Transcriber's Note:

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THE WORKS
OF
ALEXANDER POPE.

NEW EDITION.

INCLUDING

SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER NEW MATERIALS.

COLLECTED IN PART BY THE LATE

R^T. HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER.

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES.

BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN.

VOL. II.

POETRY.—VOL. II.

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.

[The right of Translation is reserved.]

LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

Frontispiece to Pope's Works, Vol. II.

Frontispiece to the Essay on Man, designed by Pope to represent the vanity of human glory.

Transcriber's Note:

The original did not have a table of contents covering the whole volume; this has been added.

Table of Contents

[AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.]
[APPENDIX.]
[THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF W. WARBURTON ON THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM.]
[RAPE OF THE LOCK.]
[ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY.]
[ELOISA TO ABELARD.]
[AN ESSAY ON MAN.]
[THE ARGUMENT.]
[THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.]
[APPENDIX.]
[NOTES on "An Essay on Man".]
[ NOTES OF W. WARBURTON ON THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.]
[FOOTNOTES.]

[AN]
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709.

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM,

4to.

London: Printed for W. Lewis, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden; and sold by W. Taylor, at the Ship, in Pater-Noster-Row, T. Osborn, in Gray's-Inn, near the Walks, and J. Graves, in St. James's Street. 1711.

Warton says that the poem was "first advertised in the Spectator, No. 65, May 15th, 1711." Pope informed Caryll that a thousand copies were printed. Lewis, the publisher, was a Roman Catholic, and an old schoolfellow of the poet.

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Written by Mr. Pope.

The second edition, 8vo.

London: Printed for W. Lewis, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden, 1713.

Though the date on the title page is 1713, Isaac Reed states that the second edition was advertised in the Spectator on November 22, 1712. It was a common practice to substitute the date of the coming, for that of the expiring, year. A third and fourth edition in a smaller type and size came out in 1713. In 1714, the poem was appended to the second edition of Lintot's Miscellanies, by some arrangement with Lewis, whose name appears upon the title page of that particular edition of the Miscellanies as joint publisher. On July 17, 1716, Lintot purchased the remainder of the copyright for £15, preparatory to inserting the piece in the quarto of 1717. He brought out a sixth octavo edition of the essay in 1719, and a seventh in 1722, and reprinted the poem in each of the four editions of his Miscellanies which were published between 1720 and 1732.

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Written in the year 1709. With the Commentary and Notes of W. Warburton, A.M. 4to.

The Essay on Criticism has no date, but on the title page of the "Essay on Man," which appeared in the same volume is, "London: Printed by W. Bowyer for M. Cooper, at the Globe in Pater-Noster Row. 1743." Pope, writing to Warburton on October 7, 1743, says, "I have given Bowyer your comment on the Essay on Criticism this week, and he shall lose no time with the rest." On Jan. 12, 1744, he tells his commentator that the publication had been delayed by the advice of Bowyer, and on Feb. 21, he writes word that he shall keep it back till Warburton goes to town. There is no doubt that the edition was printed in 1743, and published in 1744.

In the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience. It was published about two years afterwards, and being praised by Addison in the Spectator, with sufficient liberality, met with so much favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself attacked without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity." How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope's character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently of his own virtues. Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wantonly; but though he always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom.

Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it." The gentlemen and the education of that time seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression. Dennis was not his only censurer. The zealous papists thought the monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but to these objections he had not much regard. The Essay has been translated into French by Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grammont, whose version was never printed; by Robotham, secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel; and commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by the author. Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand, whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. "It is possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction from any one truth, all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous truths, at least of all truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed such as, when it is once shown, shall appear natural; but if this order be reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or made. Aristotle is praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be practised; but he might with equal propriety have placed prudence and justice before it, since without prudence fortitude is mad, without justice it is mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity, and where there is no obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method.

The Essay on Criticism is one of Pope's greatest works, and if he had written nothing else, would have placed him among the first critics and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactic composition—selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it. He that delights himself with observing that such powers may be soon attained, cannot but grieve to think that life was ever after at a stand. To mention the particular beauties of the essay, would be unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe that the comparison of a student's progress in the sciences with the journey of a traveller in the Alps, is perhaps the best that English poetry can show. A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates though it does not ennoble; in heroics that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that circumstances were sometimes added which, having no parallels, served only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously called "comparisons with a long tail." In their similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed. The ship race compared with the chariot race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference. When Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god, are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and a dog. The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.

Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph in which it is directed that the sound should seem an echo to the sense,—a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet. This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as thump, rattle, growl, hiss. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a soft line and a soft couch, or between hard syllables and hard fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified, and yet it may be suspected that in such resemblances the mind often governs the idea, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of their most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus:

With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:

While many a merry tale, and many a song,
Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long;

The rough road then, returning in a round,
Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.

We have surely now lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity. But to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet who tells us that

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;

when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon sound and time, and produced this memorable triplet:

Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.

Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of swiftness by one time longer than that of tardiness. Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied, and when real are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be solicited.—Johnson.

The Essay on Criticism is a poem of that species for which our author's genius was particularly turned,—the didactic and moral. It is therefore, as might be expected, a master-piece in its kind. I have been sometimes inclined to think that the praises Addison has bestowed on it were a little partial and invidious. "The observations," says he, "follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer." It is, however, certain that the poem before us is by no means destitute of a just integrity, and a lucid order.[1] Each of the precepts and remarks naturally introduce the succeeding ones, so as to form an entire whole. The Spectator adds, "The observations in this Essay are some of them uncommon." There is, I fear, a small mixture of ill-nature in these words; for this Essay, though on a beaten subject, abounds in many new remarks and original rules, as well as in many happy and beautiful illustrations and applications of the old ones. We are, indeed, amazed to find such a knowledge of the world, such a maturity of judgment, and such a penetration into human nature, as are here displayed, in so very young a writer as was Pope when he produced this Essay, for he was not twenty years old. Correctness and a just taste are usually not attained but by long practice and experience in any art; but a clear head and strong sense were the characteristical qualities of our author, and every man soonest displays his radical excellences. If his predominant talent be warmth and vigour of imagination it will break out in fanciful and luxuriant descriptions, the colouring of which will perhaps be too rich and glowing. If his chief force lies in the understanding rather than in the imagination, it will soon appear by solid and manly observations on life or learning, expressed in a more chaste and subdued style. The former will frequently be hurried into obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction; the latter will seldom hazard a figure whose usage is not already established, or an image beyond common life; will always be perspicuous if not elevated; will never disgust if not transport his readers; will avoid the grosser faults if not arrive at the greater beauties of composition. When we consider the just taste, the strong sense, the knowledge of men, books, and opinions that are so predominant in the Essay on Criticism, we must readily agree to place the author among the first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, "among the first poets," on this account alone. As a poet he must rank much higher for his Eloïsa and Rape of the Lock. The Essay, it is said, was first written in prose, according to the precept of Vida, and the practice of Racine, who was accustomed to draw out in plain prose, not only the subject of each of the five acts, but of every scene, and every speech, that he might see the conduct and coherence of the whole at one view, and would then say, "My tragedy is finished."—Warton.

Most of the observations in this Essay are just, and certainly evince good sense, an extent of reading, and powers of comparison, considering the age of the author, extraordinary. Johnson's praise however is exaggerated.—Bowles.

"Essay" in Pope's day was used in its now obsolete sense of an attempt. Stephens in 1648 entitled his translation of the five first books of the Thebais "an Essay upon Statius:" and Denham's "Essay on the second book of Virgil's Æneis" is a version and not a dissertation. "I have undertaken," Dryden wrote to Walsh, "to translate all Virgil; and as an essay have already paraphrased the third Georgic as an example." Two quotations in Johnson's Dictionary,—one from Dryden, the other from Glanville,—show that the word was usually understood to imply diffidence. Dryden, in his Epistle to Roscommon, says,

Yet modestly he does his work survey,
And calls a finished poem an essay;

and Glanville says, "This treatise prides itself in no higher a title than that of an essay, or imperfect attempt at a subject." Locke named his great and elaborate work an "Essay on the Human Understanding," from the consciousness that it was an "imperfect attempt," and when hostile critics refused him the benefit of his modest title, he answered that they did his book an honour "in not suffering it to be an essay." Pope borrowed both the word, and the plan of his poem, from some works which enjoyed in his youth a credit far beyond their worth,—the Essay on Translated Verse by the Earl of Roscommon, and the Essay on Satire, and the Essay on Poetry by the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham. These small productions had been suggested in their turn by Horace's Art of Poetry, and its modern imitations. Roscommon and Mulgrave, men of common-place minds, were incapable of originality, and Pope, with the latent genius of a leader, was a follower in early years.

"The things that I have written fastest," said Pope to Spence, "have always pleased the most. I wrote the Essay on Criticism fast; for I had digested all the matter in prose before I began upon it in verse."[2] This last circumstance was mentioned by Warton in his Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, long before the Anecdotes of Spence were published, and Johnson commented upon the statement in his review of Warton's work. "There is nothing," he said, "improbable in the report, nothing indeed but what is more likely than the contrary; yet I cannot forbear to hint the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relators."[3] The caution was not intended to discredit the evidence of Spence. Warton had suppressed his authority, and Johnson had a proper mistrust of common hearsay.

On the title-page of the poem in the quarto of 1717, it is said, that it was "written in the year 1709," to which Richardson has attached the note, "Mr. Pope told me himself that the Essay on Criticism was, indeed, written 1707, though said 1709 by mistake." The poet continued the alleged mistake through all succeeding revisions. The quarto of 1743 was the last edition he superintended, and 1709 appears as usual upon the title-page, but Warburton announced in the final sentence of the commentary, that the Essay was "the work of an author who had not attained the twentieth year of his age," and as the author was born in May, 1688, he must, according to this testimony, have completed his task before May, 1708, which confirms the account of Richardson. Pope had thus assigned one date to his piece on the first page of the quarto of 1743, and sanctioned the promulgation of a different date on the concluding page. There is the same contradiction in his conversations with Spence. "My Essay on Criticism," he said on one occasion, "was written in 1709, and published in 1711, which is as little time as ever I let anything of mine lay by me."[4] This agrees with the printed title-page. "I showed Walsh," he said to Spence on another occasion, "my Essay on Criticism in 1706. He died the year after."[5] This falls in with the evidence of Richardson and Warburton; for Walsh died on March 15, 1708, and 1706 was an error for 1707. The double date reappears in a note to the Pope Letters of 1735, solely through a change in the punctuation. "Mr. Walsh," it was said in some copies, "died at 49 years old, in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on Criticism." "Mr. Walsh," it was said in other copies, "died at 49 years old in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on Criticism." In the first version it is asserted that the poem was written in 1709, or the year after Mr. Walsh died; in the second version it is asserted that it was written in 1707, and that Mr. Walsh died the year after. Such a series of conflicting statements could not all be accidental. When Pope published the quarto edition of his Letters in 1737, he again altered the note. "Mr. Walsh," he then said, "died at 49 years old, in the year 1708, the year before the Essay on Criticism was printed," which informs us of the new fact that it was printed a couple of years before it was published, and since the poet assured Spence that it was written two or three years before it was printed,[6] we have the date of its composition once more thrown back to 1707. Pope forgot the confession in the poem, ver. 735-740, that in consequence of having "lost his guide" by the death of Walsh, he was afraid to attempt ambitious themes, and selected the Essay on Criticism as a topic suited to "low numbers." However fictitious may have been the reason he assigned for the choice of his subject, he there admits that he did not form the design till after the death of his friend in March 1708. In his later statements he oscillated between the truth, and the desire to magnify the precocity of his genius. He was always ambitious of the kind of praise which Johnson bestows upon the Essay, when he calls it "the stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty." But at whatever period the poem was first written, it did not appear till May, 1711, and represents the capacity of Pope at twenty-three. He avowedly kept his pieces long in manuscript for the purpose of maturing and polishing them, and they were as good as he could make them at the period when they finally left his hands.

