Mr. Addison's Freeholder, No. 40.

When I consider myself as a British freeholder, I am in a particular manner pleased with the labours of those who have improved our language with the translations of old Greek and Latin authors.-We have already most of their historians in our own tongue, and, what is more for the honour of our language, it has been taught to express with elegance the greatest of their poets in each nation. The illiterate among our own countrymen may learn to judge from Dryden's Virgil, of the most perfect epic performance. And those parts of Homer which have been published already by Mr. Pope, gives us reason to think that the Iliad will appear in English with as little disadvantage to that immortal poem."

As to the rest, there is a slight mistake, for this younger muse was an elder; nor was the gentleman (who is a friend of our author) employed by Mr. Addison to translate it after him since he saith himself that he did it before. Contrariwise, that Mr. Addison engaged our author in this work appeareth by declaration thereof in the preface to the Iliad, printed some time before his death, and by his own letters of October 26, and November 2, 1713, where he declares it is his opinion that no other person was equal to it.

Next comes his Shakspeare on the stage: Let him (quoth one, whom I take to be

Mr. Theobald, Mist's Journal, June 8, 1728) publish such an author as he has least studied, and forget to discharge even the dull duty of an editor. In this project let him lend the bookseller his name (for a competent sum of money) to promote the credit of an exorbitant subscription.' Gentle reader, be pleased to cast thine eye on the proposal below quoted, and on what follows (some months after the former assertion) in the same Journalist of June 8: The bookseller proposed the book by subscription, and raised some thousands of pounds for the same: I believe the gentleman did not share in the profits of this extravagant subscrip

terests with those great men to this rising bard, who frequently levied by that means unusual contributions on the public.' Which surely cannot be, if, as the author of the Dunciad Dissected reporteth, Mr. Wycherly had before introduced him into a familiar acquaintance with the greatest peers and brightest wits then living. 'No sooner (saith the same journalist) was his body lifeless, but this author, reviving his resentment, libelled the memory of his departed friend; and what was still more heinous, made the scandal public.' Grievous the accusation! unknown the accuser! the person accused no witness in his own cause; the person, in whose regard accused, dead! But if there be living any one nobleman whose friendship, yea any one gentleman whose subscription Mr. Addison procured to our author, let him stand forth, that truth may appear! Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas. In verity, the whole story of the libel is a lie; witness those persons of integrity, who several years before Mr. Addison's decease, did see and approve of the said verses, in no wise a libel, but a friendly rebuke sent privately in our author's own hand to Mr. Addison himself, and never made public, till after their own Journals, and Curll had printed the same. One name alone, which I am here authorized to declare, will sufficiently evince this truth, that of the right honourable the earl of Burlington. Next is he taxed with a crime (in the opinion of some authors, I doubt, more heinous than any in morality), to wit, plagiarism, from the inventive and quaint-con

ceited

James Moore Smith, Gent.

Upon reading the third volume of Pope's Miscellanies, I found five lines which I thought excellent; and hap pening to praise them, a gentleman produced a modern comedy (the Rival Modes) published last year, where were the same verses to a tittle.

These gentlemen are undoubtedly the first plagiaries, that pretend to make a reputation by stealing from a man's works in his own life-time, and out of a public print. Let us join to this what is written by the author of the Rival Modes, the said Mr. James Moore Smith, in a letter to our author himself, who had informed him a month before that play was acted, Jan. 27, 1726-7, that, These verses, which he had before given him leave to insert in it, would be known for his, some copies being got abroad. He, desires, nevertheless, that since the lines had been read in his comedy to several, Mr. P. would not deprive it of them,' &c. Surely, if we add the testimonies of the lord Bolingbroke, of the lady to whom the said verses were originally addressed, of Hugh Bethel, esq. and others, who knew them as our author's long before the said gentleman composed bis play; it is hoped, the ingenuous, that affect not error, will rectify their opinion by the suffrage of so honour

If any say, that before the said Proposals were printed, the subscription was begun without declaration of such assistance; verily those who set it on foot or (as the term is) secured it, to wit, the right honourable the lord viscount Harcourt, were he living, would testify, and the right honourable the lord Bathurst, now living doth testify, the same is a falsehood.

