his verse and in his notes, and these changes are frequently to be traced to personal and political motives, full of interest. as revelations of his character. Again, the secret history of the period, as disclosed in such works as the Duchess of Marlborough's Correspondence, the letters of Lady Suffolk, Lady M. W. Montagu, and Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, and the Marchmont Papers, helps to explain the sense of certain passages in the Satires, which have been passed over or despaired of by the commentators. Notable instances of difficulties overcome by memory and reading are found in Mr. Croker's ingenious interpretations of Imitation of Horace, Epistle i., Book i., v. 90, and Epilogue to Satires, i., 73, 74. Horace Walpole, in his 'Notes on Pope,' and Lord Hailes, in his letter to Malone (see the 'Life' of the latter, p. 253) give the key to several enigmas, which have hitherto baffled conjecture. Last, but certainly not least, the transcript which Mr. Elwin has made from the Chauncy MS., and which he has kindly placed at my disposal, affords most important clues to the meaning of some of the allusions, in which fictitious names are used; and so also, though of course to a much less considerable extent, do the annotations of Lord Orrery, in his copy of Pope's works (preserved at Marston Hall near Frome, the seat of Lord Cork), and those of Edward, Earl of Oxford, in the folio copy in the Bodleian Library. With regard to the general spirit of the Satires, pitfalls abound for those who yield to the very natural excitement of defending a thesis,' either on the side of the Pope or antiPope factions. It has been already said that our view of the justice of the Satires must largely depend on our judgment of 1 Mr. Elwin has transcribed Lord Orrery's notes, which are in his own handwriting at the beginning of the volume, together with the following memorandum: 'Whatever names appear here in manuscript were never communicated by the author, but are merely the guess work of idle hours, and may be deemed the echoes and recoils of busy town whispers. This much it is necessary to attest in defence of the person who gave this book to O.' the character of the poet; but this itself is in question; for if we are to believe himself, he was a saint, while his enemies depict him as a detestable hypocrite. It does not follow, however, that either the one account or the other is entirely true; the only way to decide between them is to let each party plead their own cause, and then to see how far the pleadings are consistent with indisputable facts. Pope had to answer the time-honoured charge brought against all satirists, from Horace downwards, of wanton libel. and malignant motive. He makes, in effect, the same defence as his predecessors have always done. To the charge of aggressiveness he replies, like the Roman Satirist, that he only wrote in self-defence. Melius non tangere clamo!' says Horace. Peace,' says Pope, Peace is my dear delight, not Fleury's more, But touch me, and no minister so sore. Imitation of Horace, Sat. i. B. 2, 75. On the question of motive, Trebatius warns Horace to beware of a law against 'mala carmina,' and the poet, playing on the word, replies that his verses are 'bona,' implying both that they were good in themselves, and that they were written for the public good. Pope is still stronger in his professions, O sacred weapon left for Truth's defence, The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide: Epilogue to Satires, Dialogue ii. 212. These assertions of his innocence and public spirit are the poet's plea for all four classes of his satires: the 'Dunciad' directed against the bad writers who had attacked him; the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,' and the 'Imitations of Horace,' which form a kind of poetical and autobiographical apology for his moral character; the two Dialogues entitled MDCCXXXVIII.,’ which inveigh against the general corruption of the age; and the ✓ 'Moral Essays,' which contain many particular representations of folly and vice deduced from general philosophical principles. On the other side, Pope's enemies loudly proclaim that his professions are not to be trusted; they declare that, in their quarrel with him, he was the first aggressor, and that, so far from being inspired by 'honest zeal,' the object of his spleen was human-kind.'1 When we come to weigh the evidence, the first thing that strikes us is a certain contradiction between the reforming ardour professed in the lines quoted above and the ethical system which Pope had formulated in the 'Essay on Man' and in the 'Moral Essays.' It was natural that Persius, from the high ground of Stoicism, or even Juvenal, from his more human level of patriotism and common sense, should inveigh against the corruption of a debased society. But Pope's philosophy, as expressed in the Essay on Man,' was founded-whatever Warburton may urge to the contrary-on pure fatalism. If, as he says, all partial evil' is 