So unaffected, so composed a mind; ON THE MONUMENT OF THE HONOURABLE ROBERT DIGBY, AND OF HIS SISTER MARY, ON MR. GAY. In Westminsier Abbey, 1730. Or manners gentle, of affections mild; And uncorrupted, e'en among the great: Erected by their Father, the Lord Digby, in the Church But that the worthy and the good shall say, of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, 1727. Go! fair example of untainted youth, Of modest wisdom, and pacific truth; Composed in sufferings, and in joy sedate, Good without noise, without pretension great: Just of thy word, in every thought sincere, Who knew no wish but what the world might hear: Of softest manners, unaffected mind, Lover of peace, and friend of human-kind : And thou, bless'd maid! attendant on his doom, Steer'd the same course to the same quiet shore, Yet, take these tears, mortality's relief, ON SIR GODFREY KNELLER. In Westminster Abbey, 1723. KNELLER, by Heaven, and not a master, taught, Living, great nature fear'd he might outvie ON GENERAL HENRY WITHERS. HERE, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind, For thee the hardy veteran drops a tear, ON MR. ELIJAH FENTON. At Easthamsted, in Berks, 1730. THIS modest stone, what few vain marbles can, Whom Heaven kept sacred from the proud and great: Calmly he look'd on either life, and here Thank'd Heaven that he had lived, and that he died. Striking their pensive bosoms- Here lies Gayr ANOTHER. WELL then! poor Gay lies under ground, So there's an end of honest Jack: So little justice here he found, "Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back. INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON ISAACUS NEWTONUS: Testantur Tempus, Natura, Cœlum: Hoc Marmor Fatetur. NATURE and nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be!' and all was light. ON DR. FRANCIS ATTERBURY, Who died in Exile in Paris, 1732. [His only daughter having expired in his arms, imme diately after she arrived in France to see him.] DIALOGUE. She. YES, we have lived-one pang, and then we part; He. ON EDMUND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, Who died in the 19th year of his age, 1735. Ir modest youth with cool reflection crown'd, And every opening virtue blooming round, Could save a parent's justest pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a sinking state; This weeping marble had not ask'd thy tear, Or sadly told how many hopes lie here! The living virtue now had shone approved, The senate heard him, and his country loved. Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham: In whom a race, for courage famed and art, Ends in the milder merit of the heart; And, chiefs or sages long to Britain given, Pays the last tribute of a saint to Heaven. FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. HEROES and kings! your distance keep; ANOTHER, ON THE SAME. UNDER this marble or under this sill, LORD CONINGSBY'S EPITAPH.* HERE lies Lord Coningsby-be civil: ON BUTLER'S MONUMENT. RESPECT to Dryden, Sheffield justly paid, THE DUNCIAD, IN FOUR BOOKS; With the Prolegomena of Scriblerus, the Hypercritics of Aristarchus, and Notes Variorum. A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER, of my life, and a much greater respect to truth, than to him or any man living, engaged me in inquiries, of which the inclosed notes are the fruit. I perceive that most of these authors had been (doubtless very wisely) the first aggressors. They had tried, till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: nobody was either concerned or surprised, if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce. But every one was curious to read what could be said to prove Mr. Pope one, and was ready to pay something for such a discovery: a stratagem which, would they fairly own it, might not only reconcile them to me but screen them from the resentment of their lawfis superiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them. I found this was not all ill success in that had transported them to personal abuse, either of himself, or (what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men of virtue and honour bad men, long before he had either leisure or inclination to call them bad writers; and some had been such old offenders, that he had quite forgotten their persons as well as their slanders, till they were pleased to revive them. Now what had Mr. Pope done before. to incense them? He had published those works which are in the hands of every body, in which not the least mention is made of any of them. And what has he done since? He has laughed, and written the Dunciad. What has that said of them? A very serious truth, which the public had said before, that they were dull; and what it had no sooner said, but they themselves were at great pains to procure, or even purchase, room in the prints, to testify under their hands the truth of it. I should still have been silent, if either I had seen any inclination in my friend to be serious with such accusers, or if they had only meddled with his writings; since whoever publishes, puts himself on his trial by his country-but when his moral character was attacked, and in a manner from which neither truth nor virtue can secure the most innocent; in a manner, which, though it annihilates the credit of the accusation with the just and impartial, yet aggravates very much the guilt of the accusers; I mean by authors without names: then I thought, since the danger was common to all, the concern ought to be so; and that it was an act of justice to detect the authors, not only on this account, but as many of them are the same who for several years past have made free with the greatest names in church and state, exposed to the world the private misfortunes of families, abused all, even to women, and whose prodivision of their country) have insulted the fallen, the stituted papers (for one