Chapter XVI: Part 16

[Footnote 74: In the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Cato sided with Pompey, and when the cause was lost, he stabbed himself in the bowels to avoid being captured. He was found by his friends insensible, but alive, and a physician began to sew up the wound. Cato recovered his consciousness, pushed away the physician, tore open the wound, and expired.]

[Footnote 75: A horrible spectre appeared to Brutus while he sat meditating in his tent at night. "What art thou?" said Brutus, "and what is thy business with me?" "I am thy evil genius," replied the spectre; "thou wilt see me at Philippi." At Philippi the spectre rose up again before him on the night preceding the battle in which he suffered a total defeat. He destroyed himself in the night which followed.]

[Footnote 76: In the midst of the Temple, nearest the throne of Fame, are placed the greatest names in learning of all antiquity. These are described in such attitudes as express their different characters. The columns on which they are raised are adorned with sculptures, taken from the most striking subjects of their works, which sculpture bears a resemblance, in its manner and character, to the manner and character of their writings.--POPE.

This was a trite device, and is poorly applied in the present instance. "The manner and character of the writings" of Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Horace, Aristotle, and Cicero could hardly have been described in a vaguer and more common-place way.]

[Footnote 77:

From the dees many a pillere,
Of metal that shone not full clere, &c.
Upon a pillere saw I stonde
That was of lede and iron fine,
Him of the sect Saturnine,
The Ebraike Josephus the old, &c.
Upon an iron piller strong,
That painted was all endelong,
With tigers' blood in every place,
The Tholosan that highte Stace,
That bare of Thebes up the fame, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 78:

Full wonder hye on a pillere
Of iron, he the great Omer,
And with him Dares and Titus, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 79: Pope has selected from Homer only three subjects as the most interesting: Diomed wounding Venus, Hector slaying Patroclus, and the same Hector dragged along at the wheels of Achilles' chariot. Are these the most affecting and striking incidents of the Iliad? But it is highly worth remarking, that this very incident of dragging the body of Hector thrice round the walls of Troy, is absolutely not mentioned by Homer. Heyne thinks that Virgil, for he first mentioned it, adopted the circumstance from some Greek tragedy on the subject.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 80:

There saw I stand on a pillere
That was of tinned iron cleere,
The Latin poete Virgyle,
That hath bore up of a great while
The fame of pious AEneas.
And next him on a pillere was
Of copper, Venus' clerk Ovide,
That hath y-sowen wondrous wide
The great God of Love's name--
Tho saw I on a pillere by
Of iron wrought full sternely,
The greate poet Dan Lucan,
That on his shoulders bore up than
As high as that I mighte see,
The fame of Julius and Pompee.
And next him on a pillere stoode
Of sulphur, like as he were woode,
Dan Claudian, sothe for to tell,
That bare up all the fame of hell, &c.--POPE.

Since Homer is placed by Chaucer upon a pillar of iron, he places Virgil upon iron tinned over, to indicate that the AEneis was based upon the Iliad and was both more polished and less vigorous. The sulphur upon which Claudian stands, is typical of the hell he described in his poem on the Rape of Proserpine. Ovid, the poet of love, is put upon a pillar of copper, because copper was the metal of Venus; and Lucan, like Homer, has a pillar of iron allotted to him because he celebrated in his Pharsalia the wars of Caesar and Pompey, and, as Chaucer says,

Iron Martes metal is,
Which that god is of battaile.]

[Footnote 81: Wakefield supposes that "modest majesty" was suggested by Milton's phrase, "modest pride," in Par. Lost, iv. 310.]

[Footnote 82: For this expression Wakefield quotes Dryden, AEn. vi. 33.

There too in living sculpture might be seen
The mad affection of the Cretan queen.]

[Footnote 83: The rhyme is dearly purchased by such an inexcusable inversion as "silver blight."]

[Footnote 84: Pindar being seated in a chariot, alludes to the chariot races he celebrated in the Grecian games. The swans are emblems of poetry, their soaring posture intimates the sublimity and activity of his genius. Neptune presided over the Isthmian, and Jupiter over the Olympian games.--POPE.]

[Footnote 85: A. Philips, Past. v. 95.

He sinks into the cords with solemn pace,
To give the swelling tones a bolder grace.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 86: "Distorted," which is always used in an unfavourable sense, is a disparaging epithet by which to characterise the vehement eagerness of the champions. It is not clear who or what they "threaten," whether the horses or each other, and in either case there is nothing "great" in the image of a person uttering threats in a "distorted posture."]

[Footnote 87: This expresses the mixed character of the odes of Horace: the second of these verses alludes to that line of his,

Spiritum Graiae tenuem camoenae,

as another which follows, to

Exegi monumentum aere perennius.

The action of the doves hints at a passage in the fourth ode of his third book:

Me fabulosae Vulture in Apulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliae,
Ludo fatigatumque somno,
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texere; mirum quod foret omnibus--
Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
Lauroque, collataque myrto,
Non sine Dis animosus infans.

