mires, GENIUS defpifes; and what GENIUS loves, SENSE neglects: GENIUS often fees wisdom or virtue, where SENSE only remarks folly or vice; and the contrary; for GENIUS diftinguishes good and bad, however blended; SENSE fees only the predominant quality, and having precipitately determined, will afterwards exaggerate or extenuate either good or bad in favour of that determination: GENIUS neceffarily yields to the demonstration which results from contradictions; SENSE, rather than admit demonftration against a favourite opinion, will fuppofe a thousand contradictions to be confiftent: GENIUS prefers truth, even to itself; SENSE, however it loves truth, always loves itself better. SENSE, like a winged infect, flutters through the mists that surround this dark spot at a small distance from its surface; GENIUS, like a planet, takes a wide circuit through the pure expanse of nature, and visits not regions only, but whole worlds which SENSE does not know to exist.” MAXIMS, ult. FINIS. However irregular, the writer is fo afhamed of a blunder of one word for another (how it happened no matter) in the very last sheet printed off, that he will beg his reader to take the trouble of immediately altering it with his pencil or pen; the passage is incomprehenfible as it stands, and in a place perhaps a little nice and difcriminating: it is in page 131, and the first line of the note therein; the word printed is mathematical, and fhould be geometrical. As Errata, in their common fituations, are scarcely ever attended to, the writer will beg leave to add here, that there are still more than one mistake of measure in the poetry, though feveral have been corrected, a blunder the writer has been strangely prone to, even to his own furprize; fince his ear in general (and this the reader may judge of) is not very bad. Perhaps the extreme novelty, not to add hurry, of writing all this poetry may be fome cause of it: the intelligent reader will fee the places. Perhaps there may now be in all, three or four; thofe intended (as improvement) the fuperior reader will distinguish; the other Errata are not numerous; the greatest are, I think, where fpecie ftands for fpecies; Titan for Tithonus in the portrait of Chlora, and fome others of lefs confequence. POSTSCRIPT. THU POSTSCRIPT. HUS then do I too at length feem arrived at my "Famque opus exegi:" To the additional part of the fentence, as I have no pretenfion, fo have I indeed no inclination to, or want of it; entirely agreeing with friend Falstaff as to the benefit to-day, of me, who died yesterday. And yet is there a fomething too methinks within most men, as well as myself, not entirely confonant to this fo very good reasoning, which makes us averse to the leaving behind us, for ever so short a period of time, things that we do not feel satisfied with whilst in being; but, on the contrary, wish to remain in memory as fatisfactorily to our living minds as we can: from that principle do I now experience no flight fatisfaction in the having vented my thoughts as I have done, both in explanation of that production of fo many years back, with its attendant circumstances that are feen; as alfo with the additional and certainly connective sentiments, that all this (to me fo very novel) vehicle of verfe has fupplied me with; the whole exposing pretty amply whatever imperfect ideas I may have entertained in my mind concerning our state and world; the subject which Mr. Pope and Lord Bolingbroke, among so many others, have more or lefs confiderately or amply treated themselves and recommended to others. Mr. Pope's effective Effay feems to have pretty well gained the fanction of prescription, through a period of not lefs than half a century. How far I have fucceeded in the attempt of examination of that work, as far as I have gone, (joined indeed with no fmall intermixture of my own along with it) it is not for me to decide: I have had but one guide therein, and, as it should seem, not one of mental ingenuity, powers, or faculties, but of fuch facility as was open to every one; fuch as required rather will than wit. And need I add the old hackneyed term of truth, to mark that That was the one and only thing I make any pretenfions to. Should I therefore, at all, have effected effected the attempt, may I not quote on the occafion what I remember reading somewhere of Sir W. Temple's answer to de Wit, who, on carrying over, if I do not mistake, the famous treaty of the triple alliance, he had meditated, projected, and concluded, in oppofition to the wretched French measures then purfued at Charles the Second's court, was, by de Wit, complimented as the first and greatest of statesmen; on which Sir William replied, "Sir, you " are pleased to confider me as a man of infinite ingenuity, ability, and superiority, for having projected and effected this treaty; but indeed the ingenuity was all on the other side of the question, for this was the mere natural "courfe of things, which only followed that course, and effected themselves.' And is this no ways applicable to the fubject before us? Shall I ask you, Can water flow out of