No More Learning

He was, therefore, angry at Swift, who
represents him as "refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that
what had never been offered had never been refused.

Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the
Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the
different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the epistle to
lord Bathurst, 1733, on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared
great labour to have been bestowed[134].

Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known
characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say
how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the man of
Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous
enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have
diffused all those blessings from "five hundred a year. " Wonders are
willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man
of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the
wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes;
this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the
utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he
had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place:
and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man, being made more
credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable
virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is
recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to
be possible.

This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his
religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by
mentioning, with some indignation, the inscription on the monument.

When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of
direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no
very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which
Bathurst is introduced as speaking.

He afterwards, 1734, inscribed to lord Cobham his Characters of Men,
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and
exemplify his favourite theory of the "ruling passion," by which he
means an original direction of desire to some particular object; an
innate affection, which gives all action a determinate and invariable
tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or
more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate
propension.

Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may
reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men
change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one
time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed,
who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit: for
excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular
species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early
conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and
emulation.

It must be, at least, allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to
reason and observation, must have an object independent on human
contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No
man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of
money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be
born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically
regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and
any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness
of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have
enabled to comprehend it.

This doctrine is, in itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency
is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or
overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is
prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall
excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful
dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his "ruling
passion[135]. "

Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples
by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions,
appetites, and habits.

To the Characters of Men, he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to
have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has
taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured
with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great success,
was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,
because the publick was informed, by an advertisement, that it contained
"no character drawn from the life;" an assertion which Pope probably did
not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his
readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them, in a note, that
the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was "vice too high"
to be yet exposed.

The time, however, soon came, in which it was safe to display the
dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was
inserted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.

He published, from time to time, between 1730 and 1740, imitations of
different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was
suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own,
he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the
dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and, perhaps, had
been long in his hands.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarized, by
adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of
Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his
satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of
our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the second, by
Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient. It
is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design,
which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the
parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement; for
he has carried it farther than any former poet.

He published, likewise, a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's
satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the
earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems
to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he
was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he
thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to
himself.

The epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived, in its first
design, from Boileau's Address _à son Esprit_, was published in January,
1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It
is to be regretted, that either honour or pleasure should have been
missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his
life, and venerable for his piety.

Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession,
versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to
animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a
scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who, in the crowd of life,
retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates
himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces
his own claims to kindness and respect.

Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before
printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,
of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first,

Who would not smile if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

Then,

Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

At last it is,

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

He was at this time at open war with lord Hervey, who had distinguished
himself as a steady adherent to the ministry; and, being offended with a
contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets[136], had summoned Pulteney
to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack, perhaps, cannot now
be easily known: he had written an invective against Pope, whom he
calls, "Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;" and hints that his
father was a _hatter_[137]. To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and
prose; the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never
sent, is printed among his letters; but to a cool reader of the present
time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity.

His last satires, of the general kind, were two dialogues, named, from
the year in which they were published, Seventeen Hundred and
Thirty-eight. In these poems many are praised, and many are reproached.
Pope was then entangled in the opposition; a follower of the prince of
Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and
censured the conduct of the ministers. His political partiality was too
plainly shown: he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his
earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent
conflicts of faction.

In the first dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath,
he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit
of his ancestors, and called him in his verses "low-born Allen. " Men are
seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of
defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which
was afterwards softened[138] into "humble Allen. "

In the second dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among
others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of
repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who
scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the
resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.

About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the
lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley, his publisher.
Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped; but
Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was,
however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended
rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.

Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor
drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of
reformation is imputed, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing
over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of
opinion, that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of
power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and
formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his
resentment; till, at last, he began to think he should be more safe, if
he were less busy.

The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the
first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot,
who used to meet in the time of queen Anne, and denominated themselves
the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning
by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the
design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an
event very disastrous to polite letters.

If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the
production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope, the want
of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer
ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the
satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of
absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never
felt.

For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never
obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read
has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by
remembering it.

The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general
resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular
imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle.

Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for
his travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though
the rest had been suppressed.

Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have
been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the
modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau
endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.
Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for
the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection
from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London,
about the latter end of the last century, by a man[139] who concealed
his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well qualified for his
undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and,
1740, published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his
predecessor's preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere
text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the
editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness;
he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on
Man, of which he has given this account to Dr Swift:

"March 25, 1736.

"If ever I write any more epistles in verse, one of them shall
be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but
I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work
ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest.
The subject is large, and will divide into four epistles, which
naturally follow the Essay on Man; viz. 1. Of the extent and
limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful,
and, therefore, attainable, and of the unuseful, and, therefore,
unattainable, arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, application, and
use, of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the
science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire
against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by
pictures, characters, and examples. "

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and
finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage
to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added,
at Warburton's request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design
is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either
pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.

When this book was printed, 1742, the laurel had been, for some time,
upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope
could regard with much kindness or esteem, though, in one of the
imitations of Horace, he has liberally enough praised the Careless
Husband. In the Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had
mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet's
unkindness as more injurious, "because," says he, "I never have offended
him. "

It might have been expected, that Pope should have been, in some degree,
mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence
appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned
him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his
epistle to Arbuthnot: and, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, attacked
him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.
Perhaps he imagined, that, in ridiculing the laureate, he satirized
those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious
petulance, with which he affected to insult the great.

The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had
confidence enough in his own powers to believe, that he could disturb
the quiet of his adversary, and, doubtless, did not want instigators,
who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by
looking on the contest. He, therefore, gave the town a pamphlet, in
which he declares his resolution, from that time, never to bear another
blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by
perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very
distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off
the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the
audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened
that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to
enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions,
he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in
a mummy and a crocodile. "This," says he, "was received with loud claps,
which indicated contempt of the play. " Pope, who was behind the scenes,
meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the
virulence of a "wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he
would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than
to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the
same provocation. "

He shows his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play
which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope's
behaviour at a tavern. The pamphlet was written with little power of
thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would
have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with
human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his
understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world
seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher
character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope
would say of Cibber, nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity
might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.

He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die,
without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as
Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber
had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him,
he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence
only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be
felt would have been struck in vain.

But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole
English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he
thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he
published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope
was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore,
depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry,
and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which
raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he
had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in
time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally
in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable
impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.
Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by
transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its
efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to
say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own
magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.

Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another
pamphlet[141], which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have
heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter,
on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope,
who said, "these things are my diversion. " They sat by him while he
perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be
preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.

From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital
powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any
original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his
remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in
which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears
to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree.

He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for
his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction,
established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the
fabulous age: the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been
exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily
be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted
with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the
nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead; by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model
the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time
or country in which he places them.

He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he
expresses it, "going down the hill. " He had, for at least five years,
been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians
were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr.
Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the
common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation.
Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the
water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not
subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss
him.

While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one
day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw
his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord
Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand,
crossed his legs and sat still; but lord Marchmont, who was younger and
less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked,
"What, is he not dead yet[142]? " She is said to have neglected him, with
shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little
which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance
began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their
conversation, therefore, was endearing, for when they met, there was an
immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her
unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or
human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and
impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet
consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered
his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that
might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was
too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.

In May, 1744, his death was approaching[143]; on the 6th, he was all day
delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient
humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing
things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the
presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall.
He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.

Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and
being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his
deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or
absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his
understanding, answered, "It has so. " And added, "I never in my life
knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or
more general friendship for mankind. " At another time he said, "I have
known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship
than"--His grief then suppressed his voice.

Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by
his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father
and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I
do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you
for putting me in mind of it. "

In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he
said, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship,
and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue. "

He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly,
that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He
was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument
has been erected to him by his commentator, the bishop of Gloucester.