Which may be thus Englished:

While yet a child, I chanced to stray,
And in a desert sleeping lay;
The savage race withdrew, nor dared
To touch the muses' future bard;
But Cytherea's gentle dove
Myrtles and bays around me spread,
And crowned your infant poet's head
Sacred to music and to love.--POPE.

In addition to these passages, he had in his mind Hor. Epist. lib. i. 19, quoted by Wakefield:

Temperat Archilochi Musam pede mascula Sappho,
Temperat Alcaeus.]

[Footnote 88: Horace speaking, in his ode to Augustus, of the relative glory of different families, says that the Julian star shone among all the rest as the moon shines among the lesser lights. The star referred to the comet which appeared for seven days the year after the death of Julius Caesar, and which was supposed to indicate that he had become a deity in the heavens. A star was sculptured in consequence on his statue in the forum.]

[Footnote 89: Surely he might have selected for the basso rilievos about the statue of Horace ornaments more manly and characteristical of his genius.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 90: A very tame and lifeless verse indeed, alluding to the treatise of Aristotle "concerning animals."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 91: Pope here refers to Aristotle's treatise on the Heavens.]

[Footnote 92: This beautiful attitude is copied from a statue in the collection which Lady Pomfret presented to the University of Oxford.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 93: Addison's translation of some lines from Sannazarius:

And thou whose rival tow'rs invade the skies.

[Footnote 94: Chaucer in a passage, not quoted by Pope, represents Fame as enthroned upon "a seat imperial," which was formed of rubies.]

[Footnote 95:

Methoughte that she was so lite
That the length of a cubite
Was longer than she seemed to be;
But thus soon in a while she,
Herself tho wonderly straight,
That with her feet she carthe reight,
And with her head she touched heaven.--POPE.]

[Footnote 96: This notion of the enlargement of the temple is also from Chaucer, who says that it became in length, breadth, and height, a thousand times bigger than it was at first.]

[Footnote 97: The corresponding passage in Chaucer is not quoted by Pope, who translated from their common original, Virg. AEn. iv. 181:

Cui quot sunt corpore plumae,
Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu,
Tot lunguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris.]

[Footnote 98:

I heard about her throne y-sung
That all the palays walles rung;
So sung the mighty Muse, she
That cleped is Calliope,
And her eighte sisters eke.--POPE.

Pope should have continued the extract; for his next four lines were prompted by the succeeding four in Chaucer:

And evermore eternally
They sing of Fame as tho heard I;
"Heried be thou and thy name
Goddess of renown or fame."

"Heried" means praised.]

[Footnote 99:

I heard a noise approchen blive,
That fared as bees done in a hive,
Against their time of out flying;
Right such a manere murmering,
For all the world it seemed me.
Tho gan I look about and see
That there came entring into th' hall,
A right great company withal;
And that of sundry regions,
Of all kind of conditions, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 100: This description is varied with improvements from Dryden, AEneis, vi. 958.

About the boughs an airy nation flew
Thick as the humming bees that hunt the golden dew:
The winged army roams the field around,
The rivers and the rocks remurmer to the sound.--WAKEFIELD.

He was assisted by another passage in Dryden's Flower and Leaf:

Thick as the college of the bees in May,
When swarming o'er the dusky fields they fly,
Now to the flow'rs, and intercept the sky.]

[Footnote 101: So in Chaucer all degrees, "poor and rich" fall down on their knees before Fame and beg her to grant them their petition.]

[Footnote 102: "The tattling quality of age which, as Sir William Davenant says, is always narrative." Dryden's Dedication of Juvenal.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 103:

And some of them she granted sone,
And some she warned well and fair,
And some she granted the contrair--
Right as her sister dame Fortune
Is wont to serven in commune.--POPE.

Chaucer and Pope describe Fame as bestowing reputation upon some, and traducing others, when their deserts were equal, but neither Pope nor Chaucer touch upon the truth that the same person is commonly both lauded and denounced. This is finely expressed by Milton, Samson Agonistes, ver. 971:--

Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.]

[Footnote 104: The idea is from Chaucer:

They hadde good fame each deserved
Although they were diversely served.

Besides the passage in Chaucer, Pope evidently recalled Creech's translation of Juvenal, Sat. xiii. 132.

ev'ry age relates
That equal crimes have met unequal fates;
That sins alike, unlike rewards have found,
And whilst this villain's crucified the other's crowned.]

[Footnote 105: In Chaucer, Fame sends for Eolus, who comes with two trumpets, a golden trumpet, from which he gives forth praises, and a black trumpet of brass, from which he sends forth blasts of slander. In Pope the golden trumpet is blown by the muses, and the trump of slander sounds without the mention of any agent.]

[Footnote 106:

Tho came the thirde companye,
And gan up to the dees to hye,
And down on knees they fell anone,
And saiden: We ben everichone
Folke that han full truely
Deserved fame rightfully,
And prayen you it might be knowe
Right as it is, and forthe blowe.
I grant, quoth she, for now me list
That your good works shall be wist.
And yet ye shall have better loos,
Right in despite of all your foos,
Than worthy is, and that anone.
Let now (quoth she) thy trumpe gone--
And certes all the breath that went
Out of his trumpes mouthe smel'd
As men a pot of baume held
Among a basket full of roses.--POPE.]

