MR. MALLET,

in his Epistle on Verbal Criticism:

..., ་་

'Whose life, severely scann'd, transcends his lays;
For wit supreme is but his second praise.'

MR. HAMMOND,

that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv.

'Now fir'd by Pope and virtue, leave the age,
In low pursuit of self-undoing wrong,

And trace the author through his moral page,
Whose blameless life still answers to his song.'

MR. THOMSON,

in his elegant and philosophical poem of the Seasons:

6

Although not sweeter his own Homer sings,

Yet is his life the more endearing song.'

To the same tune also singeth that learned clerk

of Suffolk,

MR. WILLIAM BROOME :

'Thus 80 nobly rising in fair virtue's cause,

From thy own life transcribe th' unerring laws.'

And, to close all, hear the Reverend Dean of St. Patrick's:

'A soul with every virtue fraught,

By patriots, priests, and poets taught:

Whose filial piety excels

Whatever Grecian story tells.

A genius for each business fit,

Whose meanest talent is his wit,' &c.

Let us now recreate thee by turning to the other

30 In his poems at the end of the Odyssey.

side, and showing his character drawn by those with whom he never conversed, and whose countenances he could not know, though turned against him; first, again commencing with the high-voiced and never-enough quoted

MR. JOHN DENNIS;

who, in his Reflections on the Essay on Criticism, thus describeth him: 'A little affected hypocrite, who has nothing in his mouth but candour, truth, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity. He is so great a lover of falsehood, that whenever he has a mind to calumniate his contemporaries, he brands them with some defect which is just contrary to some good quality for which all their friends and their acquaintance commend them. He seems to have a particular pique to people of quality, and authors of that rank. He must derive his religion from St. Omer's.' -But in the Character of Mr. P. and his writings (printed by S. Popping, 1716), he saith, though he is a professor of the worst religion, yet he laughs at it;' 'but that, nevertheless, he is a virulent Papist; and yet a pillar for the Church of England.' Of both which opinions

MR. LEWIS THEOBALD

seems also to be; declaring, in MIST'S JOURNAL of June 22, 1718, 'that, if he is not shrewdly abused, he made it his business to cackle to both parties in their own sentiments.' But as to his pique against people of quality, the same Journalist doth not agree, but saith (May 8, 1828),

'He had, by some means or other, the acquaintance and friendship of the whole body of our nobility.'

81

However contradictory this may appear, Mr. Dennis and Gildon, in the character last cited, make it all plain, by assuring us, that he is a creature that reconciles all contradictions: he is a beast, and a man; a Whig and a Tory; a writer (at one and the same time) of Guardians and Examiners; an assertor of liberty, and of the dispensing power of kings; a Jesuitical professor of truth; a base and a foul pretender to candour.' So that upon the whole account, we must conclude him either to have been a great hypocrite, or a very honest man; a terrible imposer upon both parties, or very moderate to either.

Be it as to the judicious reader shall seem good. Sure it is, he is little favoured of certain authors whose wrath is perilous: for one declares he ought to have a price set on his head, and to be hunted down as a wild beast: 82 another protests that he does not know what may happen; advises him to insure his person; says he has bitter enemies, and expressly declares it will be well if he escapes with his life.83 One desires he would cut his own throat, or hang himself. But Pasquin seemed rather inclined it should be done by the govern

81 The names of two weekly papers.

82 Theobald, Letter in Mist's Journal, June 22d, 1728. 33 Smedley, Pref. to Gulliveriana, pp. 14, 16.

84 Gulliveriana, p. 332.

ment, representing him engaged in grievous designs with a Lord of Parliament then under prosecution. Mr. Dennis himself hath written to a minister, that he is one of the most dangerous persons in this kingdom;36 and assureth the public that he is an open and mortal enemy to his country; a monster that will, one day, show as daring a soul as a mad Indian, who runs a-muck to kill the first Christian he meets.87 Another gives information of treason discovered in his poem.88 Mr. Curll boldly supplies an imperfect verse with kings and princesses; 89 and one Matthew Concanen, yet more impudent, publishes at length the two most sacred names in this nation as members of the Dunciad!

40

This is prodigious! yet it is almost as strange that, in the midst of these invectives, his greatest enemies have (I know not how) borne testimony to some merit in him.

MR. THEOBALD,

in censuring his Shakspeare, declares, 'he has so great an esteem for Mr. Pope, and so high an

85 Anno 1723.

86 Anno 1729.

87 Preface to Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, p. 12 and in the last page of that treatise.

38 Pages 6, 7, of the Preface, by Concanen, to a book entitled, A Collection of all the Letters, Essays, Verses, and Advertisements, occasioned by Pope and Swift's Miscellanies. Printed for A. Moore, octavo, 1714.

89 Key to the Dunciad, 3d edition, p. 18.

40 A List of persons, &c. at the end of the forementioned Collection of all the Letters, Essays, &c.

opinion of his genius and excellencies, that notwithstanding he professes a veneration · almost rising to idolatry for the writings of this inimitable poet, he would be very loth even to do him justice at the expense of that other gentleman's character.' 41

MR. CHARLES GILDON, after having violently attacked him in many pieces, at last came to wish from his heart, 'that Mr. Pope would be prevailed upon to give us Ovid's Epistles by his hand; for it is certain we see the original of Sappho to Phaon with much more life and likeness in his version than in that of Sir Car Scrope. And this (he adds) is the more to be wished, because in the English tongue we have scarce any thing truly and naturally written upon Love.' 42 He also, in taxing Sir Richard Blackmore for his heterodox opinions of Homer, challenges him to answer what Mr. Pope hath said in his preface to that poet.

MR. OLDMIXON

calls him a great master of our tongue; declares 'the purity and perfection of the English language to be found in his Homer; and, saying there are more good verses in Dryden's Virgil than in any other work, excepts this of our author only.' 48

41 Introduction to his Shakspeare Restored, in quarto, p. 3. 42 Commentary on the Duke of Buckingham's Essay, 8vo. 1721, pp. 97, 98.

48 In his prose Essay on Criticism.