The Essay on Criticism was published anonymously. Warton was informed by Lewis the bookseller, that "it laid many days in his shop unnoticed and unread." Pope wrote word to Caryll, July 19, 1711, that he did not expect it would ever arrive at a second edition. Piqued, said Lewis, at the neglect, the poet one day directed copies to several great men, and among others to Lord Lansdowne, and the Duke of Buckingham. These presents caused the work to be talked about.[7] The name of the author, which soon transpired, assisted the sale, and the paper of Addison in the Spectator on December 20, 1711, brought the Essay under the notice of the entire reading world, though it was still another twelvemonth before the thousand copies were exhausted.

The notoriety, if not the sale, of the Essay on Criticism must have been promoted by the angry pamphlet put forth by Dennis six months before the laudatory paper of Addison appeared in the Spectator.[8] Dennis was the only living writer who was openly abused in the poem, and there was an asperity in the language which savoured of personal hostility. He and Pope were slightly acquainted. "At his first coming to town," says Dennis, "he was very importunate with the late Mr. Henry Cromwell to introduce him to me. The recommendation of Mr. Cromwell engaged me to be about thrice in company with him; after which I went into the country, and neither saw him, nor thought of him, till I found myself insolently attacked by him in his very superficial Essay on Criticism."[9] A passage quoted by Bowles from Pope's Prologue to the Satires reveals the cause of the enmity:

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 stream.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answered,—I was not in debt.[10]

Here we learn that Dennis thought meanly of Pope's Pastorals. The critic had enough taste for true poetry to despise the conventional puerilities which, more than "pure description, held the place of sense" in these juvenile effusions. He frequented the coffee-houses where authors congregated, he indulged in professional talk, and his unfavourable judgment was sure to get round to Pope. The irritation at the time must have been great, since the censure continued to rankle in the mind of the poet at the distance of five-and-twenty years. His memory was less faithful when he claimed credit for not replying. He found it convenient to forget that he had seized an early opportunity for retaliating in the Essay on Criticism.

Dennis complained that "he was attacked in a clandestine manner in his person instead of his writings." "How the attack," says Johnson, "was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated." Evidently Dennis termed the attack clandestine, because the Essay was anonymous, and his assailant concealed. Pope, however, had not been studious of secrecy among his acquaintances, and Dennis showed in his pamphlet that he knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal. His assertion, denied by Johnson, that he was attacked "in his person instead of his writings" is clearly correct, unless, contrary to usage, the word is restricted to what is indelible in a man's bodily make. To say that he reddened at every word of objection, and stared tremendous with a threatening eye, like the fierce tyrants depicted in old tapestry, was to represent his personal bearing and appearance in an offensive light. Pope himself disclaimed the personality. "I cannot conceive," he wrote to Caryll, June 25, 1711, "what ground he has for so excessive a resentment, nor imagine how those three lines can be called a reflection on his person which only describe him subject to a little colour and stare on some occasions, which are revolutions that happen sometimes in the best and most regular faces in Christendom." The description, in other words, was not a reflection upon the person of Dennis, because some persons with handsome faces were liable to the same infirmity, and no satire was personal which did not declare a man to be radically ugly. That the resentment might seem the more unreasonable, the stare tremendous and threatening eye, were softened down to a "little stare." This was characteristic of Pope. He was not afraid to strike, but when the blow was resented, he frequently made a hasty and ignominious retreat. Either he pretended that the satire was not aimed at the individuals who called him to account, or he gave a mitigated and erroneous version of his lampoons.

Pope lashed Dennis for an intemperance of manner which could be controlled at will. Dennis upbraided Pope with a deformity which he had not caused and could not cure. "If you have a mind," said the infuriated critic, "to enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham, for a young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love, you will be soon directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have taken a survey of him, tell me whether he is a proper author to make personal reflections on others. This little author may extol the ancients as much, and as long as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was born a modern, for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems,—the life of half a day."[11] There was a wide difference between ridiculing the distortions of countenance which grew out of irascible vanity, and mocking at defects which were a misfortune, and not a fault. But Pope's lines were insulting, and a man of the world would have foreseen that Dennis would repel insult by scurrility. The poet was as yet a novice in the coarse personalities of that abusive age, and he had not anticipated such brutal raillery. "The latter part of Mr. Dennis's book," he wrote to Caryll, "is no way to be properly answered, but by a wooden weapon, and I should perhaps have sent him a present from Windsor Forest of one of the best and toughest oaken plants between Sunninghill and Oakingham if he had not informed me in his preface that he is at this time persecuted by fortune. This, I protest, I knew not the least of before; if I had, his name had been spared in the Essay for that only reason."[12] Pope could no more compete with Dennis in personal prowess, than Dennis could compete in satire with Pope. His assigned reason for not executing his empty vaunt was equally hollow. He was not wont to spare his enemies out of consideration for their necessities, but taunted them with their forlorn condition, and, true to his custom, the persecution of fortune, which he said would have induced him to suppress his satire upon Dennis, was made the ingredient of a fresh satire at a future day:

I never answered; I was not in debt.

The insinuation was unjust. Violent, and often wrong-headed, Dennis spoke his genuine sentiments, and was not more a hireling than Pope, or any other author who earns money by his pen. The poor debtor could not have bartered his honour for a sorrier bribe. The pamphlet on the Essay on Criticism consisted of thirty-two octavo pages of small print, with a preface of five pages, and he received for it 2l. 12s. 6d.

Dennis urged as an aggravation of the "falsehood and calumny" in the Essay, that they proceeded from a "little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity." 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," 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."[13] 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.[14]

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,
But touch me, and no minister so sore.[15]

His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. His mind was 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 weakness 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 remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience under reproof."[16] 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."[17] 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."[18] The candour and manliness 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.[19] Inferior writers have not the same consolation. 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.

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 moderns, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he makes his entrance into the world. I am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among 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."[20] 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.[21] 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.[22]

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."[23] De Quincey, a subtler and sounder critic than Hazlitt, boldly challenged decisions 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."[24] 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."[25] 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.[26] 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 Æneis, "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.[27] 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 which betrays that he had never looked into their works, and what he says of the rest only required that he should know their writings by repute. All, and more than all, the classical information embodied in the Essay, might have been picked up from his French manuals in a single morning.

A didactic poet who draws his precepts from the truisms and current publications of his day, could not at twenty-three deserve credit for precocity of learning or thought. He might still manifest an early maturity of judgment in sifting the insignificant from the important, the true from the false. Pope did not avoid the trite, but he is said to have evinced a rare capacity for discriminating the true. Bowles agrees with Johnson and Warton that "the good sense in the Essay is extraordinary considering the age of the author," and it is pronounced "an uncommon effort of critical good sense" by Hallam, conspicuous himself for sense and sobriety.[28] Whoever looks through the speciousness of rhyme, and views the ideas in their naked meaning, will be much more struck by the want of good sense in the principal critical canons. They are not even "extraordinary for the age of the author;" versed as he was in English literature they are below his years. They are the narrow, erroneous dogmas of a youth fresh from school-boy studies, who imagined that the Greeks and Romans had ransacked the illimitable realms of genius and taste, and swept off the whole of the spoils. He broadly asserted this doctrine in the poetical creed which he prefixed to his works.[29] He was at least old enough then to know better, from whence it is clear that the common statements respecting him are the opposite of the truth. He did not display the ripe judgment of manhood in his juvenile criticism; he remained a boy in criticism when he was a man.

Follow nature, said Pope, in his Essay, but beware of taking nature at first hand. Homer and nature are the same, and to copy nature is to copy the rules deduced from his works. The ancients sometimes deviated into excellence by throwing off their self-imposed shackles. The moderns must not presume to be irregularly great. They must keep to the precepts, and if they ever break a rule they must at least be able to quote a case precisely parallel from a classical author.[30] The English had not submitted to the wholesome restraint. They had been "fierce for the liberties of wit," and Pope avows his conviction that the entire race of English writers were therefore "uncivilised," with the exception of a few who had "restored among us wit's fundamental laws." He names the most illustrious of these reformers. They were three in number,—the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Roscommon, and Walsh.[31] The absurdity could not be exceeded. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton were "uncivilised" writers; they not only fell into minor errors, but set at nought the "fundamental laws" of poetry, while the persons who taught how English poetry was to be raised from its rude condition were a trio of prosy mediocrities, whose works might have been annihilated without leaving the smallest vacuum in literature. "The Duke of Buckingham," said Pope later, "was superficial in everything; even in poetry, which was his forte."[32]

Pope seems to have been unconscious of the vast metamorphose which the world had undergone since the close of the Greek and Roman eras. Religion, institutions, usages, opinions, all had changed. Society was in a ferment with new ideas; nations had been gathered out of new elements; characters were moulded under new influences, and the play of passions, interests, convictions, and policy had assumed new forms. This altered order of things was reflected in our poetry. The mighty men of genius who led the way could not have put aside their genuine thoughts to mimic works which, noble in themselves, were musty and obsolete in modern imitations. The vigorous races which had sprung up drew living pictures from their own minds; they were inspired by national and present sentiments; they stamped upon their verse the feelings, humours, and beliefs of their age. They borrowed from the classics, and sometimes with bad taste; but the extrinsic details they appropriated were not permitted to cramp the masculine elasticity of their native fancy and experience. The materials of the edifice, in the main, were no longer the same, and neither was the shape they assumed. The difference was as great as between a Grecian temple and a Gothic cathedral. The principles which governed the ancients in their compositions were confined, and did not give verge enough for that variety and picturesqueness among ourselves which demanded to be embodied in written words. The originality, which was our glory, appeared a vice to Pope. The adaptation of the structure to its complex purposes he believed to be a declension towards barbarism. He would have preferred that our magnificent English literature, instinct with the freshness of nature, and gathering into its huge circumference the growth of centuries, should have been reduced to a stale and meagre counterfeit. The ancients had the prerogative to make and break critical laws; the moderns must not dare to think for themselves. Genius had been free in Greece, and was to be altogether a slave in England. It cannot be urged in excuse for this protest against the independence of our literature that Pope had imbibed the prejudices of his generation. His doctrine was hacknied, but not allowed. He admits that it had few disciples,[33] and one of the three adherents he claimed did not belong to him. "Not only all present poets," wrote Dryden to Walsh, in 1693, "but all who are to come in England will thank you for freeing them from the too servile imitation of the ancients."[34] The rules of Pope could never have prevailed, for they were intrinsically false, and would have emasculated every national literature. The thoughts, words, and deeds of the actual world would not have been impressed upon its books; a gulf would have separated the sympathies of the reader from the feeble, monotonous unrealities of the author, and both author and reader would soon have grown sick of this unnatural effort to be artificial and dull.