[Footnote 107: Prior, Carmen Seculare:

In comely rank call ev'ry merit forth,
Imprint on ev'ry act its standard worth.]

[Footnote 108: The whole tribe of the "good and just," who obtain any fame at all, are said by Pope to get more than they deserve. For this notion there is certainly no foundation, unless he meant that the fact of desiring reputation deprived virtue of the title to it.]

[Footnote 109:

Therewithal there came anone
Another huge companye,
Of good folke--
What did this Eolus, but he
Took out his black trump of brass,
That fouler than the devil was:
And gan this trumpe for to blowe,
As all the world should overthrowe.
Throughout every regione
Went this foule trumpes soune,
As swift as pellet out of gunne,
When fire is in the powder runne.
And such a smoke gan oute wende,
Out of the foule trumpes ende, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 110: In his account of the reception given by Fame to her various suppliants, Pope is detailing the manner in which praise and blame are dispensed in this world, and it is a departure from reality to consign the entire race of conquerors to oblivion. However little they may deserve fame, they at least obtain it. The inconsistency is the more glaring that when he describes the temple in the opening of the poem, he tells us that,

Within stood heroes, who through loud alarms,
In bloody fields pursued renown in arms.

[Footnote 111:

I saw anone the fifth route,
That to this lady gan loute,
And down on knees anone to fall,
And to her they besoughten all,
To hiden their good workes eke,
And said, they yeven not a leke
For no fame ne such renowne;
For they for contemplacyoune,
And Goddes love hadde ywrought,
Ne of fame would they ought.--POPE.]

[Footnote 112:

What, quoth she, and be ye wood?
And wene ye for to do good,
And for to have of it no fame?
Have ye despite to have my name?
Nay, ye shall lien everichone:
Blowe they trump, and that anone
(Quoth she) thou Eolus yhote,
And ring these folkes works be note,
That all the world may of it hear;
And he gan blow their loos so cleare,
In his golden clarioune,
Through the world went the soune,
All so kenely, and eke so soft,
That their fame was blowen aloft.--POPE.

Pope makes everybody obtain fame who seeks to avoid it, which is absurd. Chaucer keeps to truth. The first company came,

And saiden, Certes, lady bright,
We have done well with all out might,
But we ne kepen have for fame,
Hide our workes and our name.

"I grant you all your asking," she replies; "let your works be dead." The second company arrive immediately afterwards, and prefer the same request in the lines versified by Pope, when Fame, with her usual capriciousness, refuses their prayer, and orders Eolus to sound their praises.]

[Footnote 113: An obvious imitation of a well-known verse in Denham:

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 114: The reader might compare these twenty-eight lines following, which contain the same matter, with eighty-four of Chaucer, beginning thus:

Tho came the sixthe companye,
And gan faste to Fame cry, &c.,

being too prolix to be here inserted.--POPE.]

[Footnote 115: "A pretty fame," says Dennis, "when the very smartest of these coxcombs is sure to have his name rotten before his carcase. When the author introduced these fellows into the temple of Fame, he ought to have made the chocolate-house, and the side-box, part of it." The criticism was just. The contemptible creatures who buzzed their profligate falsehoods for the hour, and were heard of no more, should have been introduced, if at all, into the Temple of Rumour, and not into the Temple of Fame. Pope followed Chaucer.]

[Footnote 116: Strokes of pleasantry and humour, and satirical reflections on the foibles of common life, are unsuited to so grave and majestic a poem. They appear as unnatural and out of place as one of the burlesque scenes of Heemskirk would do in a solemn landscape of Poussin. When I see such a line as

And at each blast a lady's honour dies

in the Temple of Fame, I lament as much to find it placed there as to see shops and sheds and cottages erected among the ruins of Diocletian's baths.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 117: Pope places the temple of Fame on a precipitous rock of ice, and Dennis charges him with departing from his allegory when he describes the self-indulgent multitude, who are "even fatigued with ease," as having toiled up the "steep and slippery ascent" to present themselves before the goddess. There is the same defect in Chaucer.]

[Footnote 118:

Tho come another companye
That Lad ydone the treachery, &c.--POPE.

Pope in this paragraph had not only Chaucer in view, but the passage of Virgil where he describes the criminals in the infernal regions. The second line of Pope's opening couplet was suggested by Dryden's translation, AEneis, vi. 825:

Expel their parents and usurp the throne.]

[Footnote 119: A glance at the Revolution of 1688.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 120: The scene here changes from the Temple of Fame to that of Rumour, which is almost entirely Chaucer's. The particulars follow:

Tho saw I stonde in a valey,
Under the castle faste by
A house, that Domus Dedali
That Labyrinthus cleped is,
Nas made so wonderly I wis,
Ne half so queintly ywrought;
And evermo, as swift as thought,
This queinte house aboute went,
That never more stille it stent--
And eke this house hath of entrees
As fele of leaves as ben on trees
In summer, when they grene ben;
And in the roof yet men may sene
A thousand holes, and well mo
To letten well the soune out go;
And by day in every tide
Ben all the doores open wide,
And by night each one unshet;
No porter is there one to let
No manner tydings in to pace:
Ne never rest is in that place.--POPE.]

