The Works of Alexander Pope Part 11

LORD LYTTELTON.[25]

TO MR. POPE.[26]

_From Rome, 1730._

Immortal bard! for whom each muse has wove The fairest garlands of th' Aonian grove; Preserved, our drooping genius to restore, When Addison and Congreve are no more; After so many stars extinct in night, 5 The darkened age's last remaining light!

To thee from Latian realms this verse is writ, Inspired by memory of ancient wit: For now no more these climes their influence boast, Fall'n is their glory, and their virtue lost: 10 From tyrants, and from priests, the muses fly, Daughters of reason and of liberty.

Nor Baiae now, nor Umbria's plain they love, Nor on the banks of Nar, or Mincio rove; To Thames's flow'ry borders they retire, 15 And kindle in thy breast the Roman fire.

So in the shades, where cheered with summer rays Melodious linnets warbled sprightly lays, Soon as the faded, falling leaves complain Of gloomy winter's unauspicious reign, 20 No tuneful voice is heard of joy or love, But mournful silence saddens all the grove.

Unhappy Italy! whose altered state Has felt the worst severity of fate: Not that barbarian hands her fasces broke 25 And bowed her haughty neck beneath their yoke; Nor that her palaces to earth are thrown, Her cities desert, and her fields unsown; But that her ancient spirit is decayed, That sacred wisdom from her bounds is fled, 30 That there the source of science flows no more, Whence its rich streams supplied the world before.

Ill.u.s.trious names! that once in Latium s.h.i.+ned, Born to instruct, and to command mankind; Chiefs, by whose virtue mighty Rome was raised, 35 And poets, who those chiefs sublimely praised!

Oft I the traces you have left explore, Your ashes visit, and your urns adore; Oft kiss, with lips devout, some mould'ring stone, With ivy's venerable shade o'ergrown; 40 Those hallowed ruins better pleased to see Than all the pomp of modern luxury.

As late on Virgil's tomb fresh flow'rs I strowed, While with th' inspiring muse my bosom glowed, Crowned with eternal bays my ravished eyes 45 Beheld the poet's awful form arise: Stranger, he said, whose pious hand has paid These grateful rites to my attentive shade, When thou shalt breathe thy happy native air, To Pope this message from his master bear: 50 "Great bard! whose numbers I myself inspire, To whom I gave my own harmonious lyre, If high exalted on the throne of wit, Near me and Homer thou aspire to sit, No more let meaner satire dim the rays, 55 That flow majestic from thy n.o.bler bays; In all the flow'ry paths of Pindus stray, But shun that th.o.r.n.y, that unpleasing way; Nor, when each soft engaging muse is thine, Address the least attractive of the nine. 60 "Of thee more worthy were the task to raise A lasting column to thy country's praise, To sing the land, which yet alone can boast That liberty corrupted Rome has lost, Where science in the arms of peace is laid, 65 And plants her palm beneath the olive's shade.

Such was the theme for which my lyre I strung, Such was the people whose exploits I sung; Brave, yet refined, for arms and arts renowned, With diff'rent bays by Mars and Phoebus crowned, 70 Dauntless opposers of tyrannic sway, But pleased, a mild AUGUSTUS to obey.

"If these commands submissive thou receive, Immortal and unblamed thy name shall live; Envy to black Cocytus shall retire, 75 And howl with furies in tormenting fire; Approving time shall consecrate thy lays, And join the patriot's to the poet's praise."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Recommendatory poems addressed to Pope are without exception dull, insipid productions, which never rise above mediocrity, and sometimes fall below it. Only those are reprinted here which he himself prefixed to his works. The first seven appeared in the quarto of 1717, and the remaining two in the octavo of 1736.]

