and subtle Hurd; and amid the gradations of the votive brotherhood, the profound BALGUY, the spirited BROWN, till we descend "To his tame jackall, parson TOWNE." Verses on Warburton's late Edition. The character of a literary sycophant was never more perfectly exhibited than in Hurd. A Whig in principle, yet he had all a courtier's arts for Warburton; to him he devoted all his genius, though that, indeed, was moderate; aided him with all his ingenuity, which was exquisite; and This Warburtonian party reminds one of an lent his cause a certain delicacy of taste and old custom among our elder poets, who formed a cultivated elegance, which, although too prim and kind of freemasonry among themselves, by adopt-artificial, was a vein of gold running through his ing younger poets by the title of their sons.--But mass of erudition; it was Hurd who aided the that was a domestic society of poets; this, a usurpation of Warburton in the province of revival of the Jesuitic order instituted by its criticism, above Aristotle and Longinust. Hard founder, that language of our honest ancestors to such mushrooms, a gentleman of the last edition."Edwards misunderstood the allusion, and sore at the personal attack which followed, of his having "eluded the solicitude of his careful father," considered himself "degraded of his gentility," that it was "a reflection on his birth," and threatened to apply to "Mr. Warburton's Masters of the Bench, for degrading a 'barrister of their house."" -This afforded a new triumph to Warburton, in a new note, where he explains his meaning of these "mushrooms," whom he meant merely as literary ones; and assures "Fungoso and his friends, who are all gentlemen, that he meant no more than that Edwards had become a gentleman of the last edition of the Dunciad!" Edwards and his fungous friends had understood the phrase as applied to new-fangled gentry. One of these wits, in the collection of verses cited above, says to Warburton : "This mushroom has made sauce for you. He's meat; thou'rt poison-plain enough— If he's a mushroom, thou'rt a puff!" Warburton had the full command over the Dunciad, even when Pope was alive; for it was in consequence of Warburton's being refused a degree at Oxford, that the poet, though one had been offered to himself, produced the celebrated lines of " Apollo's Mayor and Aldermen," in the fourth Dunciad. Thus it is that the personal likes and dislikes of witty men come down to posterity, and are often mistaken as just satire, when, after all, they are nothing but LITERARY QUARRELS, seldom founded on truth, and very often complete falsehoods! • Warburton, indeed, was always looking about for fresh recruits: a circumstance which appears in the curious Memoirs of the late Dr. Heathcote, written by himself. Heathcote, when We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when even, after the fatal edition of Warburton's Shakespeare, he should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to assert that "this fine edition must ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the author, breathing throughout!' Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have read the "Canons of Criticism?" Yet is it to be supposed that he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of his friend should not have read them? The Warburtonians appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits, in their controversies; which was, to repeat arguments which had been confuted over and over again, to insinuate that they had not been so ! But this was not too much to risk, by him who, in his dedication of Horace's Epistle to Augustus, with a Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that "Warburton, in his enlarged view of things, had not only revived the two models of Aristotle and Longinus, but had rather struck out a new original plan of criticism, which should unite the virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two greatest of our own poets-Shakespeare and Pope. Still (he adds, addressing Warburton) you went farther, by joining to those powers a perfect insight into human nature; and so ennobling the exercise of literary, by the justest moral censure, you have now, at length, advanced criticism to its full glory." N who could maintain the unguarded passages he left behind him in his progress. is justly characterised by Warton, in his Spenser, animated by the heroic energy of Warburton ; vol. ii. p. 36, as "the most sensible and ingenious and the careless courage of the chief wanted one of modern critics."-He was a lover of his studies; and he probably was sincere, when he once told a friend of the literary antiquary Cole, that he would have chosen not to quit the university, for he loved retirement; and on that principle Cowley was his favourite poet, which he afterwards showed, by his singular edition of that poet. He was called, from the cloistered shades, to assume the honourable dignity of a Royal Tutor. Had he devoted his days to literature, he would have still enriched its stores. But he had other more supple and more serviceable qualifications. Most adroit was he in all the archery of controversy: he had the subtlety that can evade the aim of the assailant, and the slender dexterity, substituted for vigour, that struck when least expected. The subaltern genius of Hurd required to be Such, then, was WARBURTON, and such the quarrels of this great author. He was, through his literary life, an adventurer, guided by that secret principle, which opened an immediate road to fame. By opposing the common sentiments of mankind, he awed and he commanded them; and by giving a new face to all things, he surprised, by the appearances of discoveries. All this, so pleasing to his egotism, was not however fortunate for his ambition. To sustain an authority, which he had usurped; to substitute for the taste he wanted, a curious and dazzling erudition; and to maintain those reckless decisions which so often plunged him into perils, Warburton adopted his system of Literary Quarrels. These were the illegitimate means which raised a sudden celebrity; and which genius kept alive, as long as that genius lasted; but Warburton suffered that literary calamity, too protracted a period of human life he outlived himself and his fame. This great and original mind sacrificed all his genius to that secret principle we have endeavoured to develop—it was a self-immolation! A perpetual intercourse of mutual adulation, animated the Sovereign and his viceroy, and, by mutual support, each obtained the same reward: two mitres crowned the greater and the minor critic. This intercourse was humorously detected by the lively author of "Confusion worse confounded."