or other party, in the unhappy IT is with pleasure I hear that you have procured a Such notes as have occurred to me I herewith send you: you will oblige me by inserting them amongst those which are, or will be, transmitted to you by others; since not only the author's friends, but even strangers, appear engaged by humanity, to take some care of an orphan of so much genius and spirit, which its parent seems to have abandoned from the very beginning, and suffered to step into the world naked, unguarded, and unattended. It was upon reading some of the abusive papers lately published, that my great regard to a person, whose friendship I esteem as one of the chief honours This Epitaph, originally written on Picus Mirandula, is applied to F. Chartres, and printed among the works of Swift. See Hawkesworth's edition, vol. vi. S. Mr. Pope, in one of the prints from Scheemaker's monument of Shakspeare in Westminster Abbey, has sufficiently shewn his contempt of Alderman Barber, by the following couplet, which is substituted in the place of The cloud-capt towers, &c. Thus Britain loved me; and preserved my fame, Pope might probably have suppressed his satire on the alderman, because he was one of Swift's acquaintances and correspondents; though in the fourth book of the Dunciad he has an anonymous stroke at him: 'So by each bard an alderman shall sit, A heavy lord shall hang at every wit.' have already confessed I had a private one. I am no author, and consequently not to be susof the men, of whom scarce one is known to me by pected either of jealousy or resentment against any sight; and as for their writings, I have sought them (on this one occasion) in vain, in the closets and libraries of all my acquaintance. I had still been in the dark, if a gentleman had not procured me (I suppose from some of themselves, for they are generally much more dangerous friends than enemies) the passages I the malice or absurdity of them; which it behoves me send you. I solemnly protest I have added nothing to to declare, since the vouchers themselves will be so sure prevent it, by preserving at least their titles, and soon and irrecoverably lost. You may in some meadiscovering (as far as you can depend on the truth of your information) the names of the concealed authors. The per The first objection I have heard made to the poem is, that the persons are too obscure for satire. sons themselves, rather than allow the objection, to afford it a serious answer, were not all assassinates, would forgive the satire; and if one could be tempted popular insurrections, the insolence of the rabble with out doors, and of domestics within, most wrongfully chastised, if the meanness of offenders indemnified them from punishment? On the contrary, obscurity renders them more dangerous, as less thought of: law can pronounce judgment only on open facts: morality alone can pass censure on intentions of mischief; so that for secret calumny, or the arrow flying in the dark there is no public punishment left, but what a good writer inflicts. The next objection is, that these sort of authors are poor. That might be pleaded as an excuse at the Old Bailey, for lesser crimes than defamation (for it is the case of almost all who are tried there), but sure it can be none here; for who will pretend that the robbing another of his reputation supplies the want of it in himself? I question not but such authors are poor, and heartily wish the objection were removed by any honest livelihood. But poverty is here the accident, not the subject: he who describes malice and villany to be pale and meagre, expresses not the least anger against paleness or leanness, but against malice and villany. The Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet is poor; but is he therefore justified in vending poison? Not but poverty itself becomes a just subject of satire, when it is the consequence of vice, prodigality, or neglect of one's lawful callings; for then it increases the public burthen, fills the streets and highways with robbers, and the garrets with clippers, coiners, and weekly journalists. But admitting that two or three of these offend less in their morals than in their writings: must povert make nonsense sacred? If so, the fame of bad authors would be much better consulted than that of all the good ones in the world; and not one of a hundred had ever been called by his right name. They mistake the whole matter: it is not charity to encourage them in the way they follow, but to get them out of it; for men are not bunglers because they are poor, but they are poor because they are bunglers. Is it not pleasant enough to hear our authors crying out on the one hand, as if their persons and characters were too sacred for satire; and the public objecting on the other, that they are too mean even for ridicule? But whether bread or fame be their end, it must be allowed, our author, by and in this poem, has mercifully given them a little of both. There are two or three, who by their rank and fortune have no benefit from the former objections, supposing them good; and these I was sorry to see in such company. But if, without any provocation, two or three gentlemen will fall upon one, in an affair wherein his interest and reputation are equally embarked; they cannot certainly, after they have been content to print themselves his enemies, complain of being put into the number of them. Others, I am told. pretend to have been once his friends. Surely, they are their enemies who say so; since nothing can be more odious than to treat a friend as they have done. But of this I cannot persuade myself, when I consider the constant and eternal aversion of all bad writers to a good one. Such as claim merit from being his admirers, I would gladly ask if it lays him under a personal obligation? At that rate he would be the most obliged humble