other party in the unhappy divifions of their country) have infulted the fallen, the friend lefs, the exiled, and the dead.

Befides this, which I take to be a public concern, I have already confeffed I had a private one. I am one of that number who have long loved and esteemed Mr. Pope; and had often declared it was not his capacity or writings, (which we ever thought the leaft valuable part of his character,) but the honeft, open, and beneficent man, that we most esteemed and loved in him. Now, if what thefe people fay were believed, I muft appear to all my friends either a fool or a knave; either impofed on myfelf, or impofing on them; fo that I am as much interested in the confutation of thefe calumnies as he is himself.

I am no author, and confequently not to be fufpected either of jealousy or refentment against any of the men, of whom (carce one is known to me by fight; and as for their writings, I have fought them (on this one occafion) in vain, in the clofets and libraries of all my acquaintance. I had ftill been in the dark, if a gentleman had not procured me (I fuppofe from fome of themselves, for they are generally much more dangerous friends than enemies) the paffages I fend you. I folemnly protest I have added nothing to the malice or abfurdity of them; which it behoves me to declare, fince the vouchers themselves will be fo foon and fo irrecoverably loft. You may, in fome meafure, prevent it, by preserving at least their titles,* and difcovering (as far as you can depend on the truth of your information) the names of the concealed authors.

The first objection I have heard made to the Poem is, that the perfons are too obfcure for fatire. The perfons themselves, rather than allow the objection, would forgive the fatire; and if one could be tempted to afford it a ferious anfwer, were not all affaffinates, popular infurrections, the infolence of the rabble without doors, and of domeftics within, moft wrongfully chaftifed, if the meannefs of offenders indemnified them from

Which we have done in a Lift hereto fubjoined

from punishment? On the contrary, obfcurity renders them more dangerous, as lefs thought of: law can pronounce judgment only on open facts: morality alone can pass cenfure on intentions of mischief; fo that for fecret calumny, or the arrow flying in the dark, there is no public punishment left but what a good writer inflicts.

The next objection is, that thefe fort of authors are poor. That might be pleaded as an excufe at the Old Bailey for leffer crimes than defamation, (for it is the cafe of almoft all who are tried there,) but fure it can be none here: for who will pretend that the robbing another of his reputation fupplies the want of it in himfelf? I queftion not but fuch authors are poor, and heartily with the objection were removed by any honest livelihood; but poverty is here the accident, not the fubject. He who defcribes malice and villany to be pale and meagre, expreffes not the leaft anger against palenefs or leannefs, but against malice and villany. The Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet is poor; but is he therefore juftified in vending poifon? Not but poverty itself becomes a juft fubject of fatire, when it is the confequence of vice, prodigality, or neglect of one's lawful calling; for then it increases the public burden, fills the streets and highways with robbers, and the garrets with clippers, coiners, and weekly Journalists.

But admitting that two or three of thefe offend lefs in their morals than in their writings, muft poverty make nonfenfe facred? if fo, the fame of bad authors would be much better confulted than that of all the good ones in the world; and not one of an hundred had ever been called by his right name.

They mistake the whole matter: it is not charity to encourage them in the way they follow, but to get them out of it; for men are not bunglers because they are poor, but they are poor because they are bunglers.

Is it not pleasant enough to hear our authors crying out on the one hand, as if their perfons and characters were too facred for fatire; and the Public objecting on the other, that they are too mean even for ridicule? VOL. III. But

5

G

But whether bread or fame be their end, it must be allowed our Author, by and in this Poem, has mercifully given them a little of both.

There are two or three who, by their rank and fortune, have no benefit from the former objections, fuppofing them good, and thefe I was forry to fee in fuch company but if, without any provocation, two or three gentlemen will fall upon one, in an affair wherein his intereft and reputation are equally embarked, they cannot, certainly, after they have been content to print themselves his enemies, complain of being put

into the number of them.

Others, I am told, pretend to have been once his friends. Surely they are their enemies who fay fo, fince nothing can be more odious than to treat a friend as they have done. But of this I cannot perfuade myfelf, when I confider the conftant and eternal averfion of all bad writers to a good one.

