Laws. George II. had no morals, he cared nothing for what he called
Bainting and Boetry,' and he exercised no influence on legislation.
7-22. Edward
Henry Henry V.

Alfred the Great.

=

- Edward III.

base mankind to be grateful.

Alfred

at finding how unwilling are Alcides = Hercules, the grand

son of Alcæus. Cl. Myths, § 139-143. The diction and the imagery of lines 19-22 could hardly be improved.

VIII.

23-42. Skelton; died in 1529. He was a favorite of King Henry Erasmus thought better of him than Pope did, and was certainly a more competent judge. Heads of Houses. At Oxford and Cambridge, what we would call the President of a College is sometimes denominated the Head of a House. He is generally a clergyman. Christ's Kirk o' the Green; a ballad of low life by the Devil. The Devil Tavern, Lines 37-42

6

King James I. of Scotland. where Ben Jonson held his poetical Club.' - Pope. are in illustration of 35 and 36. From this point to the end of 138, the argument is intended to ridicule that unreasoning public taste which belittles the literature of its own day while it extols that of the past. Perhaps Pope 'felt in his bones' that the literary sceptre which he had received from Dryden, and which he had so long swayed, was about to pass from him to a school of Romantic poets whose precursor was Thomson. If this be so, while we may not sympathize with his regret, we cannot help admiring the sharpness of his sarcasm, the brilliancy of his wit and the extraordinary acuteness of his literary judgments.

43-68. Courtesy of England; a legal phrase, applied to the tenure by which a widower holds the property of his deceased wife. The application here will be: 'We will allow that such a poet as you describe may, by courtesy, pass for a classic, though he has not a full right to do so.' the rule that made the Horse-tail bare. The word 'rule' in this expression seems based upon a misinterpretation of lines 45-46 of the Horatian Epistle from which this Epistle is imitated. In Horace, the plucking out single hairs from a horse's tail is used for illustration just as Pope uses it in line 64; Pope's 'rule' is Horace's 'ratione ruentis acervi' (mentioned in his line 47), a logical puzzle better known under its Greek name of Sorites. For etymology and explanation of this, consult an unabridged dictionary. Stowe; author of 'Annals of This King

dom from the Time of the Ancient Britons to His Own' [1600]. 69-78. Shakespear. Shakespear and Ben Jonson may truly be said not much to have thought [sic] of this Immortality, the one in many pieces composed in haste for the stage: the other in his latter works in general, which Dryden called his Dotages.' — Pope.

-

Cowley, who died the year Paradise Lost was published, was considered by his contemporaries the greatest poet of his day. His Pindaric Odes do not remind one of Pindar in any way, and his Epic (the Davideis) would hardly be considered a compliment by so good a poet as David. Pope has an imitation of Cowley called The Garden. 79-88.... the whole paragraph has a mixture of Irony, and must not altogether be taken for Horace's own judgment, only the common chat of the pretenders to criticism; in some things right, in others wrong. . . .'- Pope. Beaumont's judgment. Of the fifty-two plays attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher, less than one-third are known to show traces of Beaumont's hand. See note

on Fletcher in the Epistle to Congreve, line 20. Shadwell hasty. Warburton tells us that this line (from Wilmot, Earl of Rochester) refers not to the differing abilities of Shadwell and of Wycherley, but to the rate at which they produced plays. For Shadwell, see note on Epistle to Congreve, line 48. Southern; Rowe; dramatists, contemporary with Pope. Heywood; John Heywood died the year after Shakespeare was born. His 'Interludes' show the transition from the Moralities to the regular play. Cibber; Colley Cibber, actor, play-wright, Poet Laureate; immortalized in 1743, when formally proclaimed by Pope as the hero of the Dunciad.

89-106. Gammer Gurton's Needle (1575) was supposed, in the time of Pope, to be the oldest English comedy. It is now known that Ralph Roister Doister goes back as far as 1566. the Careless Husband (1704). Though Cibber's masterpiece, this is certainly a dull play, lacking action and distinctness of characterization. Spenser, Sydney, Milton. As your acquaintance with these writers grows more extended you will recognize the justness of Pope's strictures. Bentley (d. 1742), the great Greek scholar, made the mistake of trying to edit Milton on the same critical principles that he had so successfully applied to the Epistles of Phalaris. He included within brackets [hooks] all lines that seemed to him spurious. The result was an edition of Milton scarcely less deplorable than Sir Isaac Newton's edition of the Prophecies of Daniel, or than Professor Tyndall's discourses on Irish Politics. Ne sutor supra crepidam. th' affected fool; Lord Hervey, the friend of Queen Caroline. This sarcasm is based upon his lines:

All that I learned from Dr. Friend at school
By Gradus, Lexicon, or Grammar-rule
Has quite deserted this poor John-Trot-head,
And left plain native English in its stead.

107-118. Sprat; 'A worse Cowley.' - Pope (apud Spence). Carew; Sedley; each a man of one song. To the former belongs

'He that loves a rosy cheek;' to the latter, Ah, Chloris, could I now but sit, As unconcern'd.

119-138. If I but ask, etc. Pope's Edition of Shakespeare (1731) had been severely criticised by Theobald. Betterton (d. 1710)

was for many years the leading actor of the English stage, and this in spite of his clumsy figure. Booth; see line 334. A

muster roll of names. 'An absurd custom of several actors, to pronounce with emphasis the mere proper names of Greeks and Romans, which (as they call it) fill the mouth of the player.' — Pope. Merlin;

139-154.

Him the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens ;
The people called him Wizard.