Sorry I am, that persons professing to be learned, or of whatever rank of authors, should either falsely tax, or be falsely taxed. Yet let us, who are only reporters, be impartial in our citations, and proceed.

Mist's Journal, June 8, 1728.

And yet followeth another charge, insinuating no less than his enmity both to church and state, which could come from no other informer than the said

Mr. James Moore Smith.

The Memoirs of a Parish Clerk was a very dull and unjust abuse of a person who wrote in defence of our religion and constitution, and who has been dead many years.' This seemeth also most untrue; it being known to divers that these memoirs were written at the seat of the lord Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, before that excellent person (bishop Burnet's) death, and many years before the appearance of that history, of which they are pretended to be an abuse. Most true it is, that Mr. Moore had such a design, and was himself the man who pressed Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Pope to assist him therein; and that he borrowed those memoirs of our author, when that history came forth, with intent to turn them to such abuse. But being able to obtain from our author but one single hint, and either changing his mind, or having more mind than ability, he contented himself to keep the said memoirs, and read them as his own to all his acquaintance. A noble person there is, into whose company Mr. Pope once chanced to introduce him, who well remembereth the conversation of Mr. Moore to have turned upon the contempt he had for the work of that reverend prelate, and how full he was of a design he deson is the earl of Peterborough.

Vid. Pref. to Mr. Tickell's translation of the first

book of the Iliad, 4to.

Daily Journal, March 18, 1728. Daily Journal, April 3, 1728

Here in truth should we crave pardon of all the foresaid right honourable and worthy personages, for having mentioned them in the same page with such weekly riff-raff railers and rhymers; but that we had their ever-honoured commands for the same; and that they are introduced not as witnesses in the controversy, but as witnesses that cannot be controverted; not to dispute, but to decide.

Certain it is, that dividing our writers into two classes, of such who were acquaintance, and of such who were strangers to our author; the former are those who speak well, and the other those who speak evil of him. Of the first class, the most noble

Mr. William Broome :

Thus, nobly rising in fair virtue's cause,
From thy own life transcribe the unerring laws.
And, to close all, hear the reverend dean of St. Pa-
trick's:

A soul with every virtue fraught,
By patriots, priests, and poets taught:
Whose filial piety excels

Whatever Grecian story tells..
A genius for each business fit;

Whose meanest talent is his wit,' &c.

Let us now recreate thee by turning to the other. side, and shewing his character drawn by those with whom he never conversed, and whose countenances he could not know, though turned against him: First again commencing with the high-voiced and neverenough quoted

Mr. John Dennis,

who, in his Reflections on the Essay on Criticism, thus describeth him: A little affected hypocrite, who has nothing in his mouth but candour, truth, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and magnanimity. He is so great a lover of falsehood, that whenever he has a n.ind to calumniate his contemporaries, he brands them with. some defect which was just contrary to some good quality for which all their friends and acquaintance commend them. He seems to have a particular pique to people of quality, and authors of that rank.--He must derive his religion from St. Omer's.-But in the character of Mr. P. and his writings (printed by S.

in this apostrophe:

Mr. Walter Hart,

Oh! ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise! Bless'd in thy life, and bless'd in all thy lays, Add, that the Sisters every thought refine, And e'en thy life be faultless as thy line, Yet envy still with fiercer rage pursues, Obscures the virtue, and defames the muse. A soul like thine, in pain, in grief, resign'd, Views with just scorn the malice of mankind.'t The witty and moral satirist,

Dr. Edward Young,

wishing some check to the corruption and evil manners of the times, calleth out upon our poet to undertake a task so worthy of his virtue:

Why slumbers Pope, who leads the Muses' train, Nor hears that virtue, which he loves, complain ?'S Mr. Mallet,

in his Epistle on Verbal Criticism:

Whose life, severely scann'd, transcends his lays; For wit supreme, is but his second praise.'

Mr. Hammond,

that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv.

'Now, fired by Pope and virtue, leave the age,
In low pursuit of self-undoing wrong,
And trace the author through his moral page,
Whose blameless life still answers to his song.'

Mr. Thomson,

• Verses to Mr. P. on his translation of Homer.

+ Poem prefixed to his works.

In his poems, printed for B. Lintot.

