Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, That always shows great pride, or little sense: Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve:' As things seem large which we through mists descry, Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. music, and Dryden never wrote a note. 1 Creech's translation of Horace's Art of Poetry: men of sense retire, The boys abuse, and only fools admire. Aaron Hill says, that Pope was very fond of the line in the text, and often repeated it. Hill, who "abhorred the sentiment," once asked him if he still adhered to the opinion of Longinus, that the true sublime thrilled and transported the reader. On Pope replying in the affirmative, his interrogator pressed him with the contradiction, and the perplexed poet, according to Hill's report, took refuge in nonsense, and made this unintelligible answer,- -"that Longinus's remark was truth, but that, like certain truths of more importance, it required assent from faith, without the evidence of demonstration." It must be evident that Shakespeare, Milton, and scores besides, are worthy of admiration; and no man would show his sense by protesting that he did not admire but only approved of them. Pope is inconsistent, for at ver. 236 he speaks of "rapture 38.5 390 395 warming the mind," and of "the generous pleasure to be charmed with wit." 2 In all editions before the quarto of 1743, "Some the French writers." 3 This was directed against Pope's co-religionists, and greatly annoyed them. The offence was not that he had misrepresented their views, but that he had denounced a doctrine which all zealous papists maintained. "Nothing," he said, when writing in vindication of the passage to Caryll, "has been so much a scarecrow to our opponents as that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves. I own to you I was glad of any opportunity to express my dislike of so shocking a sentiment as those of the religion I profess are commonly charged with, and I hoped a slight insinuation, introduced by a casual similitude only, could never have given offence, but on the contrary, must needs have done good in a nation wherein we are the smaller party, and consequently most misrepresented, and most in need of vindication." The Roman Catholics Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, But blame the false, and value still the true. And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he took to themselves the couplet "Meanly they seek," which followed the simile, but Pope pointed out that the plural "some," and not the singular "each man," was the antecedent to "they." The comparison was not kept up throughout the paragraph, and the lines after ver. 397 refer solely to the critics. 1 The word "enlights" is, I believe, of our poet's coinage, analogically formed from "light," as "enlighten" from "lighten."—WAKEFIELD. 400 405 410 415 420 And neither gives increase, nor brings decay. 3 There is very little poetical expression from this line to ver. 450. It is only mere prose fringed with rhyme. Good sense in a very prosaic style; reasoning, not poetry.-WAR TON. 4 "Joins with quality" for "joins with men of rank" is a vulgar colloquialism. 5 In sing-song Durfey, Oldmixon or me, 2 Sir Robert Howard's poem against was the original reading of the manu Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, The vulgar thus through imitation err; So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong: 425 So schismatics the plain believers quit,' And are but damned for having too much wit. Some praise at morning what they blame at night; 430 But always think the last opinion right. A muse by these is like a mistress used, This hour she's idolised, the next abused; "An 1 This couplet is succeeded by two more lines in the manuscript: And while to thoughts refined they make pretence, [sense. Hate all that's common, ev'n to common 2 In the first edition the reading was "dull believers," which Pope in the second edition altered to "plain." The change was occasioned by the outery against the couplet. ordinary man," he wrote to Caryll, "would imagine the author plainly declared against these schismatics for quitting the true faith out of contempt of the understanding of some few of its believers. But these believers are called 'dull,' and because I say that these schismatics think some believers dull, therefore these charitable well-disposed interpreters of my meaning say that I think all 435 440 believers dull." There is a culpable levity in the language of Pope's lines, but he could not intend to espouse the cause of the sceptics when he selects them as an instance of people who "purposely go wrong" because "the crowd go right." 3 If this couplet is interpreted by the grammatical construction, the "unfortified towns daily changed their sides" in consequence of vacillating "betwixt sense and nonsense." Of course Pope only meant that in war weak towns frequently changed sides, but not for the same reason that weak heads changed their opinions. 4 The Book of Sentences was a work of Peter Lombard, which consisted of subtle disquisitions on theology. Thomas Aquinas wrote a com. mentary upon it. Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn ?" Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, The current folly proves the ready wit; Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh. 1 St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. Scotus, who died in 1308, disputed the doctrines of his predecessor, and their respective disciples divided for a century the theological world.-CROKER. 9 Cowley speaks of "the cobwebs of the schoolmen's trade," and says in a note, "the distinctions of the schoolmen may be likened to cobwebs either because of the too much fineness of the work, or because they take not the materials from nature, but spin it out of themselves." A place where old and secondhand books were sold formerly, near Smithfield.-POPE. 4 Between this and verse 448: No more with crambo entertain the stage. Now all are banished to th' Hibernian shore! Till like a swan it sings itself to death.] 445 450 455 Thus leaving what was natural and fit, Which lived as long as fools were pleased to The lines between brackets are from the manuscript, and were not printed by Pope. The whole passage was probably written after the poem was first published, since the topics seem to have been suggested by Addison's papers upon false wit in the Spectator of May, 1711, where the anagrams, acrostics, and punning sermons of the reign of James I. are all enumerated. Swiney was the director of the Italian opera, which, at the commencement of 1712, failed to meet with adequate support, and he withdrew, not to Ireland, but to the continent. "He remained there," says Cibber, "twenty years, an exile from his friends and country." An additional couplet follows in the manuscript: To be spoke ill of, may good works befall, Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose, In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;' 1 The parson alluded to was Jeremy Collier; the critic was the Duke of Buckingham; the first of whom very powerfully attacked the profligacy, and the latter the irregularity and bombast of some of Dryden's plays. These attacks were much more than merry jests.-WARTON. 2 Dryden himself, Virg. Geor. iv. 729: But she returned no more to bless his longing eyes.-WAKEFIELD. 3 Blackmore's attack upon Dryden occurs in a poem which appeared in 1700, called a Satire against Wit. The author treats wit as money, and proposes that the whole should be recoined for the purpose of separating the base metal from the pure. Into the melting pot when Dryden comes How will he shrink when all his lewd allay This is exaggerated, but the censure is directed against the indecency which was really infamous. The invectives of Milbourne in his Notes on Dryden's Virgil, 1698, had not the same excuse. The strictures are confined to the translation of the Eclogues and Georgics, and are throughout rabid, insolent, coarse, and contemptible. To demonstrate his own superiority, Milbourne inserted specimens of a rival translation, which is on a par with his 460 465 criticisms. He was in orders, and Wouldst thou be soon dispatched, and perish In the second edition he substituted S -s, which meant Shadwells, for Bl- -s, but in the quarto of 1717 he again coupled Blackmore with Milbourne, and printed both names at full length. Blackmore was living, and the changes indicate Pope's varying feelings towards him. 4 In the fifth book of Vitruvius is an account of Zoilus's coming to the court of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and presenting to him his virulent and brutal censures of Homer, and begging to be rewarded for his work; instead of which, it is said, the king ordered him to be crucified, or, as some said, stoned. His person is minutely described in the eleventh book of Ælian's various History.—WARTON. Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden: Let mighty Spenser raise his reverend head, dead. |