The Muse but ferv'd to ease some friend, not Wife, 134 A. But why then publish? P. Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise, And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays; NOTES. The VER. 131. Not Wife,] These two words feem added merely for the verse, and are what the French call a cheville. VER. 135. But why then publish?] To the three first names that encouraged his earlieft writings, he has added other friends, whose acquaintance with him did not commence till he was a poet of established reputation. From the many commendations which Walsh, and Garth, and Grenville beftowed on his Paftorals, it may fairly be concluded how much the public tafte has been improved, and with how many good compofitions our language has been enriched, fince that time. When Gray published his exquifite ode on Eton College, his first publication, little notice was taken of it but I suppose no critic can be found that will not place it far above Pope's Paftorals. On reading which ode a certain perfon exclaimed, "Sweet Bard, who fhunn'ft the noise of Folly, Moft mufical, moft melancholy! Thee oft the lonely woods among I woo to hear thy evening fong; And think thy thrilling ftrains have power To raise Mufæus from his bower; Or bid the tender Spenfer come From his lov'd haunt, fair Fancy's tomb." See particularly that fine stanza, "Thefe fhall the fury paffions tear, and alfo, The vultures of the mind;" "Yet ah! why fhould they know their fate?" The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 140 And St. John's felf (great Dryden's friends before) With open arms receiv'd one Poet more. Happy my studies, when by these approv❜d! Happier their Author, when by thefe belov'd! From these the World will judge of men and books, Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks. 146 NOTES. Soft VER. 139. Talbot, &c.] All these were Patrons or Admirers of Mr. Dryden; though a fcandalous libel against him, entitled Dryden's Satyr to his Mufe, has been printed in the name of the Lord Somers, of which he was wholly ignorant. These are the persons to whose account the Author charges the publication of his first pieces: persons, with whom he was converfant (and he adds beloved) at 16 or 17 years of age; an early period for fuch acquaintance. The catalogue might be made yet more illuftrious, had he not confined it to that time when he writ the Paftorals and Windfor Foreft, on which he paffes a fort of Cenfure in the lines following: "While pure Description held the place of Senfe," &c. P. Every word and epithet here used is exactly characteristical and peculiarly appropriated, with much art, to the temper and manner of each of the perfons here mentioned; the elegance of Lanfdown, the open free benevolence and candour of Garth, the warmth of Congreve, the difficulty of pleafing Swift, the very gefture (as I am informed) that Atterbury used when he was pleased, and the animated air and spirit of Bolingbroke. VER. 146. Burnets, &c.] Authors of fecret and fcandalous History. P. Ibid. Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.] By no means Authors of the fame class; though the violence of party might hurry them into the fame mistakes. But if the firft offended this way, it was only through an honeft warmth of temper, that allowed too little to an excellent understanding. The other two, with very bad heads, had hearts ftill worse. W. 150 Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure Description held the place of Sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill; I wish'd the man a Dinner, and sate still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answer'd, I was not in debt. If want provok'd, or madness made them print, 155 I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint. If Did fome more fober Critic come abroad; wrong, I fmil'd; if right, I kifs'd the Rod. NOTES. Pains, VER. 148. While pure Defcription held the place of Senfe?] He ufes pure equivocally, to fignify either chafe or empty; and has given in this line what he esteemed the true Character of descriptive poetry, as it is called. A compofition, in his opinion, as abfurd as a feast made up of fauces. The office of a picturefque imagination is to brighten and adorn good fenfe; fo that to employ it only in defeription, is like children's delighting in a prism for the fake of its gaudy colours; which, when frugally managed and artfully dif pofed, might be made to unfold and illustrate the noblest objects in nature. W. VER. 150.] A painted meadow, or a purling fiream,] is a verse of Mr. Addifon. P. Ibid. A painted mistress, or a purling Stream.] Meaning the Rape of the Lock, and Windfor-Forest. W. VER. 151. Yet then did Gildon] The unexpected turn in the fecond line of each of these three couplets, contains as cutting and bitter ftrokes of fatire as perhaps can be written. It is with difficulty we can forgive our Author for upbraiding these wretched fcriblers for their poverty and diftreffes, if we do not keep in our minds the grofsly abufive pamphlets they published; and, even allowing this circumftance, we ought to feparate rancour from reproof: "Curtam crudeles optavit fumere pœnas ?" Pains, reading, ftudy, are their just pretence, NOTES. 