§ Universal Passions, sat. i.

of the worst religion, yet he laughs at it; but that, nevertheless, he is a virulent papist; and yet a pillar of the church of England.'

Of both which opinions

Mr. Lewis Theobald

seems also to be; declaring in Mist's Journal of June 22, 1718, That ir he is not shrewdly abused, he made it his practice to cackle to both parties in their own sentiments.' But as to his pique against people of quality, the same journalist doth not agree, but saith (May 8, 1728), He had by some means or other, the acquaintance and friendship of the whole body of our nobility.'

However contradictory this may appear, Mr. Dennis and Gildon, in the character last cited, make it all plain, by assuring us, That he is a creature that reconciles all contradictions: he is a beast, and a man; a Whig and a Tory; a writer (at one and the same time) of Guardians and Examiners; an assertor of liberty, and of the dipensing power of kings; a Jesuitical professor of truth; a base and foul pretender to candour.' So that, upon the whole acconut, we must conclude him either to have been a great hypocrite, or a very honest man; a terrible impostor upon both parties, or very moderate to either.

Be it as to the judicious reader shall seem good. Sure it is, he is little favoured of certain authors, whose wrath is perilous: For one declares he ought to have a price set on his head, and to be hunted down as a wild beast. Another protests that he does not know what may happen; advises him to ensure his person; says he has bitter enemies, and expressly declares it will be well if he escapes with his life. § One desires he would cut his own throat, or hang himself. But Pasquin seemed rather inclined it should be done by the government, representing him engaged in grievous designs with a lord of parliament then under prosecution. § Mr. Dennis himself hath written to a minister, that he is one of the most dangerous persons in this kingdom; and assureth the public, that he is an open and mortal enemy to his country; a monster that will one dav, shew as daring a soul as a mad Indian, who runs

* In his poems at the end of the Odyssey. The names of two weekly papers.

Theobald, Letter in Mist's Journal, June 22, 1728.

§ Smedley, pref. to Gulliveriana, p. 14, 16.
Gulliveriana, p. 332.
Anno 1729

§ Anno 1723.

Mr. Theobald,

Mr. Charles Gildon,

after having violently attacked him in many pieces, at last came to wish from his heart, That Mr. Pope would be prevailed upon to give us Ovid's Epistles by his hand, for it is certain we see the original of Sappho to Phaon with much more life and likeness in his version, than in that of sir Car Scrope. And this (he adds) is the more to be wished, because in the English tongue we have scarcely any thing truly and naturally written upon love. He also, in taxing sir Richard Blackmore for his heterodox opinions of Homer, challengeth him to answer what Mr. Pope hath said in his preface to that poet.

Mr. Oldmixon

calls him a great master of our tongue; declares the purity and perfection of the English language to be found in his Homer; and, saying there are more good verses in Dryden's Virgil than in any other work, except this of our author only.'**

The Author of a Letter to Mr. Cibber

says: Pope was so good a versifier [once] that, his predecessor Mr. Dryden, and his contemporary Mr. Prior excepted, the harmony of his numbers is equal to any body's. And, that he had all the merit that a man can have that way.'++ And

Mr. Thomas Cooke,

after much blemishing our author's Homer, crieth out:
But in his other works what beauties shine,
While sweetest music dwells in every line!
These he admired, on these he stamp'd his praise,
And bade them live to brighten future days.'‡‡
So also one who takes the name of

H. Stanhope,

the maker of certain verses to Duncan Campbell,§§ in that poem, which is wholly a satire upon Mr. Pope, confesseth,

"Tis true, if finest notes alone could shew
(Tuned justly high, or regularly low)

That we should fame to these mere vocals give;
Pope more than we can offer should receive:
For when some gliding river is his theme,

His lines run smoother than the smoothest streain, &c.

* Preface to Rem. on the Rape of the Lock, p. 12; and in the last page of that treatise.

Page 6, 7, of the Preface, by Concanen, to a book, called, A Collection of all the Letters, Essays, Verses and Advertisements, occasioned by Pope and Swift's Miscellanies. Printed for A. Moore, 8vo. 1712.

Key to the Dunciad, 3d edit. p. 18.

SA list of Persons, &c. at the end of the forementioned Collection of all the Letters, Essays, &c. Introduction to his Shakspeare Restored, in 4to.