[Footnote 121: This thought is transferred thither out of the second book of Fame, where it takes up no less than one hundred and twenty verses, beginning thus:

Geffray, thou wottost well this, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 122: From Chaucer:

If that thou
Throw on water now a stone,
Well wost thou it will make anon
A little roundel as a circle,
Paraunture broad as a covercle,
And right anon thou shalt see wele,
That circle will cause another wheel,
And that the third, and so forth, brother,
Every circle causing other,
And multiplying evermoe,
Till that it so far ygo
That it at bothe brinkes be.

* * * * * * * * * *

And right thus every word, ywis,
That loud or privy y-spoken is,
Moveth first an air about,
And of this moving, out of doubt,
Another air anon is moved,
As I have of the water proved
That every circle causeth other.

A "covercle" was the cover or lid of a pot.]

[Footnote 123: Dryden's version of Ovid, Met. xii.:

Whence all things, though remote, are viewed around
And hither bring their undulating sound.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 124:

Of werres, of peace, of marriages,
Of rest, of labour, of voyages,
Of abode, of dethe, of life,
Of love and hate, accord and strife,
Of loss, of lore, and of winnings,
Of hele, of sickness, and lessings,
Of divers transmutations
Of estates and eke of regions,
Of trust, of drede, of jealousy,
Of wit, of winning, of folly,
Of good, or bad governement,
Of fire, and of divers accident.--POPE.

The dismissal of Lord Oxford, the death of Queen Anne immediately afterwards, on August 1, 1714, and the overthrow of Bolingbroke, were events which had recently happened when Pope published his poem, and there never was a time when "changes in the state," "the falls of favourites," and "old mismanagements" were a more universal topic of conversation.]

[Footnote 125:

But such a grete congregation
Of folke as I saw roame about,
Some within, and some without.
Was never seen, ne shall be eft--
And every wight that I saw there
Rowned everich in others ear
A newe tyding privily,
Or elles he told it openly
Right thus, and said, Knowst not thou
That is betide to night now?
No, quoth he, tell me what
And then he told him this and that, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 126:

Thus north and south
Went every tiding fro mouth to mouth,
And that encreasing evermo,
As fire is wont to quicken and go
From a sparkle sprong amiss,
Till all the citee brent up is.--POPE.]

[Footnote 127: Dryden, Ovid, Met. xii.:

Fame sits aloft.

In Ovid the scene is laid in the house of Fame. Pope lays it in the house of Rumour, and having left Fame enthroned in her own temple, he now represents her as permanently "sitting aloft" in a totally different edifice.]

[Footnote 128:

And sometime I saw there at once,
A lesing and a sad sooth saw
That gonnen at adventure draw
Out of a window forth to pace--
And no man be he ever so wrothe,
Shall have one of these two, but bothe, &c.--POPE.]

[Footnote 129: The hint is taken from a passage in another part of the third book, but here more naturally made the conclusion, with the addition of a moral to the whole. In Chaucer, he only answers, "he came to see the place;" and the book ends abruptly, with his being surprized at the sight of a man of great authority, and awaking in a fright.--POPE.

This is an imperfect representation. While Chaucer is standing in the House of Fame, a person goes up to him,

And saide, Friend, what is thy name,
Artow come hither to have fame?

The poet disclaims any such intention, and protests that he has no desire that his name should be known to a single soul. He is then asked what he does there, and he replies that he who brought him to the place promised him that he should learn new and wonderful things, in which, he says, he has been disappointed, for he was aware before that people coveted fame, though he was not hitherto acquainted with the dwelling of the goddess, nor with her appearance and condition. His interrogator answers that he perceives what it is he desires to know, and conducts him to the house of Rumour. There he has revealed to him the falsehood of the world, and especially of pilgrims and pardoners, which was an important doctrine to be inculcated in those days. When the scene has been fully disclosed, "a man of great authority" appears, and the poet starts up from his sleep, by which he seems to intimate that the wise and serious frown upon those who listen to idle tales. His awaking "half afraid," is the result of his

Remembring well what I had seen,
And how high and far I had been
In my ghost.

Pope, by reserving the inquiry addressed to him for the end of the poem, represents himself as being asked in the temple of Rumour whether he has come there for fame, which, is not more, but much less natural than the arrangement of Chaucer, who supposes the question to be put in the temple of Fame itself. Nor would it have been congenial to Chaucer's modest disposition to make himself the climax of the piece.]

[Footnote 130: Garth, in the preface to his Dispensary: "Reputation of this sort is very hard to be got, and very easy to be lost."--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 131: Cowley's Complaint:

Thou who rewardest but with popular breath
And that too after death.--WAKEFIELD.

