4

To second, ARBUTHNOT! thy Art and Care,
And teach the Being you preserv'd, to bear.
But why then publish? Granville the polite 1,
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;
The courtly Talbot 5, Somers, Sheffield read;
Ev'n mitred Rochesters would nod the head,
And St. John's self (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 these belov'd!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes 10.

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 stream11.
Yet then did Gildon12 draw his venal quill;-
I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.

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Yet then did Dennis 13 rave in furious fret ;

I never answer'd,-I was not in debt.

If want provok'd, or madness made them print,
I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint 14.
Did some more sober Critic come abroad;
If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.

[See note to p. 15.] 2 [See note to p. 13.] 3 [See note to p. 17.J

4 [William Congreve (born 1669, died 1728,) the author of the Mourning Bride and many famous comedies, was one of those who encouraged Pope's earliest efforts.]

5 Talbot, &c.] All these were Patrons or Admirers of Mr Dryden; tho' a scandalous libel against him entitled, Dryden's Satyr to his Muse, has been printed in the name of the Lord Somers, of which he has wholly ignorant.

These are the persons to whose account the author charges the publication of his first pieces: persons with whom he was conversant (and he adds beloved) at 16 or 17 years of age; an early period for such acquaintance. The catalogue might be made yet more illustrious, had he not confined it to that time when he writ the Pastorals and Windsor Forest, on which he passes a sort of censure in the lines following,

While pure description held the place of
Sense, &c. P.

[Talbot. See Pope's note to Epilogue to Satires, Dial. II. v. 79.]

6 [Somers. See Pope's note ib. v. 77.] 7 [Sheffield. See note to Essay on Criticism, v. 724.]

8 [Atterbury bishop of Rochester. to Epitaph XIII.]

See note

9 [See note to p. 191.]

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160

10 Burnets, &c.] Authors of secret and scandalous History. P.

Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.] By no means Authors of the same class, though the violence of party might hurry them into the same mistakes. But if the first offended this way, it was only through an honest warmth of temper, that allowed too little to an excellent understanding. The other two, with very bad heads, had hearts still worse. P.

[Gilbert Burnet bishop of Salisbury, the author of the History of My own Times from the Restoration to the Peace of Utrecht (which Swift annotated in the spirit of Pope's reference), died in 1715; Oldmixon, see Dunciad, II. vv. 282, foll.; and Cooke, see ib. II. 138 and notes.]

11 Meaning the Rape of the Lock, and Windsor Forest. Warburton. A painted meadow &c. is a verse of Mr Addison. P.

12 [Charles Gildon, a converted Roman Catholic, of whom Warburton says in a note to Dunciad, 1. 296, that 'he signalised himself as a critic, having written some very bad plays; abused Pope very scandalously in an anonymous pamphlet of the Life of Mr Wycherly, and in other pamphlets.' See also Dunciad, 111. 173.]

13 [See Essay on Criticism, vv. 270, 586; and Dunciad, passim.] 14 [Cf. ante, v. 13.]

Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds 2:
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each Word-catcher, that lives on syllables,
Ev'n such small Critics some regard may claim,
Preserv'd in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name3.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms 4!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.
Were others angry: I excus'd them too;
Well might they rage, I gave them but their duc.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;
But each man's secret standard in his mind,
That Casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The Bard whom pilfer'd Pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a Crown 5,

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Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;

He, who still wanting, tho' he lives on theft,

Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left":

185

And He, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning7:
And He, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not Poetry, but prose run mad3:

All these, my modest Satire bade translate,
And own'd that nine such Poets made a Tate 10.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not ADDISON himself was safe.

190

[Dr Richard Bentley. See Dunciad, IV. 201.] 2 [As to Theobald, see Introduction to Dunciad.]

3 [Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost, which appeared in 1732, was at once the last and the least worthy effort of his critical prowess; as to Theobald's Shakspere, it was an honest and not wholly unsuccessful piece of work, and a better edition than Pope's own. Bentley's Milton is better characterised in Imitations of Horace, 1. Ep. of II. Bk. vv. 103-4.1

4 [Warburton has a characteristic note on this passage, referring with unconscious irony to his own edition of Shakspere-the edition which pointed the best of Foote's jests, when he compared a chimney-sweep on a noble steed to 'Warburton on Shakspere.']

5 [Ambrose Philips, v. ante v. 100. Philips translated the Persian Tales, as well as two 'Olympioniques' of Pindar, and other Greek poems. His Pastorals brought him 'renown' at the hands of Gildon, who in his Art of Poetry ranked him with Theocritus and Vergil.]

6 Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:] A fine improvement of this line of Boileau, Qui toujours emprunt, et jamais ne gagne rien. Warburton.

7 Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:] A case common both to Poets and Critics of a certain order; only with this difference, that the Poet writes himself out of his own meaning; and the Critic never gets into another man's. Yet both keep going on, and blundering round about their subject, as benighted people are wont to do, who seek for an entrance which they cannot find.

