Dreading ev'n Fools, by Flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;

Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,

And sit attentive to his own applause;

210

VARIATIONS.

After Ver. 208 in the MS.

Who, if two Wits on rival themes contest,
Approves of each, but likes the worst the best.

Alluding to Mr. P.'s and Tickell's Translation of the first Book of the Iliad.

NOTES.

Ver. 209. Like Cato, give] In the second volume of the Biographia Britannica is a vindication of Addison, by a writer, who, to a consummate knowledge of the laws and history of his country, added a most exquisite taste in literature, I mean Sir William Blackstone; who thus concludes this vindication : Nothing surely could justify so deep a resentment, unless the story be true of the commerce between Addison and Gildon; which will require to be very fully proved, before it can be believed of a gentleman who was so amiable in his moral character, and who (in his own case) had two years before expressly disapproved of a personal abuse of Mr. Dennis. The person, indeed, from whom Mr. Pope seems to have received this anecdote, about the time of his writing the character (viz. about July 1715), was no other than the Earl of Warwick, son-in-law to Mr. Addison himself; and the something about Wycherley (in which the story supposes that Addison hired Gildon to abuse Pope and his family) is explained by a note on the Dunciad, to mean a pamphlet containing Mr. Wycherley's Life. Now it happens, that in July 1715, the Earl of Warwick (who died at the age of twenty-three, in August 1721) was only a boy of seventeen, and not likely to be intrusted with such a secret, by a statesman between forty and fifty, with whom it does not appear he was any way connected or acquainted; for Mr. Addison was not married to his mother, the Countess of Warwick, till the following year 1716: nor would Gildon have been employed in July 1715 to write Mr. Wycherley's Life, who lived till the December following. As therefore so many inconsistencies are evident in the story itself, which never found its way into print till near sixty years after it is said to have happened, it will be no breach of charity to sup

While Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise-
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he?

NOTES.

pose that the whole of it was founded on some misapprehension in either Mr. Pope or the Earl; and unless better proof can be given, we shall readily acquit Mr. Addison of this most odious part of the charge."

I beg leave to add, that as to the other accusation, Dr. Young, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Harte, and Lord Lyttleton, each of them assured me that Addison himself certainly translated the first Book of Homer.

An able vindication of Addison was written by Mr. Jeremiah Markland, then a young man, and afterward the celebrated Critic. Both were printed together, by Curll, so early as 1717. And perhaps this circumstance may furnish a clue to what has been so ably discussed by Judge Blackstone, in the "Biographia Britannica," under the article Addison. The epistle to Arbuthnot was not published till January 1735; that to Augustus, with some others, appeared in 1738.-"I have seen Mr. Pope's best performances, and find that he pleases the town most when he is most out of humour with the court. He has made very free with his gracious majesty, in the Epistle to Augustus. But he had lost his favourite bill; even my Lord Harvey had carried a point against him; and while he is angry, he will never be idle. In this last Epistle he seems to have recanted all he had before said of Addison," viz.

-"(Excuse some courtly stains)

No whiter page than Addison remains," &c.

From a manuscript letter of Mr. Clarke, who wrote on Ancient Coins, to his learned printer and friend Mr. Bowyer; July 6, 1738.

Ver. 214. Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he?] But when we come to know it belongs to Atticus, i. e. to one whose more obvious qualities had before engaged our love or esteem, then friendship, in spite of ridicule, will make a separation; our old impressions will get the better of our new; or, at least, suffer themselves to be no farther impaired than by the admission of a mixture of pity and concern. W.

216

What tho' my Name stood rubric on the walls, Or plaster'd posts, with claps, in capitals? Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers load, On wings of winds came flying all abroad? I sought no homage from the race that write; I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight: 220 Poems I heeded (now be-rhym'd so long)

No more than thou, great GEORGE! a birth-day song.

I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,

To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, 225
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;
But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.
Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sate full-blown Bufo puff'd by ev'ry quill;

230

NOTES.

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

P.

Ver. 218. On wings of winds came flying all abroad?] Hopkins, in the civth Psalm.

Ver. 232. puff'd by ev'ry quill;] By Addison, in his Account of Poets; by Steele, in a dedication to the Spectator; by Tickell, to his Homer. The ridicule on the Hind and Panther was the best of Halifax's compositions.

Fed with soft Dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
His Library (where busts of Poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head)
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,
Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place :
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:

Till

grown more frugal in his riper days,

235

240

He paid some bards with port, and some with praise, To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,

And others (harder still) he paid in kind.

Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, 245 Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:

VARIATIONS.

After Ver. 234 in the MS.

To Bards reciting he vouchsaf'd a nod,
And snuff'd their incense like a gracious god.

NOTES.

Ver. 236. a true Pindar stood without a head] Ridicules the affectation of Antiquaries, who frequently exhibit the headless Trunks and Terms of Statues, for Plato, Homer, Pindar, &c. Vide. Fulv. Ursin. &c.

Ver. 245. Dryden alone] Our Poet, with true gratitude, has seized every opportunity of shewing his reverence for his great master, Dryden; whom Swift as constantly depreciated and maligned. "I do affirm," says he severely, but with exquisite irony indeed, in the dedication of the Tale of a Tub to Prince Posterity," upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet to be seen." And he attacks him again in the Battle of Books. Shaftesbury is also very fond of petulantly carping at Dryden : "To see the incorrigibleness of our poets in their pedantic

But still the Great have kindness in reserve,
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.

NOTES.

manner," says he, vol. iii. p. 276, "their vanity, defiance of criticism; their rhodomontade, and poetical bravado; we need only turn to our famous poet-laureat, the very Mr. Bays himself, in one of his latest and most-valued pieces, Don Sebastian, writ many years after the ingenious author of the Rehearsal had drawn his picture." I remember to have heard my father say, that Mr. Elijah Fenton, who was his intimate friend, and had been his master, informed him, that Dryden, upon seeing some of Swift's earliest verses, said to him, Young man, you will never be a poet:" And that this was the cause of Swift's rooted aversion to Dryden, mentioned above. was so much and so often altered, at the instigation of Addison, who mentioned this circumstance to my father at Magdalen College, that not above eight lines remain as they originally stood. Shaftesbury's resentment was excited by the admirable poem of Absalom and Achitophel; and particularly by four lines in it that related to Lord Ashley, his father:

Baucis and Philemon

"And all to leave, what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son,
Got while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy."

In the character which Dr. Johnson has given of Dryden, with his usual eloquence and energy, there is one sentence to which I cannot subscribe: "Dryden, standing in the highest place, was in no danger from his contemporaries." Where then was Milton? Dryden himself yielded the first place to Milton.

Ver. 248. help'd to bury] Mr. Dryden, after having lived in exigences, had a magnificent Funeral bestowed upon him by the contribution of several persons of Quality. P.

Ver. 248. help'd to starve.] Alluding to the subscription that was made for his funeral. Garth spoke an oration over him. His necessities obliged him to produce (besides many other poetical pieces) twenty-seven plays in twenty-five years. He got 251. for the copy, and 701. for his benefits generally. Dramatic poetry was certainly not his talent. His plays, a very few passages excepted, are insufferably unnatural. It is remarkable that he did not scruple to confess, that he could