which all these marks may be found. It is entitled, Q. Hor. Fl. Ars Poetica, et ejusd. Ep. ad Aug. with an English Commentary and Notes.1 Ver. 642. with reason on his side?] Not only on his side, but in actual employment. The critic makes but a mean figure, who when he has found out the beauties of his author, contents himself with showing them to the world in only empty exclamations. His office is to explain their nature, show from whence they arise, and what effects they produce, or in the better and fuller expression of the poet, To teach the world with reason to admire. Ver. 652. Who conquered nature, &c.] By this we must not understand physical nature, but moral. The force of the observation consists in giving it this sense. The poet not only uses the word nature, for human nature, throughout this poem; but also, where in the beginning of it, he lays down the principles of the arts he treats of, he makes the knowledge of human nature the foundation of all criticism and poetry. Nor is the observation less true than apposite. For Aristotle's natural inquiries were superficial and ill made, though extensive; but his logical and moral works are supremely excellent. In his moral, he has unfolded the human mind, and laid open all the recesses of the heart and understanding; and in his logical, he has not only conquered nature, but by his categories, has kept her in tenfold chains; not as dulness kept the muses in the Dunciad, to silence them; but as Aristæus held Proteus in Virgil, to deliver oracles. Ver. 665. See Dionysius, &c.] In the first of these lines, on which the other depends, the peculiar excellence of this critic, and indeed the most material and useful part of a critic's office, is touched upon, who, like the refiner, purifies the rich ore of an original writer; for such a one busied in creating, often neglects to separate and refine the mass, pouring out his riches rather in bullion than in sterling. Ver. 667. Fancy and art, &c.] "The chief merit of Petronius," says an objector, "is that of telling a story with grace and ease.” But the poet is not here speaking, nor was it his purpose to speak, of the chief merit of Petronius, but of his merit as a critic, which consisted, he tells us, in softening the art of a scholar with the ease of a courtier, and whoever reads and understands the critical part of his abominable story-telling will see that the poet has given his true character as a critic, which was the only thing he had to do with. Ver. 693. At length Erasmus, &c.] Nothing can be more artful than the application of this example, or more happy than the turn of the compliment. To throw glory quite round the character of this admirable person, he makes it to be (as in fact it really was) by his assistance chiefly, that Leo was enabled to restore letters and the fine arts in his pontificate. Ver. 694. The glory of the priesthood and the shame!] Our author elsewhere lets us know what he esteems to be the glory of the priesthood as well as of a christian in general, where comparing himself to Erasmus, he says, In moderation placing all my glory, I The work which Warburton vaunts as the only honest piece of modern criticism, was by his friend and flatterer Hurd. Personal partiality might excuse the undue exaltation of a feeble production, but is no apology for calumniating men who were quite as candid and far more able The objector was Warton. He justly intimated that the character which Pope bad given of Petronius, conveyed an erroneous idea of the nature of his writings. and consequently what he regards as the shame of it. The whole of this character belonged eminently and almost solely to Erasmus: for the other reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and their followers, understood so little in what true christian liberty consisted, that they carried with them, into the reformed churches, that very spirit of persecution, which had driven them from the church of Rome. Ver. 696. And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.] In this attack on the established ignorance of the times, Erasmus succeeded so well as to bring good letters into fashion, to which he gave new splendour, by preparing for the press correct editions of many of the best ancient writers, both ecclesias. tical and profane. But having laughed and shamed his age out of one folly, he had the mortification of seeing it run headlong into another. The virtuosi of Italy, in a superstitious dread of that monkish barbarity which he had so severely handled, would use no term (for now almost every man was become a Latin writer), not even when they treated of the highest mysteries of religion, which had not been consecrated in the capitol, and dispensed unto them fro the sacred hand of Cicero. Erasmus observed the growth of this classical folly with the greater concern, as he discovered under all their attention to the language of old Rome, a certain fondness for its religion, in a growing impiety which disposed them to think irreverently of the christian faith. And he no sooner discovered it than he set upon reforming it; which he did so effectually in the dialogue, entitled Ciceronianus, that he brought the age back to that just temper, which he had been all his life endeavouring to mark out to it,-purity, but not pedantry in letters, and zeal, but not bigotry, in religion. In a word, by employing his great talents of genius and literature on subjects of general importance; and by opposing the extremes of all parties in their turns; he completed the real character of a true critic and an honest man. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM. Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos, Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT. 1712. 8vo. This is the title-page of the original Rape of the Lock, in two cantos, which appeared anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany. The poem begins on p. 353 of the volume, and the previous piece ends at p. 320. What purported to be a second edition of the Miscellany came out in 1714, but except that the gap between p. 320 and p. 353 had been filled up, and that the Essay on Criticism is inserted at the end of the book, the work is merely a reissue, with a new title-page, of the first edition, and the Rape of the Lock, like the rest, is the old impression of 1712. Even the primitive "Table of Contents" was retained, though it omits the additional pieces, which were chiefly poems by Pope. His contributions to the Miscellany are, however, enumerated on the title-page of the second edition. Londou Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross Keys in Fleet Street. 1714. Svo. was The first enlarged edition. A second and third edition followed in the same year. After the Rape of the Lock had been included in the quarto of 1717, it was still printed in a separate form, and a "fifth edition corrected published by Lintot in 1718. He also inserted the work in the four editions of his Miscellanies, which appeared in the twelve years from 1720 to 1732. Lintot paid Pope £7 on March 21, 1712, for the Rape of the Lock in its first form, and gave £15 for the enlarged poem on February 20, 1714. |