country. But when his moral character was attacked, and in a manner from which neither truth nor virtue can secure the most innocent; in a manner, which, though it annihilates the credit of the accusation with the just and impartial, yet aggravates very much the guilt of the accusers; I mean by authors without names; then I thought, since the danger was common to all, the concern ought to be so; and that it was an act of justice to detect the authors, not only on this account, but as many of them are the same who for several years past have made free with the greatest names in Church and State, exposed to the world the private misfortunes of families, abused all, even to women, and whose prostituted papers (for one or other party, in the unhappy divisions of their country) have insulted the fallen, the friendless, the exiled, and the dead.

Besides this, which I take to be a public concern, I have already confessed I had a private one. I am one of that number, who have long loved and esteemed Mr. Pope; and had often declared it was not his capacity or wri tings (which we ever thought the least valuable part of his character) but the honest, open, and beneficent man, that we most esteemed, and loved in him. Now, if what these people say were believed, I must appear to all my friends either a fool, or a knave; either imposed on myself, or imposing on them; so that I am as much interested in the confutation of these calumnies, as he is himself.

I am no author, and consequently not to be suspected either of jealousy or resentment against any of the men, of whom scarce one is known to me by sight and as for their writings, I have sought them (on this one occasion) in vain, in the closets and libraries of all my acquaintance. I had still been in the dark, if a gentleman had not procured me (I suppose from some of themselves, for they are generally much more dangerous friends than enemies) the passages I send you. I solemnly protest I have added nothing to the malice or absurdity of them; which it behoves me to declare, since the vouchers themselves will be so soon and so irrecoverably lost. You may in some measure prevent it, by preserving at least their titles, and discovering (as far as you can depend on the truth of your information) the names of the concealed authors.

The first objection I have heard made to the poem is, that the persons are too obscure for satire. The persons themselves, rather than allow the objection, would forgive the satire; and if one could be tempted to afford it a serious answer, were not all assassinates, popular insurrections, the insolence of the rabble without doors, and of domestics within, most wrongfully chastised, if the meanness of offenders indemnified them from punishment? On the contrary, obscurity renders them more dangerous, as less thought of: law can pronounce judgment only on open facts; morality alone can pass censure on intentions of mischief; so that for secret calumny, or the arrow flying in the dark, there is no public punishment left, but what a good writer inflicts. The next objection is, that these sort of authors are poor. That might be

9 See a list of them printed in the Appendix.

pleaded as an excuse at the Old Bailey, for lesser crimes than defamation, (for 'tis the case of almost all who are tried there,) but sure it can be none here for who will pretend that the robbing another of his reputation, supplies the want of it in himself? I question not but such authors are poor, and heartily wish the objection were removed by any honest livelihood. But Poverty is here the accident, not the subject: he who describes malice and villany to be pale and meagre, expresses not the least anger against paleness or leanness, but against malice and villany. The Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet is poor; but is he therefore justified in vending poison? Not but poverty itself becomes a just subject of satire, when it is the consequence of vice, prodigality, or neglect of one's lawful calling: for then it increases the public burden, fills the streets and highways with robbers, and the garrets with clippers, coiners, and weekly journalists.

But admitting that two or three of these offend less in their morals than in their writings; must poverty make nonsense sacred? If so, the fame of bad authors would be much better consulted than that of all the good ones in the world; and not one of an hundred had ever been called by his right name. They mistake the whole matter: it is not charity to encourage them in the way they follow, but to get them out of it; for men are not bunglers because they are poor, but they are poor because they are bunglers.

Is it not pleasant enough, to hear our authors crying out on the one hand, as if their persons and characters were too sacred for satire: and the public objecting on the other, that they are too mean even for ridicule? But whether bread or fame be their end, it must be allowed, our author, by and in this

poem, has mercifully given them a little of both.

There are two or three, who by their rank and fortune have no benefit from the former objections, supposing them good, and these I was sorry to see in such company. But if, without any provocation, two or three gentlemen will fall upon one, in an affair wherein his interest and reputation are equally embarked; they cannot certainly, after they have been content to print them selves his enemies, complain of being put into the number of them.

Others, I am told, pretend to have been once his friends. Surely they are their enemies who say so, since nothing can be more odious than to treat a friend as they have done. But of this I cannot persuade myself, when I consider the constant and eternal aversion of all bad writers to a good one.

Such as claim a merit from being his admirers, I would gladly ask, if it lays him under a personal obligation? At that rate he would be the most obliged humble servant in the world. I dare swear for these in particular, he never desired them to be his admirers, nor promised in return to be theirs. That had truly been a sign he was of their acquaintance; but would not the malicious world have suspected such an approbation of some motive worse than ignorance, in the author of the Essay on Criticism? Be it as it will, the reasons of their admiration and of his contempt are equally subsisting, for his works and theirs are the very same that they were.

