I sit with sad civility' I read With honest anguish, and an aching head; This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years." Bless me! a packet.-"'T is a stranger sues, A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.” If I dislike it, "furies, death, and rage!" If I approve, "Commend it to the stage." There (thank my stars), my whole commission ends, Fir'd that the house reject him, "'Sdeath! I'll print it, All my demurs but double his attacks: At last he whispers, "Do; and we go snacks." Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door; 7 Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, The precincts of the Mint, in those days, included a jail for debtors. It was shabby of the poor devils of authors to take advantage of the poet's dinner-hour; but was it quite magnanimous in the poet to say so? If his father had not left him an independence, he might have found even himself hard pushed sometimes for a meal. Pope was a little too fond of taking his pecuniary advantages for merits. He did not see (so blind respecting themselves are the acutest satirists) that this inability to forego a false ground of superiority originated in an instinct of weakness. 8 Curll invites to dine.-Curll was the chief scandalous bookseller of that time. CHARACTERS AND RULING PASSIONS. CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF WHARTON Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes, Search then the Ruling Passion: there, alone, He dies, sad outcast of each church and state, Then turns repentant, and his God adores, With the same spirit that he drinks and whores. The reader must bear in mind that all which is considered coarse language now, was not so considered in Pope's time; and that words, which cannot any longer be read out loud in mixed company, may still have the benefit of that recollection, and be silently endured. 10 Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule ? Perhaps, if it were required to select from all Pope's writings the passage most calculated to have a practical effect on readers in want of it, it would be this couplet. The address of it is exquisite. The obvious conclusion is, that it is better to be thought a fool by a knave than by a man of genius. CHARACTER OF ADDISON A man's true merit is not hard to find; It is not poetry, but prose run mad; All these my modest satire bade translate, And own'd that nine such poets made a Tate. How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe,. Aud swear not Addison himself was safe. Peace to all such! But were there one whose fires Blest with each talent and each art to please, 11-Each man's secret standard in his mind Exquisite discernment, as exquisitely expressed. This is the whole secret of arrogance, and (in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred) of ordinary sullenness and exaction. The standard is invisible, and no arbiter is allowed. 12 The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown, This was Ambrose Philips, a man of genius, whose half-jest ing, half-serious poems in short verses were of a delicacy not sufficiently appreciated; and whose mistake in pastoral writing was, at all events, not so bad as Pope's, who never forgave the superiority awarded to him in that direction by Steele and others. What is meant by the pastorals being "pilfered," I forget; if that they were imitated from Spenser and others, Pope's may said to have been all pilfered from classical common-places. The accusation of the half-crown is, of course, not true; and if it were, would be no disgrace but to the accuser and the bookseller. Suppose Philips had described Pope as the man Who turns a page of Greek for eighteen-pence! be The tales here alluded to were the delightful Persian Tales, translated from the French of Petit de la Croix. They are of genuine Eastern origin, and worthy brothers of the enchanting Arabian Nights. 13 Who would not weep, if Atticus were he.-It is well known and obvious that this character of Atticus was meant for Addison. A doubt has existed whether Pope was right in supposing Addison to have been jealous; and perhaps he was not: but the coldness, reserve, and management, in the disposition of the lord of Button' Coffee-house, not unnaturally gave rise to the suspicion and the exquisite expression of the language in which it is conveyed has all the eloquence of belief. CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend, And see what comfort it affords our end. In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung," Of mimick'd statesmen, and their merry king. No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. 14 In the worst inn's worst room, &c.-It is a pity that Pope wrote this character of Buckingham after Dryden's; for, though celebrated and worth repeating, it is very inferior, and, in the details, of very questionable truth. In fact, the superlative way of talking throughout it (the "worst inn's worst room," the introduction |