"Tis true, said I, not void of hopes I came, Th' estate which wits inherit after death!" the whole. In Chaucer, he only answers, he came to see the place;" and the book ends abruptly, with his being surprized at the sight of a man of great authority, and awaking in a fright.-POPE. This is an imperfect representation. While Chaucer is standing in the House of Fame, a person goes up to him, And saide, Friend, what is thy name, The poet disclaims any such intention, and protests that he has no desire that his name should be known to a single soul. He is then asked what he does there, and he replies that he who brought him to the place promised him that he should learn new and wonderful things, in which, he says, he has been disappointed, for he was aware before that people coveted fame, though he was not hitherto acquainted with the dwelling of the goddess, nor with her appearance and condition. His interrogator answers that he perceives what it is he desires to know, and conducts him to the house of Rumour. There he has revealed to him the falsehood of the world, and especially of pilgrims and pardoners, which was an important doctrine to be inculcated in those days. When the scene has been fully disclosed, “a man of great authority" appears, and the poet starts up from his sleep, by which he seems to intimate that the wise and serious frown upon those who listen to idle tales. His 506 awaking "half afraid," is the result of his Remembring well what I had seen, Pope, by reserving the inquiry addressed to him for the end of the poem, represents himself as being asked in the temple of Rumour whether he has come there for fame, which, is not more, but much less natural than the arrangement of Chaucer, who supposes the question to be put in the temple of Fame itself. Nor would it have been congenial to Chaucer's modest disposition to make himself the climax of the piece. 1 Garth, in the preface to his Dispensary: "Reputation of this sort is very hard to be got, and very easy to be lost."-WAKEFIELD. 2 Cowley's Complaint: Thou who rewardest but with popular breath And that too after death.-WAKEFIELD. Pope's moral is inconsistent with the previous tone of his poem. He has not treated the "second life in others' breath" as "vain," but speaks of the position of Homer, Aristotle, &c. in the temple of Fame as though it were a substantial triumph, a real dignity, and a glorious reward. The purport of his piece is to enforce, and not to depreciate, the value of literary renown. His whole life attests that this was his genuine opinion. He was not endowed with the equanimity The great man's curse, without the gains, endure, But if the purchase cost so dear a price, 510 515 As soothing folly, or exalting vice; Oh! if the muse must flatter lawless sway, And follow still where fortune leads the way;' Then teach me, heav'n! to scorn the guilty bays; which neither covets nor despises reputation, and it was pure affectation when he pretended, in the concluding paragraph, that he did not "call for the favours of fame," and that he held 520 posthumous fame, in particular, to be a worthless possession. 1 Dryden, in Palamon and Arcite, says of women that they Still follow fortune where she leads the way. Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, THESE Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen, and then passed through the hands of Mr. Walsh, Mr. Wycherley, G. Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, Sir William Trumbull, Dr. Garth, Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, Mr. Mainwaring, and others. All these gave our author the greatest encouragement, and particularly Mr. Walsh, whom Mr. Dryden, in his postscript to Virgil, calls the best critic of his age. "The author," says he, seems to have a particular genius for this kind of poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds his years. He has taken very freely from the ancients. But what he has mixed of his own with theirs is no way inferior to what he has taken from them. It is not flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. His preface is very judicious and learned." Letter to Mr. Wycherley, Ap. 1705. The Lord Lansdowne, about the same time, mentioning the youth of our poet, says, in a printed letter of the character of Mr. Wycherley, that "if he goes on as he hath begun in the pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman." Notwithstanding the early time of their production, the author esteemed these as the most correct in the versification, and musical in the numbers, of all his works. The reason for his labouring them into so much softness, was, doubtless, that this sort of poetry derives almost its whole beauty from a natural ease of thought and smoothness of verse: whereas that of most other kinds consist in the strength and fulness of both. In a letter of his to Mr. Walsh about this time, we find an enumeration of several niceties in versification, which perhaps have never been strictly observed in any English poem, except in these Pastorals. They were not printed till 1709.-POPE. The sycophancy of A. Philips, who had prejudiced Mr. Addison against Pope, occasioned those papers' in the Guardian, written by the latter, in which there is an ironical preference given to the Pastorals of Philips above his own, in order to support the profound judgment of those who could not distinguish between the rural and the rustic, and on that account condemned the Pastorals of Pope for wanting simplicity. These papers were sent by an unknown hand to 1 There was only one paper. |