P, 3.

Commentary on the Duke of Buckingham's Essay, Svo, 1721, p. 97, 98.

** In his prose Essay on Criticism. ++ Printed by J. Roberts, 1742, p. 11. Battle of the Poets, folio, p. 15.

Printed under the title of the Progress of Dulness, 12mo, 1728.

who 'grants it to be a better poem of its kind than ever was writ; but adds, it was a victory over a parcel of poor wretches, whom it was almost cowardice to conquer. A man might as well triumph for having killed so many silly flies that offended him. Could he have let them alone, by this time, poor souls! they had all been buried in oblivion,'* Here we see our excellent laureate allows the justice of the satire on every man in it, but himself; as the great Mr. Dennis did before him. The said

Mr. Dennis and Mr. Gildon,

in the most furious of all their words (the forecited Character, p. 5), do in concert confess, That some men of good understanding value him for his rhymes.' And (p. 17) that he has got, like Mr. Bayes in the Rehearsal (that is, like Mr. Dryden), a notable knack at rhyming, and writing smooth verse.'

bestowed by his avowed enemies, in the imagination On his Essay on Man, numerous were the praises that the same was not written by him, as it was printed anonymously,

Thus sang of it even

Bezaleel Morris :

'Auspicious bard! while all admire thy strain,
All but the selfish, ignorant, and vain;
I, whom no bribe to servile flattery drew,
Must pay the tribute to thy merit due:
Thy muse sublime, significant, and clear,
Alike informs the soul, and charms the ear,' &c.
And

Mr. Leonard Welsted

thus wrote to the unknown author, on the first pub lication of the said Essay; I must own, after the recep tion which the vilest and most immoral ribaldry hath lately met with, I was surprised to see what I had long despaired, a performance deserving the name of a poet, Such, sir, is your work. It is, indeed, above all com. mendation, and ought to have been published in an age weight any where, you are sure to have it in the amplest and country more worthy of it. If my testimony be of manner, &c. &c. &c.

"Sir,

pamphlet till this day. I am infinitely satisfied and "I had not the opportunity of hearing of your excellent couragement your adınirable performance deserves, &c. pleased with it, and hope you will meet with that en"CH. GILDON."

'Now is it not plain, that any one who sends such compliments to another, has not been used to write in partnership with him to whom he sends them?' Dennis, Remarks on the Dunciad, p. 50. Mr. Dennis is there. fore welcome to take this piece to himself.

1733.

In a letter under his own hand, dated March 13,

98

Thus we see every one of his works hath been extolled by one or other of his most inveterate enemies; and to the success of them all they do unanimously give testimony. But it is sufficient, instar omnium, to behold the great critic, Mr. Dennis, sorely lamenting it, even from the Essay on Criticism to this day of the Dunciad! A most notorious instance (quoth he) of the depravity of genius and taste, the approbation this Essay meets with.*-I can safely affirm, that I never attacked any of these writings, unless they had success infinitely beyond their merit. This, though an empty, has been a popular scribbler. The epidemic madness of the times has given him reputation.+-If, after the cruel treatment so many extraordinary men (Spenser, lord Bacon, Ben Jonson, Milton, Butler, Otway, and others) have received from this country, for these last hundred years, I should shift the scene, and shew all that penury changed at once to riot and profuseness; and more squandered away upon one object, than would have satisfied the greater part of those extraordinary men; the reader to whom this one creature should be unknown, would fancy him a prodigy of art and nature, would believe that all the great qualities of these persons were centered in him alone. But if I should venture to assure him, that the people of England had made such a choice-the reader would either believe me a malicious enemy, and slanderer, or that the reign of the last (Queen Anne's) ministry was designed by fate to encourage fools.'t

But it happens that this our poet never had any place, pension, or gratuity, in any shape, from the said glorious queen, or any of her ministers. All he owed,

in the whole course of his life, to any court, was a subscription for his Homer, of £200, from King George I. and 100 from the prince and princess.