He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to lord
Bolingbroke[144], and, if he should not be living, to the earl of
Marchmont; undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and
eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his
life. After a decent time, Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit
preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been
yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world has been
disappointed of what was "reserved for the next age. "

He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke, by a kind of posthumous
offence. The political pamphlet, called the Patriot King, had been put
into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very few
copies, to be distributed, according to the author's direction, among
his friends, and Pope assured him that no more had been printed than
were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer brought and
resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies, which Pope had
ordered him to print, and to retain in secret. He kept, as was observed,
his engagement to Pope, better than Pope had kept it to his friend; and
nothing was known of the transaction, till, upon the death of his
employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to the right
owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and
delivered the whole impression to the flames.

Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by
resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the
violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might
have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from
the example.

Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of vengeance
excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his
last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell
the tale to the publick with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose
heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation,
thought it proper for him to interpose; and undertook, not indeed to
vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal,
but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be
denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the
motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have
induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by
usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shown to a
number more than sufficient to preserve the author's claim; he could not
gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke
was dead: and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud
would be defeated, and if left to himself, would be useless.

Warburton, therefore, supposes, with great appearance of reason, that
the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for
Bolingbroke, who might, perhaps, have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope
thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's approbation.
To this apology an answer was written in a Letter to the most impudent
Man living.

He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the petulant and
contemptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen, and an affected
repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known friend and
favourite of Pope, had been invited to the house of Allen, where she
comported herself with such indecent arrogance, that she parted from
Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for
ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much
bitterness as to refuse any legacy from Pope, unless he left the world
with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her
dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the
violence of her temper, or, perhaps, with a prejudice of a lover,
persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he complied with her
demand, and polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted
the legacy, which he gave to the hospital at Bath, observing that Pope
was always a bad accomptant, and that, if to 150_l_. he had put a cipher
more, he had come nearer to the truth[145].

The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed on the nicest
model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared himself to a
spider, and, by another, is described as protuberant behind and before.
He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of a
constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a tender
frame are easily distorted, his deformity was, probably, in part the
effect of his application. His stature was so low, that to bring him to
a level with common tables, it was necessary to raise his seat. But his
face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid.

By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were
so much disordered, that his life was a "long disease. " His most
frequent assailant was the headache, which he used to relieve by
inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very frequently required.

Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was
communicated by a female domestick of the earl of Oxford, who knew him,
perhaps, after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in
perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that
he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen
with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of
stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were
laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted.
His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of
stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able
to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without
help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean.

His hair had fallen almost all away; and he used to dine sometimes with
lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was
black, with a tie-wig and a little sword.

The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required, had taught
him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man. He
expected that every thing should give way to his ease or humour; as a
child, whose parents will not hear her cry, has an unresisted dominion
in the nursery:

C'est que l'enfant toujours est homme;
C'est que i'homme est toujours enfant.

When he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company;" and once slumbered at
his own table while the prince of Wales was talking of poetry.

The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many invitations;
but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no servant, and had so
many wants that a numerous attendance was scarcely able to supply them.
Wherever he was, he left no room for another, because he exacted the
attention, and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands
were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen, in time, avoided and
neglected him; and the earl of Oxford discharged some of the servants
for their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had
neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr.
Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the
woman that waited on him in his chamber, he was very burdensome; but he
was careful to recompense her want of sleep; and lord Oxford's servant
declared, that in a house where her business was to answer his call, she
would not ask for wages.

He had another fault easily incident to those who, suffering much pain,
think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can snatch.
He was
too indulgent to his appetite: he loved meat highly seasoned and of
strong taste; and at the intervals of the table amused himself with
biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes, he
would oppress his stomach with repletion; and though he seemed angry
when a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends,
who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury,
which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is
not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. Hannibal, says
Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the sword; the slaughters of
Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope was imputed, by some
of his friends, to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to
heat potted lampreys.

That he loved too well to eat, is certain; but that his sensuality
shortened his life, will not be hastily concluded, when it is
remembered that a conformation so irregular lasted six-and-fifty years,
notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation.