An exclusive partisan of classical poetry, Pope did not the less denounce sectarians in wit, the contracted spirits "who the ancients only or the moderns prize," and he exhorted critics "to regard not if wit be old or new."[35] The contradiction in his principles was not accompanied by a corresponding contradiction in his practice, for in no part of his Essay did he rectify his injustice towards his countrymen. He had not one word of commendation for any great English poet, with the exception of Dryden, and him he chiefly extolled, in company with Denham and Waller, for his metrical euphony. Nay, Pope limited the fame of our most illustrious writers to barely threescore years, on the pretence that their language became partially obsolete, which would yet leave them an enormous advantage over dead tongues. Because "length of fame (our second life) is lost," he exhorted the public in common fairness to recognise merit betimes.[36] There was not a semblance of truth in his premise, nor was the plea which he grounded upon it admissible in his mouth. "How vain," he exclaimed, "that second life in other's breath,"[37] and if posthumous fame was worthless there was no claim for compensation. In reality the value is not in the posthumous fame, but in the anticipation which converts it into an immediate possession, the mind feasting in imagination upon plaudits to come. The successful author adds them to the chorus of present praise, and the unsuccessful creates for himself the fame he lacks. The parental partiality which appeals from contemporaries to posterity may deceive, but it soothes and sustains. "A reputation after death," said Jortin, "is like a favourable wind after a shipwreck."[38] Rather the faith in a future reputation is the preservative against shipwreck, unless when men are indifferent to literary immortality.

The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intellectual superiority. Of old the poets "who but endeavoured well," were praised by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights of Parnassus "employed their pains in spurning down others." Of old again the professional critic was "generous and fanned the poet's fire." Now critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had learned from him the art of criticism.[39] A freedom from jealousy, a liberality of eulogy were universal with pagans; malice and envy reigned supreme in Christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had the luxury of indulging in the vice he reprobated. He preached up "good-nature," he would suffer no leaven of "spleen and sour disdain,"[40] and his Essay throughout is a diatribe against English critics. The entire crew were spiteful blockheads without sense or principle. The excessive rancour points to some personal offence, and it is probable that his estimate of critics was regulated by their low opinion of his Pastorals, which was the chief work he had hitherto published. When he speaks of poets he keeps no better to the leniency he advocates. He would "sometimes have censure restrained, and would charitably let the dull be vain," upon the uncharitable allegation that the more they were corrected the worse they grew. He engrafts upon his recommendation of a "charitable silence," an invective against the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have not discovered that they are superannuated. For this inability to detect the decay of their faculties he calls them "shameless bards, impenitently bold."[41] No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be treated with tenderness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less excusable that it was certainly directed against his former friend Wycherley.

There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the minor positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth when he said of the whole that it was "very superficial." There remains the question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty of expression signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his work to be a combination of highly wrought passages, and of that more easy style described by Dryden, when he says—

And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose,
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.[42]

The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are far the best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile of the traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to his improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. One or two only are good; the rest have little point or appropriateness. Anxious to string together as many smart comparisons as possible, Pope was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of abusing paltry versifiers, he says,

Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.[43]

The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets become callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure; the meaning of the second that failure stimulated them to improvement. In the first couplet they proceed from drowsiness to slumber; in the second their false steps stir them up to mend their pace. They are first represented as proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad to better. The attempt in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only partially successful. Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in different ways of the familiar style, pour out words in their natural order with a marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this unforced idiomatic flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles of rhymes. Almost anybody may convert ordinary prose into defective verse, and much of the verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a low order. The phraseology is frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metre inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell below bald and slip-shod prose. Examples lie thick, and a couple of specimens will be enough:

But when t'examine ev'ry part he came.
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the rule with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of preserving the legitimate arrangement of words; yet it is an anomaly in literature that with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate such despicable examples of the licence, and this in enunciating hacknied precepts, only to be raised above insipidity by the perfection with which they were moulded into verse. Where the plain portions of the poem are not positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity, relieved by occasional well-wrought passages, forms the staple of the work, and Hazlitt must surely have given loose to one of his wilful paradoxes when he contended that the general characteristics of the Essay were originality, thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous expression, and brilliant illustration.

In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of Pope's poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. "There are," says Hazlitt, "no less than half a score couplets rhyming to sense. This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are given."

But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.—lines 3, 4.

In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.—l. 28, 29.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.—l. 209, 10.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.—l. 324, 5.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.—l. 364, 5.

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense.—l. 386, 7.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.—l. 566, 7.

Be niggards of advice on no pretence:
For the worst avarice is that of sense.—l. 578, 9.

Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.—l. 608, 9.

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense.—l. 653, 4.

The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied. "Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and "pretence" are each employed twice.

Hazlitt might have remarked, that wit was even more favoured than sense, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction; and wit, besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings, already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone:

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.—lines 52, 3.

One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.—l. 60, 1.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.—l. 233, 4.

Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.—l. 237, 8.

As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.—l. 259, 60.

Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.—l. 291, 2.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.—l. 301, 2.

So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.—l. 428, 9.

Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit.—l. 448, 9.

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.—l. 538, 9.

Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.—l. 651, 2.

He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.—l. 657, 8.

In these twelve instances "wit" rhymes five times to "fit," and three times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. "Art," in the singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every case rhymes to "part," "parts," or "imparts."

Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the order in which they are set down. "None, own—showed, trod—proved, beloved—steer, character—esteem, them—full, rule—take, track—rise, precipice—thoughts, faults—joined, mankind—delight, wit—appear, regular—caprice, nice—light, wit—good, blood—glass, place—sun, upon—still, suitable—ear, repair—join, line—line, join—Jove, love—own, town—fault, thought—worn, turn—safe, laugh—lost, boast—boast, lost (bis)—join, divine—prove, love—ease, increase—care, war—join, shine—disapproved, beloved—take, speak—fool, dull—satires, dedicators—read, head—speaks, makes—extreme, phlegm—find, joined—joined, mind—revive, live—chased, passed—good, blood—desert, heart—receive, give." In numerous instances, "the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it, when speaking of Denham, "is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it."

Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.

Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong emphasis, as

False eloquēnce like thē prismatic glass,

which only ceases to be prose when "the," and the last syllable of "eloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. Examples like

Atones not fōr that envy which it brings;
That in̄ proud dullness joins with quality;
That not alone what tō your sense is due;

are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen, offend the ear by the succession of "low" and "creeping words." Pope belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who freely dispensed with the laws they had made.

Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the sense, thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to describe the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used the same measure to denote "the march of slow-paced majesty." There was no need to look for an instance at the interval of thirty years. It would have been found at an interval of half thirty lines in the Essay on Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to portray the dragging progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposition was doubtless deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the opposite movements of sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunderstood the theory. The Alexandrine was not supposed to represent speed, but space. Thus when Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, in his translation of the Iliad, he says in a note, "Homer is very particular here in giving the picture of the blood running in a long trace, lower and lower. The author's design being only to image the streaming of the blood, it seemed equivalent to make it trickle through the length of an Alexandrine line."

As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.

A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long distance, the retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be expressed by the slow or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. The end was not answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break in the middle of the Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has equally shown that Pope was not happy in the application of his mistaken rule. The slow march outstrips the swift Camilla, who is even left behind by the wounded snake in the first half of the line. Had the examples been a complete illustration of the theory, the gain would have been nothing. Representative metre, in the strict sense of the term, though sanctioned by eminent names, would degrade poetry. There cannot be a paltrier poetic effect than to mimic the roll of stones, the trickling of blood, and the dragging motion of wounded snakes.

"Mr. Walsh used to tell me," says Pope, "that there was one way left of excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct, and he desired me to make that my study and aim."[44] Warton calls this "very important advice,"[45] and both he and Pope seem to assume that it had been effectual. The notion has been generally accepted. "To distinguish this triumvirate from each other," says Young, "Swift is a singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a great author."[46] "He is the most perfect of our poets," said Byron; "the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach."[47] Hazlitt took the opposite side. "Those critics who are bigoted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness, seem to be of opinion that there is but one perfect writer, even Pope. This is, however, a mistake; his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and imperfect. His rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding, writers. The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shows either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness."[48] De Quincey confirms Hazlitt; but, with his profounder knowledge of the characteristics of Pope's poetry, he saw that the incorrectness was spread wider, and went deeper. "Let us ask," he says, "what is meant by correctness? Correctness in developing the thought? In connecting it, or effecting the transitions? In the use of words? In the grammar? In the metre?" In all these points he maintains that Pope, "by comparison with other great poets, was conspicuously deficient."[49] For an example of incorrectness in developing the thought De Quincey refers to the character of Addison:

Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?
Who but must weep if Atticus were he?

"Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. Very well; but why, then, must we weep? Because this assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. Well, that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human nature. But then revolves the question, Why must we laugh? Because, if the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know from the very first. The very first line says,

Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame aspires.

Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character. We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already known from the beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in Shakspeare."[50] Pope was still more deficient in logical correctness, in the power of preserving consistency, and coherency between congregated ideas. "Of all poets," says De Quincey, "that have practised reasoning in verse he is the one most inconsequential in the deduction of his thoughts, and the most severely distressed in any effort to effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are not ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. All his thinking proceeded by insulated and discontinuous jets, and the only resource for him, or chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty of stringing his aphoristic thoughts, like pearls, having no relation to each other but that of contiguity."[51] Many of his arguments are capable of a double construction; absolute contradictions are not uncommon; and when we try to get a connected view of his principles we are irritated by their discordance, indefiniteness, and obscurity. As little will his grammar bear the test of correctness. "His syntax," says De Quincey, "is so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other times to defeat it. Preterites and participles he constantly confounds, and registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron index of rhymes that never can mend." Another defect of language was, in De Quincey's opinion, "almost peculiar to Pope." "The language does not realise the idea: it simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to give a single illustration:

Know God and Nature only are the same;
In man the judgment shoots at flying game.