8 A verse of Dr Evans. Wilkes.

9 All these my modest Satire bade translate,] See their works, in the Translations of classical books by several hands.

10 [Nahum Tate, compendiously described by the late Prof. Craik as 'the author of the worst alterations of Shakspere, the worst version of the psalms of David, and the worst continuation of a great poem (Absalom and Achitophel) extant.']

Peace to all such! but were there One whose fires1
True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone",
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by Flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd3;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise :--
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he?

What tho' my Name stood rubric on the walls,
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of winds came flying all abroad?

I sought no homage from the Race that write;

I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now be-rhym'd so long)

No more than thou, great GEORGE! a birth-day song.
I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,

To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled thro' the town,
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;

For an account of Pope's relations with Addison see Introductory Memoir, p. xv. f. The sentiments and imagery in Pope's letter to Craggs of July 15th 1715 were embodied in the [above] character of Atticus.. which appears to have been first printed in 1723 (in a collection of poems called Cytherea published by Curll), then included by Pope in the Miscellanies of 1727, and finally, after undergoing revision, engrafted into the Epistle to Arbuthnot, published in 1735. Carruthers. 2 This image is originally Denham's. John

son.

3 After v. 208 in the MS.

'Who, if two Wits on rival themes contest, Approves of each, but likes the worst the best.' Alluding to Mr P.'s and Tickell's Translation of the first Book of the Iliad. Warburton.

4 [This famous couplet first stood thus:

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225

'Who would not smile if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if ADDISON were he?' Then,

'Who would not grieve if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if ADDISON were he?'

Johnson.]

It was a great falsehood, which some of the Libels reported, that this Character was written after the Gentleman's death; which see refuted in the Testimonies prefixed to the Dunciad. But the occasion of writing it was such as he would not make public out of regard to his memory: and all that could further be done was to omit the name, in the Edition of his Works. P.

5 On wings of winds came flying all abroad?] Hopkins, in the civth Psalm. P.

6 [To daggle is to run through the mire. Hence Swift's epithet daggle-tail.]

But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by ev'ry quill1;
Fed with soft Dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song".
His Library (where busts of Poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head 3,),
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,

Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:
Till grown more frugal in his riper days,

He paid some bards with port, and some with praise;

To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,

And others (harder still) he paid in kind.

Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,

Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:

But still the Great have kindness in reserve,

He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve 4.

May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill!

May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!

So, when a Statesman wants a day's defence,

Or Envy holds a whole week's war with Sense,

Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blest be the Great! for those they take away,
And those they left me; for they left me GAY5;
Left me to see neglected Genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:
Of all thy blameless life the sole return

My Verse, and QUEENSB'RY weeping o'er thy urn!
Oh let me live my own, and die so too!

(To live and die is all I have to do:)

Maintain a Poet's dignity and ease,

And see what friends, and read what books I please;

Above a Patron, tho' I condescend

265

Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

I was not born for Courts or great affairs;

I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray'rs;
Can sleep without a Poem in my head;

Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead1.

270

Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?

Heav'ns! was I born for nothing but to write?
Has Life no joys for me? or, (to be grave)
Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?

"I found him close with Swift -'Indeed? no doubt,'

275

(Cries prating Balbus) something will come out."
'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.
'No, such a Genius never can lie still;'
And then for mine obligingly mistakes

The first Lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo3 makes.
Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,
When ev'ry Coxcomb knows me by my Style?
Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed Virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fall'n worth, or Beauty in distress,
Who loves a Lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a Libel, or who copies out:

That Fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,

1 After v. 270 in the MS.
'Friendships from youth I sought, and seek them
still:

Fame, like the wind, may breathe where'er it will.
The World I knew, but made it not my School,
And in a course of flatt'ry liv'd no fool.'

2 Sir William Yonge. Bowles. ['A man whose fluency and readiness of speech amounted to a fault, and were often urged as a reproach, and of whom Sir Robert Walpole himself always said that nothing but Y.'s character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character." Lord Stanhope. He was a supporter of Walpole's.]

3 [Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, the author of a well known Diary and the confidential adviser of Frederick Prince of Wales. He is a character typical in many respects of his age; utterly unconscientious and cheerfully blind to his unconscientiousness; and

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a liberal rather than discriminating patron of literary men. He died in 1762.]

4 After v. 282 in the MS.

P. What if I sing Augustus, great and good?
A. You did so lately, was it understood?
P. Be nice no more, but, with a mouth profound,
As rumbling D-s* or a Norfolk hound;
With GEORGE and FRED'RIC roughen every verse,
Then smooth up all, and CAROLINE rehearse.
A. No-the high talk to lift up Kings to Gods
Leave to Court-sermons, and to birth-day Odes.
On themes like these, superior far to thine,
Let laurell'd Cibber, and great Arnalt shine.
P. Why write at all? A. Yes, silence if you keep,
The Town, the Court, the Wits, the Dunces weep.
Warburton.

* [Dennis.]

[See Dunciad, bk. ii. v. 315.]

5 [Contrast with the self-complacency of Pope Dryden's noble lines of self-reproach in the Elegy on Anne Killigrew.]