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I perceived, that most of these authors had I am no author, and consequently not to be susbeen (doubtless very wisely) the first aggressors.pected either of jealousy or resentment against any They had tried, till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: nobody was either concerned or surprised, if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce. But every one was curious to read what could be said to prove Mr. Pope one, and was ready to pay something for such a discovery: a stratagem which would they fairly own, it might not only reconcile them to me, but screen them from the resentment of their lawful superiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them.

of the men, of whom scarce one is known to me by sight; and as for their writings, I have sought them (on this one occasion) in vain, in the closets and libraries of all my acquaintance. I had still been in the dark, if a gentleman had not procured me (I suppose from some of themselves, for they are generally much more dangerous friends than enemies) the passages I send you. I solemnly protest I have added nothing to the malice or absurdity of them; which it behoves me to declare, since the vouchers themselves will be so soon and so irrecoverably lost. You may in some measure prevent it, by preserving at least their titles', and discovering (as far as you can depend on the truth of your information) the names of the concealed authors.

I found this was not all: ill success in that had transported them to personal abuse, either of himself, or what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men of virtue and honour bad men, long before he had either leisure or inclination to call them bad writers: and some had been such old offenders, that he had quite for-tire. gotten their persons as well as their slanders, till they were pleased to revive them.

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Now what had Mr. Pope done before, to incense them? He had published those works which are in the hands of every body, in which not the least mention is made of any of them. And what has he done since? He has laughed, and written the Dunciad. What has that said of them? very serious truth, which the public had said before, that they were dull: and what it had no sooner said, but they themselves were at great pains to procure, or even purchase, room in the prints, to testify under their hands to the truth of it.

I should still have been silent, if either I had seen any inclination in my friend to be serious with such accusers, or if they had only meddled with his writings; since whoever publishes, puts himself on his trial by his country. But when his moral character was attacked, and in a manner from which neither truth nor virtue can secure the most innocent; in a manner, which, though it annihilates the credit of the accusation with the just and impartial, yet aggravates very much the guilt of the accusers; I mean by authors without names; then I thought, since the danger was common to all, the concern ought to be so; and that it was an act of justice to detect the authors, not only on this account, but as many of them are the same who for several years past have made free with the greatest names in church and state, exposed to the world the private misfortunes of families, abused all, even to women, and whose prostituted papers (for one or other party, in the unhappy divisions of their country) have insulted the fallen, the friendless, the exiled, and the dead.

The first objection I have heard made to the poem is, that the persons are too obscure for saThe persons themselves, rather than allow the objection, would forgive the satire; and if one could be tempted to afford it a serious answer, were not all assassinates, popular insurrections, the insolence of the rabble without doors, and of domestics within, most wrongfully chastised, if the meanness of offenders indemnified them from punishment? On the contrary, obscurity renders them more dangerous, as less thought of: law can pronounce judgment only on open facts: morality alone can pass censure on intentions of mischief; so that for secret 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 these sort of authors are poor. That might be pleaded as an excuse at the Old Bailey, for lesser crimes than defamation (for it is the case of almost all who are tried there) but sure it can be none here: for who will pretend that the robbing another of his reputation supplies the want of it in himself? I question not but such authors are poor, and heartily wish the objection were removed by any honest livelihood. But poverty is here the accident, not the subject: he who describes malice and villainy to be pale and meagre, expresses not the least anger against paleness or leanness, but against malice and villainy. The Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet is poor; but is he therefore justified in vending poison? Not but poverty itself becomes a just subject of satire, when it is the consequence of vice, prodigality, or neglect of one's lawful calling; for then it increases the public burthen, fills the streets and highways with robbers, and the garrets with clippers, coiners, and weekly journalists.

But omitting that two or three of these offend less Besides this, which I take to be a public conin their morals than in their writings; must poverty cern, I have already confessed I had a private make nonsense sacred? If so, the fame of bad auone. I am one of that number who have long thors would be much better consulted than that of loved and esteemed Mr. Pope; and had often all the good ones in the world; and not one of an declared it was not his capacity or writings (which hundred had ever been called by his right name. we ever thought the least valuable part of his cha- They mistake the whole matter: it is not character) but the honest, open, and beneficent man,rity to encourage them in the way they follow, that we most esteemed, and loved in him. Now, but to get them out of it; for men are not bunif what these people say were believed, I must ap-glers because they are poor, but they are poor bepear to all my friends either a fool, or a knave; cause they are bunglers. either imposed on myself, or imposing on them, so that I am as much interested in the confutation of these calunnies, as he is himself

Which we have done in a list printed in the Appendix.