The first line one would naturally construe into this: that God and Nature were in harmony, whilst all other objects were scattered into incoherency by difference and disunion. Not at all; it means nothing of the kind; but that God and Nature only are exempted from the infirmities of change. This might mislead many readers; but the second line must do so: for who would not understand the syntax to be, that the judgment, as it exists in man, shoots at flying game? But, in fact, the meaning is, that the judgment in aiming its calculations at man, aims at an object that is still on the wing, and never for a moment stationary."[52] This, De Quincey contends, is the worst of all possible faults in diction, since perspicuity, ungrammatical and inelegant, is preferable to conundrums of which the solution is difficult, and often doubtful. He says that there are endless varieties of the vice in Pope, and that "he sought relief for himself from half an hour's labour at the price of utter darkness to his reader." De Quincey was in error when he imputed the imperfections to indolence. There never was a more painstaking poet than Pope. His works were slowly elaborated, and diligently revised. "I corrected," he says, "because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write,"[53] and his manuscripts attest his untiring efforts to mend his composition. Language and not industry failed him. Happy in a multitude of phrases, lines, couplets, and passages, his vocabulary and turns of expression were often unequal to the exactions of verse. Not even rhymes, dearly purchased by violations of grammar and a false order of words, nor the imperfection of the rhymes themselves, could always enable him to satisfy the double requirement of metre and clearness. Most of his usual deviations from correctness are especially prominent in the Essay on Criticism, and any one who reads it with common attention might be tempted to think that the claim which Warton and others set up for Pope, was an insidious device to injure his reputation by diverting attention from his merits, and basing his fame upon a foundation too unstable to support it. The advice of Walsh was foolish. A poet who believed originality to be exhausted, and who merely aspired to echo his predecessors, with no distinguishing quality of his own beyond some additional correctness, might have spared his pains. The correct imitator would be intolerable by the side of the fresh and vigorous genius he copied. The assumption that the domain of poetic thought had been traversed in every direction, and that no untrodden paths were left for future explorers, was itself a delusion, soon to be refuted by Pope's own Rape of the Lock. Many immortal works have since belied the shallow doctrine of Walsh, who made his dim perceptions the measure of intellectual possibilities. The aspects under which the world, animate and inanimate, may be regarded by the poet are practically endless. The latent truths of science do not offer to the philosopher a more unbounded field of novelty.

[CONTENTS.]

PART I.

Introduction: That it is as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1—That a true taste is as rare to be found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18—That most men are born with some taste, but spoiled by false education, ver. 19 to 25—The multitude of critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to 45—That we are to study our own taste, and know the limits of it, ver. 46 to 67—Nature the best guide of judgment, ver. 68 to 87—Improved by art and rules, which are but methodised nature, ver. 88—Rules derived from the practice of the ancient poets, ver. 88 to 110—That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied by a critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to 138—Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients, ver. 142 to 180—Reverence due to the ancients, and praise of them, ver. 181, &c.

PART II. Ver. 201, &c.

Causes hindering a true judgment—1. Pride, ver. 208—2. Imperfect learning, ver. 215—3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver. 233 to 288—Critics in wit, language, versification, only, ver. 288, 305, 339, &c.—4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire, ver. 384—5. Partiality, too much love to a sect, to the ancients or moderns, ver. 394—6. Prejudice or prevention, ver. 408—7. Singularity, ver. 424—8. Inconstancy, ver. 430—9. Party spirit, ver. 452, &c.—10. Envy, ver. 466—Against envy and in praise of good nature, ver. 508, &c.—When severity is chiefly to be used by critics, ver. 526, &c.

PART III. Ver. 560, &c.

Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic—1. Candour, ver. 563—Modesty, ver. 566—Good breeding, ver. 572—Sincerity and freedom of advice, ver. 578—2. When one's counsel is to be restrained, ver. 584—Character of an incorrigible poet, ver. 600—And of an impertinent critic, ver. 610—Character of a good critic, ver. 629—The history of criticism, and characters of the best critics, Aristotle, ver. 645—Horace, ver. 653—Dionysius, ver. 665—Petronius, ver. 667—Quintilian, ver. 670—Longinus, ver. 675—Of the decay of criticism, and its revival. Erasmus, ver. 693—Vida, ver. 705—Boileau, ver. 714—Lord Roscommon, &c. ver. 725—Conclusion.

AN

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 5
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.[54]
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 10
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;[ [55]
Both must alike from heav'n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel, 15
And censure freely, who have written well.[ [56]
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?
Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind:[57] 20
Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light,
The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right;

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II.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,[126] 205
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:[127]
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 210
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.
A little learning is a dang'rous thing; 215
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130] 220
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132] 225
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way, 230
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]
A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]
With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 235
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,[136]
Correctly cold,[137] and regularly low, 240
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,
We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 245
But the joint force and full result of all.[138]
Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,
(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th' admiring eyes; 250
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]
The whole at once is bold, and regular.
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.[141]
In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, 255
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.[142]
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: 260
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]
For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize, 265
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.
Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;[146] 270
Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;
Made him observe the subject, and the plot, 275
The manners, passions, unities, what not,
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.
"What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite. 280
"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,
"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.
"Then build a new, or act it in a plain."[147]
Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 285
Curious not knowing,[148] not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts,
As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]
Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; 290
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature, and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, 295
And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]
True wit is nature[151] to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind. 300
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]
As bodies perish through excess of blood.
Others for language all their care express, 305
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: 310
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;

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III.

Learn then what morals critics ought to show, 560
For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,
That not alone what to your sense is due
All may allow, but seek your friendship too. 565
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past, 570
And make each day a critique on the last.
'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot. 575
Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;
That only makes superior sense beloved.
Be niggards of advice on no pretence:
For the worst avarice is that of sense.
With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust, 580
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.
'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,
But Appius reddens[239] at each word you speak, 585
And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]
Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,
Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;
Such, without wit, are poets when they please, 590
As without learning they can take degrees.[241]
Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,
And flattery to fulsome dedicators,
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595
'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,
And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]
Your silence there is better than your spite,
For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, 605
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,
Strain out the last dull droppings[245] of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.
Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true, 610
There are as mad, abandoned critics too.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears. 615
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With him most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.[247]
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, 620
Nay, showed his faults—but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]
Nor is Paul's church[249] more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251] 625

}

APPENDIX.

Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of his intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was perpetually dazzled and misled, by the eager desire of seeing everything in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and forced comments. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such unsubstantial objects. Accordingly his notes on Shakspeare have been totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the roots his fanciful and visionary interpretation of the sixth book of Virgil. And but few readers, I believe, will be found that will cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered,[296] that his notes on Pope's Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever. For, to instance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Essay on Man to the doctrines of revelation, is the rashest adventure in which ever critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to divine, rather than to explain an author's meaning.—Warton.

If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on the subject. For these reasons I have thought it advisable, in this edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious, if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.—Roscoe.

Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts, was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another, and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity, though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren.

[ THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF]
W. WARBURTON
ON THE
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

COMMENTARY.

An Essay.] The poem is in one book, but divided into three principal parts or members. The first, to ver. 201, gives rules for the study of the art of criticism: the second, from thence to ver. 560, exposes the causes of wrong judgment: and the third, from thence to the end, marks out the morals of the critic.

In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be necessary to observe, that though it be entitled simply An Essay on Criticism, yet several of the precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to the true judging of a poem. This is so far from violating the unity of the subject, that it preserves and completes it: or from disordering the regularity of the form, that it adds beauty to it, as will appear by the following considerations: 1. It was impossible to give a full and exact idea of the art of poetical criticism, without considering at the same time the art of poetry; so far as poetry is an art. These therefore being closely connected in nature, the author has, with much judgment, interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally through his whole poem. 2. As the rules of the ancient critics were taken from poets who copied nature, this is another reason why every poet should be a critic: therefore as the subject is poetical criticism, it is frequently addressed to the critical poet. And 3dly, the art of criticism is as properly, and much more usefully exercised in writing than in judging.

But readers have been misled by the modesty of the title, which only promises an art of criticism, to expect little, where they will find a great deal,—a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the art both of criticism and poetry. This, and the not attending to the considerations offered above, was what, perhaps misled a very candid writer, after having given the Essay on Criticism all the praises on the side of genius and poetry which his true taste could not refuse it, to say, that "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 writer." Spect. No. 235. I do not see how method can hurt any one grace of poetry: or what prerogative there is in verse to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every part of it. Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism, the reader will soon see, is a regular piece, and a very learned critic has lately shown that Horace had the same attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. Hurd's Comment on the Epistle to the Pisos.[297]

Ver. 1. 'Tis hard to say, &c.] The poem opens, from ver. 1 to 9, with showing the use and seasonableness of the subject. Its use, from the greater mischief in wrong criticism than in ill poetry—this only tiring, that misleading the reader. Its seasonableness, from the growing number of bad critics, which now vastly exceeds that of bad poets.

Ver. 9. 'Tis with our judgments, &c.] The author having shown us the expediency of his subject, the art of criticism, inquires next, from ver. 8 to 15, into the proper qualities of a true critic, and observes first, that judgment alone is not sufficient to constitute this character, because judgment, like the artificial measures of time, goes different, and yet each man relies upon his own. The reasoning is conclusive, and the similitude extremely just. For judgment, when it is alone, is generally regulated, or at least much influenced, by custom, fashion, and habit; and never certain and constant but when founded upon and accompanied by taste, which is in the critic, what in the poet we call genius. Both are derived from heaven, and like the sun, the natural measure of time, always constant and equable.

Judgment alone, it is allowed, will not make a poet; where is the wonder then, that it will not make a critic in poetry? For on examination we shall find, that genius and taste are but one and the same faculty, differently exerting itself under different names, in the two professions of poetry and criticism. The art of poetry consists in selecting, out of all those images which present themselves to the fancy, such of them as are truly beautiful; and the art of criticism in discerning, and fully relishing what it finds so selected. The main difference is, that in the poet, this faculty is eminently joined to a bright imagination, and extensive comprehension, which provide stores for the selection, and can form that selection, by proportioned parts, into a regular whole: in the critic, it is joined to a solid judgment and accurate discernment, which can penetrate into the causes of an excellence, and display that excellence in all its variety of lights. Longinus had taste in an eminent degree; therefore, this quality, which all true critics have in common, our author makes his distinguishing character:

Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.

i. e. with taste, or genius.

