genus pecoris appellatur, quod est idoneum opus armorum. And alluding to the temper of this warlike breed, our poet very appositely calls them a hundred head.-SCRIBLERUS. Ver. 247. See! still thy own the heavy canon roll, And metaphysic smokes involve the pole. Canon here, if spoken of artillery, is in the plural number; if of the canons of the House, in the singular, and meant only of one : in which case I suspect the pole to be a false reading, and that it should be the poll or head of that canon. It may be objected that this is a mere paronomasia or pun. But what of that? Is any figure of speech more apposite to our gentle goddess or more frequently used by her, and her children, especially of the university? Doubtless it better suits the character of Dulness, yea of a doctor, than that of an angel; yet Milton feared not to put a considerable quantity into the mouths of his. It hath indeed been observed, that they were the devil's angels, as if he did it to suggest the devil was the author as well of false wit as of false religion, and that the father of lies was also the father of puns. But this is idle: it must be owned a Christian practice, used in the primitive times by some of the Fathers, and in later by most of the sons of the church; till the debauched reign of Charles the Second, when the shameful passion for wit overthrew everything: and even then the best writers admitted it, provided it was obscene, under the name of the double entendre.—SCRIBLEKUS. Here the learned Aristarchus ending the first member of his harangue in behalf of words, and entering on the other half, which regards the teaching of things, very artfully connects the two parts in an encomium on metaphysics, a kind of middle nature between words and things: communicating, in its obscurity with substance, and in its emptiness with names.-SCRIBLERUS. CHEOPS. Ver. 372. Who like his Cheops.] A king of Egypt, whose body was certainly to be known, as being buried alone in his pyramid, and is therefore more genuine than any of the Cleopatras. This royal mummy, being stolen by a wild Arab, was purchased by the consul of Alexandria, and transmitted to the museum of Mummius: for proof of which he brings a passage in Sandys' Travels, where that accurate and learned voyager assures us that he saw the sepulchre empty, which agrees exactly, (saith he) with the time of the theft above mentioned. But he omits to observe that Herodotus tells the same thing of it in his time. SYRIAN MEDALS. Ver. 374. Speak'st thou of Syrian medals? The strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the history of the Syrian kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourrasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend, the famous physician and antiquary, Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour first asked him whether the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing such a treasure he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense. EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Ver. 487. Or that bright image to our fancy draw, Bright image was the title given by the later Platonists to that idea of Nature, which they had formed in their fancy, so bright, that they called it AUTOяTOV "Ayаλua, or the self-seen image, i.e. seen by its own light. Thus this philosopher calls upon his friend to partake with him in these visions: "To-morrow, when the eastern sun With his first beams adorns the front, Of yonder hill, if you're content To wander with me in the woods you see, We will pursue those loves of ours, By favour of the sylvan nymphs: and invoking first the Genius of the place, we'll try to obtain at least some faint and distant view of the sovereign Genius and first Beauty."-Charact. vol. 2, p. 245. This Genius is thus apostrophized (p. 345) by the same philosopher :O glorious Nature! Supremely fair, and sovereignly good! All-loving, and all-lovely! all-divine! Wise substitute of Providence! empower'd Supreme Creator! Thee I invoke, and thee alone adore. Sir Isaac Newton distinguishes between these two in a very different manner. [Princ. Schol. gen. sub fin.]-Hunc cognoscimus solummodo per proprietates suas et attributa, et per sapientissimas et optimas rerum structuras, et causas finales; veneramur autem et colimus ob dominium. Deus etenim sine dominio, providentia, et causis finalibus, nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura. [There is often great beauty in the stately and melodious periods of Thesales, or Shaftesbury, while he dilates on his Platonic philosophy. To some of his airy speculations and reflections Pope might have subscribed. For example: "The central powers which hold the lasting orbs in their just poise and movement, must not be controlled to save a fleeting form, and rescue from the precipice a puny animal, whose brittle frame, however protected, must of itself soon dissolve. The ambient air, the inward vapours, the impending meteors, or whatever else is nutrimental or preservative of this earth, must operate in a natural course; and other good constitutions must submit to the good habit and constitution of the all-sustaining globe. Let us not wonder, therefore, if by earthquakes, storms, pestilential blasts, nether or upper fires, or floods, the animal kinds are often afflicted, and whole species perhaps involved at once in one common ruin. Nor need we wonder if the interior form, the soul and temper, partakes of this occasional deformity, and sympathizes often with its close partner. Who is there that can wonder either at the sicknesses of sense, or the depravity of minds enclosed in such frail bodies and dependent on such pervertible organs? "Here then is that solution you require, and hence those seeming blemishes cast upon Nature. Nor is there aught in this beside what is natural and good. 