Is it not pleasant enough, to hear our authors crying out on the one hand, as if their persons and characters were too sacred for satire; and the public objecting on the other, that they are too mean even for ridicule? 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.

and most judicious critic of his age and country, admirable for his talents, and yet perhaps more ad. mirable for his judgment in the proper application of them; I cannot help remarking the resemblance betwixt him and our author, in qualities, fame, and fortune; in the distinctions shown them by their superiors, in the general esteem of their equals, and in their extended reputation amongst foreigners; in the latter of which ours has met

There are two or three, who by their rank and fortune have no benefit from the former objec-with a better fate, as he has had for his translators tions, supposing them good; and these I was sorry to see in such company. But if, without any provocation, two or three gentlemen will fall upon one, in an affair wherein his interest 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 say so; since nothing can be more odious than to treat a friend as they have done. But of this I cannot persuade myself, when I consider the constant and eternal aversion of all bad writers to a good one.

persons of the most eminent rank and abilities in their respective nations'. But the resemblance holds in nothing more than in their being equally abused by the ignorant pretenders to poetry of their times; of which not the least 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 answer for him he will do it in no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had slandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from censuring obscure and worthless persons, for scarce any other were his enemies. However, as the parity is so remarkable, I hope it will continue to the last; and if ever he should give us an edition of this poem himself, I may see some of them treated as gently, on their repentance or better merit, as Perrault and Quinault were at last by Boileau.

In one point I must be allowed to think the cha

Such as claim a merit from being his admirers, I would gladly ask, if it lays him under a personal obligation? At that rate he would be the most obliged humble servant in the world. I dare swear for these in particular, he never desired them to be his admirers, nor promised in return to be theirs :racter of our English poet the more amiable. He that had truly been a sign he was of their acquaintance; but would not the malicious world have suspected such an approbation of some motive worse than ignorance, in the author of the Essay on Criticism? Be it as it will, the reasons of their admiration and of his contempt are equally subsisting, for his works and theirs are the very same that they were.

One, therefore, of their assertions I believe may be true, "That he has a contempt for their writings." And there is another which would probably be sooner allowed by himself than by any good judge beside, "That his own have found too much success with the public." But as it cannot consist with his modesty to claim this as a justice, it lies not on him, but entirely on the public, to defend its own judgment.

There remains what in my opinion might seem a better plea for these people, than any they have made use of. If obscurity or poverty were to exempt a man from satire, much more should folly or dullness, which are still more involuntary; nay, as much so as personal deformity. But even 'this will not help them: deformity becomes an object of ridicule, when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness, when he sets up for a wit, They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure; but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and unpretending part of mankind from imposition, because particular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools, ought never to be made so, in complaisance to a few who are. Accordingly we find, that in all ages, all vain pretenders, were they ever so poor or ever so dull, have been constantly the topics of the most candid satirists, from the Codrus of Juvenal to the Damon of Boileau.

Having mentioned Boileau, the greatest poet
VOL XII.

has not been a follower of fortune or success; he has lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power, without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received no favour, but what was done him in his friends. As his satires were the more just for being delayed, so were his panegyrics; bestowed only on such persons as he had familiarly known, only for such virtues as he had long observed in them, and only at such times as others cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean when out of power or out of fashion2. A satire, therefore, on writers so notorious for the contrary practice, became no man so well as himself; as none, it is plain, was so little in their friendships, or so much in that of those whom

1 Essay on Criticism in French verse, by General Hamilton; the same, in verse also, by Monsieur Roboton, counsellor and privy secretary to king George I. after by the abbé Reyne! in verse, with notes. Rape of the Lock, in French, by the princess of Conti, Paris, 1728; and in Italian verse, by the abbé Conti, a noble Venetian; and the marquis Rangoni, envoy extraordinary from Modena to king George II. Others of his works by Salvini of Florence, &c. His Essays and Dissertations on Homer, several times translated into French. Essay on Man, by the abbé Reynel, in verse; by Monsieur Silhout, in prose, 1737, and since, by others in French, Italian, and Latin.