Ver. 15. Let such teach others, &c.] But it is not enough that the critic hath these natural endowments of judgment and taste, to entitle him to exercise his art; he should, as our author shows us, from ver. 14 to 19, in order to give a further test of his qualification, have put them successfully into use. And this on two accounts: 1. Because the office of a critic is an exercise of authority. 2. Because he being naturally as partial to his judgment as the poet is to his wit, his partiality would have nothing to correct it, as that of the person judged hath by the very terms. Therefore some test is necessary; and the best and most unexceptionable, is his having written well himself—an approved remedy against critical partiality, and the surest means of so maturing the judgment as to reap with glory what Longinus calls "the last and most perfect fruits of much study and experience." Η γαρ των λογων κρισις πολλης εστι πειρας τελευταιον επιγεννημα.

Ver. 19. Yet, if we look, &c.] But the author having been thus free with the fundamental quality of criticism, judgment, so as to charge it with inconstancy and partiality, and to be often warped by custom and affection, that he may not be misunderstood, he next explains, from ver. 18 to 36, the nature of judgment, and the accidents occasioning those miscarriages before objected to it. He owns, that the seeds of judgment are indeed sown in the minds of most men, but by ill culture, as it springs up, it generally runs wild, either on the one hand, by false learning, which pedants call philology, and by false reasoning, which philosophers call school-learning, or, on the other, by false wit, which is not regulated by sense, and by false politeness, which is solely regulated by the fashion. Both these sorts, who have their judgment thus doubly depraved, the poet observes, are naturally turned to censure and abuse, only with this difference, that the learned dunce always affects to be on the reasoning, and the unlearned fool on the laughing side. And thus, at the same time, our author proves the truth of his introductory observation, that the number of bad critics is vastly superior to that of bad poets.

Ver. 36. Some have at first for wits, &c.] The poet having enumerated, in this account of the nature of judgment and its various depravations, the several sorts of bad critics, and ranked them into two general classes, as the first sort,—namely, the men spoiled by false learning—are but few in comparison of the other, and likewise come less within his main view (which is poetical criticism) but keep grovelling at the bottom amongst words and syllables, he thought it enough for his purpose here, just to have mentioned them, proposing to do them right hereafter. But the men spoiled by false taste are innumerable, and these are his proper concern. He therefore, from ver. 35 to 46, subdivides them again into the two classes of the volatile and heavy. He describes, in few words, the quick progression of the one through criticism, from false wit to plain folly, where they end; and the fixed station of the other, between the confines of both; who under the name of witlings, have neither end nor measure. A kind of half-formed creature from the equivocal generation of vivacity and dulness, like those on the banks of Nile, from heat and mud.

Ver. 46. But you who seek, &c.] Our author having thus far, by way of introduction, explained the nature, use, and abuse of criticism, in a figurative description of the qualities and characters of critics, proceeds now to deliver the precepts of the art. The first of which, from ver. 45 to 68, is, that he who sets up for a critic should previously examine his own strength, and see how far he is qualified for the exercise of his profession. He puts him in a way to make this discovery, in that admirable direction given ver. 51.

And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

He had shown above, that judgment, without taste or genius, is equally incapable of making a critic or a poet. In whatsoever subject then the critic's taste no longer accompanies his judgment, there he may be assured he is going out of his depth. This our author finely calls,

that point where sense and dulness meet.

and immediately adds the reason of his precept, the author of nature having so constituted the mental faculties, that one of them can never greatly excel, but at the expense of another. From this state of co-ordination in the mental faculties, and the influence and effects they have upon one another, the poet draws this consequence, that no one genius can excel in more than one art or science. The consequence shows the necessity of the precept, just as the premises, from which the consequence is drawn, show the reasonableness of it.

Ver. 68. First follow nature, &c.] The critic observing the directions before given, and now finding himself qualified for his office, is shown next how to exercise it. And as he was to attend to nature for a call, so he is first and principally to follow nature when called. And here again in this, as in the foregoing precept, our poet, from ver. 67 to 88, shows both the fitness and necessity of it. I. Its fitness. 1. Because nature is the source of poetic art, this art being only a representation of nature, who is its great exemplar and original. 2. Because nature is the end of art, the design of poetry being to convey the knowledge of nature in the most agreeable manner. 3. Because nature is the test of art, as she is unerring, constant, and still the same. Hence the poet observes, that as nature is the source, she conveys life to art; as she is the end, she conveys force to it, for the force of any thing arises from its being directed to its end; and as she is the test, she conveys beauty to it, for everything acquires beauty by its being reduced to its true standard. Such is the sense of these two important lines,

Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

II. The necessity of the precept is seen from hence. The two constituent qualities of a composition, as such, are art and wit; but neither of these attains perfection, till the first be hid, and the other judiciously restrained. This only happens when nature is exactly followed; for then art never makes a parade; nor can wit commit an extravagance. Art, while it adheres to nature, and has so large a fund in the resources which nature supplies, disposes every thing with so much ease and simplicity, that we see nothing but those natural images it works with, while itself stands unobserved behind; but when art leaves nature, misled either by the bold sallies of fancy, or the quaint oddness of fashion, she is then obliged at every step to come forward, in a painful or pompous ostentation, in order to cover, to soften, or to regulate the shocking disproportion of unnatural images. In the first case, our poet compares art to the soul within, informing a beauteous body; but in the last, we are bid to consider it but as a mere outward garb, fitted only to hide the defects of a misshapen one. As to wit, it might perhaps be imagined that this needed only judgment to govern it; but, as he well observes,

wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

They want therefore some friendly mediator; and this mediator is nature: and in attending to nature, judgment will learn where he should comply with the charms of wit; and wit how she ought to obey the sage directions of judgment.

Ver. 88. Those rules of old, &c.] Having thus, in his first precept, to follow nature, settled criticism on its true foundation; he proceeds to show, what assistance may be had from art. But lest this should be thought to draw the critic from the ground where our poet had before fixed him, he previously observes, from ver. 87 to 92, that these rules of art, which he is now about to recommend to the critic's observance, were not invented by abstract speculation; but discovered in the book of nature; and that therefore, though they may seem to restrain nature by laws, yet as they are laws of her own making, the critic is still properly in the very liberty of nature. These rules the ancient critics borrowed from the poets, who received them immediately from nature.

Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,
These drew from them what they derived from heav'n,

so that both are to be well studied.

Ver. 92. Hear how learn'd Greece, &c.] He speaks of the ancient critics first, and with great judgment, as the previous knowledge of them is necessary for reading the poets, with that fruit which the end here proposed requires. But having, in the foregoing observation, sufficiently explained the nature of ancient criticism, he enters on the subject treated of from ver. 91 to 118, with a sublime description of its end; which was to illustrate the beauties of the best writers, in order to excite others to an emulation of their excellence. From the raptures which these ideas inspire, the poet is brought back, by the follies of modern criticism, now before his eyes, to reflect on its base degeneracy. And as the restoring the art to its original purity and splendour is the great purpose of this poem, he first takes notice of those, who seem not to understand that nature is exhaustless; that new models of good writing may be produced in every age; and consequently, that new rules may be formed from these models, in the same manner as the old critics formed theirs, which was, from the writings of the ancient poets: but men wanting art and ability to form these new rules, were content to receive and file up for use, the old ones of Aristotle, Quintilian, Longinus, Horace, &c. with the same vanity and boldness that apothecaries practise, with their doctors' bills: and then rashly applying them to new originals (cases which they did not hit) it was no more in their power, than in their inclination, to imitate the candid practice of the ancients when

The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.

For, as ignorance, when joined with humility, produces stupid admiration, on which account it is commonly observed to be the mother of devotion and blind homage, so when joined with vanity (as it always is in bad critics) it gives birth to every iniquity of impudent abuse and slander. See an example (for want of a better) in a late ridiculous and now forgotten thing, called the Life of Socrates;[298] where the head of the author (as a man of wit observed) has just made a shift to do the office of a camera obscura, and represent things in an inverted order, himself above, and Sprat, Rollin, Voltaire, and every other writer of reputation, below.

Ver. 118. You then whose judgment, &c.] He comes next to the ancient poets, the other and more intimate commentators of nature, and shows, from ver. 117 to 141, that the study of these must indispensably follow that of the ancient critics, as they furnish us with what the critics, who only give us general rules, cannot supply, while the study of a great original poet, in

His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page:
Religion, country, genius of his age;

will help us to those particular rules which only can conduct us safely through every considerable work we undertake to examine; and without which, we may cavil indeed, as the poet truly observes, but can never criticise. We might as well suppose that Vitruvius's book alone would make a perfect judge of architecture, without the knowledge of some great master-piece of science, such as the rotunda at Rome, or the temple of Minerva at Athens, as that Aristotle's should make a perfect judge of wit, without the study of Homer and Virgil. These therefore he principally recommends to complete the critic in his art. But as the latter of these poets has, by superficial judges, been considered rather as a copier of Homer, than an original from nature, our author obviates that common error, and shows it to have arisen (as often error does) from a truth, viz., that Homer and nature were the same; that the ambitious young poet, though he scorned to stoop at anything short of nature, when he came to understand this great truth, had the prudence to contemplate nature in the place where she was seen to most advantage, collected in all her charms in the clear mirror of Homer. Hence it would follow, that though Virgil studied nature, yet the vulgar reader would believe him to be a copier of Homer; and though he copied Homer, yet the judicious reader would see him to be an imitator of nature, the finest praise which any one, who came after Homer, could receive.

Ver. 141. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, &c.] Our author, in these two general directions for studying nature and her commentators, having considered poetry as it is, or may be reduced to rule, lest this should be mistaken as sufficient to attain perfection either in writing or judging, he proceeds from ver. 140 to 201, to point up to those sublimer beauties which rules will never reach, nor enable us either to execute or taste,—beauties, which rise so high above all precept as not even to be described by it; but being entirely the gift of heaven, art and reason have no further share in them than just to regulate their operations. These sublimities of poetry (like the mysteries of religion, some of which are above reason, and some contrary to it) may be divided into two sorts, such as are above rules, and such as are contrary to them.

Ver. 146. If, where the rules, &c.] The first sort our author describes from ver. 145 to 152, and shows that where a great beauty is in the poet's view, which no stated rules will authorise him how to reach, there, as the purpose of rules is only to attain an end like this, a lucky licence will supply the place of them: nor can the critic fairly object, since this licence, for the reason given above, has the proper force and authority of a rule.