In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in artifice,
and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected
methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem. " If, at the house of
his friends, he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to ask for
it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as something
convenient; though, when it was procured, he soon made it appear for
whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teased lord Orrery till he
obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions, that
lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the
politician about cabbages and turnips. " His unjustifiable impression of
the Patriot King, as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must
have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught
an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of
outwitting Bolingbroke[146].

In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he
excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being not one that
was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable, that so near
his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little
of what he has said: traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery,
nor sentences of observation; nothing either pointed or solid, either
wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record. When an
objection, raised against his inscription for Shakespeare, was defended
by the authority of Patrick, he replied, "horresco referens"--that, "he
would allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of a
single word, but not of two words put together. "

He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be
capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave lord Oxford silently,
no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and
messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was, indeed,
infested by lady Mary Wortley, who was the friend of lady Oxford, and
who, knowing his peevishness, could by no entreaties be restrained from
contradicting him, till their disputes were sharpened to such asperity,
that one or the other quitted the house.

He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiours; but
by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited
to laughter.

Of his domestick character, frugality was a part eminently remarkable.
Having determined not to be dependent, he determined not to be in want,
and, therefore, wisely and magnanimously rejected all temptations to
expense unsuitable to his fortune. This general care must be universally
approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony,
such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters,
as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in
five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his
friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in
his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and,
having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say,
"Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine. " Yet he tells his friends, that
"he has a heart for all, a house for all, and, whatever they may think,
a fortune for all. "

He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is said to have
wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such performances require.
That this magnificence should be often displayed, that obstinate
prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not permit; for his
revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to about eight hundred pounds
a year, of which, however, he declares himself able to assign one
hundred to charity[147].

Of this fortune, which, as it arose from publick approbation, was very
honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it
would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that
ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters, and in
his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or
some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topick of
his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his
antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint, and their
want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the
world, that to want money is to want every thing.

Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that
of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and
whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any
practices of meanness or servility; a boast which was never denied to be
true, and to which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set his
genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or
praised those whom he did not esteem. Savage, however, remarked, that he
began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for his
Highness's dog.

His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of
life. He passed over peers and statesmen, to inscribe his Iliad to
Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had
his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so
great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in
literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of
Congreve appears in the letters among those of his other friends, but
without any observable distinction or consequence.

To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names dignified with
titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except lord
Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that a good man would
wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity; he can derive
little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.

Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual
and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness.
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.
It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true
characters-of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes
to his friend, lays his heart open before him. But the truth is, that
such were the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the
friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they
dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed,
they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we
hide from ourselves we do not show to our friends. There is, indeed, no
transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and
sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of
conversation, the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they
are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have
their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate
performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and
surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.

Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so
much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he
desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less
constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his
chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a
letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and
partialities are known; and must, therefore, please, if not by favouring
them, by forbearing to oppose them.

To charge those favourable representations which men give of their own
minds with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would show more severity
than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's
thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure
while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in
privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with
benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are
formed, they are felt; and self-love does not suspect the gleam of
virtue to be the meteor of fancy.

If the letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem
to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write, because
there is something which the mind wishes to discharge; and another to
solicit the imagination, because ceremony or vanity requires something
to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with
"affectation and ambition:" to know whether he disentangled Himself from
these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life must be
set in comparison.

One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if
it had been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was
certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself was sufficiently
observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he
says, when "he has just nothing else to do;" yet Swift complains that he
was never at leisure for conversation, because he had "always some
poetical scheme in his head. " It was punctually required that his
writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and lord Oxford's
domestick related, that, in the dreadful winter of forty, she was called
from her bed by him four times in one night, to supply him with paper,
lest he should lose a thought.

He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it was
observed, by all who knew him, that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet,
and that his extreme irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation;
but he wished to despise his criticks, and, therefore, hoped that he
did despise them.

