: infomuch, that Hermolaus Barbarus, a paffionate admirer of it, and a noted Critic, used to boast, that he had invoked and raised the Devil, and puzzled him into the bargain, about the meaning of the Ariftotelian ΕΝΤΕΛΕΧΕΙΑ. Another, whom Balzac speaks of, was as eminent for his Revelations: and was wont to say, that the meaning of fuch or fuch a verse, in Perfius, no one knew but God and himself. While the celebrated Pomponius Latus, in excess of Veneration for Antiquity, became a real Pagan, raifed altars to Romulus, and facrificed to the Gods of Latium: in which he was followed by our countryman, Baxter, in every thing, but in the expence of his facrifices. But if the Greeks cried down Cicero, the Italian Critics knew how to fupport his credit. Every one has heard of the childish excesses into which the ambition of being thought CICERONIANS carried the most celebrated Italians of this time. They abstained from reading the Scriptures for fear of fpoiling their style: Cardinal Bembo used to call the Epiftles of St. Paul by the contemptuous name of Epistolaccias, great oveng oun Épistles. But ERASMUS cured their frenzy in that makerlece of good fenfe, his Ciceronianus. For which (in the way Lunatics treat their Physicians) the elder Scaliger infulted him with all the brutal fury peculiar to his family and profeffion. |