-"When the late Duke of R. (says he) The learned SELDEN, in the curious little volume kept wild beasts, it was a common diversion to of his "Table-Talk," has delivered to posterity a make two of his bears drunk (not metaphorically precept for the learned, which they ought to wear, with flattery, but literally with strong ale), and like the Jewish phylacteries, as "a frontlet between then daub them over with honey. It was excellent their eyes." No man is the wiser for his Learnsport to see how lovingly (like a couple of critics) ing: it may administer matter to work in, or they would lick and claw one another." It is objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are almost amazing to observe how Hurd, who born with a man.-Sir THOMAS HANMER, who naturally was of the most frigid temperament, and was well acquainted with Warburton, during their the most subdued feelings, warmed, heated, and correspondence about Shakespeare, often said of blazed, in the progressive stages, "of that pageantry of praise spread over the Rev. Mr. Warburton, when the latter was advancing fast towards a Bishoprick," to use the words of Dr. Parr, a sagacious observer of man. However, notwithstanding the despotic mandates of our Pichrocole and his dapper minister, there were who did not fear to meet the greater bear, of the Warburton, it is probable, was not really the two so facetiously described above. And the character he appears. It mortifies the lovers of author of "Confusion worse confounded" tells a genius to discover how a natural character may be familiar story, which will enliven the history of thrown into a convulsed unnatural state, by some our great critic." One of the bears mentioned adopted system: it is this system, which carrying above happened to get loose, and was running it, as it were, beyond itself, communicates a more along the street in which a tinker was gravely than natural, but a self-destroying energy. All walking. The people all cried Tinker! tinker! then becomes reversed! The arrogant and vitubeware of the bear!'-Upon this Magnano faced perative Warburton was only such in his assumed about, with great composure; and raising his staff, character; for, in still domestic life, he was the knocked down Bruin; then setting his arms creature of benevolence, touched by generous a-kimbo, walked off very sedately; only saying-passions. But in public life, the artificial, or the 'Let the bear beware of the tinker'-which is now acquired character, prevails over the one which become a proverb in those parts."-Confusion nature designed for us; and by that all public men, worse confounded, p. 75. as well as authors, are usually judged by posterity. him: "The only use he could find in Mr. Warburton was, starting the game; he was not to be trusted in running it down." A just discrimination! His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative ; but his taste and his judgment, perpetually stretched out by his system, could not save him from even inglorious absurdities! POPE, AND HIS MISCELLANEOUS QUARRELS. POPE adopted a system of literary politics-collected, with extraordinary care, everything relative to his Quarrels -no politician ever studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions and intricate stratagems-some of his manœuvres-his systematic hostility not practised with impunity-his claim to his own Works contested-CIBBER'S facetious description of POPE's feelings, and WELSTED'S elegant satire on his genius-DENNIS's account of POPE's Introduction to him-his political prudence further discovered in the Collection of all the Pieces relative to the Dunciad, in which he employed SAVAGE-the THEOBALDIANS and the POPEIANS; an attack by a Theobaldian-The Dunciad ingeniously defended, for the grossness of its imagery, and its reproach of the poverty of the authors, supposed by POPE himself, with some curious specimens of literary personalities-the Literary Quarrel between AARON HILL and POPE distinguished for its romantic cast-a Narrative of the extraordinary transactions respecting the publication of POPE's Letters; an example of Stratagem and Conspiracy, illustrative of his character. POPE has proudly perpetuated the history of his Literary Quarrels; and he appears to have been among those authors, surely not forming the majority, who have delighted in, or have not been averse to provoke, hostility. He has registered the titles of every book, even to a single paper, or a copy of verses, in which their authors had committed treason against his poetical sovereignty*. His ambition seemed gratified in heaping these trophies to his genius, while his meaner passions could compile one of the most voluminous of the tained much of the Secret Memoirs of Grub-street: it was always a fountain whence those "waters of bitterness," the notes in the Dunciad, were readily supplied. It would be curious to discover by what stratagem Pope obtained all that secret intelligence * Pope collected these numerous literary libels about his Dunces, with which he has burthened with extraordinary care. He had them bound