As he happened to live in two reigns when the court paid little
attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings,
and proclaims that "he never sees courts. " Yet a little regard shown him
by the prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say
when he was asked by his royal highness, "How he could love a prince
while he disliked kings. "

He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents
himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as on
emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes with
gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of pity.
These were dispositions apparently counterfeited. How could he despise
those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation his esteem of
himself was super-structed? Why should he hate those to whose favour he
owed his honour and his ease? Of things that terminate in human life,
the world is the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were
possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was
far enough from this unreasonable temper: he was sufficiently "a fool to
fame," and his fault was, that he pretended to neglect it. His levity
and his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common
life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions
of common men.

His scorn of the great is too often repeated to be real; no man thinks
much of that which he despises; and, as falsehood is always in danger of
inconsistency, he makes it his boast, at another time, that he lives
among them.

It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind. He is
afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the post-office should know his
secrets; he has many enemies; he considers himself as surrounded by
universal jealousy: "after many deaths, and many dispersions, two or
three of us" says he, "may still be brought together, not to plot, but
to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it pleases:" and they can
live together, and "show what friends wits may be, in spite of all the
fools in the world. " All this while it was likely that the clerks did
not know his hand; he certainly had no more enemies than a publick
character like his inevitably excites; and with what degree of
friendship the wits might live, very few were so much fools as ever to
inquire.

Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, and
expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with him.
Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere; Pope's was the
mere mimickry of his friend, a fictitious part which he began to play
before it became him. When he was only twenty-five years old, he related
that "a glut of study and retirement had thrown him on the world," and
that there was danger lest "a glut of the world should throw him back
upon study and retirement. " To this Swift answered with great propriety,
that Pope had not yet either acted or suffered enough in the world to
have become weary of it. And, indeed, it must be some very powerful
reason that can drive back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the
pleasures of society.

In the letters, both of Swift and Pope, there appears such narrowness of
mind, as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some
affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation to so
small a number, that whoever should form his opinion of the age from
their representation, would suppose them to have lived amidst ignorance
and barbarity, unable to find, among their contemporaries, either virtue
or intelligence, and persecuted by those that could not understand them.

When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when
he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with
negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his habitual and
settled sentiments, but either wilfully disguises his own character, or,
what is more likely, invests himself with temporary qualities, and
sallies out in the colours of the present moment. His hopes and fears,
his joys and sorrows, acted strongly upon his mind; and, if he differed
from others, it was not by carelessness; he was irritable and resentful;
his malignity to Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous, and then
hated for being angry, continued too long. Of his vain desire to make
Bentley contemptible, I never heard any adequate reason. He was
sometimes wanton in his attacks; and, before Chandos, lady Wortley, and
Hill, was mean in his retreat.

The virtues which seem to have had most of his affection were liberality
and fidelity of friendship, in which it does not appear that he was
other than he describes himself. His fortune did not suffer his charity
to be splendid and conspicuous; but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred
pounds, that he might open a shop; and, of the subscription of forty
pounds a year, that he raised for Savage, twenty were paid by himself.
He was accused of loving money; but his love was eagerness to gain, not
solicitude to keep it.

In the duties of friendship he was zealous and constant; his early
maturity of mind commonly united him with men older than himself, and,
therefore, without attaining any considerable length of life, he saw
many companions of his youth sink into the grave; but it does not appear
that he lost a single friend by coldness or by injury; those who loved
him once, continued their kindness. His ungrateful mention of Allen, in
his will, was the effect of his adherence to one whom he had known much
longer, and whom he naturally loved with greater fondness. His violation
of the trust reposed in him by Bolingbroke, could have no motive
inconsistent with the warmest affection; be either thought the action so
near to indifferent that he forgot it, or so laudable, that he expected
his friend to approve it.

It was reported, with such confidence as almost to enforce belief, that
in the papers intrusted to his executors was found a defamatory life of
Swift, which he had prepared as an instrument of vengeance, to be used
if any provocation should be ever given. About this I inquired of the
earl of Marchmont, who assured me, that no such piece was among his
remains.

The religion in which he lived and died was that of the church of Rome,
to which, in his correspondence with Racine, he professes himself a
sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in some part of his
life, is known by many idle and indecent applications of sentences taken
from the scriptures; a mode of merriment which a good man dreads for its
profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.
But to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that
his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of
revelation. The positions, which he transmitted from Bolingbroke, he
seems not to have understood; and was pleased with an interpretation,
that made them orthodox.

