Happy my ftudies, when by thefe approv'd! Happier their Author, when by these belov'd! 146 Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure Description held the place of Senfe? Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, A painted miftrefs, or a purling stream. 150 Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill; I wifh'd the man a Dinner, and fate ftill. NOTES. Yet VER. 146. Burnets, Ec.] Authors of fecret and fcandalous Hiltory. POPE. Ibid. Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks] By no means Authors of the fame clafs; though the violence of party might hurry them into the fame miitakes. But if the first offended this way, it was only through an honest warmth of temper, that allowed too little to an excellent understanding. The other two, with very bad heads, had hearts ftill worse. WARBURTON, VER. 146. Burnets,] Was such a character as Burnet's, to be placed among the infignificant and contemptible feriblers, that affailed Pope? VER. 148. While pure Defcription held the place of Sense?] He ufes pure equivocally, to fignify either chajte or empty; and has given in this line what he esteemed the true Character of defcrip. tive poetry, as it is called. A compofition, in his opinion, as abfurd as a feast made up of fauces. The office of a picturesque ima. gination is to brighten and adorn good fenfe; fo that to employ it only in defcription, is like children's delighting in a prism for the fake of its gaudy colours; which, when frugally managed and artfully difpofed, might be made to unfold and illuftrate the nobleft objects in nature. WARBURTON. VER. 155. A painted meadow, or a purling fream,] is a verse of Mr. Addison. POPE. Ibid. A painted mistress, or a purling ftream.] Meaning the Rape of the Lock, and Wind or-Foref. WARBURTON. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret I never anfwer'd, I was not in debt. If want provok'd, or madness made them print, 155 I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint. Did fome more fober Critic come abroad; If wrong, I fimil'd; if right, I kifs'd the Rod. NOTES. Pains, VER. 151. Yet then did Gildon] It is with difficulty we can forgive our Author for upbraiding these wretched fcriblers for poverty and distresses, if we do not keep in our minds the grofsly abufive pamphlets they published; and, even allowing this circumstance, we ought to feparate rancour from reproof: their "Cur tam crudeles optavit fumere pœnas? WARTON. Gildon was born at the village of Gillingham, near Shaftesbury, in Dorsetshire. Pope's "wishing him a dinner," is not exactly understood. The expreffions are thought unfeeling, as meant to upbraid him with his poverty; but the truth is, Gildon in his effays fays, his fole motive for writing was "neceffity." It cannot be faid, that it is cruel to "with a man a dinner," who profeffes he writes to get one. A few more words concerning this obfcure writer, may not be unacceptable. He was fent to Doway, to the English College of Secular Priefts there, to be made a Priest; but his inclinations led him another way. He came to London, spent his property, and endeavoured to repair his fortune by writing abufive pamphlets. Dennis were was VER. 153. Yet then did Dennis] I cannot help thinking that poor hardly used. He was a scholar, had a liberal education, and had been in his early youth, a companion of those who distinguished for rank and literature. Being at first countenanced, and having a confiderable fhare of learning and ingenuity, he was no doubt mortified and galled, to find the stream of popular applaufe turned almoft exclufively towards one Poet. On this account, his ftrictures, though often juft, are marked with afperity and coarseness, as he was evidently chagrined at the fuccefs which he could not gain himself. Hence his coarfe and contemptu ous Pains, reading, study, are their juft pretence, And 'twere a fin to rob them of their mite. Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds, NOTES. 160 Each ous treatment of Addison's Cato, and Pope's Effay on Man; but we must admit, that many of his obfervations were well-founded, and that they evince confiderable claffical knowledge, as well as fhrewdnefs. Let us alfo remember what is due to disappointment. Dennis came into the world with ardent hopes as a man of literature, and with refpectable connections. He found all his expectations croffed, though he was confcious of his acquirements; and after long and ineffectual struggles towards attaining what he confidered his deferved rank of literary eminence, he funk at laft, poor and unfriended, into old age. Pope's fatire in this place, refpecting his being in debt, is certainly unfeeling. Pope was in poffeffion of affluence and honour, and it was not till his old antagonist was laid helpless at his feet, that his refentment abated; it was then that he wrote the Prologue for his benefit. How noble does the character of Addifon appear, who, though equally attacked by Dennis as a Critic, yet never mentioned his name with afperity, and refused to give the leaft countenance to the pamphlet which Pope had written upon the occafion of Dennis's ftrictures on Cato? VER. 163. Tet ne'er one sprig] Swift imbibed from Sir W. Temple, and Pope