friendship, goodnature, humanity, and maguanimity." These are the qualities enforced in the poem, and whether the description of Dennis, under the name of Appius, was a faithful likeness or a caricature, the attack was at variance with the precepts which accompanied it. Pope insisted that the specification of faults, to be useful, must be delicate and courteous. He laid down the proposition at ver. 573, that "blunt truths do more mischief than nice falsehoods," and at ver. 576, that "without good breeding truth is disapproved." At the interval of six lines he exemplified the urbanity he enjoined by a derisive sketch which could only be intended to injure and exasperate. The inconsistency did not stop here. He prefaced the obnoxious passage by the maxim, "those best can bear reproof who merit praise," and the sketch of Dennis is an illustration of the opposite character. Was Pope a man who bore reproof with the fortitude which entitled him to scoff at others for their irritability? He certainly sometimes drew a flattering picture of his own equanimity and forbearance. He assures us at ver. 741, that he was "careless of censure." He told Spence, that he never much minded what his angry critics published against him,-only one or two things at first." "When," 66 he added, "I heard for the first time that Dennis had written against me, it gave me some pain; but it was quite over as soon as I came to look into his book, and found he was in such a passion." In the Prologue to the Satires, he represents himself to have been a perfect model of candour and amiability, and says of the objections of his correctors, If wrong I smiled; if right I kissed the rod.2 But he could seldom keep long to one version of any subject, and the truth comes out in his first Imitation of Horace : Peace is my dear delight,-not Fleury's more, His mind was His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. like inflamed flesh; the touch which a healthy constitution would have disregarded, tortured and enraged him; his smile was a vindictive jeer; and he used with acrimony the rod he professed to kiss. His soreness at censure was the very cause of his charging the weaknes upon Dennis. He was angry at the disparagement of his Pastorals, and because he himself was testy, he ridiculed the testiness of his critic. The accusation, according to Dennis, was a malicious invention. "If a man," he said, "is remarkable for the extraordinary deference which he pays to the opinions and 1 Spence, p. 208. 2 Ver. 158. 3 Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. Sat. 1, ver. 75. remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience under reproof. Though docility was not the virtue of Dennis, his failing was probably overcharged in the Essay on Criticism, for unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope. In retaining a grudge against those who wounded his self-esteem, Pope did not disdain to profit by their spiteful censorship. "I will make my enemy," he said to Caryll, "do me a kindness where he meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend," and he requested Trumbull to tell him "where Dennis had hit any blots." 2 He cared too much for his works to be influenced by the stubborn pride which cannot stoop to confess an error. Where the criticism has not been inspired by malice, authors in general have not been intolerant of their critics. Coleridge relates that his thankfulness to the reviewers of his juvenile poems was sincere, when they concurred in condemning his obscurity, turgid language, and profusion of double epithets. Of the obscurity he was unconscious, "and my mind,” he says, was not then sufficiently disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for my own conviction." “The glitter both of thought and diction" he pruned with an unsparing hand, "though, in truth," he adds, "these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. "3 The candour and maliness are charming, but it must not be overlooked that the magnanimity diminishes as the mental capacity increases. Wakefield well remarks that one reason why those who merit praise can best bear reproof is, that the reproof is either counterbalanced by praise, or by the inward consciousness that the merit is great and will prevail. Inferior writers have not the same cousolation. The chief advantage after all which authors derive from the enumeration of their defects is, that it teaches them modesty, and the true limits of their powers. They are seldom able to mend. The qualities they lack are not within their reach; for the mind cannot rise above itself, and has little pliancy when once it has taken its bent. 4 The notice in the Spectator must have been doubly welcome to Pope after the invective and cavils of Dennis. In our own country," says Addison, "a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderus, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he makes his entrance into the world. am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among Dennis's Reflections, p. 22. 2 Pope to Caryll, June 25, 1711; Pope to Trumbull, Aug. 10, 1711. Biographia Literaria, ed. 1817, vol. i. p. 3. 