"*O! ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise! DR. EDWARD YOUNG, wishing some check to the corruption and evil manners of the times, calleth out upon our poet to undertake a task so worthy of his virtue : "Why slumbers Pope, who leads the Muses' train, Nor hears that virtue, which he loves, complain?" MR. MALLET, in his epistle on Verbal Criticism: "Whose life severely scann'd, transcends his lays; For wit supreme is but his second praise." MR. HAMMOND, that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv. "Now, fir'd by Pope and Virtue, leave the age, * In his Poems, printed for B. Lintot. P. P. MR. THOMSON, in his elegant and philosophical poem of the Sea sons: "Altho' not sweeter his own Homer sings, Yet is his life the more endearing song." To the same tune also singeth that learned clerk of Suffolk, MR. WILLIAM BROOME. "*Thus, nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause, From thy own life transcribe th' unerring laws." And, to close all, hear the reverend Dean of St. Patrick's: "A soul with ev'ry virtue fraught, By patriots, priests, and poets taught; Whatever Grecian story tells; A genius for each bus'ness fit, Whose meanest talent is his wit;" &c. Let us now recreate thee by turning to the other side, and shewing his character drawn by those with whom he never conversed, and whose countenances he could not know, though turned against him: first again commencing with the high voiced and never enough quoted MR. JOHN DENNIS; who, in his Reflections on the Essay on Criticism, thus describeth him: "A little affected hypocrite, In his Poems, and at the end of the Odyssey. P. who has nothing in his mouth but candour, truth, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and magnanimity. He is so great a lover of falsehood, that whenever he has a mind to calumniate his cotemporaries, he brands them with some defect which is just contrary to some good quality, for which all their friends and their acquaintance commend them. He seems to have a particular pique to people of quality, and authors of that rank. He must derive his religion from St. Omer's."-But in the Character of Mr. P. and his writings (printed by S. Popping, 1716), he saith, "Though he is a professor of the worst religion, yet he laughs at it;" but that, "nevertheless, he is a virulent Papist ; and yet a pillar for the church of England." Of both which opinions MR. LEWIS THEOBALD seems also to be; declaring, in Mist's Journal of June 22, 1718, "That if he is not shrewdly abused, he made it his business to cackle to both parties in their own sentiments." But, as to his pique against people of quality, the same Journalist doth not agree, but saith (May 8, 1728), " He had, by some means or other, the acquaintance and friendship of the whole body of our nobility." However contradictory this may appear, Mr. Dennis and Gildon, in the character last cited, make it all plain, by assuring us," That he is a creature that reconciles all contradictions; he is a beast, and a man; a Whig and a Tory; a writer (at one and the same time) of Guardians and Examiners;* an asserter of liberty, and of the dispensing power of kings; a Jesuitical professor of truth; a base and a foul pretender to candour." So that, upon the whole account, we must conclude him either to have been a great hypocrite, or a very honest man; a terrible imposer upon both parties, or very moderate to either. Be it as to the judicious reader shall seem good. Sure it is, he is little favoured of certain authors, whose wrath is perilous: for one declares he ought to have a price set on his head, and to be hunted down as a wild beast. Another protests that he does not know what may happen; advises him to insure his person; says he has bitter enemies, and expressly declares it will be well if he escapes with his life. One desires he would cut his own throat, or hang himself.§ But Pasquin seemed rather inclined it should be done by the government, representing him engaged in grievous designs with a Lord of Parliament, then under prosecution. Mr. Dennis himself hath written to a Minister, that he is one of the most dangerous persons in this kingdom; and assureth the public, that he is an open and mortal enemy to his country; a monster, that will, one day, shew as daring a soul as a mad P.t • The names of two weekly Papers. P. P. § Gulliveriana, p. 332. P. ¶ Anno 1723. P. || Anno 1729. P. Indian, who runs a muck to kill the first Christian he meets.* Another gives information of Treason discovered in his poem. Mr. Curl boldly supplies an imperfect verse with Kings and Princesses.‡ And one Matthew Concanen, yet more impudent, publishes at length the two most SACRED NAMES in this nation, as members of the Dunciad!§ This is prodigious! yet it is almost as strange, that in the midst of these invectives his greatest enemies have (I know not how) borne testimony to some merit in him. MR. THEOBALD, in censuring his Shakespear, declares," He has so great an esteem for Mr. Pope, and so high an opinion of his genius and excellencies; that notwithstanding he professes a veneration almost rising to idolatry for the writings of this inimitable poet, he would be very loth even to do him justice, at the expense of that other gentleman's character."¶ MR. CHARLES GILDON, after having violently attacked him in many pieces, * Pref. to Rem. on the Rape of the Lock, p. 12. and in the last page of that treatise. P. Page 6, 7. of the Preface (by Concanen) to a book intitled, A Collection of all the Letters, Essays, Verses, and Advertisements, occasioned by Pope and Swift's Miscellanies. Printed for A. Moore, octavo, 1712. Key to the Dunciad, 3d edit. p. 18. P. P. § A List of Persons, &c. at the end of the fore-mentioned Collection of all the Letters, Essays, &c. P. Introduction to his Shakespear Restored, in quarto, p. 3. P. |