written on the first appearance of that poem, and the publication of which had been postponed only in consequence of Pope's submissive attitude towards him. As usual he hits weak places, but spoils his case by his violence and blind injustice. The following is a specimen of his invective:

"And can such a creature as this be deserving of the noble name of a POET, the name and the function of which he has so much blasphemed? Nay, can he deserve even the name of a versifier, whose ear is as injudicious and undistinguishing as the rest of his head? . . . A. P-E has none of these distinguishing talents, nor variety, nor force, nor power of numbers, but an eternal monotony. His Pegasus is nothing but a battered Kentish jade, that neither ambles, nor paces, nor trots, nor runs, but is always upon the Canterbury; and as he never mends, never slackens his pace, but when he stumbles or falls. So that having neither judgment nor numbers, he is neither poet nor versifier, but only an eternal rhymer, a little conceited incorrigible creature, that, like the Frog in the fable, swells and is angry because he is not allowed to be as great as the ox."

called 'Sawney,' a burlesque

Ralph produced a poem imitation of the style of Paradise Lost,' in which he retailed all the injurious reports respecting the translation of the 'Odyssey.' Concanen collected into a pamphlet called A Supplement to the Profound,' all the verses, essays, letters, and advertisements occasioned by the publication of the Miscellanies.' Lady M. W. Montagu (as Pope always firmly believed) joined in the general attack with a leaflet entitled A Pop upon Pope,' based on the fiction that the poet had been seized upon and whipped in Ham Walks by two gentlemen offended by the Dunciad.' Young came forward on the other side with two Epistles dedicated to Pope, whom he addressed in strains of the highest compliment, but, to neutralise the effect of these, Welsted and Moore Smythe published their 'One Epistle,' bringing together, in a completer form than in any of the libels that had hitherto appeared, all the charges most likely to prejudice him with the public. They pretended, among other things, that Pope had been "censured" by Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, and "blessed" by the traitor Atterbury; that he had flattered

the infamous Chartres; that Fenton had quarrelled with him and abjured his friendship; that he had behaved shabbily to "half-paid drudging Broome;" and that he had persuaded the Duke of Buckingham to dismiss Gildon from his employment. They even named the 'unfortunate lady' whose affections they declared that he had betrayed.

Pope might well ask as he did afterwards, in the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,'

"Whom have I hurt? Has poet yet or peer

Lost the arched eyebrow or Parnassian sneer?"

He saw very well that he must resort to weapons different from those which he had hitherto employed. The One Epistle' was published in April, 1730, and before that date Pope had, under the management of his friends Dr. John Martyn and Dr. Richard Russell, started the 'Grub Street Journal,' reviving an old design, 'The Works of the Unlearned,' formed in the days of the Scriblerus Club, and ridiculing the dunces from behind an anonymous shield. The journal was a weekly one; the first number was published on the 8th of January, 1730; and it was carried on to the close of the year 1737. In it the Knights of the Bathos, a kind of Round Table of Critics, passed judgment on the literature of the day, and while they ironically depreciated Pope and his friends, heaped their praises upon the works of the dunces. Occasionally, however, they thought it expedient to be serious, and when the 'One Epistle' appeared, a writer in the Journal,' evidently Pope himself, examined the different charges in detail and gave to each of them a flat denial. It is evident that Welsted's and Smythe's satire, poor in design as it was, wounded Pope to the quick, and that it was the secret of the intense personal bitterness with which he ever afterwards pursued James Moore Smythe, whom in the 'Dunciad' he had handled with a kind of rollicking contempt. Smythe was fairly cowed, and neither he nor Welsted appear to have attempted any retaliation against the storm of

epigrams with which the 'Grub Street Journal' incessantly assailed them.

Fresh editions of the 'Dunciad' were issued at short intervals down to the time of Pope's death, and there was scarcely one which did not contain some alterations and additions. He thus continued to illustrate the remark that in the first edition he puts into the mouth of his 'Publisher':

"Whoever will consider the unity of the whole design will be sensible that the poem was not made for these authors, but these authors for the poem. And I should judge that they were clapped in as they rose, fresh and fresh, and changed from day to day, in like manner as, when the old boughs wither, we thrust new ones into the chimney."

The satire is therefore wholly devoid of the moral significance which the poet claims for it. It represents merely a quarrel between authors; literary genius being engaged on the one side, literary envy on the other, and unscrupulous bitterness and malignity on both. The wonder is that such a medley of personal detail should still be able to excite the interest of the reader. We are not greatly moved at the treatment of the scribbling victims of Juvenal and Boileau, the Codruses and Cotins of literature. But the 'Dunciad' occupies a position. by itself. Its name at least is known in every European country; and in England even to-day the imagination is entertained with the fortunes of these obscure heroes of the mock epic, who have most of them been dead for more than a century and a half. It is impossible not to feel a mixture of amusement and compassion in observing the evident enjoyment with which Pope seizes on his hosts of enemies, and rolls them one after the other in the mud; impossible not to admire the artful and almost sublime imagery by which he brings into relief their miserable meanness. The Dunciad' in fact, with all the pettiness of its particulars, is still a living monument of Pope's own character. It possesses a yet larger interest. The war it celebrates is something quite different in its character from the mere per

sonal jealousies of rival writers like Harvey and Nash, Dryden and Shadwell. In the person of Pope we see an image of Literature, asserting itself as an independent force in the State, in the face of all the obstacles presented by rank, station, and privilege; in his grotesque exaggeration of the real proportions of his subject there is a lively image of the weaknesses so often found in the purely literary character, its vanity, its sensitive irritability, and its self-love; Grub Street reflects the rancorous envy which is certain to attend all literary success. In these respects the satire will always possess an interest far transcending its actual theme, and will point a moral, though of a kind very different from that which Pope sought to enforce.

CHAPTER XI.

THE ESSAY ON MAN' AND THE MORAL ESSAYS.'

Bolingbroke's influence on Pope-Epistle to Burlington on Taste '—Character of Timon-Epistle to Bathurst on 'The Use of Riches '-Reason for the Anonymous Publication of the Essay on Man'-Merits and Defects of the Essay.

It is highly characteristic of Pope, that while he was pursuing the objects of his vengeance with deadly animosity, he was meditating what he flattered himself was "a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of ethics."

The Essay on Man' occupies a position among Pope's works analogous to that of the 'Essay on Criticism.' As the latter was the product of general forces operating throughout Europe in the sphere of taste and imagination, so the Essay on Man' reflects the influences which since the Reformation had determined in England the direction of religious thought. As to the origin of the particular form in which Pope has embodied the ideas of his time, opinion has been much divided. Some have ascribed it entirely to the individual influence of Bolingbroke. Lord Bathurst declared that he had read the whole scheme of the poem drawn up in a series of propositions by Bolingbroke, which Pope was to enlarge, illustrate, and turn into verse. Mr. Pattison, on the other hand, believed that the subject of the poem was imposed on Pope from without by the general tendency of national thought, and that as he entered on his task without sympathy and understanding, the result, philosophically speaking, was a medley of confused

1 'The Design of the Essay on Man.’