Ver. 152. Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, &c.] He describes next the second sort, the beauties against rule. And even here, as he observes, from ver. 151 to 161, the offence is so glorious, and the fault so sublime, that the true critic will not dare either to censure or reform them. Yet still the poet is never to abandon himself to his imagination. The rules laid down for his conduct in this respect are these: 1. That though he transgress the letter of some one particular precept, yet that he be still careful to adhere to the end or spirit of them all, which end is the creation of one uniform perfect whole. And 2. That he have, in each instance, the authority of the dispensing power of the ancients to plead for him. These rules observed, this licence will be seldom used, and only when he is compelled by need, which will disarm the critic, and screen the offender from his laws.

Ver. 169. I know there are, &c.] But as some modern critics have pretended to say, that this last reason is only justifying one fault by another, our author goes on, from ver. 168 to 181, to vindicate the ancients; and to show that this presumptuous thought, as he calls it, proceeds from mere ignorance,—as where their partiality will not let them see that this licence is sometimes necessary for the symmetry and proportion of a perfect whole, in the light, and from the point, wherein it must be viewed; or where their haste will not give them time to observe, that a deviation from rule is for the sake of attaining some great and admirable purpose. These observations are further useful, as they tend to give modern critics an humbler opinion of their own abilities, and a higher of the authors they undertake to criticise. On which account he concludes with a fine reproof of their use of that common proverb perpetually in the mouths of the critics, "quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;" misunderstanding the sense of Horace, and taking quandoque for aliquando:

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Ver. 181. Still green with bays, &c.] But now fired with the name of Homer, and transported with the contemplation of those beauties which a cold critic can neither see nor conceive, the poet, from ver. 180 to 201, breaks out into a rapturous salutation of the rare felicity of those few ancients who have risen superior over time and accidents; and disdaining, as it were, any longer to reason with his critics, offers this as the surest confutation of their censures. Then with the humility of a suppliant at the shrine of immortals, and the sublimity of a poet participating of their fire, he turns again to these ancient worthies, and apostrophises their Manes:

Hail, bards triumphant! &c.

Ver. 200. T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!] This line concludes the first division of the poem; in which we see the subject of the first and second part, and likewise the connexion they have with one another. It serves likewise to introduce the second. The effect of studying the ancients, as here recommended, would be the admiration of their superior sense, which, if it will not of itself dispose moderns to a diffidence of their own (one of the great uses, as well as natural fruits of that study), our author, to help forward their modesty, in his second part shows them (in a regular deduction of the causes and effects of wrong judgment) their own bright image and amiable turn of mind.

Ver. 201. Of all the causes, &c.] Having, in the first part, delivered rules for perfecting the art of criticism, the second is employed in explaining the impediments to it. The order of the two parts was well adjusted. For the causes of wrong judgment being pride, superficial learning, a bounded capacity, and partiality, they to whom this part is principally addressed, would not readily be brought either to see the malignity of the causes, or to own themselves concerned in the effects, had not the author previously both enlightened and convinced them, by the foregoing observations, on the vastness of art, and narrowness of wit; the extensive study of human nature and antiquity; and the characters of ancient poetry and criticism; the natural remedies to the four epidemic disorders he is now endeavouring to redress.

Ver. 201. Of all the causes, &c.] The first cause of wrong judgment is pride. He judiciously begins with this, from ver. 200 to 215, as on other accounts, so on this, that it is the very thing which gives modern criticism its character, whose complexion is abuse and censure. He calls it the vice of fools, by which term is not meant those to whom nature has given no judgment (for he is here speaking of what misleads the judgment), but those to whom learning and study have given more erudition than taste, as appears from the happy similitude of an ill-nourished body, where the same words which express the cause, express likewise the nature of pride:

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find,
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind.

It is the business of reason, he tells us, to dispel the cloud in which pride involves the mind: but the mischief is, that the rays of reason, diverted by self-love, sometime gild this cloud, instead of dispelling it. So that the judgment, by false lights reflected back upon itself, is still apt to be a little dazzled, and to mistake its object. He therefore advises to call in still more helps:

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.

Both the beginning and conclusion of this precept are remarkable. The question is of the means to subdue pride. He directs the critic to begin with a distrust of himself; and this is modesty, the first mortification of pride: and then to seek the assistance of others, and make use even of an enemy; and this is humility, the last mortification of pride: for when a man can once bring himself to submit to profit by an enemy, he has either already subdued his vanity, or is in a fair way of so doing.

Ver. 215. A little learning, &c.] We must here remark the poet's skill in his disposition of the causes obstructing true judgment. Each general cause which is laid down first, has its own particular cause in that which follows. Thus, the second cause of wrong judgment, superficial learning, is what occasions that critical pride, which he places first.

Ver. 216. Drink deep, &c.] Nature and learning are the pole-stars of all true criticism: but pride obstructs the view of nature; and a smattering of letters makes us insensible of our ignorance. To avoid this ridiculous situation, the poet, from ver. 214 to 233, advises, either to drink deep, or not to drink at all; for the least sip at this fountain is enough to make a bad critic, while even a moderate draught can never make a good one. And yet the labours and difficulties of drinking deep are so great, that a young author, "fired with ideas of fair Italy," and ambitious to snatch a palm from Rome, here engages in an undertaking like that of Hannibal: finely illustrated by the similitude of an inexperienced traveller penetrating through the Alps.

Ver. 233. A perfect judge, &c.] The third cause of wrong judgment is a narrow capacity; the natural cause of the foregoing defect, acquiescence in superficial learning. This bounded capacity our author shows, from ver. 232 to 384, betrays itself two ways: in its judgment both of the matter, and the manner of the work criticised. Of the matter, in judging by parts, or in having one favourite part to a neglect of all the rest. Of the manner, in confining men's regard only to conceit, or language, or numbers. This is our poet's order, and we shall follow him as it leads us, only just observing one general beauty which runs through this part of the poem; it is,—that under each of these heads of wrong judgment, he has intermixed excellent precepts for the right. We shall take notice of them as they occur.

He exposes the folly of judging by parts very artfully, not by a direct description of that sort of critic, but of his opposite, a perfect judge, &c. Nor is the elegance of this conversion less than the art; for as, in poetical style, one word or figure is still put for another, in order to catch new lights from distant images, and reflect them back upon the subject in hand, so in poetical matter one person or description may be commodiously employed for another, with the same advantage of representation. It is observable that our author makes it almost the necessary consequence of judging by parts, to find fault: and this not without much discernment: for the several parts of a complete whole, when seen only singly, and known only independently, must always have the appearance of irregularity,—often of deformity; because the poet's design being to create a resultive beauty from the artful assemblage of several various parts into one natural whole, those parts must be fashioned with regard to their mutual relations in the stations they occupy in that whole, from whence the beauty required is to arise; but that regard will occasion so unreducible a form in each part, when considered singly, as to present a very mis-shapen form.

Ver. 253. Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,] He shows next, from ver. 252 to 263, that to fix our censure on single parts, though they happen to want an exactness consistent enough with their relation to the rest, is even then very unjust: and for these reasons:—1. Because it implies an expectation of a faultless piece, which is a vain fancy. 2. Because no more is to be expected of any work than that it fairly attains its end. But the end may be attained, and yet these trivial faults committed: therefore, in spite of such faults, the work will merit that praise that is due to everything which attains its end. 3. Because sometimes a great beauty is not to be procured, nor a notorious blemish to be avoided, but by suffering one of these minute and trivial errors. 4. And lastly, because the general neglect of them is a praise, as it is the indication of a genius, attentive to greater matters.

Ver 263. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, &c.] II. The second way in which a narrow capacity, as it relates to the matter, shows itself, is judging by a favourite part. The author has placed this, from ver. 262 to 285, after the other of judging by parts, with great propriety, it being indeed a natural consequence of it. For when men have once left the whole to turn their attention to the separate parts, that regard and reverence due only to a whole is fondly transferred to one or other of its parts. And thus we see, that heroes themselves, as well as hero-makers, even kings, as well as poets and critics, when they chance never to have had, or long to have lost the idea of that which is the only legitimate object of their office, the care and conservation of the whole, are wont to devote themselves to the service of some favourite part, whether it be love of money, military glory, despotic power, &c. And all, as our author says on this occasion,

to one loved folly sacrifice.

This general misconduct much recommends that maxim in good poetry and politics, to give a principal attention to the whole,—a maxim which our author has elsewhere shown to be equally true likewise in morals and religion, as being founded in the order of things; for if we examine we shall find the misconduct here complained of to arise from this imbecility of our nature, that the mind must always have something to rest upon, to which the passions and affections may be interestingly directed. Nature prompts us to seek it in the most worthy objects; and reason points us to a whole, or system: but the false lights which the passions hold out confound and dazzle us: we stop short; and, before we get to a whole, take up with some part, which thenceforth becomes our favourite.

2. He concludes his observations on those two sorts of judges by parts, with this general reflection:—The curious not knowing are the first sort, who judge by parts, and with a microscopic sight (as he says elsewhere) examine bit by bit. The not exact but nice, are the second, who judge by a favourite part, and talk of a whole to cover their fondness for a part, as philosophers do of principles, in order to obtrude notions and opinions in their stead. But the fate common to both is, to be governed by caprice and not by judgment, and consequently to form short ideas, or to have ideas short of truth; though the latter sort, through a fondness to their favourite part, imagine that it comprehends the whole in epitome, as the famous hero of La Mancha, mentioned just before, used to maintain, that knight errantry comprised within itself the quintessence of all science, civil, military, and religious.

Ver. 289. Some to conceit alone, &c.] We come now to that second sort of bounded capacity, which betrays itself in its judgment on the manner of the work criticised. And this our author prosecutes from ver. 288 to 384. These are again subdivided into divers classes.

Ver. 289. Some to conceit alone, &c.] The first, from ver. 288 to 305, are those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit. And here again the critic by parts, offends doubly in the manner, just as he did in the matter; for he not only confines his attention to a part, when it should be extended to the whole, but he likewise judges falsely of that part. And this, as the other, is unavoidable, the parts in the manner bearing the same close relation to the whole, that the parts in the matter do; to which whole, the ideas of this critic have never yet extended. Hence it is, that our author, speaking here of those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit, describes the distinct species of true and false wit, because they not only mistake a wrong disposition of true wit for a right, but likewise false wit for true. He describes false wit first, from ver. 288 to 297,

Some to conceit alone, &c.,

where the reader may observe our author's address in representing, in a description of false wit, the false disposition of the true; as the critic by parts is apt to fall into both these errors.

He next describes true wit, from ver. 296 to 305,

True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c.

And here again the reader may observe the same beauty; not only an explanation of true wit, but likewise of the right disposition of it, which the poet illustrates, as he did the wrong, by ideas taken from the art of painting, in the theory of which he was exquisitely skilled.

