The "Dunciad," in the complete edition, is addreffed to Dr. Swift. Of the notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot; and an apologetical Letter was prefixed, figned by Cleland, but supposed to have been written by Pope.

After this general war upon Dulness, he seems to have indulged himself awhile in tranquillity; but his fubfequent productions prove that he was not idle. He publifhed (1731) a poem on "Tafte," in which he very particularly and feverely criticifes the house, the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments, of Timon, a man of great wealth and little taste. By Timon he was univerfally fuppofed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is addressed, was privately faid to mean the Duke of Chandos; a man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had confequently the voice of the public in his favour.

A violent outcry was therefore raised against the ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was faid to have been indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a thoufand pounds, and who gained the opportunity of infulting him by the kindnefs of his invitation.

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publicly denied, but from the reproach which the attack on a character fo amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of efcaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was fatisfied; and he was at laft reduced to fhelter his temerity behind diffimulation, and endeavour to make that difbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excufe without believing his profeffions. He faid, that to have ridiculed his tafte, or his buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in Pope, after the reciprocal VOL. I. kindness

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kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been lefs easily excused.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early, and whom he feemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old; an age at which the mind begins lefs eafily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow lefs flexible, and when therefore the departure of an old friend is very acutely felt.

In the next year he loft his mother, not by an unexpected death, for fhe had lafted to the age of ninetythree; but he did not die unlamented. The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary; his parents had the happinefs of living till he was at the fummit of poetical reputation, till he was at eafe in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his refpect or tendernefs. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among its foothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than fuch a fon.

In 1733 he published the first part of the "Effay "on Man." This poem had a form and title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; fome thought it a very imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was unknown, fome, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and fome cenfured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect ; the fale increased, and editions were multiplied. The fecond and third parts were foon after published; and, in 1734, the fourth; when Pope avowed himfelf the author, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the firft ranks of learning. He was a iman of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, fupplied by inceffant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which

yet

yet had not oppreffèd his imagination, nor clouded his perfpicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the fcholar, the reafoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his purfuits too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he difdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of oppofition difpofed him to treat his adverfaries with fuch contemptuous fuperiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of fome who favoured the caufe. He feems to have adopted the Roman Emperor's determination, oderint dum metuant: he ufed no allurements of gentle languge, but wifhed to compel rather than perfuade.

His ftyle is copious without selection, and forcible without neatnefs; he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and impure, and his fentences are unmeasured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleafed himself with the notice of inferior wits, and correfponded with the enemies of Pope. A Letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, " Dryden I obferve borrows for want of "leasure, and Pope for want of genius: Milton out of "pride, and Addifon out of modefty." And when Theobald published "Shakespeare," in oppofition to Pope, the best notes were fupplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed fo much to the exaltation of his rival.

The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of offence, and therefore it may be fuppofed that his union with Pope was cenfured as hypocritical inconftancy; but furely to think differently, at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily al

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lowed. Such opinions are often admitted, and dif miffed, without nice examination. Who is there that has not found reafon for changing his mind about queftions of greater importance?

Warburton, whatever was his motive, from month to month, continued a vindication of the "Effay on "Man," in the literary journal of that time, called "The Republick of Letters."

From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with Warburton, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to Mr. Murray, by whofe intereft he became preacher at Lincoln'sInn, and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his eftate, and by confequence a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of his works; a legacy which may be reasonably eftimated at four thoufand pounds.

Pope lived at this time among the Great, with that reception and respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired by any private mifconduct or factious partiality.

He published from time to time (between 1730 and 1740) Imitations of different Poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once as was fuípected without it.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarifed, by adapting their fentiments to modern topics, by making Horace fay of Shakspeare what he originally faid of Ennius, and accommodating his fatires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the Second by Oldham and Rochefter. It is a kind of middle compofition between tranflation and original defign, which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the parallels lucky. It feems to have been Pope's favourite amufement; for he has carried it further than any former poet.

His

In

His laft Satires, of the general kind, were two Dialogues, named, from the year in which they were publifhed, "Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight." these poems many are praised, and many are reproached. Pope was then entangled in the oppofition; a follower of the Prince of Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and censured the conduct of the Minifters. His political partiality was too plainly fhewn: he forgot the prudence with which he paffed, in his earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, thro' much more violent conflicts of faction.

Pope now added, at Warburton's request, another book to the "Dunciad," of which the defign is to ridicule fuch studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.

When this book was printed (1742) the laurel had been for fome time upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be fuppofed that Pope could regard with much kindness or esteem, though in one of the imitations of Horace he has liberally enough praised the "Careless Hufband." In the " Dunciad," among other worthlefs fcribblers, he had mentioned Cibber who, in his "Apology," complains of the great poet's unkindness as more injurious, "because," fays he, "I have never offended him."

It might have been expected that Pope should have been, in fome degree, mollified by this fubmiffive gentlenefs, but no fuch confequence appeared. Though he condefcended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned him afterwards contemptuously in one of his fatires, and again in his epiftle to Arbuthnot; and in the fourth book of the "Dunciad," attacked him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily difcoverable. Perhaps he imagined that, in ridiculing the Laureat, he fatirifed those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to infult the great.

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