to the prefs) fince this, I fay, is the cafe, his L-p's known virtue will never fuffer me to suppose that you, Sir, and the author of these letters can be the fame perfon. His known wifdem would lefs endure fuch an imputation. Whatever you, Sir, may think, his L-p's glory will never stand brighter with posterity than in the lines of this immortal poet. So that to defile the mirror, which holds his L-p up, by a kind of magic virtue, to the admiration of all times and places, would indeed fhew him more detached from the world, and indifferent to cenfure, than even you, his apologift, think fit to reprefent him. It muft furely be some frong neceffity that could induce his Lordship to be thus acceflary to his own undoing, that is, undoing the charm which his poetical friend had worked fo high. And yet your advertisement fupplies neither him nor your reader with any excufe of this nature. You thought fit, I will fuppofe, that fome reafon fhould be given for your publication of the letters. But had not your Bookfeller done this for you already, when he fo often told the public, that it was to prevent their being impofed on by a spurious and mangled edition, of which one or two feraps had appeared in a MAGAZINE? Poffibly you will fay, the reader might expect to know how they came there. If it was really your intention to fatisfy him at any one's expence befides Mr. P.'s, why did you not feek out and detect the man ingaged in that honourable employment, as by a proper irony you call it? Sure it was no difficult matter: for you tell us, again, that fome of the copies had been handed about not very privately fince Mr. P.'s death. Befides, the law would have obliged the proprietor of the Magazine to discover from whom he had received his ftoln-goods. Why then fo much tenderness for him, who manifefted his defign by publishing, and fo little for him, who only gave fufpicion of it, by printing? Or did the ORDER OF THINGS, which, indeed, (in Mr. P.'s language of his L--p) was here violated, require, that vengeance fhould purfue, and trace up the crime, to the original offender; who had fo audaciously ftretched his hand to the forbidden tree, and gathered, without leave, of the knowledge of political good and evil. Or if the feve rity of justice required even this; was it not enough to say, that the mischief came first from Mr. P. by his giving abroad too many copies; without telling their COMMON ENEMIES, that he had printed fifteen hundred? For it came not from thefe ง thefe 1500, (which, you own, were all deftroyed in one common fire) but from a ftraggling copy which efcaped that deftruction. As this brand therefore on Mr. POPE's memory was needlefs, it could not come from the hand of his noble friend. But whatever high notions I myself may have of L. B. I am not so vain to think my readers must needs fubfcribe to them. They may, for ought I know, believe you and him to be one and the fame. And then, I am half afraid, even his character, great as it is, will not fecure him from their cenfure. Are the laws of friendship then fo weak, may fome of them be apt to fay, are its bonds fo flight, that one imprudent action committed against the humour of a friend, in a mistaken fondness for his glory which came near to adoration, that one fuch fhall obliterate the whole merit of a life of fervice, flowing from the warmest heart that the paffion of friendship ever took poffeffion of? Obliterate, will they fay, nay purfue, with inexorable vengeance, the poor delinquent to the foot of the most mercilefs tribunal; that PUBLIC, one part of which he had much offended by a vigorous war upon the general profligacy of manners; another, much more offended by the infufferable fplendor of his talents; and a third, and that no fmall nor inconfiderable part, by his over zealous attachment to his very ACCUSER. Unhappy Poet! will they fay, who has received the only wound to his honour from the hand of that friend, whofe reputation he had, for many years, fingly fupported against an almost univerfal prejudice. But more unhappy ill-ftarred FRIENDSHIP, if thefe be thy iniquitous conditions! Who after this fhall feek, in thee, a folace for the cares of private life; or believe thee to be, what thy Partifans have fo often boafted in thy favour, the pureft and largest fource of public virtue? Never, after this, wilt thou be thought deferving of honefter or better followers than MODERN PATRIOTS. For where true love of our country is, there, friendship wears a different face. At fuch time it has been known, that when real and repeated injuries had torn in funder a well united friendship, the death of one of the parties has buried every paft refentment, and revived, in the bofom of the other, all his ancient tenderness as if the refined and defecated paffions of him, who had flaken off mortality, had, by that divine fympathy of affections which lives between friends, communicated of its virtue to the : furvivor. Nay I have heard, fome where or other, of a MAN *, who, when his dying friend, at the inftigation, and to quiet the impotent paffions, of another; (for what generous mind has not been deceived by ill-placed friendfhips?) had inferted an unkind claufe concerning him in his laft will, took no other revenge for a folly fo unprovoked, than by doubling the legacy which his deceafed friend had left to an old faithful fervant, because he the furvivor deemed it to be