POPE

SATIRES AND EPISTLES

EDITED BY

MARK PATTISON, B. D.

FOURTH EDITION, CORRECTED

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1881

[All rights reserved]

In this edition, the Imitations of Horace with the Epistle to Arbuthnot and the two Epilogues, are, to avoid confusion, numbered continuously with the collective title Satires and Epistles.

The imitation of Horace I. Satire 2, which has been excluded by its indecency from most of the editions of Pope's Works from Warburton's edition (1751) downwards, is not here given. And to enable this volume to be freely put into the hands of the young, a few words and lines have been omitted, their place being indicated by asterisks.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE pieces collected in this volume were published by Pope singly, at various times during the five years from 1733 to 1738. When his Works were first collected, they were placed together in one volume, and entitled Satires and Epistles of Horace imitated. It is no paradox to say that these Imitations are among the most original of his writings. So entirely do they breathe the spirit of the age and country in which they were written, that they can be read without reference to the Latin model.

Our pleasure indeed is enhanced, and our admiration of the poetic skill raised, when we compare them with Horace, and note the ingenuity with which the English analogue is substituted in every instance for the Roman original. It may be said to be a perfect translation, the persons and things being transferred as well as the words. All translation from an ancient into a modern language involves some modernisation of the idea. It is the problem constantly before the translator, how far he shall carry this transformation. In the early part of the eighteenth century, many of the classical poets suffered translation into English verse upon this system. The aim was to modernise as much as possible. Dryden's Virgil and Pope's Homer were only attempts to bring Virgil and Homer not only into the language of the 'Town,' but into its modes of thought and expression. The translator followed the precedent of the stage, on which the Greek and Roman heroes appeared in perruque and silk stockings, the court dress of Versailles. In vain Boileau ridiculed the fashion, and (Art Poétique, 3. 118) forbade the dramatist 'peindre Caton galant, et Brutus dameret.' The limits of translation and imitation were not distinctly defined.

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Oldham translated some Satires of Juvenal on this system; Dryden himself calls his Art of Poetry a translation of Boileau, though he has substituted English authors throughout for the French examples. And in his translation of Juvenal, Dryden could not resist introducing Shadwell's name. But Rochester (died 1680), in what he calls an Allusion to the tenth Sat. of first Book of Horace, had furnished the first regular example of that style which Pope brought to perfection in these Imitations.

To Lord Bolingbroke Pope assigns (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 297) the suggestion of these Imitations, as he did the suggestion of the Essay on Man. If the suggestion came from Bolingbroke, the idea was not original. Examples lay everywhere at hand in both French and English. Pope, who himself quotes Creech's Horace (Sat. and Ep. 4. 4), could not have been ignorant of what Creech tells his readers, that the same suggestion had been made to him (1684), and rejected in favour of the system of close translation. But Pope may naturally have wished to come forward as a satirist under the shield of a' noble name. He seems to feel that the bitter personalities which he is writing may need some such cover. Boileau, before Pope, had felt himself compelled to publish an apology for being a professed satirist. The Discours sur la Satire (1668) rests his defence on classical precedent. Because Persius and Juvenal wrote satire without alarming the jealousy of Nero or Trajan, he may follow their example under the milder government of Louis the Great. The monarch treated it as a joke, so no subject had ground for making it a serious offence.

So Pope would fain shelter himself under a minister, or, greater name, under Bolingbroke. Of his Satires of Donne versified (1735) he tells the reader that they were done at the desire of the Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Shrewsbury, and he does not omit to add that it was while the one was Lord