from Swift, an inveterate and unreasonable averfion and contempt for Bentley, whose admirable Boyle's Lectures, Remarks on Collins's Emendations of Menander and Callimachus, and Tully's Tufcal. Difp. whofe edition of Horace, and, above all, Differtations on the Epifles of Phalaris, (in which he gained the most complete victory over a whole army of wits,) all of them exhibit the moft ftriking marks of accurate and extensive erndition, and a vigorous and acute understanding. He degraded himself much by his ftrange and abfurd hypothefis of the faults which Milton's amanuenfis introduced into that poem. But I have been informed that there was fill an additional caufe for Pope's Each wight who reads not, and but fcans and fpells, Each Word-catcher that lives on fyllables, 166 Ev'n NOTES. Pope's refentiment: That Atterbury, being in company with Bentley and Pope, infifled upon knowing the Doctor's opinion of the English Homer; and that, being earnestly preffed to declare his fentiments freely, he said, "The verses are good verfes, but the work is not Homer, it is Spondanus." It may, however, be obferved, in favour of Pope, that Dr. Clarke, whose critical exactness is well known, has not been able to point out above three or four mistakes in the fenfe throughout the whole Iliad. The real faults of that tranflation are of another kind: They are fuch as remind us of Nero's gilding a brazen ftatue of Alexander the Great, caft by Lyfippus. Pope, in a letter which Dr. Rutherforth fhewed me at Cambridge in the year 1771, written to a Mr. Bridges at Fulham, mentions his confulting Chapman and Hobbes, and talks of "their authority, joined to the knowledge of my own imperfectnefs in the language, over-ruled me." Thefe are the very words which I tranfcribed at the time. WARTON. VER. 163. thefe ribalds,] How defervedly this title is given to the genius of PHILOLOGY, may be seen by a fhort account of the manners of the modern Scholiafts. When in thefe latter ages, human learning raised its head in the Weft; and its tail, verbal criticifm, was, of courfe, to rife with it; the madness of Critics foon became fo offenfive, that the grave ftupidity of the Monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J. Ar. propylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy, alter the facking of Conftantinople by the Turks, used to maintain that Cicero understood neither Philofophy nor Greek: while another of his countrymen, J. Lafcar is by name, threatened to demonstrate that Virgil was no Poet. Countenanced by fuch great examples, a French Critic afterwards undertook to prove that Ariftotle did not understand Greek, nor Titus Livius, Latin. It has been fince discovered that Jofephus was ignorant of Hebrew; and Erafmus fo pitiful a linguift, that, Burman affures us, were he now alive, he would not deferve to be put at the head of a countryfchool: And even fince it has been found out that Pope had no invention, and is only a Poet by courtefy. For though time has 3 ftripp'd Ev'n fuch fmall Critics fome regard, may claim, NOTES. Pretty! ftripp'd the prefent race of Pedants of all the real accomplishments of their predeceffors, it has conveyed down this spirit to them, unimpaired; it being found much easier to ape their manners, than to imitate their feience However, thofe earlier RIBALDS raised an appetite for the Greek language in the Weft; infomuch, that Hermolaus Barbarus, a paffionate admirer of it, and a noted Critic, ufed to boaft, that he had invoked and raised the Devil, and puzzled him into the bargain, about the meaning of the Aristotelian ENTEAEXLIA. Another, whom Balzac speaks of, was as eminent for his Revelations; and was wont to fay, that the meaning of fuch or fuch a verfe in Perfius, no one knew but God and himfelf. While the celebrated Pomponius Latus, in excefs of veneration for Antiquity, became a real Pagan; raised altars to Romulus, and facrificed to the Gods of Latium; in which he was fol. lowed by our countryman Baxter, in every thing, but in the costlinefs of his facrifices. But if the Greeks cried down Cicero, the Italian Critics knew how to fupport his credit. Every one has heard of the childish exceffes into which the ambition of being thought CICERONIANS carried the most celebrated Italians of this time. They abstained from reading the Scriptures for fear of spoiling their style: Cardinal Bembo used to call the Epilles of St. Paul by the contemptuous name of Epiftolaccias, great overgrown Epifles. But ERASMUS cured their frenzy by that mafter-piece of good sense, his Ciceronianus. For which (in the way that Lunatics treat their Phyficians) the elder Scaliger infulted him with all the brutal fury peculiar to his family and profeffion. His fons Jofeph and Salmafius had indeed fuch endowments of nature and art, as might have raifed modern learning to a rivalfhip with the ancient. Yet how did they and their adversaries tear and worry one another? The choiceft of Jofeph's flowers of fpeech were Stercus Diaboli, and Lutum Stercore maceratum. It is true, these were lavished upon his enemies: for his friends he had other things in flore. In a letter to Thuanus, fpeaking of two of them, Clavius and Lipfius, he calls the first a monfler of ignorance; and |