Tennyson. Merlin and Vivian, 22-26. These lines sketch the growth of taste in England from the time of Charles restored (1660). Even in Horace's Epistle the connection between the different parts of the argument (if so it may be called) is extremely loose; in Pope this connection is often conspicuous only by absence. All, by the King's example, etc. 'A Newmarket (near Camwas a favorite place of Sir Peter Lely (d. 1680) they taught the note to

Lely;

verse of the Lord Lansdowne.' — Pope. bridge); famous for its horse-races. It resort for Charles the Second. painted many of the Court beauties. pant. The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Davenant, the first opera sung in England [1656].' — Pope.

155-160. These lines have no logical connection either with what precedes or with what follows.

161-180. The good old times, when nobody wrote, contrasted with these degenerate days, when everybody writes.

181-188. Everybody-except the would-be author- - realizes that he must learn his trade before he can practise it. Ward. A famous empiric, whose pill and drops had several surprising effects, and were one of the principal subjects of writing and conversation at that time.' - Pope. Radcliff's Doctors. The Radcliff (Medical) Scholarship at Oxford permits the holders to spend half their time in study in parts beyond sea.' Ripley. See note on Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, line 18.

Peter;

189-200. In spite of his mania for writing, the author is a harmless creature. the Folly; that is the folly of writing. Peter Walter (according to Bowles) who cheated Mr. George Pitt when collecting his rents.

201-240. A commendation of poets as useful members of society. Roscommon. The Earl of Roscommon (d. 1684) was a friend of Dryden's. He translated the Ars Poetica of Horace and wrote an Essay on Translated Verse. Pope speaks of him in the Essay on Criticism (725-728) as

Swift.

not more learned than good,

With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;

To him the Art of Greece and Rome was known,

And every author's merit but his own.

See Brewer, articles Drapier's Letters,' 'Wood's Halfpence.' Swift's life in Dublin was worthy the splendid eulogium his friend here bestows upon it. Hopkins and Sternhold. The Hopkins and Sternhold version of the Psalms was published with the Book of Common Prayer in 1562. The mention of them as poets is a joke that can be appreciated only by him whose youthful spirit has been tried by the attempts of these worthy creatures to improve upon the Hebrew bards. Campbell admirably says of them that, 'with the best intentions and worse taste [they] degraded the spirit of Hebrew psalmody by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime.'

241-262. This account of the origin and growth of satiric verse is historically true of Rome, but not of England. English satire is not, like Latin satire, indigenous, but is formed upon foreign models. The literary ancestor of Dryden is Juvenal.

263-266. England conquered and made France captive but once under Henry V. in 1420 (Treaty of Troyes). This conquest had no such effect on English literature as is here described. If Pope refers to the victories of Marlborough (1702-9), he places too late the date at which French influences began to affect English literature; such influences are easily visible during the first decade after the Restoration (1660).

Waller (d. 1687)

267-281. The Progress of English Poetry. enjoyed a reputation among his contemporaries that posterity has failed to endorse. He was the first 17th Century poet to employ the heroic couplet as his ordinary means of expression; Dryden acknowledges that he learned much of the art of versification from him. correctness. De Quincey's elaborate examination into Pope's 'correctness,' seems to follow a false scent and to lead to no satisfactory results. A modern scholar who studies Pope carefully and sympathetically, can hardly fail to agree with Mr. Courthope that the correctness' at which Pope aimed was 'accuracy of expression, propriety of design and justice of

thought and taste.' Racine (d. 1699), the greatest of French tragic writers. Pope's exact is not an exact characterization. 'Realistic' is probably what he means. Of this Realism we have good examples in Racine's Iphigénie and in his Phèdre.

Corneille (d. 1684), the father of French tragedy; his noble fire burns brightest in his Cinna and in his Horace. Otway (d. 1685), the only great tragic writer of the Restoration period. His Venice Preserved is hardly inferior in pathos to Othello. fluent Shakespear. I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespear, that, in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted out a thousand!". Ben Jonson. Copious Dryden.

Dryden's twenty-seven plays, twenty could easily be spared.

Of

282-303. Judgments on the Comedy-Writers of Pope's day. Congreve; see notes on Dryden's Epistle to Congreve. If you compare Witwoud in Congreve's Way of the World with Touchstone in As You Like It, or with the Clown in Twelfth Night, you will see the difference between a Fool who merely displays the author's wit and one who is as thoroughly human as any other character in the play. pert, low dialogue. This criticism does injustice to the sprightly and often not unrefined dialogue of Farquhar's later and better work- The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux' Stratagem (1707). Pope's only play, Three Hours After Marriage, failed dismally; from that fatal hour he seldom missed a chance to sneer at the dramatists of his own day. Van Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim, and author of ten comedies. The phrase 'wants grace' seems to condemn, not unjustly, his lack of moral fibre. Some of Vanbrugh's plays are admirably constructed, so far as plot and situation go. His best work (The Confederacy), adapted from the French, has a double motif quite as diverting as that in the Comedy of Errors, and possesses much more verisimilitude. Astræa; Mrs. Aphra Behn,

=

author of seventeen indifferent plays; the first Englishwoman who made a living by her pen. Cibber; see note on The Careless Husband, line 92. the laws = the laws of comedy. poor Pinkey; William Penkethman, a comic actor. In the Tatler, No. 188, we read, ' . . Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug; Penkethman devours a cold chick with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus.' See also The Spectator, No. 370, for a description of Penkethman in the character of Don Choleric Snap Shorto de Testy. 304-307. Condemnation of the public rage for farces and spectacular plays. With this passage compare Spectator, No. 31.