Above all Greek, above all Roman Fame1: Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green1; He swears the Muses met him at the Devil". Tho' justly Greece her eldest sons admires, We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well, If Time improve our Wit as well as Wine, 50 "Who lasts a century can have no flaw, 55 At ninety-nine, a Modern and a Dunce? And shall we deem him Ancient, right and sound, 60 Then by the rule that made the Horse-tail bears, 65 "By courtesy of England', he may do." I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, 1 Te nostris ducibus, te Graiis anteferendo. Hor. 2 [Particularly when modernised.] 3 And beastly Skelton, etc.] Skelton, Poet Laureate to Hen. VIII. a volume of whose verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of ribaldry, obscenity, and scurrilous language. P. [John Skelton born about 1460, tutor to prince Henry (afterwards K. H. VIII.) and ultimately Rector of Diss in Norfolk, died in 1529. His English verse, which is chiefly satirical and in part directed against Wolsey, is by no means entirely what Pope's perfunctory epithets declare it to be.] 4 Christ's Kirk o' the Green;] A Ballad made by a King of Scotland. P. [James I.] 5 met him at the Devil] The Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his Poetical Club. P. 6 [i.e. to be immortal.] 7 ['Courtesy of England,' a legal term signifying the custom by which a widower holds during his lifetime the lands of which his wife was seized in fee, if she had issue by him born alive.] 8 [The reference in Horace is to the so-called Argumentatio Acervalis, or Sorites, the purpose of which is to show that relative terms of measure admit of no precise definition.] While you to measure merits, look in Stowe 1, Shakespear (whom you and ev'ry Play-house bill 70 For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, [Stowe's Annals of England appear to have been first published in 1580.] 2 Shakespear] Shakespear and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought of this Immortality, the one in many pieces composed in haste for the Stage; the other in his latter works in general, which Dryden call'd his Dotages. 3 Pindaric Art;] which has much more merit than his Epic, but very unlike the Character, as well as Numbers of Pindar. P. 4 [Compare p. 180.] 5 In all debates, etc.] The Poet has here put the bald cant of women and boys into extreme fine verse. This is in strict imitation of his Original, where the same impertinent and gratuitous criticism is admirably ridiculed. [This common assumption should in its turn be checked by the consideration that out of 52 plays known as Beaumont and Fletcher's the former can only be proved to have had part in 17. Beaumont, though ten years younger than Fletcher, published plays before the latter.] 7 [Thomas Shadwell, poet-laureate, the original of Dryden's Mac Flecknoe.] 8 [Wycherley, see note to p. 20.] 9 Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow.] Nothing was less true than this particular: But the whole paragraph has a mixture of Irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own Judgment, only the common Chat of the pre 10 tenders to Criticism; in some things right, in others, wrong; as he tells us in his answer, Interdum vulgus rectum videt: est ubi peccat. P. -hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley, is a line of Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: the sense of which seems to have been generally mistaken. It gives to each his epithet, not to design the difference of their talents, but the number of their productions. Warburton. 10 [Thomas Southern (1660-1746), the author of the tragedy of Oroonoko.] 11 [Rowe. See Epitaph v.] 12 [Of John Heywood's 'Interludes,' which form a transition from the moral-plays to the regular drama, the earliest was probably written in the first quarter of the 16th century.] 13 Gammer Gurton] A piece of very low humour, one of the first printed Plays in English, and therefore much valued by some Antiquaries. P. [Believed, on insufficient evidence, to have been written by Bishop Still. The oldest extant edition of this play is dated 1575; Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (of which a copy was first discovered in 1818) was certainly printed nine years previously; and, being founded on Plautus, is infinitely superior to Gammer Gurton's Needle, although the latter has a few touches of considerable humour and contains an excellent drinkingsong.] [Cibber's Careless Husband, in which the character of Lord Foppington is taken from Or say our Fathers never broke a rule; But let them own, that greater Faults than we And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet 3 : Or lengthen'd Thought that gleams through many a page, In the dry desert of a thousand lines, Has sanctify'd whole poems for an age. I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censur'd, not as bad but new; 95 100 105 110 115 While if our Elders break all reason's laws, These fools demand not pardon, but Applause 11. If I but ask, if any weed can grow; One Tragic sentence if I dare deride Vanbrugh, was first acted in 1704; and kept the stage throughout the century. Lady Betty Modish is a character in this comedy.] 