'universal good;' if the characters of the miser and the prodigal are directly formed and fashioned by Providence for the furtherance of its own designs, why should the poet have disturbed himself on account of the vice and folly about him, or have done more than amuse himself, like Mandeville, with noting the inconsistencies of human character? And, indeed, this position. of mere spectator is the one which he assumes in the first and second Moral Essays; while even the panegyric on the Man of Ross, in the third Moral Essay, seems rather to flow from his feeling than from his principles. How 1 Verses to the Imitator of Horace. can we reconcile with the philosophic unconcern of these Essays, the moral zeal professed in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, which was written about the same period? Must we not infer either that his moral conclusion is inconsistent with his intellectual premisses, or that the inadequacy of these premisses is proved by the natural working of his own moral instinct? How far Pope's satiric genius was really inspired by the strong antipathy of good to bad,' may be gathered from the circumstances attending the production of the Dunciad.' The 'Dunciad' was the first of his regular satires; it was by far the most extensive in its design; and to the bitter attacks upon his character which it provoked we owe the whole series of his apologetic satires, comprehending the Epistle to Arbuthnot and the Imitations of Horace. Can it then be said that this poem was undertaken in the public interest or in simple self-defence? The idea of the work was probably suggested by Arbuthnot, whose ironic turn of mind gave a considerable bias to Pope's satirical genius. Very soon after his introduction to Arbuthnot, we find Pope confiding to Gay (Oct. 23, 1713) the original design of the Grub Street Journal, the title of which was to be 'The Works of the Unlearned,' and 'in which whatever book appears that deserves praise shall be depreciated ironically, and in the same manner that modern critics take to undervalue works of value, and to commend the high productions of Grub Street.' This was a general scheme, quite in Arbuthnot's manner, and as such it obtained, Pope tells us, the approval of Swift. But in 1715 the Scriblerus Club were dispersed, and the execution of the design being postponed, the idea of the ironical praise of Dulness was afterwards revived by the poet in an entirely new and imaginative form, and with the intention of employing it against his personal enemies. Of a war against the dunces, originating in such private motives, Swift never heartily approved. "Take care," said he to Pope in his letter of 26th November, 1725, "the bad poets do not outwit you, as they have served the good ones in every age, whom they have provoked to transmit their names to posterity. Mævius is as well known as Virgil, and Gildon will be as well known as you, if his name gets into your verses; and as to the difference between good and bad fame, 'tis a perfect trifle." This was good sense, and Pope felt it to be so, for he says, in his answer of 10th Dec., 1725: "I am much the happier for finding (a better thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all scribblers should be passed by in silence. * * * So let Gildon and Phillips rest in peace." Unfortunately his invention or his inclination proved, in the end, too strong for his judgment. The Treatise on the Bathos,' and the 'Dunciad,' were direct attacks, not only on Gildon and Phillips, but on a host of other scribblers, who had either given Pope cause of offence, or offered plain marks for his ridicule. Here, then, we have direct evidence that Pope's original design in the Dunciad' was merely to clear off scores with his personal enemies. And in this sense the public read and enjoyed the satire. But when the first effect of the brilliant display of wit and invention had passed, they began to see that the means employed in the poem were out of all proportion to its end, and Pope found that the morality of his work was being called in question. He accordingly fell back on his original idea of the Works of the Unlearned,' and caused to be prefixed, to what he called the first correct copy of the 'Dunciad,' a letter to the publisher, with the signature of Cleland-his 'man William '-in which the writer, under cover of a desire for the success of the poem, offers an apology for its character. He pleads, in the first place, that it was written in self-defence, the poet's victims having been the first aggressors; and, in the second place, he insists that the extermination of a set of writers, who lived upon defamation, was for the public interest. He next sets himself to meet the arguments, advanced by the objectors, of the obscurity and poverty of the persons ridiculed; and finally he puts forward, as of his own accord, a consideration which contains the gist of the question as to the morality of the Dunciad.' "There remains what in my opinion might seem a better |