servant in the world. I dare swear for these in particular, he never desired them to be his admirers, nor promised in return to be theirs: that had truly been a sign he was of their acquaintance; but would not the malicious world have suspected such an approbation of some motive worse than ignorance in the author of the Essay on Criticism? Be it as it will, the reasons of their admiration and of his contempt are equally subsisting, for his works and theirs are the very same that they were. One, therefore, of their assertions I believe may be true, That he has a contempt for their writings.' And there is another which would probably be sooner allowed by himself than by any good judge beside, That his own have found too much success with the public.' But as it cannot consist with his modesty to claim this as a justice, it lies not on him, but entirely on the public, to defend its own judgment. There remains what in my opinion, might seem a better plea for these people, than any they have made use of. If obscurity or poverty were to exempt a man from satire, much more should folly or dulness, which are still more involuntary; nay, as much so as personal deformity. But even this will not help them: deformity becomes an object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness, when he sets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed, because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure; but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and tending part of mankind from imposition, because par unpre ticular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools, ought never to be made so, in complaisance to a few who are. Accordingly we find, that, in all ages, all vain pretenders, were they ever so poor, or ever so dull, have been constantly the topics of the most candid satirists, from the Codrus of Juvenal to the Damon of Boileau. Having mentioned Boileau, the greatest poet and most judicious critic of his age and country, admirable for his talents, and yet perhaps more admirable for his judgment in the proper application of them; I cannot help remarking the resemblance betwixt him and our author, in qualities, fame, and fortune: in the distinction shewn them by their superiors, in the general esteem of their equals, and in their extended reputation amongst foreigners; in the latter of which ours has met with a better fate, as he has had for his translators persons of the most eminent rank and abilities in their respective nations.* But the resemblance holds in nothing more, than in their being equally abused by the ignorant pretenders to poetry of their times; of which not the least memory will remain but in their own writings, and in the notes made upon them. What Boileau has done in almost all his poems, our author has only in this: I dare answer for him he will do it in no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had slandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from censuring obscure and worthless persons, for scarce any other were his enemies. However, as the parity is so remarkable, I hope it will continue to the last; and if ever he should give us an edition of this poem himself, I may see some of them treated as gently, on their repentance or better merit, as Perrault and Quinault were at last by Boileau In one point I must be allowed to think the character of our English poet the more amiable. He has not been a follower of fortune or success; he has lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received, no favour, but what was done him in his friends. As his satires were the more just for being delayed, so were his panegyrics; bestowed only on such persons as he had familiarly known, only for such virtues as he had long observed in them, and only at such times as others when out of power or out of fashion. A satire therefore, cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean on writers so notorious for the contrary practice, became no man so well as himself; as none, it is plain, was so little in their friendships, or so much in that of those whom they had most abused, namely the greatest and best of all parties. Let me add a further reason, that, though engaged in their friendships, he never espoused their animosities; and can almost singly challenge this through guilt, through shame, or through fear, through honour, not to have written a line of any man, which, variety of fortune, or change of interests, he was ever unwilling to own. I shall conclude with remarking, what a pleasure it must be to every reader of humanity, to see all along, that our author, in his very laughter, is not indulging his own ill-nature, but only punishing that of others. As to his poem, those alone are capable of doing it justice, who to use the words of a great writer, kuow how hard it is (with regard both to his subject and his manner) Hamilton; the same, in verse also, by Monsieur Roboton, Essay on Criticism in French verse, by General counsellor and privy secretary to King George I. after by the abbé Reynel, in verse, with notes. Rape of the and in Italian verse by the abbé Conti, a noble Venetian; Lock, in French, by the princess of Conti, Paris, 1728; and by the marquis Rangoni, envoy extraordinary from Modena to King George II. Others of his works by Sal vini of Florence, &c. His Essays and Dissertations on Homer, several times translated into French. Essay on houte, in prose, 1737, and since by others in French, Man, by the abbé Reynel, in verse; by Monsieur SilItalian and Latin. against his book of poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death; As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the town declaimed sir William Trumbull, when he had resigned the office of secretary of state; lord Bolinbroke, at his leaving England, afrer the queen's death; lord Oxford, in his last decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the South-sea year, and after his death: others only in epitaphs. vetustis dare novitatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris | the same author at different seasons. Nor shall we lucem fastiditis gratiam. I am your most humble servant, St. James's, Dec. 22d, 1728. WILLIAM CLELAND.* MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS HIS PROLEGOMENA AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DUNCIAD: With the Hypercritics of Aristarchus Dennis' Remarks on Prince Arthur. I CANNOT but think it the most reasonable thing in the world, to distinguish good writers, by discouraging the bad. Nor is it an ill-natured thing, in relation even to the very persons upon whom the reflections are made. It is true, it may deprive them a little the sooner of a short profit and a transitory reputation; but then it may have a good effect, and oblige them (before it be too late) to decline that for which they are so very unfit, and to have recourse to something in which they may be more successful. Character of Mr. P. 1716. The persons whom Boileau has attacked in his writings have been for the most part authors, and most of those authors, poets: and the censures he hath passed upon them have been confirmed by all Europe. Gildon, Preface to his New Rehearsal. It is the common cry of the poetasters of the town, and their fautors, that it is an ill-natured thing to expose the pretenders to wit and poetry. The judges and magistrates may with full as good reason be reproached with ill-nature for putting the laws in execution against a thief or impostor. The same will hold in the republic of letters, if the critics and judges will let every ignorant pretender to scribbling pass on the world. Theobald, Letter to Mist, June 22, 1728. Attacks may be levelled, either against failures in genius, or against the pretensions of writing without one., gather only the testimonies of such eminent wits as would of course descend to posterity, and consequently be read without our collection; but we shall likewise, with incredible labour, seek out for divers others, which, but for this our diligence, could never at the distance of a few months appear to the eye of the most curious, Hereby thou mayest not only receive the delectation of variety, but also arrive at a more certain judgment by a grave and circumspect comparison of the witnesses with each other, or of each with himself. Hence also thou wilt be enabled to draw reflections, not only of a critical, but a moral nature, by being let into many particulars of the person as well as genius, and of fortune as well as merit of our author: in which if I relate some things of little concern peradventure to thee, and some of as little even to him; I entreat thee to consider how minutely all true critics and commentators are wont to insist upon such, and how material they seem to themselves, if to none other. Forgive me, gentle reader, if tedious: allow me to take the same pains to find whe(following learned example) I ever and anon become modest or arrogant; as another, whether his author ther my author were good or bad, well or ill-natured, coat or a cassock. was fair or brown, short or tall, or whether he wore a education: but as to these, even his contemporaries do We proposed to begin with his life, parentage, and exceedingly differ. One saith, he was educated at home; another. that he was bred at St. Omer's by Jesuits; a third, not at St. Omer's, but at Oxford! a fourth, that he had no university education at all. Those who allow him to be bred at home, differ as much concerning his tutor: One saith, he was kept by his priest; a third,** that he was a parson; one++ calleth father on purpose; a second, that he was an itinerant him a secular clergyman of the church of Rome; another, a monk. As little do they agree about his father, whom one §§ supposeth, like the father of Hesiod, a another,¶¶ a hatter, &c. tradesman or merchant; another, a husbandman; wanting to give our' poet such a father as Apuleius hath Nor has an author been viz. a demon: for thus Mr. Gildon :-*** to Plato, Jamblichus to Pythagoras, and divers to Homer, the devil; and that he wanteth nothing but horns and 'Certain it is, that his original is not from Adam, but tail to be the exact resemblance of his infernal father.' Finding, therefore, such contrariety of opinions, and (whatever be ours of this sort of generation) not being fond to enter into controversy, we shall defer writing the life of our poet, till authors can determine among themselves what parents or education he had, or whether he had any education or parents at all. Proceed we to what is more certain, his Works, though not less uncertain the judgments concerning them; bethe most ancient of critics, Concanen, Dedication to the Author of the Dunciad.ginning with his Essay on Criticism, of which hear first A satire upon dulness is a thing that has been used and allowed in all ages. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, wicked scribbler! TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS Concerning our Poet and his Works. M. Scriblerus Lectori S. BEFORE we present thee with our exercitations on this most delectable poem (drawn from the many volumes of our adversaria on modern authors) we shall here, according to the laudable usage of editors, collect the various judgments of the learned concerning our poet; various indeed, not only of different authors, but of This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the university of Utrecht, with the earl of Mar. He served in Spain under earl Rivers. After the peace, he was made one of the commissioners of the customs in Scotland, and then of taxes in England; in which, having shewn himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible (though without any other assistance of fortune), he was suddenly displaced by the minister, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and died two months after, in 1741. He was a person of universal learning, and an enlarged conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his friend, or a sincerer attachment to the constitution of his country. Mr. John Dennis. 