Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,'
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;'
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,'
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.

In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,"
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice."

But though the ancients thus their rules invade, (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,') Moderns, beware! or if you must offend

Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;

Let it be seldom, and compelled by need;
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.'
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.'
A prudent chief not always must display'
His pow'rs in equal rank, and fair array,
But with th' occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,'
Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream."

Eneis: "Virgil might make this anachronism by superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the same reason that a monarch may dispense with or suspend his own laws."

1

Pope's manuscript supplies two omitted lines:

The boldest strokes of art we may despise, Viewed in false lights with undiscerning eyes.

2 A violation of grammatical propriety, into which many of our first and most accurate writers have fallen. "Mishapen" is doubtless the true participle.-Wakefield.

3 Pope took his imagery from Horace, Ars Poet., 361:

Ut pictura, poesis erit: quæ, si propiùs
stes,
[abstes:

To capiat magis; et quædam, si longiùs
Hæc amat obscurum ; volet hæc sub luce
videri.

He was also indebted to the translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dryden and Soame:

Each object must be fixed in the due place,
And diff'ring parts have corresponding

grace.

165

170

175

180

4 Οἷον τι ποιοῦσιν οἱ φρόνιμοι στρατηλά ται κατὰ τὰς τάξεις τῶν στρατευμάτων. Dion. Hal. De Struct. Orat.-WARBURTON.

5 It may be pertinent to subjoin Roscommon's remark on the same subject:

Far the greatest part

Of what some call neglect is studied art.
When Virgil seems to trifle in a lino,
'Tis but a warning piece which gives the
sign,

To wake your fancy and prepare your sight
To reach the noble height of some unusual
flight.-WARTON.

Variety and contrast are necessary, and it is impossible all parts should be equally excellent. Yet it would be too much to recommend introduc ing trivial or dull passages to enhance the merit of those in which the whole effort of genius might be employed.— BOWLES.

6 Modeste, et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent quod non intelligunt. Ac si necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;'

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.'

See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring;

185

Hear, in all tongues consenting Pæans ring!

In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined,
And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind."

Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;*
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;

eorum legentibus placere, quam multa
displicere maluerim. Quint.-POPE.

Lord Roscommon was not disposed to be so diffident in those excellent verses of his Essay:

For who, without a qualm, hath ever
looked
[cooked?

On holy garbage, though by Homer
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded
gods,

Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.-WAKEFIELD.

Pope originally wrote in his manuscript,

Nor Homer nods so often as we dream, which was followed by this couplet: In sacred writ where difficulties rise, "Tis safer far to fear than criticise.

1 So Roscommon's epilogue to Alexander the Great :

Secured by higher pow'rs exalted stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.-
WAKEFIELD.

2 The poet here alludes to the four great causes of the ravage amongst ancient writings. The destruction of the Alexandrine and Palatine libraries by fire; the fiercer rage of Zoilus, Mævius, and their followers, against wit; the irruption of the barbarians into the empire; and the long reign of ignorance and superstition in the cloisters.-WARBURTON.

I like the original verse better

190

Destructive war, and all-devouring age,― as a metaphor much more perspicuous and specific.-WAKEFIELD.

In his epistle to Addison, Pope has 'all-devouring age," but the epithet here is more original and striking, and admirably suited to the subject. This shows a nice discrimination. "All-involving" would be as improper in the Essay on Medals as "all-devouring" would be in this place.— BOWLES.

A couplet in Cooper's Hill suggested the couplet of Pope :

Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or
time, or fire,
[spire.
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall con

Thus in a poem on the Fear of
Death, ascribed to the Duke of
Wharton:

There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen'ral chorus of her reign.—
WAKEFIELD.

4 Cowley on the death of Crashaw:
Hail, bard triumphant.
Virg. Æn. vi. 649:
Magnanimi heroes! nati melioribus annis.
-WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's Religio Laici:

Those giant wits in happier ages born.

From Pope's manuscript it ap. pears that he had originally written

Hail, happy heroes, born in better days

Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found!'
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,

(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)

To teach vain wits a science little known,

// T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own! //

195

200

II.

Or 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,"

She gives in large recruits of needful pride;

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

205

What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:*

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense.

If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.

In a note he gave the line from Virgil of which his own was a translation.

1 An imitation of Cowley, David. ii. 833:

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound

And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.-WAKEFIELD.

210

and are there separated by some organ destined to the purpose." Pope adopted the doctrine "allowed by everybody," but which consisted of assumptions without proof. The very existence of these fluid spirits had never been ascertained. The remaining physiology of Pope's couplet was erroneous. When there is a deficiency of blood, its place is not supplied by wind. The grammatical construction, again, is vicious, and ascribes "blood and spirits" to souls as well as to bodies. The moral reflection illustrated by the simile is but little more correct. Men in general are not proud in proportion as they have nothing to be proud of.

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;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:'
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,'
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,'
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;"
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,'
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,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep
o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"

1 Pope is commonly considered to have laid down the general proposition that total ignorance was preferable to imperfect knowledge. The context shows that he was speaking only of conceited critics, who were presumptuous because they were ill-informed. He tells such persons that the more enlightened they become the humbler they will grow.

2 In the early editions, Fired with the charms fair science does impart.

Though "does" is removed, "with what" is less dignified and graceful than "with the charms." The diction of the couplet is prosaic and devoid of elegance.—WAKEFIELD.

Dryden, in the State of Innocence, Act i. Sc. i.:

Nor need we tempt those heights which angels keep.-WAKEFIELD.

215

220

225

230

4 The proper word would have been "beyond."

5 [Much we begin to doubt and much to fear
Our sight less trusting as we see more
clear.]

So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try,
Filled with ideas of fair Italy,

The traveller beholds with cheerful eyes
The less'ning vales, and seems to tread
the skies.-POPE.

The couplet between brackets is from the manuscript. The next couplet, with a variation in the first line, was transferred to the epistle to Jervas.

This is, perhaps, the best simile in our language-that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly JOHNunrelated to each other.

SON.

I will own I am not of this opinion. The simile appears evidently to have