in posterity, for his own particular gratification. volumes of all sizes; and a range of twelves, Arbuthnot, it is said, wrote some notes merely octavos, quartos, and folios, were marshalled in literary; but Savage, and still humbler agents, portentous order on his shelves. He wrote the served him as his Espions de Police. He pensioned names of the writers, with remarks on these Savage to his last day, and never deserted him. Anonymiana. He prefixed to them this motto, In the account of "the phantom Moore," from Job: "Behold, my desire is, that mine Scriblerus appeals to Savage to authenticate some adversary had written a book: surely I would take story. One curious instance of the fruits of it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to Savage's researches in this way he has himself me." xxxi. 35. Ruffhead, who wrote Pope's preserved, in his memoirs of “ An Author to be Life under the eye of Warburton, who revised Let, by Iscariot Hackney." This portrait of " a every sheet of the volume, and suffered this mere perfect Town-Author" is not deficient in spirit: lawyer and singularly wretched critic to write on, the hero was one Roome, a man only celebrated with far inferior taste to his own-offered "the in the Dunciad for his "funereal frown." But it entire collection to any public library or museum, is uncertain whether this fellow had really so whose search is after curiosities, and may be dismal a countenance; for the epithet was borrowed desirous of enriching their common treasure with from his profession, being the son of an undertaker! it it will be freely at the service of that which Such is the nature of some satire! Dr. Warton asks first." Did no one accept the invitation? is astonished, or mortified, for he knew not which, As this was written in 1769, it is evidently pointed to see the pains and patience of Pope and his towards the British Museum; but there I have friends in compiling the Notes to the Dunciad, to not heard of it. This collection must have con- trace out the lives and works of such paltry and scandalous chronicles of literature. We are concentrating his passions into a solitary one, his retired life was passed in the contemplation of his own literary greatness. Reviewing the past, and anticipating the future, he felt he was creating a new era in our Literature, an event which does not always occur in a century; but eager to secure present celebrity, with the victory obtained in the open field, he combined the intrigues of the cabinet : thus, while he was exerting great means, he practised little artifices. No politician studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions, or with more intricate stratagems; and Pope was at once the lion and the fox of Machiavel. A book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place this great poet. Pope's literary quarrels were the wars of his poetical ambition, more perhaps than of the petulance and strong irritability of his character. They were some of the artifices he adopted, from the peculiarity of his situation. Thrown out of the active classes of society, from a variety of causes, sufficiently known forgotten scribblers. "It is like walking through To keep his name alive before the public, was the darkest alleys in the dirtiest part of St. Giles's." one of his early plans. When he published his Very true! But may we not be allowed to detect" Essay on Criticism," anonymously, the young and the vanities of human nature at St. Giles's as well impatient poet was mortified with the inertion of as St. James's? Authors, however obscure, are public curiosity: he was almost in despair +. always an amusing race to authors. The greatest | Twice, perhaps oftener, Pope attacked Pope t; and find their own passions in the least, though distorted, or cramped in too small a compass. It is doubtless from Pope's great anxiety for his own literary celebrity that we have been furnished with so complete a knowledge of the grotesque groups in the Dunciad. "Give me a shilling," said Swift facetiously, "and I will insure you that posterity shall never know one single enemy, excepting those whose memory you have preserved." A very useful hint for a man of genius to leave his wretched assailants to dissolve away in their own weakness. But Pope, having written a Dunciad, by accompanying it with a commentary, took the only method to interest posterity. He felt that Boileau's satires on bad authors are liked only in the degree the objects alluded to are known. But he loved too much the subject for its own sake. He abused the powers genius had conferred on him, as other imperial sovereigns have done. It is said that he kept the whole kingdom in awe of him. In "the frenzy and prodigality of vanity," he exclaimed . Yes, I am proud to see Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me!" Tacitus Gordon said of him, that Pope seemed to persuade the nation that all genius and ability were confined to him and his friends. * Pope, in his energetic Letter to Lord HERVEY, that "master-piece of invective," says Warton, which Tyers tells us he kept long back from publishing, at the desire of Queen Caroline, who was fearful her counsellor would become insignificant in the public esteem, and at last in her own, such was the power his genius exercised;-has pointed out one of these causes. It describes himself as "a private person under penal laws, and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience; yet it is by these alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all posts of profit or trust. I can interfere with the views of no man." The first publisher of the Essay on Criticism must have been a Mr. Lewis, a Catholic bookseller in Covent-garden; for, from a descendant of this Lewis, I heard that Pope, after publication, came every day, persecuting with anxious inquiries the cold impenetrable bookseller, who, as the poem