'His precepts are false or trivial, or both; his thoughts are crude and abortive, his expressions absurd, his numbers harsh and unmusical, his rhymes trivial and common; instead of majesty, we have something that is very mean; instead of gravity, something that is very boyish; and instead of perspicuity and lucid order, we have but too often obscurity and confusion.' And in another place- What rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated muse, who had sued out a divorce from some superanuated sinner, upon account of impotence, and 傳 who, being poxed by the former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepid age, which makes her hobble so damnably.'* No less peremptory is the censure of our hypercritical historian Mr. Oldmixon. I dare not say any thing on the Essay on Criticism in verse; but if any more curious reader has discovered in it something new which is not in Dryden's prefaces, dedications, and his essay on dramatic poetry, not to mention the French critics, I should be very glad to have the benefit of the discovery.'+ He is followed (as in fame, so in judgment) by the modest and simple-minded Mr. Leonard Welsted; Who, out of great respect to our poet, not naming him, doth yet glance at his Essay, together with the duke of Buckingham's, and the criticisms of Dryden and of Horace, which he more openly taxeth : 'As to the numerous treatises, essays, arts, &c. both in verse and prose, that have been written by the moderns on this ground-work, they do but hackney the same thoughts over again, making them still more trite. Most of their pieces are nothing but a pert, insipid heap of commonplace. Horace has, even in his Art of Poetry, thrown out several things which plainly shew, he thought an art of poetry was of no use, even while he was writing one.' To all which great authorities, we can only oppose that of Mr. Addison. author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is te Dr. Garth, in the preface to his poem of Claremont, differs from this opinion: Those who have seen these two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill and Windsor Forest, the one written by sir John Denham, the other by Mr. Pope, will shew a great deal of candour if they approve of this.' Of the Epistle of Eloïsa, we are told by the obscure writer of a poem called Sawney, That because Prior's Henry and Emma charmed the finest tastes, our author writ his Eloisa in opposition to it; but forgot innocence and virtue: If you take away her tender thoughts, and her tierce desires, all the rest is of no value.' In which, methinks, his judgment resembleth that of a, French tailor on a villa and garden by the Thames: All this is very fine; but take away the river, and it is good for nothing.' But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of himself, saying in his Alma :‡ 'O Abelard! ill-fated youth, Thy tale will justify this truth: Dan Pope, for thy misfortune grieved, Sir Richard Blackmore, Knt. who (though otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a laudable translation.'§ That ready writer Mr. Oldmixon, The Essay on Criticism,' saith he, which was published some months since, is a master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regu- Come we now to his translation of the Iliad, celarity which would have been requisite in a prose writer.lebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to They are some of them uncommon, but such as the mention the indefatigable reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that ease 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 well enlarged upon in the preface to his works: that wit and fine writing doth 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 latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or 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 few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotie, 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 are chiefly to admire. Longinus, in his Reflections, has given us the same kind of sublime, which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them: I cannot but take notice that our English author has, after the same manner, exemplified several of the precepts in the very precepts themselves.'§ He then produces some instances of a particular beauty in the numbers, and concludes with saying, that there are three poems in our tongue of the same nature, and each a master-piece in its kind! the Essay on Translated Verse; the Essay on the Art of Poetry; and the Essay on Criticism.' Of Windsor Forest, positive is the judgment of the affirmative in his forementioned Essay, frequently commends the Mr. Lewis Theobald thus extols it, The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation. I am in doubt, whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers: but when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, That he alone raised and flung with ease a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation, what I once despaired to have seen done by the force of several masterly hands.' Indeed the same gentleman appears to have changed his sentiment in his Essay on the the Art of Sinking in Reputation, (printed in Mist's Journal, March 30, 1728), where he says thus: In order to sink in reputation, let him take it into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder, as it will, how the devil he got there), and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how.' Strange variation! We are told in |