fire, or fire flame from water? You ask me in return, Can the queftion be made out of the walls of Bedlam? Oh, Pope! for you are my subject, you are my confideration, my study, my object; you have I attended to, and if in diffent, it has been in the very cause you have profeffed, and to be fure meant, to fupport; yourself and your talents I respect and honour, and have offered my mite of applause to them; nor can I suppose you would deny me your affent to any thing I have advanced, if, on re-examination, you found it was mistake or error in you, not you yourself, I had oppofed; and particularly, might I not add, if I had enforced my fentiments, not by affertion and opinion, but by validity and fact, equally liable to, equally indeed open to, every freedom of fair contradiction. It is feen that I have by no means gone through Mr. Pope's Effay, or even touched upon Mr. Warton's annotations upon it, though I profeffed to do both in a note not far preceding the conclusion of the poem. This This is very true; and certainly it is very irregular; yet if, through that irregularity, equal fatisfaction be procured to both reader and writer, I will Alatter myself that they are now so far acquainted, as for irregularity not to be an objection, if no pleafure (the end of every thing) be loft thereby. When I was got to the fubjects that are feen, and where I determined on concluding my verfe, I felt averfe to the proceeding in them, as being, I feared, uncongenial to the minds of fo many of the readers who might happen to take up the book; nay, I was grown to feel my poem enlarged upon me to too great, not to fay tiresome, a length. Is there not fome Greek fentence that fays, "a great book is a great evil?” Certainly I have ever found a long Poem a very uninviting object, and one I have hardly ever encountered. Can I poffibly then expect my own not to have fuch effect? I have therefore, on recollection, fuppreffed verse enough for perhaps nearly two more Cantos, which I had scribbled through, as with the fame rapidity, so very nearly, I believe, of the fame degree of merit or demerit with what my reader has feen, in pursuit of Mr. Pope's metaphyfics and their collaterals. This I fay I have fuppreffed, refolving to give, as I now am doing, fome account of the projected contents in a Postscript of profe, which must, at least I hope, have the merit of variety and of contraft, if no other. Johnson indeed fays, that Mr. Pope's fubject was not calculated for verse, but profe. As a critic, I must here again take the liberty of differing from this opinion; and so much so, as to believe, that had Mr. Pope given forth his Effay in plain profe, its fate would have been very different, even that of neglect and oblivion, instead of their contraries. A fentiment delivered in verse makes a far different impreffion on the mind (and is it not the mind, not work, that decides of merit?) than one delivered in profe, more efpecially of thofe awful kinds Mr. Pope treated. Lucretius I can, without ever having read him, except indeed very lately fome of his horrid indecencies A in Dryden, and which as a critic I am forry to fee in Dryden that he tranflated because he liked them; yes, I can imagine that Lucretius would never have gained the celebrity he has attained in profe, and this obfervation appears to me applicable to all didactic performances: they should indeed be kept within due bounds, be well treated, and have their other requifites. Let me then come to what I had meant to set forth, in addition to the four Cantos of Poetry I have delivered to my reader: Why, I certainly had meant (as I have just said) to go through with the fyftem of the Effay ftill in verfe, and perhaps as far as five if not fix Cantos,-nay indeed, had effected it, and not without the admiffion (not effected at prefent) of some obfervations on what Mr. Warton has faid alfo upon it. Nor was it out of my mind to mix in collateral things as they might occur to me; fpecimens enough of which my reader has already feen; nay, and perhaps, agreeable to my fo capacious title of Reflection, to have joined in ftill other things no ways connected with Mr. Pope's Effay; even in not only elucidation, but poffibly conjunction with those numerous and exceedingly various remarks, critical or other, of my old work, which I have declared so great a part of my motive for this publication, not to say the greatest, to have confifted in. I hope I fhall keep this prefent profaic fubftitute within fome bounds; happy indeed if within the bounds of fatisfaction, which, however attained, are always all that are or can be wanted. This I own, that as I feel my mind more free, and in a state more fimilar to the state it was in when indulging in its unconnected excurfions, fo fhall I be tempted a little to ramble again; and fince not quite without fuccefs then, it gives me, I own, fome fort of encouragement and hope of a reception not entirely diffimilar now. My reader will please to confider my prefent want of literary counsel, and a little allow for it; for I am no book-maker, and this is a strange period to begin the trade |