Peace to all such! but were there One whose fires1
True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by Flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd3;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise :-
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he?

What tho' my Name stood rubric on the walls,
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of winds came flying all abroad?

I sought no homage from the Race that write;

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I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now be-rhym'd so long)

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No more than thou, great GEORGE! a birth-day song.
I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,

To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled thro' the town,
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;

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Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;

For an account of Pope's relations with Addison see Introductory Memoir, p. xv. f. The sentiments and imagery in Pope's letter to Craggs of July 15th 1715 were embodied in the [above] character of Atticus..which appears to have been first printed in 1723 (in a collection of poems called Cytherea published by Curll), then included by Pope in the Miscellanies of 1727, and finally, after undergoing revision, engrafted into the Epistle to Arbuthnot, published in 1735. Carruthers. 2 This image is originally Denham's. John

son.

3 After v. 208 in the MS.

"Who, if two Wits on rival themes contest, Approves of each, but likes the worst the best.' Alluding to Mr P.'s and Tickell's Translation of the first Book of the Iliad. Warburton.

4 [This famous couplet first stood thus:

'Who would not smile if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if ADDISON were he? Then,

'Who would not grieve if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if ADDISON were he?'

Johnson.]

It was a great falsehood, which some of the Libels reported, that this Character was written after the Gentleman's death; which see refuted in the Testimonies prefixed to the Dunciad. But the occasion of writing it was such as he would not make public out of regard to his memory: and all that could further be done was to omit the name, in the Edition of his Works. P.

5 On wings of winds came flying all abroad?] Hopkins, in the civth Psalm. P.

[To daggle is to run through the mirc. Hence Swift's epithet daggle-tail.]

But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by ev'ry quill1;
Fed with soft Dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song2.
His Library (where busts of Poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head,)
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,

Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:

Till grown more frugal in his riper days,

He paid some bards with port, and some with praise;

He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.

May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill!

May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!

So, when a Statesman wants a day's defence,

Or Envy holds a whole week's war with Sense,

Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blest be the Great! for those they take away,
And those they left me; for they left me GAY5;
Left me to see neglected Genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:
Of all thy blameless life the sole return

My Verse, and QUEENSB'RY weeping o'er thy urn!
Oh let me live my own, and die so too!

(To live and die is all I have to do:)

Maintain a Poet's dignity and ease,

And see what friends, and read what books I please;

Above a Patron, tho' I condescend

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Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

I was not born for Courts or great affairs;

I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray❜rs;
Can sleep without a Poem in my head;
Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead1.

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Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?

Heav'ns! was I born for nothing but to write?
Has Life no joys for me? or, (to be grave)
Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?

"I found him close with Swift". -'Indeed? no doubt,'

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(Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.'
'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.

'No, such a Genius never can lie still;'
And then for mine obligingly mistakes

The first Lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes.
Poor guiltless I and can I choose but smile,
When ev'ry Coxcomb knows me by my Style?

Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow 5,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed Virgin steal a tear!

But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fall'n worth, or Beauty in distress,
Who loves a Lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a Libel, or who copies out:

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That Fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,

Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:

Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,

1 After v. 270 in the MS.
'Friendships from youth I sought, and seek them
still:

Fame, like the wind, may breathe where'er it will.
The World I knew, but made it not my School,
And in a course of flatt'ry liv'd no fool.'

2 Sir William Yonge. Bowles. ['A man whose fluency and readiness of speech amounted to a fault, and were often urged as a reproach, and of whom Sir Robert Walpole himself always said that nothing but Y.'s character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character." Lord Stanhope. He was a supporter of Walpole's.]

3 [Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, the author of a well known Diary and the confidential adviser of Frederick Prince of Wales. He is a character typical in many respects of his age; utterly unconscientious and cheerfully blind to his unconscientiousness; and

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a liberal rather than discriminating patron of
literary men. He died in 1762.]

4 After v. 282 in the MS.
'P. What if I sing Augustus, great and good?
A. You did so lately, was it understood?
P. Be nice no more, but, with a mouth profound,
As rumbling D-s* or a Norfolk hound;
With GEORGE and FRED'RIC roughen every verse,
Then smooth up all, and CAROLINE rehearse.
A. No-the high talk to lift up Kings to Gods
Leave to Court-sermons, and to birth-day Odes.
On themes like these, superior far to thine,
Let laurell'd Cibber, and great Arnal† shine.
P. Why write at all? A. Yes, silence if you keep,
The Town, the Court, the Wits, the Dunces weep.'
Warburton.

* [Dennis.]

↑ [See Dunciad, bk. ii. v. 315.]

5 [Contrast with the self-complacency of Pope Dryden's noble lines of self-reproach in the Elegy on Anne Killigrew.]

And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear1,
And sees at Canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction, Lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus tremble- A. What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite..
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad,

Half froth", half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.

His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile Antithesis1.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not Fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile;-be one Poet's praise,.
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways:
That Flatt'ry, ev'n to Kings, he held a shame,
And thought a Lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his songs:
That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,

The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown*,
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own5;
The morals blacken'd when the writings scape,
The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his SOV'REIGN's ear:-
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?

1 The only trait perhaps of the whole [character of Sporus] that is not either false or overcharged, is Hervey's love for antithesis, which Pulteney had already ridiculed.... His parliamentary speeches were, as Warton says, very far above florid impotence; but they were in favour of the Ministry, and that was sufficiently offensive to Pope.' Croker, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, Biogr. Notice.

2 But stoop'd to Truth,] The term is from falconry; and the allusion to one of those untamed birds of spirit, which sometimes wantons at large in airy circles before it regards, or stoops to, its prey. Warburton.

3 [i.e. made his poetry Moral, in both senses of the term.]

the lie so oft o'erthrown] As, that he re

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ceived subscriptions for Shakespear, that he set his name to Mr Broome's verses, &c. which, tho' publicly disproved were nevertheless shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in that called the Nobleman's Epistle. P.

5 Th' imputed trash,] Such as profane Psalms, Court-Poems, and other scandalous things, printed in his Name by Curll and others. P.

6 Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,] Namely on the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Bishop Atterbury, Dr Swift, Dr Arbuthnot, Mr Gay, his Friends, his Parents, and his very Nurse, aspersed in printed papers, by James Moore, G. Ducket, L. Welsted, Tho. Bentley, and other obscure persons. P.