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of lobsters would have done very well, two shillings; tarts, a shilling-But you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your time, only to spare my pocket." "No, we had rather talk with you, than drink with you." "But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drank with me.-A bottle of wine, two shillings.-Two and two are four, and one is five.-Just two and sixpence a-piece. There, POPE, there's half a crown for you; and there's another for you, Sir; for I won't save any thing by you, I am determined." This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions and, in spite of every thing we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money.*

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SECTION

* Transcribed from Mr. Spence's anecdotes.

SECTION IX.

OF THE ESSAY ON MAN.

IF it be a true observation, that for a poet to write happily and well, he must have seen and felt what he describes, and must draw from living models alone; and if modern times, from their luxury and refinement, afford not manners that will bear to be described; it will then follow, that those species of poetry bid fairest to succeed at present, which treat of things, not men; which deliver doctrines, not display events. Of this sort is didactic and descriptive poetry. Accordingly the moderns have produced many excellent pieces of this kind. We may mention the Syphilis of Fracastorius, the Silk-worms and Chess of Vida, the Ambra of Politian, the Agriculture of Alamanni, the Art of Poetry of Boileau, the Gardens of Rapin, the Cyder of Phillips, the Chase

of

of Somerville, the Pleasures of Imagination, the Art of preserving Health, the Fleece, the Religion of Racine the younger, the elegant Latin poem of Browne on the Immortality of the Soul, the Latin poems of STAY and Boscovick, and the philosophical poem before us; to which, if we may judge from some beautiful fragments, we might have added Gray's didactic poem on Education and Government, had he lived to finish it. And the English Garden of Mr. Mason must not be omitted.

1

The ESSAY ON MAN is as close a piece of argument, admitting its principles, as, perhaps, can be found in verse. POPE informs us, in his FIRST preface," that he chose this epistolary way of writing, notwithstanding his subject was high, and of dignity, because of its being mixed with argument which of its nature approacheth to prose." He has not wandered into any useless. digressions, has employed no fictions, no tale or story; and has relied chiefly on the poetry of his style for the purpose of interesting his readers. His style is concise and figurative, forcible and elegant. He has many metaphors and images,

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artfully interspersed in the driest passages, which stood most in need of such ornaments.

Never

theless, there are too many lines, in this performance, plain and prosaic. The meaner the subject is of a preceptive poem, the more striking appears the art of the poet: It is even of use, perhaps, to chuse a low subject. In this respect Virgil had the advantage over Lucretius: the latter, with all his vigour and sublimity of genius, could hardly satisfy and come up to the grandeur of his theme. POPE labours under the same difficulty. If any beauty in this Essay be uncommonly transcendent and peculiar, it is, BREVITY OF DICTION; which, in a few instances, and those pardonable, has occasioned obscurity. It is hardly to be imagined, how much sense, how much thinking, how much observation on human life, is condensed together in a small compass. He was so accustomed to confine his thoughts in rhyme, that he tells us, he could express them more shortly this way, than in prose itself. On its first publication, POPE did not own it; and it was given, by the public, to Lord Paget, Dr. Young, Dr. Desaguliers, and others. Even Swift seems to have been deceived: There

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confess, I did never imagine you were so deep in morals; or that so many new and excellent rules could be produced so advantageously and agreeably in that science, from any one head. I confess in some places I was forced to read twice; I believe I told you before what the Duke of D said to me on that occasion; how a judge here, who knows you, told him, that, on the first reading those essays, he was much pleased, but found some lines a little dark: On the second, most of them cleared up, and his pleasure increased: On the third, he had no doubt remaining, and then he admired the whole."*

The subject of this Essay is a vindication of Providence; in which the poet proposes to prove, that of all possible systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best: That in such a system, coherence, union, subordination, are necessary; and if so, that appearances of evil, both moral and natural, are also necessary and unavoidable: that the seeming defects and blemishes in the uni

*

Letters, vol. IX. pag. 140,

verse,

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