A man of such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, would
naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those who
could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was
not perfect.

Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the same man
is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has been
depreciated. He certainly was, in his early life, a man of great
literary curiosity; and, when he wrote his Essay on Criticism, had, for
his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the
living world, it seems to have happened to him, as to many others, that
he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of
Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume. He gathered his
notions fresh from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the
originals of nature. Yet, there is no reason to believe, that literature
ever lost his esteem; he always professed to love reading; and Dobson,
who spent some time at his house, translating his Essay on Man, when I
asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, "More than I
expected. " His frequent references to history, his allusions to various
kinds of knowledge, and his images, selected from art and nature, with
his observations on the operations of the mind, and the modes of life,
show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and
diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.

From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes
in his verses to Jervas; and which, though he never found an opportunity
to gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined.

Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental principle
was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of consonance and
propriety. He saw immediately, of his own conceptions, what was to be
chosen, and what to be rejected; and, in the works of others, what was
to be shunned, and what was to be copied.

But good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages
its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few
materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains
supremacy. Pope had, likewise, genius; a mind active, ambitious, and
adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; in its widest
searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still
wishing to be higher; always imagining something greater than it knows,
always endeavouring more than it can do.

To assist these powers, he is said to have had great strength and
exactness of memory. That which he had heard or read was not easily
lost; and he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested,
but what he had found in other writers that might be accommodated to his
present purpose.

These benefits of nature he improved by incessant and unwearied
diligence; he had recourse to every source of intelligence, and lost no
opportunity of information; he consulted the living as well as the dead;
he read his compositions to his friends, and was never content with
mediocrity, when excellence could be attained. He considered poetry as
the business of his life; and, however he might seem to lament his
occupation, he followed it with constancy; to make verses was his first
labour, and to mend them was his last.

From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If conversation
offered any thing that could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a
thought, or, perhaps, an expression more happy than was common, rose to
his mind, he was careful to write it; an independent distich was
preserved for an opportunity of insertion, and some little fragments
have been found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon
at some other time.

He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure: he was never
elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a
fault unamended by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured
his works, first to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it.

Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at once memory
and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and
polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions
only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related
of Virgil, that his custom was to pour out a great number of verses in
the morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting
inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his
translation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and
gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them.

With such faculties, and such dispositions, he excelled every other
writer in poetical prudence: he wrote in such a manner as might expose
him to few hazards. He used almost always the same fabrick of verse;
and, indeed, by those few essays which he made of any other, he did not
enlarge his reputation. Of this uniformity the certain consequence was
readiness and dexterity. By perpetual practice, language had, in his
mind, a systematical arrangement; having always the same use for words,
he had words so selected and combined as to be ready at his call. This
increase of facility he confessed himself to have perceived in the
progress of his translation.

But what was yet of more importance, his effusions were always
voluntary, and his subjects chosen by himself. His independence secured
him from drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren topick: he
never exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop of condolence or
congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarcely ever temporary. He
suffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a song; and
derived no opportunities from recent events, nor any popularity from the
accidental disposition of his readers. He was never reduced to the
necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a birthday, of calling the
graces and virtues to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes have said
before him. When he could produce nothing new, he was at liberty to be
silent.

His publications were, for the same reason, never hasty. He is said to
have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his
inspection: it is at least certain, that he ventured nothing without
nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and
the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is
always enamoured of its own productions, and did not trust his first
fondness. He consulted his friends, and listened with great willingness
to criticism; and, what was of more importance, he consulted himself,
and let nothing pass against his own judgment.

He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an
opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with
unvaried liberality; and, perhaps, his character may receive some
illustration, if he be compared with his master.

Integrity of understanding, and nicety of discernment, were not allotted
in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's
mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical
prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers.
But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He
wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he
pleased others, he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to
rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was
already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He
wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or
necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment
happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it
from his mind; for, when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further
solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and, therefore,
always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but
dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from
others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with
minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.