[Footnote 2: Legally speaking, of Buckingham_s.h.i.+re_; for he would not take the t.i.tle of Buckingham, under a fear that there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that t.i.tle amongst the connections of the Villiers family. He was a pompous grandee, who lived in uneasy splendour, and, as a writer, most extravagantly overrated: accordingly, he is now forgotten. Such was his vanity, and his ridiculous mania for allying himself with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption to court the Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne. Being rejected, he then offered himself to the illegitimate daughter of James II. by the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley. She was as ostentatious as himself, and accepted him.--DE QUINCEY.

Pope commenced the interchange of praise with the Duke of Buckingham by celebrating him in the Essay on Criticism. The return verses of the Duke are little better than drivelling. His Essay on Satire and Essay on Poetry are his princ.i.p.al works, but though one was retouched by Dryden and the other by Pope, they are very second-rate performances. The Duke died in February, 1721, aged 72.]

[Footnote 3: Anne, wife of Heneage, fifth Earl of Winchelsea, and daughter of Sir William Kingsmill. She died on Aug. 5, 1720.--CROKER.

She wrote a tragedy called Aristomenes, or the Royal Shepherd, to which Pope may be supposed to allude in his letter to Caryll of Dec. 15, 1713, where he says, "I was invited to dinner to my Lady Winchelsea, and after dinner to hear a play read, at both which I sat in great disorder with sickness at my head and stomach." Pope omitted her rugged, bald, prosaic verses in 1736, probably because they were intrinsically worthless, and because the name of the author had ceased to carry any weight. In 1727 and 1732 they were printed with Pope's poems in Lintot's Miscellany, and doubtless with the sanction of Pope himself.]

[Footnote 4: These verses, with the heading, "To my friend Mr. Pope, on his Pastorals," originally appeared in 1709, in the same volume of Tonson's Miscellany which contained the Pastorals themselves. In the fifth edition of Lintot's Miscellany, 1727, and in the sixth edition, 1732, the poem of Wycherley, who was then dead, is prefixed to Pope's pieces, and bears the t.i.tle, "To Mr. Pope at sixteen years old, on occasion of his Pastorals." This was untrue, and seems designed to convey a false idea of Pope's precocity. The lines were not addressed to him till he was twenty, as appears from Wycherley's letter of May 18, 1708, in which he says, "I have made a compliment in verse upon the printing your Pastorals which you shall see when you see me." Dennis, and others, accused Pope of being the author of the flattering tribute.

The poet appealed in refutation of the charge to Wycherley's letters, and added that the first draught, and corrected copy of the panegyric, which were still extant in the Harley library in Wycherley's handwriting, would show "that if they received any alteration from Mr.

Pope it was in the omission of some of his own praises." Doc.u.ments to which n.o.body had access proved nothing. Mr. Croker considered that there was strong internal evidence from the smoothness of the rhythm, the ant.i.thetical style, and the nature of the commendation, that Pope must have a.s.sisted in reducing the lines to their present shape. The mannerism of both authors can be clearly traced in them. They have the stamp of Wycherley, improved by Pope.]

[Footnote 5: If Wycherley had been capable of anything of the kind, this, and the previous couplet, might have been written after the Essay on Criticism, but surely could not have been inspired by a perusal of the ma.n.u.script of the Pastorals.--CROKER.]

[Footnote 6: This line was omitted by Pope in 1736.]

[Footnote 7: From Boileau's Art of Poetry, Chant ii. v. 1.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 8: This triplet was omitted by Pope in the edition of 1736.]

[Footnote 9: Francis Knapp, of Chilton, in Berks.h.i.+re, Gent. He was of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards demy of Magdalen College.--CUNNINGHAM.

He graduated M.A. April 30, 1695, and as he could hardly have been an M.A. before he was twenty-five, he would have been forty-five at the date of these verses. There is a rhyming "Epistle to Mr. B----, by Mr.

Fr. Knapp, of Magdalen College, in Oxford," in Tonson's Fourth Miscellany.--CROKER.

He died in, or before 1727; for in one of Lintot's advertis.e.m.e.nts of that year he is described as the "_late_ Rev. Mr. Francis Knapp, Dean of Killala."]