However, lest we imagine our author's success was constant and universal, they acquaint us of certain works in a less degree of repute, whereof, although owned by others, yet do they assure us he is the writer. Of this sort Mr. Dennis§ ascribes to him two farces, whose names he does not tell, but assures us that there is not one jest in them; and an imitation of Horace, whose title he does not mention, but assures us it is much more execrable than all his works. || The Daily Journal, May 11, 1728, assures us, He is below Tom Durfey in the drama, because (as that writer thinks) the Marriage-Hater Matched, and the Boarding School, are better than the What-d'ye-call-it;' which is not Mr. P.'s, but Mr. Gay's. Mr. Gildon assures us, in his New Rehearsal, p. 48, That he was writing a play of the Lady Jane Grey:' but it afterwards proved to be Mr. Rowe's. We are assured by another, He wrote a pamphlet called Dr. Andrew Tripe:' which proved to be one Dr. Wagstaff's. Mr. Theobald assures us, in Mist of the 27th of April, That the treatise of the Profound is very dull, and that Mr. Pope is the author of it.' The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion; and says, The whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver.** [Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men; knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.]

We are assured, in Mist of June 8th, That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad, than those of Mr. Theobald; for he had neither genius for tragedy nor comedy.' Which whether true or not, it is not easy to judge; in as much as he had attempted neither. Unless we will take it for granted, with Mr. Cibber, that his being once very angry at hearing a friend's play abused, was an infallible proof the play was his own; the said Mr. Cibber thinking it impossible for a man to be much concerned for any but himself: Now let any man judge (saith he) by his concern, who was the true mother of the child.'++

But from all that has been said, the discerning reader will collect, that it little availed our author to have any candour, since, when he declared he did not write for others, it was not credited; as little to have any modesty, since, when he declined writing in any way himself, the presumption of others was imputed to him. If he singly enterprized one great work, he was taxed of boldness and madness to a prodigy: tt if he took assistants in *Dennis, Preface to his Reflections on the Essay on Criticism. Preface to his Remarks on Homer Rem. on Homer, p. 8, 9, § Ih. p. 8. Character of Mr. Pope, p. 7. Ib. p. 6.

**Gulliv. p 336.

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS

OF THE POEM

But even

THIS poem, as it celebrateth the most grave and ancient of things, Chaos, Night, and Dulness: so is it of the most grave and ancient kind. Homer (saith Aristotle) was the first who gave the form, and (saith Horace) who adapted the measure to heroic poesy. before this, may be rationally presumed, from what the ancients have left written, was a piece by Homer, composed of like nature and matter with this of our poet. For of epic sort it appeareth to have been, yet of matter surely not unpleasant, witness what is reported of it by the learned archbishop Eustathius, in Odyss. x. accordingly Aristotle, in his Poetics, chap. iv. doth further set forth, that as the Iliad and Odyssey gave example to tragedy, so did this poem to comedy its first idea.

And

From these authors also it should seem, that the hero, or chief personage of it was no less obscure, and his understanding and sentiments no less quaint and strange (if indeed no more so) than any of the actors of our poem. Margites was the name of this personage, whom antiquity recordeth to have been Dunce the first; and surely from what we hear of him, not unworthy to be the root of so spreading a tree, and so numerous a posterity. The poem, therefore, celebrating him was properly and absolutely a Dunciad; which, though now unhappily lost, yet is its nature sufficiently known by the infallible tokens aforesaid. And thus it doth appear, that the first Dunciad was the first epic poem, written by Homer himself, and anterior even to the Iliad or Odyssey.

Now, forasmuch as our poet hath translated those two famous works of Homer which are yet left, he did conceive it in some sort his duty to imitate that also which was lost: and was therefore induced to bestow on it the same form which Homer's is reported to have had, namely, that of epic poem; with a title also framed after the ancient Greek manner, to wit, that of Dunciad.

Wonderful it is, that so few of the moderns have been stimulated to attempt some Dunciad! since in the opinion of the multitude, it might cost less pain and toil than an imitation of the greater epic. But possible it is also, that, on due reflection, the maker might find it easier to paint a Charlemagne, a Brute, or a Godfrey with just pomp and dignity heroic, than a Margites, a Codrus, or a Fleckno.

We shall next declare the occasion ana the cause which moved our poet to this particular work. He lived in those days, when (after Providence had per

The London and Mist's Journals, on his undertaking the Odyssey.