2 As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the town declaimed against his book of poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death; sir William Trumball, when he had resigned the office of secretary of state; lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England, after the queen's death; lord Oxford, in his last decline of life; Mr. secretary Craggs, at the end of the South-sea year, and after his death: others only in epitaphs.

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they had most abused, namely the greatest and best of all parties. Let me add a further reason, that, though engaged in their friendships, he never espoused their animosities; and can almost singly challenge this honour, not to have written a line of any man, which, through guilt, through shame, or through fear, through variety of fortune, or change of interests, he was ever unwilling

to own.

I shall conclude with remarking, what a pleasure it must be to every reader of humanity, to see all along, that our author. in his very laughter, is not indulging his own ill-nature, but only punishing that of others. As to his poem, those alone are capable of doing it justice, who, to use the words of a great writer, know how hard it is (with regard both to his subject and his manner) vetustis dare novitatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fastiditis gratiam.

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DENNIS' REMARKS ON PRINCE ARTHUR. I CANNOT but think it the most reasonable thing in the world, to distinguish good writers, by discouraging the bad. Nor is it an ill-natured thing, in relation even to the very persons upon whom the reflections are made. It is true, it may deprive them, a little the sooner, of a short profit and a transitory reputation; but then it may have a good effect, and oblige them (before it be too late) to decline that for which they are so very unfit, and to have recourse to something in which they may be more successful.

CHARACTER OF MR P. 1716.

The persons whom Boileau has attacked in his writings, have been for the most part authors, and most of those authors, poets: and the censures he hath passed upon them have been confirmed by all Europe.

GILDON, PREF. TO HIS NEW REHEARSAL.

It is the common cry of the poetasters of the town, and their fautors, that it is an ill-natured

This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the university of Utrecht, with the earl of Mar. He served in Spain under earl Rivers. After the peace, he was made one of the commissioners of customs in Scotland, and then of taxes in England; in which, having shown himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible (though without any other assistance of fortune), he was suddenly displaced by the minister, in the sixty-eighth year of his age; and died two months after, in 1741. He was a person of universal learning, and an enlarged conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his friend, or a sincerer attachment to the constitution of his country.

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TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS

CONCERNING OUR POET AND HIS WORKS:

M. SCRIBLERUS LECTORI S.

BEFORE we present thee with our exercitations on this most delectable poem (drawn from the many volumes of our adversaria on modern authors) we shall here, according to the laudable usage of editors, collect the various judgments of the learned concerning our poet: various indeed, not only of different authors, but of the same author at different seasons. Nor shall we gather only the testimonies of such eminent wits, as would of course descend to posterity, and consequently be read without our collection; but we shall likewise with incredible labour seek out for divers others, which, but for this our diligence, could never, at the distance of a few months, appear to the eye of the ceive the delectation of variety, but also arrive at most curious. Hereby thou mayest not only rea more certain judgment by a grave and circumspect comparison of the witnesses with each other, or of each with himself. Hence also thou wilt be enabled to draw reflections, not only of a critical, but a moral nature, by being let into many particulars of the person as well as genius, and of the fortune as well as merit, of our author: in which if I relate some things of little concern peradventure to thee, and some of as little even to him; I entreat thee to consider how minutely all true critics and commentators are wont to insist upon such, and how material they seem to themselves, if to none other. Forgive me, gentle reader, if (following learned example) I ever and anon become tedious: allow me to take the same pains to find whether my author were good or bad, well or ill-natured, modest or arrogant; as another, whether his author was fair or brown, short or tall,

or whether he wore a coat or a cassoc.

We proposed to begin with his life, parentage, and education: but as to these, even his contemporaries do exceedingly differ. One saith', he was educated at home; another, that he was bred at St. Omer's, by Jesuits; a third3, not at St. Omer's,