lay uncalled for, saw nothing but vexatious importunities in a troublesome youth. One day, Pope, after nearly a month's publication, entered, and in despair tied up a number of the poems, which he addressed to several who had a reputation in town, as judges of poetry. The scheme succeeded, and the poem, having reached its proper circle, soon got into request. He was the author of "The Key to the Lock," written to show that "The Rape of the Lock" was a political poem, designed to ridicule the Barrier Treaty. Its innocent extravagance could only have been designed to increase attention to a work, which hardly required any such artifice. In the same spirit he composed the Guardian, in which Phillips's Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the Guardian, and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have he frequently concealed himself under the names of others, for some particular design. Not to point out his dark familiar Scriblerus, always at hand for all purposes, he made use of the names of several of his friends. When he employed SAVAGE in a collection of all the pieces, in verse and prose, published on occasion of the Dunciad," he subscribed his name to an admirable dedication to Lord Middlesex, where he minutely relates the whole history of the Dunciad," and the weekly clubs held to consult of hostilities against the author; and, for an express introduction to that Work, he used the name of Cleland, to which is added a note, expressing surprise that the world did not believe that Cleland was the writer! Wanting a pretext for the publication of his letters, he delighted CURLL by conveying to him some printed surreptitious copies, who soon discovered, that it was but a fairy treasure, which he could not grasp; and Pope, in his own defence, had soon ready the authentic edition. Some lady observed that Pope "hardly drank tea without a stratagem!" The female genius easily detects its own peculiar faculty, when it is exercised with inferior delicacy. But his systematic hostility did not proceed with equal impunity in this perpetual war with dulness, he discovered that every one he called a dunce was not so; nor did he find the dunces themselves less inconvenient to him; for many successfully substituted, for their deficiencies in better qualities, the lie, that lasts long enough to vex a man; and the insolence, that does not fear him they attacked him at all points, and not always in the spirit of legitimate warfare. They filled up his asterisks, and accused him of treason. They asserted that the panegyrical verses, prefixed to his works (an obsolete mode of recommendation, which Pope condescended to practise), were his own composition, and to which he had affixed the names of some dead or some unknown writers. They published lists of all whom Pope had attacked; placing at the head, "God Almighty; the king;" descending to the "lords and gentlemen +." A few suspected his skill in Greek; discovered all the supercheries of this kind. After writing the finest works of genius, he was busily employed in attracting the public attention to them. In the antithesis of his character, he was so great and so little! But he knew mankind! and present fame was the great business of his life. but every hound yelped in the halloo against his Homer t. Yet the more extraordinary circum of all satirists. Atterbury, after reading the portrait of Atticus, advised him to proceed in a way which his genius had pointed out; but Arbuthnot, with his dying breath, conjured him "to reform, and not to chastise;" that is, not to spare the vice, but the person. It is said, Pope answered, that, to correct the world with due effect, they become inseparable; and that, deciding by his own experience, he was justified in this opinion. Perhaps, at first, he himself wavered; but he strikes bolder as he gathers strength. The two first editions of the Dunciad, now before me, could hardly be intelligible: they exhibit lines after lines gaping with an hiatus, or obscured with initial letters: in subsequent editions, the names stole into their places. We are told, that the personalities in his Satires quickened the sale: the portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atossa, were purchased by everybody; but when he once declared, respecting the characters of one of his best satires, that no real persons were intended, it checked public curiosity, which was felt in the sale of that edition. Personality in his satires, no doubt, accorded with the temper and the talent of Pope; and the malice of mankind afforded him all the conviction necessary to indulge it. Yet Young could depend solely on abstract characters and pure wit'; and I believe that his "Love of Fame" was a series of adinirable satires, which did not obtain less popularity than Pope's. Cartwright, one of the poetical sons of Ben Jonson, describes, by a beautiful and original image, the office of the satirist, though he praises Jonson for exercising a virtue he did not always practise; as Swift celebrates Pope with the same truth, when he sings:-"Yet malice never was his aim ; He lash'd the vice, but spared the name.' Cartwright's lines are: To strike the vice, but spare the person still; Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, published a letter in Mist's Journal, insisting that Pope had mistaken the whole character of Thersites, from ignorance of the language. I regret I have not drawn some notes from that essay. The subject might be made curious by a good Greek scholar, if Pope has really erred in the degree Cooke asserts. Theobald, who seems to have been a more classical + Pope is, perhaps, the finest character-painter scholar than has been allowed, besides some ver The narrative of this dark transaction, which seems to have been imperfectly known to Johnson, being too copious for a note, will be found at the close of this article. |