His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, 325 Amphibious thing! that acting either part, 330 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad; 1 The only trait perhaps of the whole [character of Sporus] that is not either false or overcharged, is Hervey's love for antithesis, which Pulteney had already ridiculed.... His parliamentary speeches were, as Warton says, very far above florid impotence; but they were in favour of the Ministry, and that was sufficiently offensive to Pope.' Croker, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, Biogr. Notice. But stoop'd to Truth,] The term is from falconry; and the allusion to one of those untamed birds of spirit, which sometimes wantons at large in airy circles before it regards, or stoops to, its prey. Warburton. 3[i.e. made his poetry Moral, in both senses of the term.] the lie so oft o'erthrown] As, that he re 335 340 345 350 355 360 ceived subscriptions for Shakespear, that he set his name to Mr Broome's verses, &c. which, tho' publicly disproved were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epistle. P. 5 Th' imputed trash,] Such as profane Psalms, Court-Poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his Name by Curll and others. P. 6 Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,] Namely on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr Swift, Dr Arbuthnot, Mr Gay, his Friends, his Parents, and his very Nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons. P. P. A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state: 1['Like Knights o' th' Post, and falsely charge Upon themselves what others forge.' Hudibras, Part 1 Canto 1. The so-called 'Knights of the Post' stood about the sheriff's pillars near the courts, in readiness to swear anything for pay. See R. Bell's note ad loc.] 2 Ver. 368 in the MS. 'Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit. 355 370 375 380 the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Dr Tindal, in the Grub-street Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least hand, direction, or supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Author. P. [He reappears in the Dunciad, II. v. 397.] 7 except his Will;] Alluding to Tindal's Will: by which, and other indirect practices, Budgell, to the exclusion of the next heir, a nephew, got to himself almost the whole fortune of a man entirely unrelated to him. P. [Budgel was believed to have forged a will purporting to be by Dr Matthew Tindal, the author of Christianity Where Woman's is the sin, and Man's the as old as the Creation.] shame.' [Again alluding to Lady Mary.] 3 [V. ante, note to v. 48.] A ten years] It was so long after many libels before the Author of the Dunciad published that poem, till when, he never writ a word in answer to the many scurrilities and falsehoods concerning him. P. Welsted's lie.] This man had the impudence to tell in print, that Mr P. had occasioned a Lady's death, and to name a person he never heard of He also publish'd that he libell'd the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had lived in familiarity, and received from him a present of five hundred pounds: the falsehood of both which is known to his Grace. Mr P. never received any present, farther than the subscription for Homer, from him, or from Any great Man whatsoever. P. [Compare Dunciad, II. vv. 207-210.] Let Budgel Budgel, in a weekly pamphlet called the Bee, bestowed much abuse on him, in 8 His father, mother, &c.] In some of Curll's and other pamphlets, Mr Pope's father was said to be a Mechanic, a Hatter, a Farmer, nay a Bankrupt. But, what is stranger, a Nobleman (if such a Reflection could be thought to come from a Nobleman) had dropt an allusion to that pitiful untruth, in a paper called an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity: And the following line, Hard as thy Heart, and as thy Birth obscure, had fallen from a like Courtly pen, in certain Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Mr Pope's Father was of a Gentleman's Family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole Heiress married the Earl of Lindsey. His mother was the daughter of William Turnor, Esq. of York: she had three brothers, one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family-Mr Pope died in 1717, aged 75; she in 1733, aged 93, a very few That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore: 385 cause, While yet in Britain Honour had applause) Each parent sprung1- A. What fortune, pray? P. Their own, 391 Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife3, 7. The good man walk'd innoxious thro' his age. 395 4CO Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy 'than 15% 405 Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine: To rock the cradle of reposing Age, Me, let the tender office long engage, With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath, 410 Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death, May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend, weeks after this poem was finished. The following inscription was placed by their son on their Monument in the parish of Twickenham, in Middlesex. D. O. M. ALEXANDRO. POPE. VIRO. INNOCVO. PROBO. PIO. PIENTISSIMAE. QVAE. VIXIT. ANNOS. XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII. PARENTIBVS. BENEMERENTIBVS. FILIVS. FECIT. ET. SIBI. P. 1 [See Introductory Memoir, p. viii.] 2 [L. Calpurnius Bestia, who here seems to signify the Duke of Marlborough, was a Roman proconsul, bribed by Jugurtha into a dishonourable peace.] 3 Alluding to Addison's marriage with the 415 Countess of Warwick, and Dryden's with Lady 4 He was a nonjuror, and would not take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, or the oath against the Pope. Bowles. 5 After v. 405 in the MS. 