At the time of publishing this Epistle, the poet's patience was exhausted by the endless impertinence of poetasters of all ranks and conditions; as well those who courted his favour, as those who envied his reputation. So that now he had resolved to quit his hands of both together, by the publication of a DUNCIAD. This design he communicated to his excellent friend Dr. ARBUTHNOT; who, although as a man of wit and learning he might not have been displeased to see their common injuries revenged on this pernicious tribe; yet, as our author's friend and physician, he was solicitous of his ease and health; and therefore unwilling he should provoke so large and powerful a party.

Their difference of opinion, in this matter, gives occasion to the following Dialogue; where, in a natural and familiar detail of all his provocations, both from flatterers and slanderers, our author has artfully interwoven an apology for his moral and poetic character.

For after having told his case, and humorously applied to his physician in the manner one would ask for a receipt to kill vermin, he straight goes on, in the common character of askers of advice, to tell his doctor that he had already taken his party, and determined of his remedy. But using a preamble, and introducing it (in the way of poets), with a simile, in which the names of Kings, Queens, and Ministers of State happen to be mentioned, his friend takes the alarm, and begs him to forbear; advises him to stick to his subject, and to be easy under so common a calamity.

To make so light of his disaster provokes the poet: he breaks the thread of his discourse, which was to lead his friend gently, and by degrees, into his project; and abruptly tells him the application of his simile at once:

"Out with it, DUNCIAD! let the secret pass," &c.

But recollecting the humanity and tenderness of his friend, which, he apprehends, might be a little shocked at the apparent severity of such a proceeding, he assures him that his good-nature is alarmed without cause; for that nothing has less feeling than this sort of offenders; which he illustrates in the examples of a damned Poet, a detected Slanderer, a Table-Parasite, a Church-Buffoon, and a Party-Writer (from ver. 1 to 101).

But, in this enumeration, coming again to Names, his friend once more stops him, and bids him consider what hostilities this

general attack would set on foot. So much the better, replies the poet; for, considering the strong antipathy of bad to good, enemies they will always be, either open or secret; and it admits of no question, but a slanderer is less hurtful than a flatterer. For, says he, (in a pleasant simile addressed to his friend's profession),

"Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,

It is the slaver kills, and not the bite."

And how abject and excessive the flattery of these creatures was, he shews, by observing that they praised him even for his infirmities, his bad health, and his inconvenient shape (ver. 100 to 125).

But still it might be said, that if he could bear this evil annexed to authorship no better, he should not have written at all. To this he answers, by lamenting the natural bent of his disposition; which, from his very birth, had drawn him towards Poetry so strongly, as if it were in execution of some secret decree of Heaven for crimes unknown. But though he offended in becoming an author, he offended in nothing else. For his early verses were perfectly innocent and harmless :

"Like gentle Fanny's was my flowing theme,

A painted mistress, or a purling stream."

Yet even then, he tells us, two enraged and hungry critics fell upon him without any provocation. But this might have been borne, as the common lot of distinction. But it was his peculiar illfortune to create a jealousy in one, whom, not only many good offices done by our author to him and his friends, but a similitude of genius and studies, might have inclined to a reciprocal affection and support. On the contrary, that otherwise amiable person, being, by nature, timorous and suspicious; by education, a partyman; and, by circumstances of fortune, beset with flatterers and pick-thanks, regarded our author as his rival, set up by a contrary faction, with views destructive of public liberty and that person's reputation. And all this, with as little provocation from Mr. Pope's conduct in his poetic, as in his civil character.

For though he had got a name (the reputation of which he agreeably rallies, in the description he gives of it) yet he never, even when most in fashion, set up for a patron, or a dictator amongst the wits; but still kept retired in his usual privacy; leaving the whole Castalian state, as he calls it, to a Mock-Mæcenas, whom he next describes (ver. 124 to 261).

And, struck with the sense of that dignity and ease which support the character of a true poet, he breaks out into a passionate vow for a continuance of the full liberty inseparable from it. And to shew how well he deserves it, and how safely he might be trusted with it, he concludes his wish with a description of his temper and disposition (ver. 260 to 271).

This naturally leads him to complain of his friends, when they consider him in no other view than that of an author; as if he had neither the same right to the enjoyments of life, the same concern for his highest interests, or the same dispositions of benevolence, with other people.

Besides, he now admonishes them, in his turn, that they do not consider to what they expose him, when they urge him to write on; namely, to the suspicions and the displeasure of a court, who are made to believe he is always writing; or at least to the foolish criticisms of court-sycophants, who pretend to find him, by his style, in the immoral libels of every idle scribbler: though he, in the mean time, be so far from countenancing such worthless trash in others, that he would be ready to execrate even his own best vein of poetry, if made at the expense of truth and innocence :

"Curs'd be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear."

Sentiments, which no effort of genius, without the concurrence of the heart, could have expressed in strains so exquisitely sublime. That the sole object of his resentment was vice and baseness; in the detection of which, he artfully takes occasion to speak of that by which he himself had been injured and offended: and concludes with the character of one who had wantonly outraged him, and in the most sensible manner (ver. 270 to 334).

And here, moved again with fresh indignation at his slanderers, he takes the advice of Horace, sume superbiam quæsitam meritis, and draws a fine picture of his moral and poetic conduct through life. In which he shews that not fame, but VIRTUE, was the constant object of his ambition: that for this he opposed himself to all the violence of cabals, and the treacheries of courts: the various iniquities of which having distinctly specified, he sums them up in that most atrocious and sensible of all (ver. 333 to 360) :

"The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps yet vibrates on his SOVEREIGN's ear.
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;

For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last."

But here again his friend interrupts the strains of his divine enthusiasm, and desires him to clear up one objection made to his conduct at court: "that it was inhumane to insult the poor, and ill breeding to affront the great." To which he replies, that indeed in his pursuit of Vice, he rarely considered how knavery was circumstanced; but followed it, with his vengeance, indifferently, whether it led to the pillory or the drawing-room (ver. 329 to 368).

But lest this should give his reader the idea of a savage intractable virtue, which could bear with nothing, and would pardon nothing, he takes to himself the shame of owning that he was of so easy a nature, as to be duped by the slenderest appearances; a pretence to virtue in a witty woman: so forgiving, that he had sought out the object of his beneficence in a personal enemy: so humble, that he had submitted to the conversation of bad poets: and so forbearing, that he had curbed in his resentment under the most shocking of all provocations, abuses on his Father and Mother (ver. 367 to 388).

This naturally leads him to give a short account of their births, fortunes, and dispositions, which ends with the tenderest wishes for the happiness of his friend; intermixed with the most pathetic description of that filial piety, in the exercise of which he makes his own happiness to consist:

"Me, let the tender office long engage

To rock the cradle of reposing age;

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!"

And now this incomparable poem, which holds so much of the DRAMA, and opens with all the disorder and vexation that every kind of impertinence and slander could occasion, concludes with the utmost calmness and serenity, in the retired enjoyment of all the tender offices of FRIENDSHIP and PIETY (ver. 387 to the end).

Warburton.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

FIRST PUBLICATION OF THIS EPISTLE.

THIS paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some persons of rank and fortune [the authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my writings (of which, being public, the public is judge) but my person, morals, and family, whereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the truth and the sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I