too little. But the greatest have their weakneffes. A French author, I have fome time read, who has given us a history of the Hermetick philofophy, brings almost every great name into the number of his Alchemifts. He gives them all their due, but concludes every various eulogium alike—“ now his folly was in hoping to extract gold from bafer metals.” And may we not, after all the good that may be said of our illuftrious poet, (and there are few of whom so much can be jufly faid) lament, that the folly which ran through his whole life was, in trying to extract friendship out of politics? However, Sir, let the world talk as it may: I must ftill perfift in thinking, that that noble perfon had no hand in your Advertisement. On this firm affurance, it will be faid, perhaps, I might have left it to its own fortune, as not at all likely to mislead pofterity; while it represents Mr. P. as mean, low, interested and perfidious, whofe nature, if I were to define it, fhould be done by the fingle word FRIENDSHIP; fo pure and fo warm was the ray of that facred pasfion which animated, and governed all his faculties. But when I confider how light a matter very often fubjects the best established characters to the fufpicions of pofterity, pofterity, often as malignant to virtue, as the age that faw it in its infufferable glory; and how ready fuch pofterity is to catch at a low revived flander, which the times that brought it forth faw defpifed and forgotten in its birth, I cannot but think it deferving a remark. These letters, Sir, of your publishing, afford us an indignant inftance. The chastity of the first Scipio Africanus, in the case of the Spanish captive, was as celebrated, and as notorious as Mr. P's friendship for L. B. But one Valerius Antias (for calumny and history, the Oldmixon of Rome) made no fcruple to affert, that far from reftoring the fair Spaniard to her fa * Mr. Allen. mily, he debauched and kept her. One would have hoped fo mean a flander might have flept forgotten in the dirty corner of a poor pedant's common-place. And yet we fee it quoted as a fact †, by an inftructor of Kings. Who knows, but that at fome happy time or other, when a writer wants to prove, that real friendship becomes a great man as little as real chastity t, this Advertisement of yours may be advanced to the fame dignity of credit with the calumny of Valerius Antias? If it fhould, I would not undertake to difpute the fact itself, on which fuch an inference might be made; for I remember Tully, a great ftatefman himself, • Agellius. Now the reputation of the first Scipio was not fo clear and "uncontroverted in private as in public life; nor was he allowed "by all to be a man of fuch fevere virtue as he affected, and as that age required. Nævius was thought to mean him in fome "verfes Gellius has preferved. And Valerius Antias made no fcruple to affert, that far from reftoring the fair Spaniard to her "family, he debauched and kept her. Notwithstanding this, "what authority did he not maintain? in what esteem and ve"neration did he not live and die ?" p. 204. of the idea of a pa triot-king. The Words of Nævius are these, Etiam qui res magnas manu fæpe geffit gloriofe, Cujus facta viva nunc vigent; qui apud gentes folus Thefe obfcure verfes were, in Gellius's opinion, the fole foundation of Antias's calumny, against the univerfal concurrence of hiftorians. His ego verfibus credo adductum Valerium Antiatem adverfum ceteros omnes fcriptores de Scipionis moribus fenfiffe, 1. 6. c. 8. And what he thought of this hiftorian's modefty and truth, we may collect from what he tells us of him in another place, where, having quoted two tribunitial decrees, which he fays he transcribed from Records, [ex annalium monumentis] he adds, that Valerius Antias made no fcruple to give the lye to them in public. Valerius autem Antias, contra hanc decretorum memoriam contraque au&toritates veterum annalium dixit, &c. 1. 7. c. 19. And Livy in his 36 B. quoting this Antias for the particulars of a victory, fubjoins, concerning the number lain, fcriptori parum fidei fit, quia in eo augendo non alius intemperantior eft. And he that will amplify on one occafion, will diminish on another; for it is the fame intemperate paffion that carries him indifferently to either. See p. 201, of the Idea of a Patriot-King. long long ago observed, Vera amicitia difficillime reperiuntur in üs qui in republica verfantur. In conclufion, what we may learn from the moral of the tale is this, that excefs, though in the focial paffions, lays us more open to popular cenfure than even the total want of them: becaufe fuch exceffes often produce effects that low minds cannot understand; or if they could, they would ftill want hearts warm enough to confefs the value of them. I am, SIR, &c. FINIS. ERRATA: P. 7. 1. 16. for lex, read, les. 53. in the note-for two, read four. 58. 1. 8. for comprehenfion, read comprehenfive. 60. 1. 2. dele perfect. 67. 1. 21. for distinguishable, read distinguished. 106. 1. 9. dele it. 133. 1. 6. for effay, read elegy. $35. 1. 17. for, he fancies to behold, read in fancy he bebolds. 139. penult-for figure, read image. 142. line the laft of the note, for faction, read party. 212. 1. 8. for account, read accident. 353, line the laft-read most of the firft characters. 356. 1. 6. for taking, read having. 382. antepenult-for of, read or. 396. 1. 15. after obligation to, add thank. |