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He is followed (as in fame, so in judgment) by the modest and simple-minded

but at Oxford a fourth,' that he had no univer- | dramatic poetry, not to mention the French critics, sity education at all. Those who allow him to be I should be very glad to have the benefit of the bred at home, differ as much concerning his tutor: discovery'." one saith', he was kept by his father on purpose; a second, that he was an itinerant priest; a third, that he was a parson; one calleth him a secular clergyman of the church of Rome; another, a monk. As little do they agree about his father, whom one' supposeth, like the father of Hesiod, a tradesman or merchant; another, a husbandman; another', a hatter, &c. Nor has an author been wanting to give our poet such a father as Apuleius hath to Plato, Jamblichus to Pythagoras, and divers to Homer, namely a demon: for thus Mr. Gildon1o: "Certain it is, that his original is not from Adam, but the devil; and that he wanteth nothing but horns and tail to be the exact resemblance of his infernal father." Finding, therefore, such contrariety of opinions, and (whatever be ours of this sort of generation) not being fond to enter into controversy, we shall defer writing the life of our poet, till authors can determine among themselves what parents or education he had, or whether he had any education or parents at all.

Proceed we to what is more certain, his works, though not less uncertain the judgments concerning them beginning with his Essay on Criticism, of which hear first the most ancient of critics,

MR. JOHN DENNIS.

MR. LEONARD WELSTED, Who, out of great respect to our poet not naming him, doth yet glance at his essay, together with the duke of Buckingham's, and the criticisms of Dryden and of Horace, which he more openly taxeth: "As to the numerous treatises, essays, arts, &c. both in verse and prose, that have been written by the moderns on this ground-work, they do but hackney the same thoughts over again, making them still more trite. Most of their pieces are nothing but a pert, insipid heap of common-place. Horace has, even in his Art of Poetry, thrown out several things which plainly show, he thought an art of poetry was of no use, even while he was writing one."

To all which great authorities, we can only oppose that of

MR. ADDISON.

"The Art of Criticism (saith he) which was published some months since, is a master-piece în its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that ease and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known and the most re

"His precepts are false or trivial, or both; his thoughts are crude and abortive, his expressions absurd, his numbers harsh and unmusical, his rhymes trivial and common; instead of majesty,ceived, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and we have something that is very mean: instead of gravity, something that is very boyish; and instead of perspicuity and lucid order, we have but too often obscurity and confusion." And in another place "What rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated Muse, who had sued out a divorce from some superannuated sinner, upon account of impotence, and who, being poxed by the former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepid age, which makes her hobble so damnably 11.” No less peremptory is the censure of our critical historian

MR. OLDMIXON.

illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty; and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so well enlarged upon in the preface to his works that wit and fine writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the lat ter ages of the world, to make observations in crihyper-ticism, morality, or any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others; we have little else left us, but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing, and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire.

"I dare not say any thing of the Essay on Criticism in verse; but if any more curious reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in Dryden's prefaces, dedications, and his essay on 1 Guardian, No. 40.

Jacob's Lives, &c. vol. ii. 3 Dunciad dissected, p. 4. Farmer P. and his son. 'Dunciad dissected. "Characters of the Times. p. 45. 7 Female Dunciad, p. ult. • Dunciad di-sected. Roome, Paraphrase on the 4th of Genesis, printed 1729.

"Longinus, in his Reflections, has given us the same kind of sublime, which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them: I cannot but take notice that our English author has after the same manner exemplified several of the preHe then

10 Character of Mr. P. and his writings in a Letter to a Friend, priuted for S. Popping, 1716. p. 10. Carll, in his Key to the Dunciad (first e lition saidcepts in the very precepts themselves?” to be printed for A. Dold) in the 10th page, declared Gildon to be the author of that lib 1; though in the subsequent editions of his Key he left out this assertion, and affirmed (in the Curliad, p. and 8) that it was written by Dennis only.

"Reflections critical and satirical on a rhapsody, called, an Essay on Criticism. Priated for Bernard Lintot, octavo.

produces some instances of a particular beauty in the numbers, and concludes with saying, that

there are three poems in our tongue of the same

1 Essay on Criticism in prose, octavo, 1728, by the author of the Critical History of England. 'Preface to his Poems, p. 18, 53. Spectator, No. 253.