Pope's moral is inconsistent with the previous tone of his poem. He has not treated the "second life in others' breath" as "vain," but speaks of the position of Homer, Aristotle, &c. in the temple of Fame as though it were a substantial triumph, a real dignity, and a glorious reward. The purport of his piece is to enforce, and not to depreciate, the value of literary renown. His whole life attests that this was his genuine opinion. He was not endowed with the equanimity which neither covets nor despises reputation, and it was pure affectation when he pretended, in the concluding paragraph, that he did not "call for the favours of fame," and that he held posthumous fame, in particular, to be a worthless possession.]

[Footnote 132: Dryden, in Palamon and Arcite, says of women that they

Still follow fortune where she leads the way.]

PASTORALS,

WITH A

DISCOURSE ON PASTORAL.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1704.

Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes,
Flumina amem, sylvasque, inglorius!--VIRG.

These Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen, and then passed through the hands of Mr. Walsh, Mr. Wycherley, G. Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, Sir William Trumbull, Dr. Garth, Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, Mr. Mainwaring, and others. All these gave our author the greatest encouragement, and particularly Mr. Walsh, whom Mr. Dryden, in his postscript to Virgil, calls the best critic of his age. "The author," says he, "seems to have a particular genius for this kind of poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds his years. He has taken very freely from the ancients. But what he has mixed of his own with theirs is no way inferior to what he has taken from them. It is not flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. His preface is very judicious and learned." Letter to Mr. Wycherley, Ap. 1705. The Lord Lansdowne, about the same time, mentioning the youth of our poet, says, in a printed letter of the character of Mr. Wycherley, that "if he goes on as he hath begun in the pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman." Notwithstanding the early time of their production, the author esteemed these as the most correct in the versification, and musical in the numbers, of all his works. The reason for his labouring them into so much softness, was, doubtless, that this sort of poetry derives almost its whole beauty from a natural ease of thought and smoothness of verse: whereas that of most other kinds consist in the strength and fulness of both. In a letter of his to Mr. Walsh about this time, we find an enumeration of several niceties in versification, which perhaps have never been strictly observed in any English poem, except in these Pastorals. They were not printed till 1709.--POPE.

The sycophancy of A. Philips, who had prejudiced Mr. Addison against Pope, occasioned those papers[1] in the Guardian, written by the latter, in which there is an ironical preference given to the Pastorals of Philips above his own, in order to support the profound judgment of those who could not distinguish between the rural and the rustic, and on that account condemned the Pastorals of Pope for wanting simplicity. These papers were sent by an unknown hand to Steele, and the irony escaping him, he communicated them to Mr. Pope, declaring he would never publish any paper where one of the club was complimented at the expense of another. Pope told him he was too delicate, and insisted that the papers should be published in the Guardian. They were so. And the pleasantry escaped all but Addison, who, taking Pope aside,[2] said to him in his agreeable manner, "You have put your friends here in a very ridiculous light, as will be seen when it is understood, as it soon must be, that you were only laughing at the admirers of Philips." But this ill conduct of Philips occasioned a more open ridicule of his Pastorals in the mock poem called the Shepherd's Week, written by Gay. But though more open, the object of it was ill understood[3] by those who were strangers to the quarrel. These mistook the Shepherd's Week for a burlesque of Virgil's Pastorals. How far this goes towards a vindication of Philips's simple painting, let others judge.--WARBURTON.

In 1704 Pope wrote his Pastorals, which were shown to the poets and critics of that time. As they well deserved, they were read with admiration, and many praises were bestowed upon them and upon the preface, which is both elegant and learned in a high degree. They were, however, not published till five years afterwards. Cowley, Milton, and Pope are distinguished among the English poets by the early exertion of their powers; but the works of Cowley alone were published in his childhood, and, therefore, of him only can it be certain that his juvenile performances received no improvement from his maturer studies. The Pastorals were at last printed [1709] in Tonson's Miscellany, in a volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, and ended with those of Pope. 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 subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's Pastorals are not, however, composed but with close thought; they have reference to the time 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 the 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.--JOHNSON.

It is somewhat strange that in the pastorals of a young poet there should not be found a single rural image that is new; but this, I am afraid, is the case in the Pastorals before us. The ideas of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser are, indeed, here exhibited in language equally mellifluous and pure; but the descriptions and sentiments are trite and common. To this assertion, formerly made, Dr. Johnson answered, "that no invention was intended." He, therefore, allows the fact and the charge. It is a confession of the very fault imputed to them. There _ought_ to have been invention. It has been my fortune from my way of life,[4] to have seen many compositions of youths of sixteen years old, far beyond these Pastorals in point of genius and imagination, though not perhaps of correctness. Their excellence, indeed, might be owing to having had such a predecessor as Pope.[5] A mixture of British and Grecian ideas may justly be deemed a blemish in these Pastorals, and propriety is certainly violated when he couples Pactolus with Thames, and Windsor with Hybla.[6] Complaints of immoderate heat, and wishes to be conveyed to cooling caverns, when uttered by the inhabitants of Greece, have a decorum and consistency, which they totally lose in the character of a British Shepherd,[7] and, Theocrites, during the ardors of Sirius, must have heard the murmurings of a brook, and the whispers of a pine, with more home-felt pleasure than Pope could possibly experience upon the same occasion. Pope himself informs us, in a note, that he judiciously omitted the following verse:

And list'ning wolves grow milder as they hear

on account of the absurdity, which Spenser overlooked, of introducing wolves into England. But on this principle, which is certainly a just one, may it not be asked, why he should speak, the scene lying in Windsor Forest, of the "sultry Sirius," of the "grateful clusters of grapes," of "a pipe of reeds," the antique fistula, of "thanking Ceres for a plentiful harvest," of "the sacrifice of lambs," with many other instances that might be adduced to this purpose? That Pope, however, was sensible of the importance of adapting images to the scene of action, is obvious from the following example of his judgment; for in translating

Audiit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,

he has dexterously dropped the laurels appropriated to Eurotas, as he is speaking of the river Thames, and has rendered it

Thames heard the numbers as he flowed along,
And bade his willows learn the moving song.

In the passages which Pope has imitated from Theocritus, and his Latin translator, Virgil, he has merited but little applause. Upon the whole, the principal merit of these Pastorals consists in their correct and musical versification, musical to a degree of which rhyme could hardly be thought capable, and in giving the truest specimen of that harmony in English verse, which is now become indispensably necessary, and which has so forcibly and universally influenced the public ear as to have obliged every moderate rhymer to be at least melodious. Pope lengthened the abruptness of Waller, and at the same time contracted the exuberance of Dryden.--WARTON.

Dr. Johnson does not appear sufficiently attentive to the true character and nature of pastoral poetry. No doubt it is natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals; for what youthful heart does not glow at the descriptions of rural nature, and scenes that accord with its own innocency and cheerfulness; but although pastorals do not, in the sense of Dr. Johnson, imitate real life, nor require any great insight into human passions and characters, yet there are many things necessary in this species of composition, more than Dr. Johnson seems to require. The chief thing is an eye for picturesque and rural scenery, and an intimate acquaintance with those minute and particular appearances of nature, which alone can give a lively and original colour to the painting of pastoral poetry. To copy the common descriptions of spring or summer, morning or evening, or to iterate from Virgil the same complaints of the same shepherds, is not surely to write pastoral poetry. It is also difficult to conceive where is "the close thought" with which Johnson says Pope's Pastorals are composed. They are pleasing as copies of "the poems of antiquity," although they exhibit no striking taste in the "selection," and they certainly exhibit a series of musical versification, which, till their appearance, had no precedent in English poetry. If in particular passages, I have ventured to remark that Pope has introduced false thoughts and conceits, let us remember that we ought not so much to wonder that he admitted any, as that they were not more. Dryden's earlier poems are infinitely more vitiated in this respect.

Warton's observations are very just, but he does not seem sufficiently to discriminate between the softness of individual lines, which is the chief merit of these Pastorals, and the general harmony of poetic numbers. Let it, however, be always remembered, that Pope gave the first idea of mellifluence, and produced a softer and sweeter cadence than before belonged to the English couplet. Dr. Johnson thinks it will be in vain, after Pope, to endeavour to improve the English versification, and that it is now carried to the _ne plus ultra_ of excellence.[8] This is an opinion the validity of which I must be permitted to doubt. Pope certainly gave a more correct and finished tone to the English versification, but he sometimes wanted a variety of pause, and his nice precision of every line prevented, in a few instances, a more musical flow of modulated passages. But we are to consider what he did, not what might be done, and surely there cannot be two opinions respecting his improvement of the couplet though it does not follow that his general rhythm has no imperfection. Johnson seems to have depreciated, or to have been ignorant of, the metrical powers of some writers prior to Pope. His ear seems to have been caught chiefly by Dryden, and as Pope's versification was more equably (couplet with couplet being considered, not passage with passage) connected than Dryden's, he thought therefore that nothing could be added to Pope's versification. I should think it the extreme of arrogance and folly to make my own ear the criterion of music; but I cannot help thinking that Dryden, and of later days, Cowper, are much more harmonious in their general versification than Pope. I ought also to mention a neglected poem, not neglected on account of its versification, but on account of its title and subject--Prior's Solomon. Whoever candidly compares these writers together, unless his ear be habituated to a certain recurrence of pauses precisely at the end of a line, will not (though he will give the highest praise for compactness, skill, precision, and force, to the undivided couplets of Pope, separately considered)--will not, I think, assent to the position, that in versification "what he found brickwork he left marble." I am not afraid to own, that with the exception of the Epistle to Abelard, as musical as it is pathetic, the verses of Pope want variety, and on this account in some instances they want both force and harmony. In variety, and variety only, let it be remembered, I think Pope deficient. It has been doubted whether couplet verses ought ever to be broken. I will appeal to Pope himself. Whenever he has done so, is there a judge of poetical cadence who will not say it is harmonious? The instances are few; but where they occur, are they not beautiful? If they had been too often repeated the effect would be destroyed. But in long compositions might not a greater variety of pauses have effect? Does not the ear feel a lassitude at times? An idea has been started by some critics that "you might as well have unequal columns to your house, as unequal couplets in verse." This comparison, however, if it proves anything, proves too much; for no one will say that every two verses in a long poem should in quantity be exactly the same, the syllables the same, the pause the same. This will not hold a moment in versification. If it did, then Johnson's assertion falls to the ground; for then Dr. Darwin is a far better versifier than Pope, and a very little pains would make a much more consummate versificator than Dr. Darwin.--BOWLES.