[Footnote 10: There are several lines in this copy of verses, which could not be endured in a common magazine. So much is the public ear, and public taste improved.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 11: The next six lines were left out by Pope in 1736.]

[Footnote 12: Hough was chosen president of Magdalen College in April, 1687, in defiance of the mandate sent by James II. to the fellows, requiring them to elect Farmer, a profligate and a papist. The illegal proceedings of the king in dispossessing the protestants, and filling the college with romanists, alarmed and enraged the country, and contributed largely to the Revolution of 1688. In May, 1690, Hough became Bishop of Oxford. He was translated to Lichfield and Coventry in 1699, and to Worcester in 1717, where he remained till his death in May, 1743, at the age of ninety-three.]

[Footnote 13: By far the most elegant, and best turned compliment of all addressed to our author, happily borrowed from a fine Greek epigram, and most gracefully applied.--WARTON.

There is little merit in borrowing a compliment from the Anthology, and the felicity of its application in the present instance may be questioned, notwithstanding the emphatic praise of Warton. The mythological basis of the lines, which is appropriate in the Greek, becomes childish when adopted by an English poet, and the point of the piece, which turns upon the a.s.sumption that Pope's translation was vastly superior to the original, is too extravagant to be pleasing.

Fenton was a scholar, and could not have thought what he said.]

[Footnote 14: "I would add," says Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Parnell, "that the description of barrenness in his verses to Pope was borrowed from Secundus, but lately searching for the pa.s.sage, which I had formerly read, I could not find it." The borrowed description is the only tolerable part of the poem, which is in a clumsy strain, unlike the usual easy style of Parnell.]

[Footnote 15: He was only son to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, and died in 1720.--ROSCOE.]

[Footnote 16: It was paying pitiful homage to rank to call an indifferent versifier, like the Duke of Buckingham, "great Sheffield,"

and pretend that he was the instructor and model of Pope.]

[Footnote 17: The comparison of the three Graces, admiring the reflection of themselves in Pope's works, to Narcissus enamoured of his own face in the stream, is a ludicrous conceit, and the execution is on a par with the idea.]

[Footnote 18: This paragraph refers to Pope's Temple of Fame.]

[Footnote 19: Pope's genius was not epic, and the only epic poem he composed was his juvenile effort, Alcander, which he burnt because it was too worthless to be preserved.]

[Footnote 20: This and the concluding verse are from the Temple of Fame.]

[Footnote 21: These lines first appeared in 1726, in the translation of the Odyssey, where they were appended by Broome to the final note. Pope inserted them in the 8vo edition of his works in 1736.]

[Footnote 22: This was a compliment our author could not take much pleasure in reading; for he could not value himself on his edition of Shakespeare.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 23: The comparison on both sides is wanting in truth. The superficial researches, and meagre notes of Pope did not renovate Shakespeare, and no second Raphael has repainted the pictures of Raphael the first. Fitness of praise was a merit which the writers of commendatory verses commonly despised. Their study was to outvie each other in the grossness, and insincerity of their flattery.]

[Footnote 24: Odyssey, lib. xvi.--BROOME.]

[Footnote 25: Pope inserted this tribute among the Recommendatory poems prefixed to the 8vo edition of his works, 1736. Lyttelton was not raised to the peerage till November, 1757, twenty-seven years after the date of his verses.]

[Footnote 26: Warton prefers Fenton's verses, but in my opinion these lines of Lord Lyttelton's are much superior to all the other recommendatory verses. They are as elegant and correct in themselves, as the sentiments they convey appear sincere, and worthy an ingenuous, cultivated, and liberal mind. There is a small inaccuracy in one or two expressions, and perhaps it would have been better if Virgil's speech, which forms the conclusion, had been compressed.--BOWLES.]

TRANSLATIONS.

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.

The following Translations were selected from many others done by the author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of exercises, while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr.