Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

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.13

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.

[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 sixtysixth 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.]

[graphic][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small]

From "Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility Examined, and the Errors of Scriblerus and his man William [Cleland] Detected." 1729.)

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS

HIS PROLEGOMENA AND ILLUSTRATIONS

ΤΟ

THE DUNCIAD:

WITH THE HYPER-CRITICS OF ARISTARCHUS.

III.

Dennis, Remarks on Prince Arthur.1

I CANNOT but think it the most reasonable thing in the world, to distinguish good writers by discouraging the bad. Nor is it an ill-natured thing, in relation even to the very persons upon whom the reflections are made. It is true it may deprive them a little sooner of a short profit and a transitory reputation; but then it may have a good effect, and oblige them (before it be too late) to decline that for which they are so very unfit, and to have recourse to something in which they may be more successful.

Character of Mr. Pope, 1716.

The persons whom Boileau has attacked in his writings, have been for the most part authors, and most of those authors, poets: and the censures he hath passed upon them have been confirmed by all Europe.

Gildon, Preface to his New Rehearsal.

It is the common cry of the poetasters of the town, and their fautors, that it is an ill-natured thing to expose the pretenders to wit and poetry. The judges and magistrates may, with full as good reason, be reproached with ill-nature for putting the laws in execution against a thief or impostor. The same will hold in the republic of letters, if the critics and judges will let every ignorant pretender to scribbling pass on the world.

Theobald, Letter to Mist, June 22, 1728.

Attacks may be levelled, either against failures in genius or against the pretensions of writing without one.

Concanen, Dedication to the Author of the Dunciad.

A satire upon dulness is a thing that has been used and allowed in all ages.

Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, wicked scribbler.

1 [For notices of Dennis, Gildon, and the other parties satirised, see the Notes at the end of the Dunciad.]

« AnteriorContinuar »