4 Wakefield's Works of Pope, p. 168. I the best judges, has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine poem, -I mean the Art of Criticism, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece of its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the later ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but very few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we chiefly admire.” Pope was delighted. "Moderate praise," he said to Steele, whom he erroneously supposed to have held the pen, encourages a young writer, but a great deal may injure him; and you have been so lavish in this point that I almost hope,—not to call in question your judgment in the piece-that it was some particular inclination to the author which carried you so far." He accepted in good part the admonition for disparaging his "brother moderns," and expressed his willingness to omit the "strokes" in another edition. He detected none of the "ill-nature" which Warton saw lurking in the phrase "that some of the observations were uncommon." Addison was familiar with the sources from which the Essay was compiled, and could hardly have been ignorant that even the " some was a generous license. He pleaded more plausibly for the work when he contended that wit consisted in presenting old thoughts in a better dress, and that the "known truths" in the poem were "placed in so beautiful a light, that they had all the graces of novelty." The charge brought later by Pope against Addison, of viewing him with jealous eyes, suggested to Warton his strained imputation, which is not warranted by the expression he quotes, and is contradicted by the genial tone of the praise. Addison at the time had no acquaintance with Pope. The eulogy on the Essay was spontaneous, and an envious rival would never have adopted the suicidal device of voluntarily publishing a strong panegyric in a periodical which every one read, and of which the decisions were accepted for law. The truth is, that Addison, by his encomiums and authority, brought into vogue the exaggerated estimate entertained of the Essay. The authors of the next generation read it in their boyhood, and were taught that it was a model of its kind. Juvenile impressions retain their hold, and upon no other supposition could we understand the preposterous opinion of Johnson, that the work set Pope "among the first critics and the first poets," and that he " never afterwards excelled it." Warton disputed the rank assigned to the poet, and assented to the claim put forth for the critic, which was equally untenable. He was misled by his relish for platitudes. "I propose," he said, "to make some observations on such passages and precepts in this Essay as, on account of their utility, novelty, or elegance, deserve particular attention," and his opening specimen of these merits is the line, In poets as true genius is but rare.1 He selected for distinction several other remarks which were not more exquisite in their form, or recondite in their substance. Hazlitt took up the strain of Johnson and Warton. "The Rape of the Lock," he says, "is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful; unless we adopt the supposition that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus, in reasoning on the variety of men's opinions, he says, 'Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined one." " De Quincey, a subtler and sounder critic than Hazlitt, boldly challenged decisions Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 108. 2 Lectures on the English Poets, 3rd ed. p. 142. which had passed, but little questioned, from mouth to mouth. "The Essay on Criticism," he says, "is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical multiplication table, of common-places the most mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps. The maxims have no natural order or logical dependency, are generally so vague as to mean nothing, and what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man as often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this very poem." 29 1 The matter of the Essay is not rated, in this passage, below its value. "I admired," said Lady Mary W. Montagu, "Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism at first very much, because I had not then read any of the ancient critics, and did not know that it was all stolen." 2 Pope had found the bulk of his materials nearer home. He told Spence that in his youth "he went through all the best critics," and specified Quintilian, Rapin, and Bossu.3 He states in his Essay, ver. 712, that "critic-learning," in modern times, "flourished most in France," and in fact the Rapins and Bossus were his principal masters. They had been brought into credit with our countrymen by Dryden. "Impartially speaking," he said, in his Dedication to the Eneis, "the French are as much better critics than the English as they are worse poets." He had a wonderful faith in the virtue of their precepts. "Spenser," he said, "wanted only to have read the rules of Bossu; for no man was ever born with a greater genius, or had more knowledge to support it." He compared the French critics to generals, and our celebrated poets to common soldiers; the poet executed what the commanding mind of the critic planned. The treatises which would have perfected the genius of Spenser were shallow drowsy productions, compounded of truisms, pedantic fallacies, and doctrines borrowed from antiquity. Pope culled most of his maxims from these, and other modern works. Many of his remarks were the common property of the civilised world. A slight acquaintance with books and men is sufficient to teach us that people are partial to their own judgment, that some authors are not qualified to be poets, wits, or critics, and that critics should not launch beyond their depth. Such profound reflections, kept up throughout the Essay, owed their credit to the disguising properties of verse. Along with the singular nicety of distinction, and knowledge of mankind, Johnson detected a no less surprising range of ancient and modern learning. Pope mentions Homer, Virgil, and half a dozen Greek and Latin critics. He has characterised some of these critics in a manner 1 De Quincey's Works, ed. 1862, vol. vii. p. 64; xv. p. 142. * Spence, p. 176. Spence, p. 147, 211. 4 Dryden's Virgil, ed. Carey, vol. ii. p. xxxii., lxxxviii. 4 |