Ver. 305. Others for language, &c.] He proceeds secondly to those contracted critics, whose whole concern turns upon language, and shows, from ver. 304 to 337, that this quality, where it holds the principal place in a work, deserves no commendation:—1. Because it excludes qualities more essential. And when the abounding verbiage has choked and suffocated the sense, the writer will be obliged to varnish over the mischief with all the false colouring of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because the critic who busies himself with this quality alone, is unable to make a right judgment of it; because true expression is only the dress of thought, and so must be perpetually varied according to the subject, and manner of treating it. But those who never concern themselves with the sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the language.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c.

Now as these critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole judgment in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination of single words; and generally those which are most to his taste, are (for an obvious reason) such as smack most of antiquity, on which account our author has bestowed a little raillery upon it; concluding with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, so far as regards their novelty and ancientry.

Ver. 337. But most by numbers judge, &c.] The last sort are those, from ver. 336 to 384, whose ears are attached only to the harmony of a poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other sort did of the eloquence, and for the same reason. Our author first describes that false harmony with which they are so much captivated; and shows that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: for

Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong.

He then describes the true: 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the roughness and flatness of false harmony: and 2. As it is varied in compliance to the subject, where the sound becomes an echo to the sense, so far as is consistent with the preservation of numbers, in contradiction to the monotony of false harmony. Of this he gives us, in the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of smoothness, roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this correspondence of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is to calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and warm the beneficent, which he illustrates in the famous adventure of Timotheus and Alexander, where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that subject, he turns it to a high compliment on his favourite poet.

Ver. 384. Avoid extremes, &c.] Our author is now come to the last cause of wrong judgment, partiality,—the parent of the immediately preceding cause, a bounded capacity, nothing so much narrowing and contracting the mind as prejudices entertained for or against things or persons. This, therefore, as the main root of all the foregoing, he prosecutes at large, from ver. 383 to 474. First, to ver. 394, he previously exposes that capricious turn of mind, which, by running into extremes, either of praise or dispraise, lays the foundation of an habitual partiality. He cautions, therefore, both against one and the other; and with reason; for excess of praise is the mark of a bad taste; and excess of censure, of a bad digestion.

Ver. 394. Some foreign writers, &c.] Having explained the disposition of mind which produces an habitual partiality, he proceeds to expose this partiality in all the shapes in which it appears both amongst the unlearned and the learned.

I. In the unlearned it is seen, first, in an unreasonable fondness for, or aversion to, our own or foreign, to ancient or modern writers. And as it is the mob of unlearned readers he is here speaking of, he exposes their folly in a very apposite similitude:

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.

But he shows, from ver. 396 to 408, that these critics have as wrong notions of reason as those bigots have of God; for that genius is not confined to times or climates; but, as the common gift of nature, is extended throughout all ages and countries; that indeed this intellectual light, like the material light of the sun, may not shine at all times, and in every place with equal splendour, but be sometimes clouded with popular ignorance, and sometimes again eclipsed by the discountenance of the great; yet it shall still recover itself, and, by breaking through the strongest of these impediments, manifest the eternity of its nature.

Ver. 408. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,] A second instance of unlearned partiality is (as he shows from ver. 407 to 424) men's going always along with the cry, as having no fixed nor well-grounded principles whereon to raise any judgment of their own. A third is reverence for names, of which sort, as he well observes, the worst and vilest are the idolizers of names of quality; whom therefore he stigmatises as they deserve. Our author's temper as well as his judgment is here seen, in throwing this species of partiality amongst the unlearned critics. His affection for letters would not suffer him to conceive, that any learned critic could ever fall into so low a prostitution.

Ver. 424. The vulgar thus—As oft the learned—] II. He comes in the second place, from ver. 423 to 452, to consider the instances of partiality in the learned. 1. The first is singularity. For, as want of principles, in the unlearned, necessitates them to rest on the common judgment as always right, so adherence to false principles (that is, to notions of their own) mislead the learned into the other extreme of supposing the common judgment always wrong. And as, before, our author compared those to bigots, who made true faith to consist in believing after others, so he compares these to schismatics, who make it to consist in believing as no one ever believed before, which folly he marks with a lively stroke of humour in the turn of the thought:

So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.

2. The second is novelty. And as this proceeds sometimes from fondness, sometimes from vanity, he compares the one to the passion for a mistress, and the other to the pride of being in fashion; but the excuse common to both is, the daily improvement of their judgment:

Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.

Now as this is a plausible pretence for their inconstancy, and our author has himself afterwards approved of it, as a remedy against obstinacy and pride, where he says, ver. 570,

But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last,

he has been careful, by the turn of the expression in this place, to show the difference between the pretence and the remedy. For time, considered only as duration, vitiates as frequently as it improves. Therefore to expect wisdom as the necessary attendant of length of days, unrelated to long experience, is vain and delusive. This he illustrates by a remarkable example, where we see time, instead of becoming wiser, destroying good letters, to substitute school divinity in their place; the genius of which kind of learning, the character of its professors, and the fate, which, sooner or later, always attends whatsoever is wrong or false, the poet sums up in those four lines:

Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, &c.

And in conclusion he observes, that perhaps this mischief, from love of novelty, might not be so great, did it not, along with the critic, infect the writer likewise, who, when he finds his readers disposed to take ready wit on the standard of current folly, never troubles himself to think of better payment.

Ver. 452. Some valuing those of their own side or mind, &c.] 3. The third and last instance of partiality in the learned, is party and faction, which is considered from ver. 451 to 474, where he shows how men of this turn deceive themselves, when they load a writer of their own side with commendation. They fancy they are paying tribute to merit, when they are only sacrificing to self-love. But this is not the worst. He further shows, that this party spirit has often very ill effects on science itself, while, in support of faction, it labours to depress some rising genius, that was, perhaps, raised by nature to enlighten his age and country. By which he would insinuate, that all the baser and viler passions seek refuge, and find support in party madness.

Ver. 474. Be thou the first, &c.] The poet having now gone through the last cause of wrong judgment, and the root of all the rest, partiality, and ended his remarks upon it with a detection of the two rankest kinds, those which arise out of party rage and envy, takes the occasion, which this affords him, of closing his second division in the most graceful manner, from ver. 473 to 560, by concluding from the premises, and calling upon the true critic to be careful of his charge, which is the protection and support of wit; for, the defence of it from malevolent censure is its true protection, and the illustration of its beauties, is its true support.

He first shows, the critic ought to do this service without loss of time, and on these motives:—1. Out of regard to himself, for there is some merit in giving the world notice of an excellence, but little or none, in pointing, like an index, to the beaten road of admiration. 2. Out of regard to the poem, for the short duration of modern works requires that they should begin to live betimes. He compares the life of modern wit (which in a changeable dialect, must soon pass away), and that of the ancient (which survives in an universal language), to the difference between the patriarchal age and our own, and observes, that while the ancient writings live for ever, as it were, in brass and marble, the modern are but like paintings, which, of how masterly a hand soever, have no sooner gained their requisite perfection by the softening and ripening of their tints, which they do in a very few years, but they begin to fade and die away. 3. Lastly, our author shows that the critic ought in justice to do this service out of regard to the poet, when he considers the slender dowry the muse brings along with her. In youth it is only a vain and short-lived pleasure; and in maturer years, an accession of care and labour, in proportion to the weight of reputation to be sustained, and of the increase of envy to be opposed: and therefore, concludes his reasoning on this head with that pathetic and insinuating address to the critic, from ver. 508 to 526.

Ah! let not learning, &c.

Ver. 526. But if in noble minds some dregs remain, &c.] So far as to what ought to be the true critic's principal study and employment. But if the sour critical humour abounds, and must therefore needs have vent, he directs to its proper object, and shows, from ver. 525 to 556, how it may be innocently and usefully pointed. This is very observable; our author had made spleen and disdain the characteristic of the false critic, and yet here supposes them inherent in the true. But it is done with judgment, and a knowledge of nature. For as bitterness and astringency in unripe fruits of the best kind are the foundation and capacity of that high spirit, race, and flavour which we find in them, when perfectly concocted by the warmth and influence of the sun, and which, without those qualities, would gain no more by that influence than only a mellow insipidity, so spleen and disdain in the true critic, when improved by long study and experience, ripen into an exactness of judgment and an elegance of taste, although, in the false critic, lying remote from the influence of good letters, they remain in all their first offensive harshness and acerbity. The poet therefore shows how, after the exaltation of these qualities into their state of perfection, the very dregs (which, though precipitated, may possibly, on some occasions, rise and ferment even in a noble mind) may be usefully employed, that is to say, in branding obscenity and impiety. Of these, he explains the rise and progress, in a beautiful picture of the different geniuses of the two reigns of Charles II. and William III. The former of which gave course to the most profligate luxury; the latter to a licentious impiety. These are the crimes our author assigns over to the caustic hand of the critic; but concludes however, from ver. 555 to 560, with this necessary admonition, to take care not to be misled into unjust censure, either on the one hand, by a pharisaical niceness, or on the other by a self-consciousness of guilt. And thus the second division of his Essay ends: the judicious conduct of which is worthy our observation. The subjects of it are the causes of wrong judgment. These he derives upwards from cause to cause, till he brings them to their source, an immoral partiality: for as he had, in the first part,

traced the Muses upward to their spring,

and shown them to be derived from heaven, and the offspring of virtue, so hath he here pursued this enemy of the muses, the bad critic, to his low original, in the arms of his nursing mother immorality. This order naturally introduces, and at the same time shows the necessity of, the subject of the third and last division, which is, on the morals of the critic.