One, therefore, of their assertions I believe may be true, "That he has a contempt for their writings." And there is another, which would probably be sooner allowed by himself than by any good judge beside, "That his own

have found too much success with the public." But as it cannot consist with his modesty to claim this as a justice, it lies not on him, but entirely on the public, to defend its own judgment.

There remains what in my opinion might seem a better plea for these people, than any they have made use of. If obscurity or poverty were to exempt a man from satire, much more should folly or dulness, which are still more involuntary; nay, as much so as personal deformity. But even this will not help them: deformity becomes an object of ridicule when a man sets up for being handsome; and so must dulness when he sets up for a wit. They are not ridiculed because ridicule in itself is, or ought to be, a pleasure; but because it is just to undeceive and vindicate the honest and unpretending part of mankind from imposition, because particular interest ought to yield to general, and a great number who are not naturally fools, ought never to be made so, in complaisance to those who are. Accordingly we find that in all ages, all vain pretenders, were they ever so poor, or ever so dull, have been constantly the topics of the most candid satirists, from the Codrus of Juvenal to the Damon of Boileau.

Having mentioned Boileau, the greatest poet and most judicious critic of his age and country, admirable for his talents, and yet perhaps more admirable for his judgment in the proper application of them; I cannot help remarking the resemblance betwixt him and our author, in qualities, fame, and fortune; in the distinctions shown them by their superiors, in the general esteem of their equals, and in their extended reputation amongst foreigners; in the latter of which ours has met with the better fate, as he has had for his translators persons of the most eminent rank and abilities in their respective nations.10 But the resemblance holds in nothing more, than in their being equally abused by the ignorant pretenders to poetry of their times; of which not the least memory will remain but in their own writings, and in the notes made upon them. What Boileau has done in almost all his poems, our author has only in this: I dare answer for him he will do it no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had slandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from censuring obscure and worthless persons, for scarce any others were his enemies. However, as the parity is so remarkable, I hope it will continue to the last; and if ever he should give us an edition of this poem himself, I may see some of them treated as gently, on their repentance or better merit, as Perrault or Quinault were at last by Boileau.

In one point I must be allowed to think the character of our English poet the more amiable. He has not been a follower of fortune or success; he has

10 Essay on Criticism, in French verse, by General Hamilton; the same, in verse also, by Monsieur Roboton, Counsellor and Privy Secretary to King George I.; after by the Abbé Reynel, in verse, with notes. Rape of the Lock, in French, by the Princess of Conti, Paris, 1728, and in Italian verse, by the Abbé Conti, a noble Venetian; and by the Marquis Rangoni, Envoy Extraordinary from Modena to King George II. Others of his works by Salvini of Florence, &c. His Essays and Dissertations on Homer, several times translated into French. Essay on Man, by the Abbé Reynel, in verse; by Monsieur Silhouette, in prose, 1737; and since by others in French, Italian, and Latin.

lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power, without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received, no favour, but what was done him in his friends. As his satires were the more just for being delayed, so were his panegyrics; bestowed only on such persons as he had familiarly known, only for such virtues as he had long observed in them, and only in such times as others cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean when out of power, or out of fashion.11 A satire, therefore, on writers so notorious for the contrary practice, became no man so well as himself; as none, it is plain, was so little in their friendships, or so much in that of those whom they had most abused, namely, the greatest and best of all parties. Let me add a further reason, that, though engaged in their friendships, he never espoused their animosities; and can almost singly challenge this honour, not to have written a line of any man, which, through guilt, through shame, or through fear, through variety of fortune, or change of interests, he was ever unwilling to own.

I shall conclude with remarking what a pleasure it must be to every reader of humanity, to see all along that our author in his very laughter is not indulging his own ill-nature, but only punishing that of others. As to his poem, those alone are capable of doing it justice, who, to use the words of a great writer, know how hard it is (with regard both to his subject and his manner) VETUSTIS DARE NOVITATEM, OBSOLETIS NITOREM, OBSCURIS LUCEM, FASTIDITIS GRATIAM.12

St. James's, Dec. 22, 1728.

I am,

Your most humble servant,

WILLIAM CLELAND.18

11 As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the Town declaimed against his book of poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death; Sir William Trumbull, when he resigned the office of Secretary of State; Lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England, after the Queen's death; Lord Oxford, in his last decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the SouthSea year, and after his death: others only in Epitaphs.

12 [This quotation is part of a passage in the Preface to Pliny's Natural History which has been obligingly pointed out by the Rev. W. Turner, Vicar of Boxgrove by Chichester:-"Res ardua, vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fastiditis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam, et naturæ suæ omnia." It is a difficult matter to supply novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, freshness to what is obsolete, light to what is dark, grace to what is out of fashion, credit to what is doubtful; particularly to bestow upon all things their own nature, and everything to its own particular nature.]