'And of myself, too, something must I say? 6 And just as rich as when he serv'd a Queen.] An honest compliment to his Friend's real and unaffected disinterestedness, when he was the favourite Physician of Queen Anne. Warburton. SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. ADVERTISEMENT. THE Occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on some of my Epistles. An Answer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the Example of much greater Freedom in so eminent a Divine as Dr Donne, seem'd a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat Vice or Folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a Station. Both these Authors were acceptable to the Princes and Ministers under whom they lived. The Satires of Dr Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State; neither of whom look'd upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they serv'd in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which Fools are so apt to fall into, and Knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a Satirist for a Libeller; whereas to a true Satirist nothing is so odious as a Libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a Hypocrite. Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis. P. ['Whoever,' says Warburton, 'expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing in these Imitations, will be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his own, without scruple or ceremony.' 'He deemed it more modest,' felicitously adds the same authority, 'to give the name of Imitations to his Satires, than, like Despreaux' [Boileau], 'to give the name of Satires to Imitations.' 'In two large columns,' wrote a less kindly critic, from whom impartiality could hardly be expected, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (alluding to the juxtaposition of the Latin and English texts), 'In two large columns, on thy motley page proceeded, from this pleasant allusion to Pope's Homer, to explain the moral obliquities of her detractor by his defects of person, birth and nature. It was not to be expected that Sappho would sing the praises of these Imitations; and the question remains, to what species of composition they belong, and what rank they hold among efforts of that species. They are not Translations; neither of the close nor of the loose kind, and are therefore at once removed from comparison even with Dryden's magnificent versions, splendid in their very faults, of Juvenal. Nor do they properly bear the name of Imitations; for an Imitation of an earlier author is an attempt to produce a poem in his style and manner, though not necessarily on the same subject. Thomson's Castle of Indolence is an Imitation of Spenser; Johnson's London is an Imitation of Boileau, or, indeed, of Oldham and of Pope himself. But Pope differs quite sufficiently in manner and style from Horace to place his so-called 'Imitations' out of the category to which they assume to belong. They are rather Adaptations, or as Warburton has correctly suggested, Parodies; in other words, they take as much of the ancient form as suits the purposes of the modern poet, they occasionally cling closely to its outlines, occasionly desert them altogether. It was the form which came most readily, and originally almost accidentally, to Pope's hands; and which he justly thought himself free to use in his own way. The example of the First Epistle of the Second Book will best illustrate these remarks. In Pope's 'Imitation' the original is here turned upside down, and what in Horace is a panegyric, in the English poem becomes a covert satire. As Pope meant to suggest that George II. was a parody on Augustus, so his Epistle is a parody on, and not an imitation of, the Latin poem. It is therefore obvious that any comparison or contrast between the Latin and English poets, interesting and suggestive as it doubtless is from other points of view, is idle with reference to the relation between these 'Imitations' and their 'originals. Warburton is true to his self-imposed task of vindicating the Christian orthodoxy of Pope, in pointing out, ever and anon, passages where the latter has substituted for the Epicurean heresies of the genial Roman turns of thought more becoming the friend of an embryo bishop. Horace designed his Satires and Epistles as humorous sketches of society, seasoned with such personal allusions as appeared necessary to enliven his pictures, or as suggested themselves to a ready wit which can never teach a lesson without applying it. What with him was ornament, with Pope was purpose. Whatever may have been the philosophical system with which Warburton laboured so hard to credit him, the centre of that system was Pope; nor were his friends and foes so much introduced into these Imitations to point morals, as the morals preached to introduce his friends and foes, and himself. The ease with which Pope moved in a form which imposed no restraint on his wit, makes these 'Imitations' the most enjoyable of all his productions. He closed the last Dialogue of the 'Epilogue' with an announcement of his resolution never to publish any more poems of the kind. Yet it was at the time (1741) when he was meditating a new Dunciad that he informed Lord Marchmont that uneasy desire of fame' and 'keen resentment of injuries' were 'both asleep together;' and even if we regard as spurious the fragment of an unpublished Satire entitled 1740,' found among his papers by Bolingbroke, and full of personal allusions to 'Bub,' and 'Hervey' and others, we may remain in doubt, whether had he lived he would or could have adhered to his determination. But he had done enough to establish himself as the unapproached master of personal satire in a poetic form; and to damn a multitude of victims, helpless against the strokes of genius, to everlasting fame.] |