Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;

But like a shadow, proves the substance true:
For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known
Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.'

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,

And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; 2
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has designed
Some bright idea of the master's mind,

1 A beautiful and poetical illustration. Pope has the art of enlivening his subject continually by images and illustrations drawn from nature, which by contrast have a particularly pleasing effect, and which are indeed absolutely necessary in a didactic poem. -BOWLES.

The passage originally stood thus in the manuscript :

Wit, as the sun, such pow'rful beams displays,

It draws up vapours that obscures its rays,

But, like the sun eclipsed, makes only known

The shadowing body's grossness, not its

own;

And all those clouds that did at first invade

The rising light, and interposed a shade,

470

475

480

485

When once transpierced with its prevailing ray

Reflect its glories, and augment the day.

2 His instance refuted his position that "bare threescore" was the duration of modern fame. "It is now a hundred years," said Dennis in 1712, "since Shakespeare began to write, more since Spenser flourished, and above three hundred years since Chaucer died. And yet the fame of none of these is extinguished." Another century and a half has elapsed, and the reputation of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare is greater than ever. The notion of the "failing language" is not more sound. Though it is a hundred and fifty years since the Essay on Criticism was published, there is not a line which has an antiquated air.

Where a new world leaps out at his command,

And ready nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!
Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,'
Atones not for that envy which it brings.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,'
But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,"
That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ ?'

6

The owner's wife, that other men enjoy ;

Then most our trouble still when most admired,
And still the more we give, the more required;'

490

195

500

the "feeble expletive" and of the "ten low words." "Supplies" in the amended version is, as Wakefield observes, a poor expression.

5 The Duke of Buckingham'sVision: The dearest care that all my thought employs.

• Wakefield objects to the "slovenly superfluity of words," and asks "to whom can a wife possibly belong but the owner?" He misunderstood Pope, who, by "the wife of the owner,' meant the wife of the owner of the wit. The metaphor is coarse, and out of keeping with the theme.

7 Thus in the first edition :

The more his trouble as the more admired, Where wanted scorned, and envied where acquired.

Against this Pope wrote, "To be altered. See Dennis, p. 20." " 'How," said Dennis, 66 can wit be scorned where it is not? The person who wants this wit may indeed be scorned,

Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,'
Sure some to vex, but never all to please;
'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,
By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!
If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,
Ah let not learning too commence its foe !?
Of old, those met rewards who could excel,

And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:'
Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due,
Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.
Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,'
Employ their pains to spurn some others down;
And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools: '

but such a contempt declares the honour that the contemner has for wit." Pope, in a letter to Caryll, admitted that he had been guilty of a bull, and the reading in the second edition was,

'Tis most our trouble when 'tis most admired,

The more we give, the more is still required.

1 In the first edition,

Maintained with pains, but forfeited with ease;

and in the second edition,

The fame with pains we gain, but lose with

ease.

The original version appears better than the readings which successively replaced it.

2 Another couplet follows in the manuscript:

Learning and wit were friends designed by
heav'n;
[giv'n.

Those arms to guard it, not to wound, were

3 Dryden's Prologue to the University of Oxford:

Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well, And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.

The feelings of antiquity were doubtless represented truly by Horace

VOL. II.-POETRY.

505

510

515

when he said that indifferent poets were not tolerated by anybody. There is not the least foundation for Pope's statement that it was the habit of old to praise bad authors for endeavouring well, and if it had been, the authors would not have cared for commendations on their abortive industry to the disparagement of their intellect.

4 Wakefield remarks upon the unhappy effect of "crowns" and "crown" in consecutive lines, and thinks the phrase some others" in the next verse too mean and elliptical. Soame and Dryden, in their translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, speak of the "base rivals" who

aspire to gain renown By standing up and pulling others down. Mr. Harte related to me, that being with Mr. Pope when he received the news of Swift's death, Harte said to him, he thought it a fortunate circumstance for their friendship, that they had lived so distant from each other. Pope resented the reflection, but yet, said Harte, I am convinced it was true. -WARTON.

But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.'

To what base ends, and by what abject ways,

Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise!"
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,'
Nor in the critic let the man be lost.
Good-nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.

But if in noble minds some dregs remain
Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;
Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,
Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.
No pardon vile obscenity should find,*

Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;'
But dulness with obscenity must prove

As shameful sure as impotence in love.

In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,

520

525

530

Sprung the rank weed,' and thrived with large increase: 535

1 That is, all the unsuccessful authors maligned the successful. The unsuccessful writers never said any. thing more slanderous.

2 Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden:

Never debase yourself by treach'rous ways Nor by such abject methods seek for praise. Pope's own life is the strongest example upon record of the degradation he deplores.

3 In the margin of the manuscript Pope has written the passages of Virgil from which he took his expressions. En. iii. 56:

quid non mortalia pectora cogis Auri sacra fames?

Geor. i. 37:

Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido, which Dryden translates,

Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move.

• Such a manly and ingenuous cen

When love was all an easy

monarch's care;

Seldom at council, never in a war:

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions,' and young lords had wit:'
The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,

And not a mask3 went unimproved away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,*

And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;"

Wits, says he, in Charles the Second's reign had pensions, when all the world knows that it was one of the faults of that reign that none of the politer arts were then encouraged. Butler was starved at the same time that the king had his book in his pocket. Another great wit [Wycherley] lay seven years in prison for an inconsiderable debt, and Otway dared not to show his head for fear of the same fate.-DENNIS.

2 "The young lords who had wit in the court of Charles II. were," says Dennis, "Villiers Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, Lord Buckhurst afterwards Earl of Dorset, the Marquess of Halifax, the Earl of Rochester, Lord Vaughan, and several others." The jilts who ruled the state were the mistresses of

the king. The Duke of Buckingham and his Rehearsal are chiefly aimed at in the expression statesmen farces writ."-CROKER.

3 Pepys, under the date of June 12, 1663, notices that wearing masks at the theatre had "of late become a great fashion among the ladies." Cibber states that the immorality of the plays was the cause of the usage. When he wrote in 1739 the custom had been abolished for many years in consequence of the ill effects which attended it.

540

545

He must mean in everyday life. There was no use for the "modest fan" at the theatre after the ladies had adopted the more effectual plan of wearing masks. Pops, ver. 535, ascribes the introduction of "obscenity" to the Restoration. In the theatre the grossness was a legacy from the older drama, and particularly from the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, which were the most popular pieces on the stage.

5 The author has omitted two lines which stood here as containing a national reflection, which in his stricter judgment he could not but disapprove, on any people whatever.-POPE.

The cancelled couplet was as follows:

Then first the Belgian morals were extolled,
We their religion had, and they our gold.

This sneer was dictated by the poet's dislike to William III. and the Dutch, for displacing the popish king James II.-CROKER.

This ingenious and religious author seems to have had two particular antipathies-one to grammatical and verbal criticism, the other to false doctrine and heresy. To the first we may ascribe his treating Bentley, Burman, Kuster, and Wasse with a contempt which recoiled upon himself. To the second we will impute