Of all Pope's various and very freely-censured writings, there are none that appear to have met with a harsher or more fastidious reception at the hands of his commentators and critics than his Pastorals. Without regarding them with a sufficient reference, either to the time of life of the author, or the objects he had in view in their composition, they have considered them as deficient in originality and strength of thought, because they do not more greatly abound in new and striking images. But to say nothing of the unreasonableness of requiring "new and striking images," on a subject which has been obvious from the earliest ages to all mankind, and has been the general theme of poetry in every country, period, and language, it must be observed, that it was not the intention of Pope to rely upon the strength of his own powers, or to attempt an original style of pastoral composition. On the contrary, he informs us at the close of his discourse, that if those pastorals have any merit, it is to be attributed to some good old authors, "whose works," says he, "as I have had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted care to imitate." In conceding then to Pope, that he has exhibited "the ideas of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser, in language equally mellifluous and pure," Dr. Warton has granted every thing which Pope endeavoured to accomplish; and the observation of Johnson, "that no invention was intended," is, as far as the remark of Warton affects the genius and character of Pope, a decisive answer. Nor although the scene be laid in Windsor Forest, does there appear to be any impropriety in referring to a pipe of reeds, the clusters of grapes, the bounty of Ceres, and other objects connected with pastoral life, and for which the poet has himself assigned a sufficient reason in the following discourse. "If," he observes, "we would copy nature, it would be useful to carry this idea along with us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age; so that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the best of men followed the employment;" to which he adds, that "an air of piety to the gods should shine through the poem, which so visibly appears in all the works of antiquity, and it ought to preserve some relish of the old way of writing."--ROSCOE.

The manuscript of Pope's Pastorals is still preserved among the Richardson papers. It was lent by Mr. T. B. Hollis to Wakefield, who has noted the variations from the published text with minute fidelity. Richardson has done the same in his copy of the quarto of 1717, and gives this correct description of the handwriting of the original:--"The manuscript title of the Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, viz., An Essay on Pastoral, and the title of the Pastorals, are written by Mr. Pope in printing capitals so perfectly beautiful, and so exactly imitated, that one can hardly believe they are not really from the press; the same of all the words which would have been printed in italics throughout the whole, which are in common printing character, the general being in italics, beautifully formed, so as in all to imitate a printed book, but in a fine taste of type, and form of the page and margin." Pope has written upon the manuscript, "Mem. This copy is that which passed through the hands of Mr. Walsh, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Mainwaring, Dr. Garth, Mr. Granville, Mr. Southern, Sir H. Sheers, Sir William Trumbull, Lord Halifax, Lord Wharton, Marquis of Dorchester, Duke of Bucks, &c. Only the third Eclogue was written since some of these saw the other three, which were written as they here stand with the Essay, anno 1704. AEtatis meae 16. The alterations from this copy were upon the objections of some of these, or my own." In his published list of the persons who had read the Pastorals in manuscript, Pope has added the names of Wycherley and Lord Somers, and omitted the names of Congreve, Southern, Sir H. Sheers, Lord Wharton, the Marquis of Dorchester, and the Duke of Buckingham. His chief adviser seems to have been Walsh, who, of all his admiring friends, gave him, he says, the greatest encouragement. "I cannot," Pope wrote to him July 2, 1706, "omit the first opportunity of making you my acknowledgments for reviewing these papers of mine. You have no less right to correct me than the same hand that raised a tree has to prune it." The Richardson collection contains a manuscript in which the poet has transcribed from his Pastorals the various lines he thought defective, and after stating his own objection to them, and subjoining amended readings, he referred the task of selection to Walsh, who has jotted down his decisions at the bottom of Pope's remarks. Both will be found in the notes on the passages to which the comments of the author and his critic relate.

