32 During this period of his life he was indefatigably diligent, and insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for expensive pleasures, and having certainly excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books: but he read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice 1. ✔ In a mind like his, however, all the faculties were at once involuntarily improving. Judgement is forced upon us by experiVence. He that reads many books must compare one opinion or one style with another; and when he compares, must necessarily distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the account given by himself of his studies was that from fourteen to twenty he read only for amusement, from twenty to twenty-seven for improvement and instruction; that in the first part of this time he desired only to know, and in the second he endeavoured to judge3.

33 The Pastorals, which had been for some time handed about among poets and criticks, 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.

34 The same year was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience. It was published

the honour to bring my friend, Mr. Pope, up to London from our retreat in the forest of Windsor, to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's.' Swift's Works, xvii. 433.

I

Post, POPE, 291. 'Pope had read a vast number of books, yet he was very ignorant - ignorant, that is, of everything but the one thing which he laboured to acquire, the art of happy expression. He read books to find ready-made images, and to feel for the best collocations of words.' PATTISON, Essays, ii. 375.

* 'JOHNSON. Sir, in my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. My judgment, to be sure, was

not so good; but I had all the facts.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 445.

3 Johnson's chief authority here is Warburton, iv. 206.

* Ante, ADDISON, 14; POPE, 24; post, t, POPE, 314; A. PHILIPS, 18. For Tonson's letter of April 20, 1706, about one of Pope's Pastorals see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 545.

5 Ante, DENHAM, 11; post, POPE, 328. For Essay see ante, RosCOMMON, 25 п. 4.

Post, POPE, 291. 'All the classical information embodied in the Essay,' writes Mr. Elwin, 'might have been picked up from his French manuals in a single morning.' Ib. ii.

about two years afterwards, and being praised by Addison in The Spectator with sufficient liberality, met with so much favour as enraged Dennis, 'who,' he says, 'found himself attacked, without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked 3 in his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity 4.'

How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived 5, nor 35 how his person is depreciated; but he seems to have known

* 'It was written in 1709, and published in 1711; which is as little time as ever I let anything of mine lay [sic] by me.' Spence's Anec. p. 170. It was first advertised in The Spectator, No. 65, May 15, 1711.' Warton's Pope, i. 223.

2 No. 253, Dec. 20, 1711. Addison, after stating that 'in our own country a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art,' continues: -'I am sorry to find that an author who is very justly esteemed among the best judges has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine poem.' Pope, in the belief that this Spectator was by Steele, wrote to him:-'I am obliged to you for your candour and frankness in acquainting me with the error I have been guilty of in speaking too freely of my brother moderns.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 389. See ib. p. 410, for his forged letter to Addison, where he says:'This period is the only one I could wish omitted of all you have written.'

3 Essay on Criticism, 11. 269, 584. * Reflections Critical and Satyrical upon a Late Rhapsody; Call'd An Essay upon Criticism. n. d. Preface. The passage quoted is in the first person. Part of this attack Pope quotes in Scriblerus's Prolegomena. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 67. For the 'perpetual

and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness' in Pope's letters, see post, POPE, 273.

The Essay was anonymous, and his assailant concealed.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 13.

• Pope describes how Dennis, under the name of Appius,

'reddens at each word you speak, And stares tremendous, with a

threat'ning eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'

Essay on Criticism, 1. 585. Pope, who had tried to get subscribers to an edition of Dennis's Works, who was in distress in his old age, wrote to Hill on Feb. 5, 1730-1:-'Mr. Dennis did, in print, lately represent my poor, undesigning subscriptions to him, to be the effect of fear.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 18. Hill replied :'I have seen that low turn which Mr. Dennis gave to your good-nature.' Hill's Works, ed. 1754, i. 78. In 1733 Pope wrote A Prologue to a Play for Mr. Dennis's Benefit, 'when he was old, blind, and in great distress.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 417. Mr. Tovey, in Thomson's Works, 1897, Preface, p. 47, points out that even in this Prologue Pope's 'malignity' is seen. See also ante, ADDISON, 64, 138; SAVAGE, 111; post, POPE, 60, 152.

something of Pope's character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently of his own virtues.

36 The pamphlet is such as rage might be expected to dictate. He supposes himself to be asked two questions: whether the Essay will succeed, and who or what is the author.

37 Its success he admits to be secured by the false opinions then prevalent; the author he concludes to be 'young and raw 1.'