For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed
to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their
publication, were the two satires of Thirty-eight; of which Dodsley told
me, that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be
fairly copied. "Almost every line," he said, "was then written twice
over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time afterwards
to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second
time. "

His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their
publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never
abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently
corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the Iliad,
and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the Essay on Criticism
received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be
found that he altered, without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour.
Pope had, perhaps, the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly wanted
the diligence of Pope.

In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose
education was more scholastick, and who, before he became an author, had
been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His
mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations
from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man
in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of
Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by
minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and
more certainty in that of Pope.

Poetry was not the sole praise of either: for both excelled likewise in
prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style
of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and
uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his
mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and
rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a
natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied
exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by
the sithe, and levelled by the roller.

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without
which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which
collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with
some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of
this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more;
for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of
Dryden it must be said, that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not
better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by
some external occasion, or extorted by domestick necessity; he composed
without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind
could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he
sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him
to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate
all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of
Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of
Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular
and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls
below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with
perpetual delight.

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just;
and, if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some
partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily
condemn me; for meditation and inquiry, may, perhaps, show him the
reasonableness of my determination.

* * * * *

The works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much with
attention to slight faults, or petty beauties, as to the general
character and effect of each performance.

It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals,
which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and,
exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no
subtile reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are not, however,
composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the
day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The last,
that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author's
favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness
of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a
delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably just, I
wish, however, that his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the
zephyrs are made "to lament in silence. "

To charge these pastorals with want of invention, is to require what was
never intended. The imitations are so ambitiously frequent, that the
writer evidently means rather to show his literature, than his wit. It
is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to
copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have
obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a
series of versification, which had in English poetry no precedent, nor
has since had an imitation.

The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill,
with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be
denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of
interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The objection made
by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts
terminating in the principal and original design. There is this want in
most descriptive poems, because, as the scenes, which they must exhibit
successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which
they are shown must by necessity be arbitrary, and more is not to be
expected from the last part than from the first. The attention,
therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by
diversity, such as his poem offers to its reader.

But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged; the parts of
Windsor Forest which deserve least praise, are those which were added to
enliven the stillness of the scene, the appearance of Father Thames, and
the transformation of Lodona. Addison had in his Campaign derided the
rivers that "rise from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes; and
it is, therefore, strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only
unnatural but lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with
sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient;
nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin,
or a rock an obdurate tyrant.

The Temple of Fame has, as Steele warmly declared, "a thousand
beauties. " Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of
ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much
improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery is
properly selected, and learnedly displayed; yet, with all this
comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and
its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little
relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much
notice, but is turned silently over, and seldom quoted or mentioned with
either praise or blame.

That the Messiah excels the Pollio, is no great praise, if it be
considered from what original the improvements are derived.

The Verses on the unfortunate Lady have drawn much attention by the
illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect; and they must
be allowed to be written, in some parts, with vigorous animation, and,
in others, with gentle tenderness; nor has Pope produced any poem in
which the sense predominates more over the diction. But the tale is not
skilfully told; it is not easy to discover the character of either the
lady or her guardian. History relates that she was about to disparage
herself by a marriage with an inferiour; Pope praises her for the
dignity of ambition, and yet condemns the uncle to detestation for his
pride; the ambitious love of a niece may be opposed by the interest,
malice, or envy of an uncle, but never by his pride. On such an occasion
a poet may be allowed to be obscure, but inconsistency never can be
right[148].

The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day was undertaken at the desire of Steele:
in this the author is generally confessed to have miscarried, yet he has
miscarried only as compared with Dryden; for he has far outgone other
competitors. Dryden's plan is better chosen; history will always take
stronger hold of the attention than fable: the passions excited by
Dryden are the pleasures and pains of real life, the scene of Pope is
laid in imaginary existence; Pope is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden
with turbulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the
passes of the mind.

Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions,
the stated recurrence of settled numbers.