MR. JOHN DENNIS,

nature, and each a master-piece in its kind! The | the force of several masterly hands." Indeed the Essay on Translated Verse; the Esay on the Art same gentleman appears to have changed his senof Poetry; and the Essay on Criticism." timents in his Essay on the Art of Sinking in ReOf Windsor Forest, positive is the judgment of putation (printed in Mist's Journal, March 30, the affirmative 1728), where he says thus: "In order to sink in reputation, let him take it into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder, as it will, how the Devil he got there), and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how." Strange variation! We are told in MIST'S JOURNAL, JUNE 8,

"That it is a wretched rhapsody, impudently writ in emulation of the Cooper's Hill of sir John Denham: the author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is temerarious, is barbarous '." But the author of the Dispensary, DR. GARTH,

In the preface to his poem of Claremont, differs "That this translation of the Iliad was not in all from this opinion: "Those who have seen these respects conformable to the fine taste of his friend two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill and Windsor Mr. Addison; insomuch that he employed a Forest, the one written by sir John Denham, the younger Muse in an undertaking of this kind, other by Mr. Pope, will show a great deal of can-which he supervised himself." Whether Mr. Addour if they approve of this." dison did find it conformable to his taste, or not, Of the Epistle to Eloisa, we are told by the ob- best appears from his own testimony the year folscure writer of a poem called Sawney, "That be-lowing its publication, in these words: cause Prior's Henry and Emma charmed the finest tastes, our author writ his Eloisa in opposition to it; but forgot innocence and virtue: if you take away her tender thoughts, and her fierce desires, all the rest is of no value." In which, methinks, his judgment resembleth that of a French taylor on a villa and gardens by the Thames: "All this is very fine; but take away the river, and it is good for nothing."

But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of

MR. PRIOR

himself, saying in his Alma,'

O Abelard! ill-fated youth,
Thy tale will justify this truth:
But well I weet, thy cruel wrong
Adorns a nobler poet's song:
Dan Pope, for thy misfortune griev'd,
With kind concern and skill has wear'd
A silken web; and ne'er shall fade
Its colours: gently has he laid
The mantle o'er thy sad distress,
And Venus shall the texture bless, &c.
Come we now to his translation of the Iliad,
Jebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to
mention the indefatigable

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, KNT.

MR. ADDISON'S FREEHOLDER, NO. 40. "When I consider myself as a British freeholder, I am in a particular manner pleased with the labours of those who have improved our language with the translations of old Greek and Latin authors.-We have already most of their historians in our own tongue, and, what is more for the honour of our language, it has been taught to express with elegance the greatest of their poets in each nation. The illiterate among our own countrymen may learn to judge from Dryden's Virgil of the inost perfect epic performance. And those parts of Homer which have been published already by Mr. Pope, give us reason to think that the Iliad will appear in English with as little disadvantage to that immortal poem."

As to the rest there is a slight mistake, for this younger Muse was an elder: nor was the gentleman (who is a friend of our author) employed by Mr. Addison to translate it after him, since he saith himself that he did it before'. Contrariwise, that Mr. Addison engaged our author in this work apce-peareth by declaration thereof in the preface to the Iliad, printed some time before his death, and by his own letters of October 26, and November 2, 1713, where he declares it is his opinion that no other person was equal to it.

Who (though otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a "laudable translation 4.” That ready writer

MR. OLDMIXON,

Next comes his Shakespeare on the stage: "Let him (quoth one, whom I take to be

MR. THEOBAID, MIST'S JOURNAL, JUNE 8, 1728,)

in his forementioned Essay, frequently commends publish such an author as he has least studied, the same. And the painful

MR. LEWIS THEOBALD

thus extols it", "The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation.-I am in doubt, whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers: but when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, that he alone raised and flung with case a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation, what I once despair'd to have seen done by

Letter to B. B. at the end of the Remarks on
Pope's Homer, 1717. 2 Printed 1728, p. 12.
Alma, Cant. 2.

In his Essays, vol. i. printed for E. Curll.
Censor, vol ij. n. 33.

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and forget to discharge even the dull duty of an editor. In this project let him lend the bookseller his name (for a competent sum of money) to promote the credit of an exorbitant subscription." Gentle reader, be pleased to cast thine eye on the proposal below quoted, and on what follows (some months after the former assertion) in the same Journalist of June 8. "The bookseller proposed the book by subscription, and raised some thousand of pounds for the same: I believe the gentle. man did not share in the profits of this extravagant subscription."

"After the Iliad, he undertook (saith MIST'S JOURNAL, JUNE 8, 1728,) the sequel of that work, the Odyssey; and having secured the success by a numerous subscription,

1 Vid. pref. to Mr. Tickell's translation of the Girst book of the Iliad, 4tos

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