Ver. 560. Learn then, &c.] We enter now on the third part, the morals of the critic. There seemed a peculiar necessity of inculcating precepts of this sort to the critic, by reason of that native acerbity so often found in the profession; of which, a short memorial will soon convince the reader, and at the same time inform him why our author has here included all critical morals in candour, modesty, and good breeding. When, in these latter ages, human learning reared its head in the West, and its tail, verbal criticism, was of course to rise with it, the madness of critics presently became so offensive, that the sober stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J. Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy after the sacking of Constantinople by the Turk, used to maintain that Cicero understood neither philosophy nor Greek; while another of his countrymen, J. Lascaris by name, threatened to demonstrate that Virgil was no poet. However, these men raised in the west of Europe an appetite for the Greek language. So that Hermolaus Barbarus, a noted critic and most passionate admirer of it, used to boast that he had invoked and raised the devil, about the meaning of the Aristotelian εντελεχεια. As this man was famous for his enchantments, so one, whom Balzac speaks of, was as useful to letters by his revelations, and was wont to say, that the meaning of such a verse in Persius, no one knew but God and himself. But they were not all so modest. The celebrated Pomponius Lætus, in excess of veneration for antiquity, became a real pagan, raised altars to Romulus, and sacrificed to the gods of Greece. But if the Greeks cried down Cicero, the Italian critics knew how to support his credit. Every one has heard of the childish excesses into which the fondness for being thought Ciceronians carried the most celebrated Italians of this time. They generally abstained from reading the scripture for fear of spoiling their style, and Cardinal Bembo used to call the epistles of St. Paul by the contemptuous name of epistolaccias,—great overgrown epistles. But Erasmus cured this frenzy in that masterpiece of good sense, entitled Ciceronianus, for which, as lunatics treat their physicians, the elder Scaliger insulted him with all the brutal fury peculiar to his family and profession. His son Joseph and Salmasius had such endowments of art and nature as might have made them public blessings; yet how did these savages tear and worry one another. The choicest of Joseph's flowers of speech were stercus diaboli, and lutum stercore maceratum. It is true these were strewn upon his enemies. He treated his friends better; for in a letter to Thuanus, speaking of two of them, Clavius and Lipsius, he calls the first "a monster of ignorance," and the other "a slave to the Jesuits" and an "idiot." But so great was his love of sacred amity, that he says, at the same time, "I still keep up a correspondence with him, notwithstanding his idiotry, for it is my principle to be constant in my friendships.—Je ne reste de lui écrire nonobstant son idioterie, d'autant que je suis constant en amitié." The character he gives of his own work, in the same letter, is no less extraordinary: "Vous vous pouvez assurer que nostre Eusebe sera un tresor des merveilles de la doctrine chronologique." But this modest account of his chronology is a trifle in comparison of the just esteem Salmasius conceived of himself, as Mr. Colomies tells the story: This critic one day meeting two of his brethren, Messrs. Gaulmin and Maussac, in the royal library at Paris, Gaulmin, in a virtuous consciousness of their importance, told the other two that he believed they three could make head against all the learned in Europe. To which the great Salmasius fiercely replied, "Do you and Mr. Maussac join yourselves to all that is learned in the world, and you shall find that I alone am a match for you all." Vossius tells us that, when Laur. Valla had snarled at every name of the first order in antiquity, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and one whom I should have thought this critic was likeliest to pass by, the redoubtable Priscian, he impiously boasted that he had arms even against Christ himself. But Codrus Urcæus went further, and actually used those arms the other only threatened with. This man while he was preparing some trifling piece of criticism for the press, had the misfortune to hear his papers were burned, on which he is reported to have broke out, "Quodnam ego tantum scelus concepi, O Christe; quem ego tuorum unquam læsi, ut ita inexpiabili in me odio debaccheris? Audi ea, quæ tibi mentis compos et ex animo dicam. Si forte, cum ad ultimam vitæ finem pervenero, supplex accedam ad te oratum, neve audias, neve inter tuos accipias oro; cum infernis Diis in æternum vitam agere decrevi." Whereupon, says my author, he quitted the converse of men, threw himself into the thickest of a forest, and there wore out the wretched remains of life in all the agonies of despair.

But to return to the poem. This third and last part is in two divisions. In the first of which, from ver. 559 to 631, our author inculcates the morals by precept. In the second, from ver. 630 to the end, by example. His first precept, from ver. 561 to 566, recommends candour, for its use to the critic, and to the writer criticised.

2. The second, from ver. 565 to 572, recommends modesty, which manifests itself in these four signs: 1. Silence where it doubts,

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;

2. A seeming diffidence where it knows,

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence;

3. A free confession of error where wrong,

But you with pleasure own your errors past;

4. And a constant review and scrutiny even of those opinions which it still thinks right.

And make each day a critique on the last.

3. The third, from ver. 571 to 584, recommends good-breeding, which will not force truth dogmatically upon men, as ignorant of it, but gently insinuates it to them, as not sufficiently attentive to it. But as men of breeding are apt to fall into two extremes, he prudently cautions against them. The one is a backwardness in communicating their knowledge, out of a false delicacy, and for fear of being thought pedants: the other, and much more common extreme, is a mean complaisance, which those who are worthy of your advice do not need, to make it acceptable; for such can best bear reproof in particular points, who best deserve commendation in general.

Ver. 584. 'Twere well might critics, &c.] The poet having thus recommended in his general rules of conduct for the judgment, these three critical virtues to the heart, shows next, from ver. 583 to 631, upon what three sorts of writers these virtues, together with the advice conveyed under them, would be thrown away; and which is worse, be repaid with obloquy and scorn. These are the false critic, the dull man of quality, and the bad poet, each of which species of incorrigible writers he hath very exactly painted. But having drawn the last of them at full length, and being always attentive to the two main branches of his subject, which are, of writing and judging well, he re-assumes the character of the bad critic (whom he had touched upon before), to contrast him with the other; and makes the characteristic common to both, to be a never-ceasing repetition of their own impertinence.

The poet—still runs on in a raging vein, &c. ver. 606, &c.

The critic—with his own tongue still edifies his ears, 614, &c.

Than which there cannot be an observation more just, or more grounded on experience.

Ver. 631. But where's the man, &c.] II. The second division of this last part, which we now come to, is of the morals of critics, by example. For, having in the first, drawn a picture of the false critic, at large, he breaks out into an apostrophe, containing an exact and finished character of the true, which, at the same time, serves for an easy and proper introduction to this second division. For having asked, from ver. 630 to 643, Where's the man, &c., he answers, from ver. 642 to 681, that he was to be found in the happier ages of Greece and Rome; in the characters of Aristotle and Horace, Dionysius and Petronius, Quintilian and Longinus, whose several excellencies he has not only well distinguished, but has contrasted them with a peculiar elegance. The profound science and logical method of Aristotle is opposed to the plain common sense of Horace, conveyed in a natural and familiar negligence; the study and refinement of Dionysius, to the gay and courtly ease of Petronius; and the gravity and minuteness of Quintilian, to the vivacity and general topics of Longinus. Nor has the poet been less careful in these examples, to point out their eminence in the several critical virtues he so carefully inculcated in his precepts. Thus in Horace he particularizes his candour; in Petronius, his good-breeding; in Quintilian, his free and copious instruction; and in Longinus, his great and noble spirit.

Ver. 681. Thus long succeeding critics, &c.] The next period in which the true critic, he tells us, appeared, was at the revival and restoration of letters in the West. This occasions his giving a short history, from ver. 682 to 709, of the decline and re-establishment of arts and sciences in Italy. He shows that they both fell under the same enemy, despotic power; and that when both had made some little efforts to recover themselves, they were soon again overwhelmed by a second deluge of another kind, namely, superstition; and a calm of dulness finished upon Rome and letters what the rage of barbarism had begun:

A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monk finished what the Goth begun.

When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of recovery now seemed desperate, it was a critic, our author shows us, for the honour of the art he here teaches, who at length broke the charm of dulness, who dissipated the enchantment, and, like another Hercules, drove those cowled and hooded serpents from the Hesperian tree of knowledge, which they had so long guarded from human approach.

Ver. 697. But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days,] This presents us with the second period in which the true critic appeared, of whom he has given us a complete idea in the single example of Marcus Hieronymus Vida; for his subject being poetical criticism, for the use principally of a critical poet, his example is an eminent poetical critic, who had written of the Art of Poetry in verse.

Ver. 709. But soon by impious arms, &c.] This brings us to the third period, after learning had travelled still further West, when the arms of the Emperor, in the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, had driven it out of Italy, and forced it to pass the mountains. The examples he gives in this period, are of Boileau in France, and of the Lord Roscommon and the Duke of Buckingham in England: and these were all poets, as well as critics in verse. It is true, the last instance is of one who was no eminent poet, the late Mr. Walsh. This small deviation might be well overlooked, were it only for its being a pious office to the memory of his friend. But it may be further justified, as it was an homage paid in particular to the morals of the critic, nothing being more amiable than the character here drawn of this excellent person. He being our author's judge and censor, as well as friend, it gives him a graceful opportunity to add himself to the number of the later critics; and with a character of his own genius and temper sustained by that modesty and dignity which it is so difficult to make consistent, this performance concludes.

I have here given a short and plain account of the Essay on Criticism, concerning which, I have but one thing more to say, that when the reader considers the regularity of the plan, the masterly conduct of each part, the penetration into nature, and the compass of learning so conspicuous throughout, he should at the same time know, it was the work of an author who had not attained the twentieth year of his age.

NOTES.

Ver. 28. In search of wit, these lose their common sense,] This observation is extremely just. Search of wit is not only the occasion, but the efficient cause of the loss of common sense; for wit consisting in choosing out, and setting together such ideas from whose assemblage pleasant pictures may be drawn on the fancy, the judgment, through an habitual search of wit, loses, by degrees, its faculty of seeing the true relation of things; in which consists the exercise of common sense.

The sentiment is just, and if Hobbes's account of laughter be true, that it arises from a silly pride, we see the reason of it. The expression too is fine; it alludes to the condition of idiots and natural fools, who are observed to be ever on the grin.

Ver. 43. Their generation's so equivocal.] It is sufficient that a principle of philosophy has been generally received, whether it be true or false, to justify a poet's use of it to set off his wit. But to recommend his argument, he should be cautious how he uses any but the true; for falsehood, when it is set too near the truth, will tarnish what it should brighten up. Besides, the analogy between natural and moral truth makes the principles of true philosophy the fittest for this use. Our poet has been pretty careful in observing this rule.

Ver. 51. And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.] Besides the peculiar sense explained in the comment, the words have still a more general meaning, and caution us against going on, when our ideas begin to grow obscure, as we are then most apt to do, though that obscurity be an admonition that we should leave off, for it arises, either from our small acquaintance with the subject, or the incomprehensibility of its nature, in which circumstances a genius will always write as badly as a dunce. An observation well worth the attention of all profound writers.

These observations are collected from an intimate knowledge of human nature. The cause of that languor and heaviness in the understanding, which is almost inseparable from a very strong and tenacious memory, seems to be a want of the proper exercise of that faculty, the understanding being in a great measure unactive, while the memory is cultivating. As to the other appearance, the decay of memory by the vigorous exercise of fancy, the poet himself seems to have intimated the cause of it in the epithet he has given to the imagination. For if, according to the atomic philosophy, the memory of things be preserved in a chain of ideas, produced by the animal spirits moving in continued trains, the force and rapidity of the imagination, breaking and dissipating the links of this chain by forming new associations, must necessarily weaken, and disorder the recollective faculties.

Ver. 67. Would all but stoop to what they understand.] The expression is delicate, and implies what is very true, that most men think it a degradation of their genius to employ it in what lies level to their comprehension, but had rather exercise their talents in the ambition of subduing what is placed above it.

Ver. 80. Some, to whom heaven, &c.] Here the poet (in a sense he was not, at first, aware of) has given an example of the truth of his observation, in the observation itself. The two lines stood originally thus:

There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it.