13 This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the University of Utrecht, with the. Earl of Mar. He served in Spain under Earl Rivers. After the peace, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Customs in Scotland, and then of Taxes in England; in which, having shown himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible, though without any other assistance of fortune, he was suddenly displaced by the minister, in the sixty-eighth year of his age; and died two months after, in 1741. He was a person of universal learning, and an enlarged conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his friend, or a sincerer attachment to the constitution of his country.

a

To this note Pope or Warburton made a short and apparently ironical addition :-And yet, for all this, the public would never believe him to be the author of this letter." A second letter signed by Mr. Cleland, vindicating the poet from the charge of having satirised the Duke of Chandos in his description of Timon's Villa, met with no better reception. The public ascribed both to Pope himself. There was, as we have seen

another defence of the Dunciad, published by Savage, but of Twickenham manufacture. In the case of Savage there was no need for standing on any ceremony. The poor poet "dwelt carelessly among men." Pope had relieved his necessities and he made him a liberal annual allowance. Mr. Cleland, however, stood in a different position. He was a man of rank, of taste, and literary attainments. He could not be altogether a phantom, like the shadowy author in the Dunciad, in the matter of these letters. The explanatory statements, the tone of sentiment, and the line of defence would probably be written out by Pope. His complaisant friend, knowing how tremblingly alive the poet was to all that concerned his reputation, and overpowered by his importunities, would then take up the subject, add at least part of the panegyric, and cast the whole in a somewhat freer and less author-like style. Such seems to be a reasonable conjecture as to the actual state of the case. There was evidently a community of feeling both in literature and politics and with respect to the society they mingled in between the parties. So late as 1739, when Cleland was in his sixtsixth year, we find Pope acknowledging the receipt of a letter from him of six quarto pages. (See Marchmont Papers.) Sir Walter Scott has stated in his edition of Swift that Pope's friend was the son of Colonel Cleland, a Presbyterian poet, who wrote several Hudibrastic satires against the persecution of the Covenanters during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and who, after the Revolution, became Colonel of the Cameronian regiment, at the head of which he was killed in 1689. Any man might be proud of such a descent, for no cavalier trained to arms and chivalry could have displayed greater gallantry or true heroism than this young Covenanting chief. He was suddenly surrounded in the town of Dunkeld by a force of four thousand men, the same force that Dundee had led to victory. His own followers did not amount to more than eight hundred; but, animated by his eloquence and example, they resolved to give battle, and they succeeded in driving the Highland army before them after the latter had lost about three hundred men. As Cleland was addressing his troops and encouraging them to persevere, he was shot in the head, and, when endeavouring to reach Dunkeld house, to conceal the fatal accident, he fell and expired. He was then only in his twenty-eighth year. The brave young Covenanter could not have been the father of Pope's friend, for he was only sixteen at the time of William Cleland's birth. The latter was the representative of an old Scotch family, Cleland of Cleland, in the county of Lanark. His great-grandfather sold the lands which his ancestors had held from the time of Bruce, and William Cleland, like many of his countrymen of gentle blood, cadets of "good family" and small fortune, was sent into the army. He was, on his return from abroad, as Pope has stated, appointed one of the Commissioners of the Customs in Scotland. In 1733 he was one of the persons in London to whom the proceedings of the Scots peers, who met at Edinburgh in that year, were directed to be communicated. In 1737 we find him gazetted as one of the Commissioners for the Duty on Houses; and his death is announced in the journals, August 21, 1741, in the following terms:-"Major Cleland, many years a Commissioner of the Land Tax, a place of £500 a-year." In some accounts we find Major Cleland represented as the prototype of Will Honeycomb in the Spectator-an absurd idea, for he was not old enough to represent the antiquated beau, and instead of despising scholars, bookish men, and philosophers, he was precisely one of this class himself. He seems to have been confounded with a Colonel Cleland, probably a relation-for the Colonel, too, was a Scotchman, whom Swift met in society in 1713, and who was anxious to be appointed Governor of Barbadoes. The Colonel gave a dinner or two to Lord Dupplin, Swift, and others of the Harley Tories, "laying these long traps for me and others," says Swift, "to engage our interest for him: he is a true Scotchman." Swift was then engaged himself in a similar pursuit, laying long traps to insure preferment in the Church at least equal to the Governorship of Barbadoes. How he succeeded all the world knows, but we are not informed of the issue of the Scotch colonel's efforts. Colonel Cleland, however, died in Barbadoes in 1718. Another Cleland is usually connected with Pope's friend-Dr. John Cleland, an unfortunate and worthless man of letters, who survived till 1789, and was an extensive miscellaneous writer. As this gentleman is represented as the son of "Colonel Cleland," we hope we may divorce him from all connection with the retired "Major" and literary Commissioner of the Land-Tax.]