2 [Compare p. 176.] 3 [In Bk. 1. of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia are specimens of his English hexameters and pentameters as well as sapphics; in Bk. II. there is also an experiment in the metre of Anacreon, by no means unpleasant in its effect.] 4 [Paradise Lost, Bk. 111.] 5 [Cf. Epistle to Arbuthnot, v. 168.] 6 An indirect satire on Lord Hervey, in allusion to certain lines in his Epistle to a D.D. from a nobleman at Hampton Court. Carruthers. 7 [Cf. Essay on Criticism, vv. 715 f.] 8 [Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester; who read James II.'s Declaration in Westminster Abbey and was arrested on a false charge of treason under William III. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society; and a popular writer of both prose and verse.] 9 [Thomas Carew, a courtier of Charles II. and a charming lyrical poet, died in 1639.] 10 [Sir Charles Sedley, the favourite poet of King Charles II., died in 1701. He was a boon companion of the Earl of Rochester.] 120 [Pope's edition of Shakspere was published in 1725. It was a failure as a speculation; and though it is not without merits, both in the preface (of which the general spirit is upon the whole creditable to Pope's appreciation of Shakspere's genius) and in the emendations (frequently very clever), yet it deservedly exposed Pope to the cavils of Theobald. See Introduction to Dunciad.] 12 [This famous actor was an early friend of Pope's, a copy by whose hand of the actor's portrait by Kneller still exists at Lord Mansfield's seat at Caen Wood, Hampstead. An account of his famous Benefit in April 7th, 1709, will be found in the Tatler. His 'grave action was probably due in part to his large habit of body; yet he played an unusually wide range of characters, and according to Cibber was particularly great in Othello, Hamlet, Hotspur, Macbeth and Brutus. See Leigh Hunt's The Town.] 13 [Barton Booth (who died in 1733) was an actor particularly celebrated for the excellence of his articulation. He was the original Cato in Addison's tragedy. Cf. v. 337.] (Tho' but, perhaps, a muster-roll of Names 1) 125 130 Had ancient times conspir'd to disallow 135 What then was new, what had been ancient now? Or what remain'd, so worthy to be read In Days of Fase, when now the weary Sword 140 145 The sleepy Eye, that spoke the melting soul. 150 155 Now all for Pleasure, now for Church and State; Effects unhappy from a Noble Cause. 165 Time was, a sober Englishman would knock A muster-roll of Names] An absurd custom of several Actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere Proper Names of Greeks or Romans, which (as they call it) fill the mouth of the Player. P. [Like the Bombomachides Clutomestoridysarchides' of Plautus.] 2 A verse of the Lord Lansdown. P. 3 in Horsemanship t'excel, And ev'ry flowry Courtier writ Romance.] The Duke of Newcastle's book of Horsemanship: the Romance of Parthenissa, by the Earl of Orrery, and most of the French Romances translated by Persons of Quality. P. 4 [Newmarket, which became popular with the rise of horse-racing under James I., was a favourite resort of Charles II., whose palace there still stands.] 5 [The two most eminent sculptors of the Restoration period were Cibber, a Dane, and Gibbons, a Dutchman.] 6 [Sir Peter Lely, by birth a Westphalian, died in 1680, after accumulating a large fortune. Warton compares for the delightful expression, 'the sleepy eye,' an epigram of Antipater, 'which it is not probable Pope could have seen.'] 7 On each enervate string, etc.] The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Davenant, the first Opera sung in England. P. [It was brought out in 1656.] Instruct his Family in ev'ry rule, And send his Wife to church, his Son to school. 165 Now times are chang'd, and one Poetic Itch 170 Sons, Sires, and Grandsires, all will wear the bays, Our Wives read Milton, and our Daughters Plays, I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie, 175 Not's self e'er tells more Fibs than I; And promise our best Friends to rhyme no more; 180 He serv'd a 'Prenticeship, who sets up shop; 185 190 Flight of Cashiers, or Mobs, he'll never mind; 195 To cheat a Friend, or Ward, he leaves to Peter5; The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre, Of little use the Man you may suppose, Ward.] A famous Empiric, whose Pill and Drop had several surprizing effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at this time. P. 2 Ev'n Radcliff's Doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance.] By no means an insinuation as if these travelling Doctors had misspent their time. Radcliff had sent them on a medicinal mission, to examine the produce of each Country, and see in what it might be made subservient to the art 200 of healing. The native commodity of France is DANCING. SCRIBL. 3 [Cf. Pope's note to Moral Essays, Ep. iv. v. 18.] [Bowles cites Coxe's Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole for an account of the flight of Knight, the cashier of the South Sea Company.] 5 [Conjectured by Bowles to refer to the cheating of Mr George Pitt, in the management of his estates, by Peter Walter.] 6 And (tho' no Soldier)] Horace had not |