There is no evidence, except the poet's own assertion, to prove that the Pastorals were composed at the age of sixteen. They had been seen by Walsh before April 20, 1705, if any dependence could be placed upon the letter of that date which he wrote to Wycherly, when returning the manuscript, but the letter rests on the authority of Pope alone, and there is reason to question the correctness of the date. The letter of Walsh to Wycherley concludes with the expression of a desire to be made acquainted with Pope. "If," adds Walsh, "he will give himself the trouble any morning to call at my house I shall be very glad to read the verses over with him." The next letter is from Walsh to Pope, and the opening sentence shows that his correspondence with the poet had only just commenced. It appears from what follows that they had met in London, that Walsh had carried Pope's verses into the country, and that these verses were three of the Pastorals. Walsh expresses a hope that when he returns to town, Pope will have some fresh verses to show him, "for I make no doubt," he says, "but any one who writes so well, must write more." These particulars evidently refer to the period when Walsh first became acquainted with the Pastorals, and undertook to criticise them. But the correspondence on the subject begins on June 24, 1706, whence we should infer that it was in April, 1706, and not in 1705, that Wycherley introduced Pope and his Pastorals to Walsh. The poet would have departed from his usual practice if he had not falsified dates to exaggerate his precocity. That he was past seventeen when he first exhibited his Pastorals to his friends is confirmed by a passage from the letter, in which George Granville sketches the character of Wycherley, and invites an unnamed correspondent to meet him. "He shall bring with him, if you will," says Granville, "a young poet, newly inspired in the neighbourhood of Cooper's Hill, whom he and Walsh have taken under their wing. His name is Pope. He is not above seventeen or eighteen years of age, and promises miracles. If he goes on as he has begun in the Pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman, and this swan of Windsor sing as sweetly as the Mantuan."[9] Whatever may be the true date of the Pastorals, a portion of them certainly existed before April 20, 1706, on which day Tonson, the bookseller, wrote to Pope, "I have lately seen a pastoral of yours in Mr. Walsh's and Congreve's hands, which is extremely fine, and is generally approved of by the best judges in poetry. I remember I have formerly seen you at my shop, and am sorry I did not improve my acquaintance with you. If you design your poem for the press, no person shall be more careful in printing of it, nor no one can give a greater encouragement to it." Three years elapsed before the Pastorals saw the light, when Tonson became the publisher, and they appeared on May 2, 1709, in his Sixth Miscellany. The preface, which Walsh had read in manuscript, and which he calls "very learned and judicious," did not come out till 1717, and then bore the title of A Discourse on Pastoral Poetry. Johnson, repeating the language of Walsh, says that it is "learned in a high degree;" whereas it was avowedly compiled from two or three recent essayists, and demanded nothing from the poet to which the term learning could be properly applied. He owed to his second-hand authorities the arbitrary and pedantic rules which were framed from the practice of the ancients, and which were employed by the mechanical critics of his day to repress the free forms of modern genius. The style would have been remarkable for its maturity, if, as Pope professed, it had been the produce of sixteen, but the Discourse was not printed till he was twenty-nine, and he certainly did not send it uncorrected into the world.

"It must appear strange," says De Quincey, "that Pope at twenty-one should choose to come forward for the first time with a work composed at sixteen. A difference of five years at that stage of life is of more effect than of twenty at a later; and his own expanding judgment could hardly fail to inform him that his Pastorals were by far the worst of his works. In reality, let us not deny, that had Pope never written anything else, his name would not have been known as a name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by some satirist or writer of a Dunciad."[10] "Expanding judgment" is often a feeble antidote to the partiality of an author for his own compositions, and Pope always spoke of his Pastoral effusions with fond complacency. He did, indeed, pretend to regret their publication. There was some delay in bringing out the Miscellany, and on November 1, 1708, he wrote thus to Cromwell: "But now I talk of the critics, I have good news to tell you concerning myself, for which I expect you should congratulate with me; it is, that beyond all my expectations, and far above my demerits, I have been most mercifully reprieved by the sovereign power of Jacob Tonson from being brought forth to public punishment, and [have been] respited from time to time from the hands of those barbarous executioners of the muses, whom I was just now speaking of. It often happens that guilty poets, like other guilty criminals, when once they are known and proclaimed, deliver themselves into the hands of justice only to prevent others from doing it more to their disadvantage, and not out of any ambition to spread their fame by being executed in the face of the world, which is a fame but of short continuance." Pope was in his twenty-first year, an age at which frankness commonly preponderates, and he already abounded in the ostentatious profession of sentiments he did not entertain. He had circulated the Pastorals among numerous authors, he had invited their criticisms, he had continued to correct the poems with fastidious care, he retained to the last a high opinion of their merit, and it is impossible to credit his insinuation, that he did not design them for the press, and that he only printed them to avoid a surreptitious edition which nobody gave any sign of preparing. The hypocrisy broke out again when the Miscellany had appeared. "Nothing," wrote Wycherley, May 17, 1709, "has lately been better received by the public than your part of it. You have only displeased the critics by pleasing them too well, having not left them a word to say for themselves against you and your performances. In earnest, all the best judges of good sense or poetry are admirers of yours, and like your part of the book so well that the rest is liked the worse." Pope replied, "I shall be satisfied if I can lose my time agreeably this way, without losing my reputation. As for gaining any, I am as indifferent in the matter as Falstaff was, and may say of fame as he did of honour, 'If it comes, it comes unlooked for; and there's an end on't.'" This affectation of indifference was kept up by him to the end of his days. Yet he was all the time composing, polishing, and publishing; his whole existence was passed in painstaking, and almost drudging authorship; he left no means untried, dishonest as well as fair, to sustain, extend, and perpetuate his reputation; and he pursued every person with inveterate malice who presumed to question his poetical supremacy. In spite of his boasted apathy, there cannot be found in the annals of the irritable race a more anxious, jealous, intriguing candidate for fame.