'First, because he discovers a sufficiency beyond his little ability, and hath rashly undertaken a task infinitely above his force. Secondly, while this little author struts, and affects the dictatorian air, he plainly shews that at the same time he is under the rod; and while he pretends to give law to others, is a pedantick slave to authority and opinion. Thirdly, he hath, like schoolboys, borrowed both from living and dead. Fourthly, he knows not his own mind, and frequently contradicts himself. Fifthly, he is almost perpetually in the wrong 2.'

38 All these positions he attempts to prove by quotations and remarks; but his desire to do mischief is greater than his power. He has, however, justly criticised some passages: in these lines, 'There are whom heaven has bless'd with store of wit, Yet want as much again to manage it; For wit and judgement ever are at strife3':

it is apparent that wit has two meanings, and that what is wanted, though called wit, is truly judgement. So far Dennis is undoubtedly right; but, not content with argument, he will have a little mirth, and triumphs over the first couplet in terms too elegant to be forgotten. 'By the way, what rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated Muse, who had sued out a divorce on account of impotence from some superannuated sinners, and, having been

(Elwin and Courthope), ii. 38 n.

* 'A wit with Pope was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the Essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone. 1b. ii. 25.

5 Wycherley. Part of this attack Pope quotes in Scriblerus's Prolegomena. Ib. iv. 55.

p-xed by her former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepit age, which makes her hobble so damnably1.' This was the man who would reform a nation sinking into barbarity.

In another place Pope himself allowed that Dennis had detected 39 one of those blunders which are called bulls2. The first edition had this line:

Where wanted, scorn'd; and envied where acquir'd 3.' 'How,' says the critick, 'can wit be scorn'd where it is not? Is not this a figure frequently employed in Hibernian land? The person that wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but the scorn shews the honour which the contemner has for wit 4.' Of this remark Pope made the proper use, by correcting the passage.

I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis's 40 criticism; it remains that justice be done to his delicacy.

a

'For his acquaintance (says Dennis) he names Mr. Walsh 5, who had by no means the qualification which this author reckons absolutely necessary to a critick, it being very certain that he was, like this Essayer, a very indifferent poet; he loved to be welldressed; and I remember little young gentleman whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company, as a double foil to his person and capacity.-Enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham for a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell me whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections.-He may extol the antients, but he has reason to thank the gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father consequently had by law had the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems, the life of half a day. - Let the person of a gentleman of his parts be never sO contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridiculous; it being impossible that his outward form, though it be that of downright monkey, should differ so much from

human shape, as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding 1.'

Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wantonly; but though he always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom.

41 Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because 'not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it.' The gentlemen, and the education of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression 2.

42 Dennis was not his only censurer; the zealous papists thought the monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised3; but to these objections he had not much regard 4.

I

2

Reflections, &c., p. 28.

Pope, writing to Caryll on July 19, 1711, about a second edition, continues:-'which I yet think the book will never arrive at, for Tonson's * printer told me he drew off a thousand copies in his first impression, and I fancy a treatise of this nature, which not one gentleman in three score even of a liberal education can understand, will hardly exceed the vent of that number.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 152. In the version of the letter published by Pope the words italicized are printed 'will not so soon arrive at.' Warton's Pope, vii. 235.

Old Mr. [William] Lewis, the bookseller in Russell Street, who printed the first edition of this Essay in quarto [1711], without Pope's name, informed me (writes Warton, Preface, p. 9) that it lay many days in his shop unnoticed; and that, piqued with this neglect, the author came one day, and packed up and directed twenty copies to several great men, and that, in consequence of these presents and his name being known, the book began to be called for.'

[Lewis was a schoolfellow and early friend of Pope. Nichols's Lit. Anec. iii. 646, viii. 168.]

It was either Lewis or his father who introduced Gibbon to the priest 'at whose feet he abjured the errors of heresy.' Gibbon's Memoirs, p. 72.

The second edition was published in the winter of 1712-13; the third and fourth in 1713. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 4. Johnson, referring to the age of Pope, said :-'We have now more knowledge generally diffused; all our ladies read now, which is a great extension.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 333.

3 'At length Erasmus, that great

injur'd name,

(The glory of the Priesthood and
the shame!)
Stemm'd the wild torrent of a
barb'rous age,

And drove those holy Vandals off

the stage.' Essay on Crit. 1. 693. * Johnson refers to Pope's three Letters to the Hon. J. C. Esq. [John Caryll]. Warton, vii. 223-36. See also Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 141, 163.

* See Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 152 n., for the name of the printer.