Such as claim a merit from being his admirers, I would gladly alk, if it lays him under a perfonal obligation? At that rate he would be the moft obliged humble fervant in the world. I dare fwear for thefe in particular, he never defired them to be his admirers, nor promifed, in return, to be theirs: that had truly been a fign he was of their acquaintance; but would not the malicious world have fuipeted fuch an approbation of fome motive worle tuan ignorance, in the Author of the Effay on Criticiin? Be it as it will, the reafons of their admiration and of his contempt are equally fubfifting, for his works and theirs are the very fame that they were.

One, therefore, of their affertions I believe may be true, "That he has a contempt for their writings." And there is another which would probably be fooner allowed by himlelf than by any good judge befide, "That his own have found too much fuccels with the "Public." But as it cannot confit with his modelty to claim this as a justice, it lies not on him, but entirely on the Public, to defend its own judgment.

There

There remains what, in my opinion, might feem a better plea for thefe people than any they have made ufe of. If obfcurity or poverty were to exempt a man from fatire, much more thould folly or dullness, which are still more involuntary; nay, as much fo as perfonal deformity. But even this will not help them: deformity becomes an object of ridicule when a man fets up for being handfome; and fo much dulluefs, when he fets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or cught to be, a pleature; but because it is juft to undeceive and yindicate the honeft and unpretending part of mankind from impofition; becaufe particular intereft ought to yield to general, and a great number, who are not naturally fools, ought never to be made fo, in complaifance to thofe who are. Accordingly we find that, in all ages, all vain pretenders, were they ever fo poor, or ever fo dull, have been conftantly the topics of the most candid fatirifts, from the Codrus of Juvenal to the Damon of Boileau.

Having mentioned Boileau, the greateft poet and moft judicious critic of his age and country, admirable for his talents, and yet, perhaps, more admirable for his judgment in the proper application of them, I cannot help remarking the refemblance betwixt him and our Author in qualities, fame, and fortune; in the diftinctions fhewn them by their fuperiors, 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 tranflators persons of the most eminent rank and abilities in their refpective nations.* But the resemblance G2 holds

Effay on Criticism, in French verfe, by General Hamilton; the fame, in verfe alfo, by Monfieur Roboton, counfellor and privy fecretary to King George I. after by the Abbe Reynel, in verfe, with notes. Rape of the Lock, in French, by the Princefs of Conti, Paris, 1728; and in Italian verfe by the Abbe Conti, a noble Venetian; and by the Marquis Rangoni, envoy extraordinary from Modena to King George II. Others of his works by Salvini of Florence, &c. His Effays and Differtations on Homer, feveral times tranflated into French. Effay on Man, by te Abbe Reynel, in verfe: by Monfieur Silhouet, in profe, 1737; and fince by others in French, Italian, and Latin.

holds in nothing more than in their being equally abufed by the ignorant pretenders to poetry of their times; of which not the leaft 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 anfwer for him he will do it in no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had flandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from cenfuring obfcure and worthless perfons; for fcarce any other were his enemies. However, as the parity is fo remarkable, I hope it will continue to the laft; and if ever he fhould give us an edition of this Poem himself, I may fee fome of them treated as gently, on their repentance and 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 fuccefs; he has lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power without penfions, from whom, as he asked, fo he received, no favour, but what was done him in his friends. As his Satires were the more just for being delayed, fo were his Panegyrics; beftowed only on fuch perfons as he had familiarly known, only for fuch virtues as he had long obferved in them, and only at fuch times as others ceafe to praife, if not begin to calumniate them-I mean when out of power, or out of fashion.* A fatire, therefore, on writers fo notorious for the contrary practice, became no man fo well as himself; as none, it is plain, was fo little in their friendships, or fo much in that of those whom they had moft abused, namely, the greatest and best of all parties. Let me add a further reafon, that, though engaged in their friendships, he never efpoufed their animofities;

*As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the Town declaim d against his book of Poems; Mr. Walth, after his death; Sir William Trumball, when he had refigned the office of fecretary of state; Lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England, after the Queen's death; Lord Oxford, in his lat decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the Southfea year, And after his death: others only in Epitaphs.