160 Each VER. 163. Yet ne'er one sprig] Swift imbibed from Sir W. Temple, and Pope from Swift, an inveterate and unreasonable averfion and contempt for Bentley, whose admirable Boyle's Lectures, Remarks on Collins's Emendations of Menander and Callimachus, and Tully's Tuscal. Difp. whose edition of Horace, and, above all, Differtations on the Epiftles of Phalaris, (in which he gained the most complete victory over a whole army of wits,) all of them exhibit the most striking marks of accurate and extensive erudition, and a vigorous and acute understanding. He degraded himself much by his strange and abfurd hypothesis of the faults of which Milton's amanuenfis introduced into that poem. But I have been informed that there was ftill an additional caufe for Pope's refentment: That Atterbury, being in company with Bentley and Pope, infifted upon knowing the Doctor's opinion of the English Homer; and that, being earnestly pressed to declare his fentiments freely, he faid, "The verfes are good verses, but the work is not Homer, it is Spondanus." It may, however, be obferved, in favour of Pope, that Dr. Clarke, whofe critical exactness is well known, has not been able to point out above three or four mistakes in the fenfe throughout the whole Iliad. The real faults of that tranflation are of another kind; They are fuch as remind us of Nero's gilding a brazen ftatue of Alexander the Great, caft by Lyfippus. Pope, in a letter which Dr. Rutherforth fhewed me at Cambridge in the year 1771, written to a Mr. Bridges at Fulham, mentions his confulting Chapman and Hobbes, and talks of " their authority, joined to the knowledge of my own imperfectnefs in the language, over-ruled me." These are the very words which I transcribed at the time. VER. 163. Thefe ribalds,] How defervedly this title is given to the genius of PHILOLOGY, may be seen by a short account of the manners of the modern Scholiafts. Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each Word-catcher that lives on fyllables, NOTES. 166 Ev'n When in these latter ages, human learning raised its head in the Weft; and its tail, verbal criticism, was, of course, to rife with it; the madness of Critics foon became fo offenfive, that the grave fupidity of the Monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J. Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy, after the facking of Conftantinople by the Turks, used to maintain that Cicero understood neither Philofophy nor Greek: while another of his countrymen, J. Lafcaris by name, threatened to demonftrate that Virgil was no Poet. Countenanced by fuch great examples, a French Critic afterwards undertook to prove that Ariftotle did not understand Greek, nor Titus Livius, Latin. It has been fince discovered that Jofephus was ignorant of Hebrew; and Erafmus fo pitiful a linguift, that, Burman affures us, were he now alive, he would not deferve to be put at the head of a country school: And even fince it has been found out that Pope had no invention, and is only a Poet by courtesy. For though time has ftripp'd the present race of Pedants of all the real accomplishments of their predeceffors, it has conveyed down this spirit to them, unimpaired; it being found much easier to ape their manners than to imitate their science. However, those earlier RIBALDS raifed an appetite for the Greek language in the Weft; infomuch, that Hermolaus Barbarus, a paffionate admirer of it, and a noted critic, used to boast, that he had invoked and raised the Devil, and puzzled him into the bargain, about the meaning of the Ariftotelian ENTEAEXEIA. Another, whom Balzac speaks of, was as eminent for his Revelations; and was wont to say, that the meaning of fuch or such a verfe, in Perfius, no one knew but God and himfelf. While the celebrated Pomponius Laetus, in excess of veneration for Antiquity, became a real Pagan; raised altars to Romulus, and facrificed to the Gods of Latium; in which he was followed by our countryman Baxter, in every thing, but in the cost linefs of his facrifices. But if the Greeks cried down Cicero, the Italian Critics knew how to fupport his credit. Every one has heard of the childish exceffes into which the ambition of being thought CICERONIANS carried the most celebrated Italians of this time. They abstained from reading the Scriptures for fear of fpoiling their style: Car dinal |