'Tis good which is predominant; and every corruptible and mortal nature, by its mortality and corruption, yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest nature which is incorruptible and immortal." Pope was well acquainted with the works of Shaftesbury, as appears from his Essay on Man.] AN ESSAY ON MAN: ΤΟ HENRY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. [THE three first parts, or epistles of the ESSAY ON MAN, were published anonymously in 1732 and 1733. "The design of concealing myself," says Pope, "was good, and had its full effect. I was thought a divine, a philosopher, and what not? and my doctrine had a sanction I could not have given to it." The poem was ascribed to various persons-to Dr. Young, to Dr. Desaguliers, Lord Paget and others. Dr. Alured Clarke (a courtly divine, whom Pope afterwards satirized) in writing to Lady Sundon, expresses a hope that the author, when known, would be found to be a very good man, else his scholars-that is, his readers-would be much mortified. Swift seems to have been among the number of the deceived, though his pride revolted at the idea of his being a dupe. When Pope apologized for not having told him the secret of the authorship, Swift wrote, "Surely I never doubted about your Essay on Man: and I would lay any odds, that I would never fail to discover you in six lines, unless you had a mind to write below or beside yourself on purpose. I confess, I did never imagine you were so deep in morals, or that so many new and excellent rules could be produced so advantageously and agreeably in that science from any one head." To the fourth part of the Essay Pope prefixed his name, thus dispelling the mystery which had given rise to so much interest and speculation, and also added materially to his reputation both as a poet and philosopher. Many parts of the Essay, in sentiment, and also in expression, bear a close resemblance to the metaphysical treatises of Bolingbroke, and a question has been raised, and kindly discussed, whether the honours of originality should be awarded to the peer or the poet? Their common friend, Lord Bathurst, confidently stated that he had read the whole scheme of the poem, in the handwriting of Bolingbroke, drawn up in a series of propositions which Pope was to amplify, versify, and illustrate. An anonymous writer-supposed to be Mallet-makes a similar statement, and mentions a large prose manuscript, which Pope is reported to have produced on one occasion, naming Bolingbroke as the author, to explain the doctrines of the poem. Such positive assertions are startling, but they are not borne out by an examination of the facts of the case as disclosed in the printed correspondence. It is certain that Pope had for many years contemplated an ethical work of this kindthat Bolingbroke merely claimed the merit of having requested or instigated his friend to undertake the subject-and that Bolingbroke considered Pope's work to be an original. The Essay on Man was published before Bolingbroke had written his metaphysical disquisitions. It was probably the manuscript of one of those disquisitions, addressed to Pope, which Bathurst (who was never a critical reader or a metaphysician) had seen and mistaken for the scheme of the poem. Pope first suggested to his noble friend, that he should give the world the benefit of his philosophical studies. "In leading me," says Bolingbroke, "to discourse as you have done often, and in pressing me to write, as you do now, on certain subjects, you may propose to draw me back to those trains of thought which are, above all others, worthy to employ the human mind, and I thank you for it." He then discriminates between the style suited to the philosopher, and that adapted to the poet. "The business of the philosopher is to dilate, if I may borrow this word from Tully, to press, to prove, to convince; and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart." Having, however, for convenience, adopted the epistolary style, he states that his essays would be written with little regard to form, and with little reserve. "My thoughts, in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just as they pass through my mind, just as they use to be when we converse together on these or any other subjects; when we saunter alone, or as we have often done, with good Arbuthnot and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick's, among the multiplied scenes |
