EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.

"POPE's last Satires of the general kind were two Dialogues, named, from the year in which they were published, 'Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight.' In these poems many are praised and many are reproached. Pope was then entangled in the Opposition; a follower of the Prince of Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and censured the conduct of the Ministers. His political partiality was too plainly shown; he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his earlier years, uninjured and unoffending through much more violent conflicts of faction."-JOHNSON.

"By long habit of writing, and almost constantly in one sort of measure, he had now arrived at a happy and elegant familiarity of style, without flatness. The satire in these pieces is of the strongest kind; sometimes, direct and declamatory, at others, ironical and oblique. It must be owned to be carried to excess. Our country is represented as totally ruined, and overwhelmed with dissipation, depravity, and corruption. Yet this very country, so emasculated and debased by every species of folly and wickedness, in about twenty years afterwards, carried its triumphs over all its enemies, through all the quarters of the world, and astonished the most distant nations with a display of uncommon efforts, abilities, and virtue. So vain and groundless are the prognostications of poets as well as politicians."-WARTON.

"From the conclusion of this Satire, which is highly poetical and animated, one might suppose that there was neither honesty, honour, public spirit, nor virtue, in the nation. We should, however, always keep in mind the agitated state of Parties at the time. Tories, Jacobites, disappointed Whigs, all under the name of Patriot, united in one cry against the administration of Walpole, who most truly deserved that distinguished appellation, and by whose firmness, wisdom, and integrity, under Providence, the Protestant succession was in great measure sustained, in the most trying periods, and with it our laws and liberties.

"But whatever may be said of the political, of the poetical part, particularly the description of vice, and the noble conclusion, there can be but one opinion. More dignified and impressive numbers, more lofty indignation, more animated appeals, and more rich personifications never adorned the page of the satiric muse."-BowLes.

"As it was the object of the poet, in his Dunciad, to excite his countrymen to exert themselves in the defence and promotion of true taste and sound learning, so, in the following pieces, it is his intention to rouse them to a due sense of their own rights and dignity as a people, to shew them the dangers by which they were surrounded, to exhibit vice and corruption in the darkest colours, and thereby to

stimulate them to the attainment of public integrity, honour, and virtue. This, however, is not the light in which these Dialogues seem to have been regarded by his later editors, and particularly by Dr. Warton, who conceives that the satire is carried to excess,' and that the prognostications of ruin to the country were vain and groundless; for that in about twenty years afterwards it carried its triumphs over all its enemies, through all quarters of the world.' On this it may be observed, that the prognostications of the poet were founded on the political depravity and corruption which he saw around him, and are in fair construction to be considered only as warnings, or denunciations, to apprize his contemporaries, that if they did not act upon higher motives and better principles, and oppose themselves to the torrent, vice would be finally triumphant, would

lift her scarlet head,

And see pale virtue carted in her stead.

"From the conclusion of this (the first) Satire,' says Mr. Bowles, 'one might suppose that there was neither honesty, honour, public spirit, nor virtue in the nation.' But this is to take in a literal what the poet meant should be taken only in a hypothetical sense, and to consider a poetical exaggeration as intended for a serious truth. The object of the poet is more decidedly manifested in his second Dialogue, in which he has celebrated numerous instances of public and private virtue, and has declared it to be his intention,

To rouse the watchmen of the public weal,
To virtue's work. provoke the tardy Hall,
And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.'

"In short, he avows his resolution to persevere in his purpose

Till all but truth drops still-born from the press,

Like the last Gazette, or the last address.'

"What effect was, in fact, produced by the remonstrances of the poet upon the manners and morals of his countrymen, and what share he may have had in attaining that great improvement and better state of things which we are informed took place some years afterwards, it would not be an easy task to ascertain; but that these Dialogues forcibly exhibit

The strong antipathy of good to bad;'

that they inculcate high and generous sentiments of public virtue and independence, and an abhorrence of political profligacy and of low and degrading pursuits, no one will be found to deny."-ROSCOE.

Johnson's remarks on these Satires, originally published under the title Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight, are interesting from

their tone of reserve and superiority. Considering that his London was produced on the same day as the first Dialogue; that it was warmly praised by Pope, and that it abounded in the party spirit which Johnson seems inclined to blame in the Epilogue, we should have expected from the critic a little more sympathy and appreciation. As a matter of fact, Pope had been " entangled in the Opposition " since Bolingbroke's return from France, and his political principles were in great measure the fruits of the philosophical instruction which he had received from that statesman. When Johnson says that Pope "forgot the prudence with which he had passed his earlier years," he overlooks the great change which had occurred in the poet's circumstances. Between 1714 and 1725 the latter was laboriously building up his fortunes by his translation of Homer; and even if he had had leisure to indulge his political preferences, the Opposition in George I.'s reign was in too disorganised a state to offer any scope for poetical treatment. But on the accession of George II., Pope's independence was secured, while the anti-Ministerial party, directed by the genius of Bolingbroke and the experience of Pulteney, were eloquent on subjects well calculated to rouse a naturally warm imagination.

Warton and Bowles are right in attributing the heat of these Satires to party spirit, and Roscoe here, as elsewhere, is betrayed into misunderstandings by his fixed resolution to take Pope's virtues exactly at the poet's own valuation. If we were to accept the picture of the age as painted by Pope in the first of these two Dialogues, we should have to regard the Law and the Church as utterly corrupted, Liberty annihilated, Patriotism extinct; in a word, "nothing is sacred now but villainy"; and nothing is bright amidst the general darkness but the moral figure of the poet:

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)
Show there was one who held it in disdain.

And this judgment we are to believe is trustworthy, as coming from an impartial spectator-for so he describes himself elsewhere:

Papist or Protestant, or both between,
Like good Erasmus in an honest mean,

In moderation placing all my glory,

While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

Imitation of Horace, Satires, 2, 1, 65.

This boasted "moderation" imposes upon Roscoe, who heads the Ninth Chapter of his Life of the Poet, " Impartiality of Pope's Political Attachments," and says:

"These attachments, it may be said, were pretty equally divided between the great contending parties of Whig and Tory. Whilst on the one hand he kept up his connection with Wyndham and Boling

VOL. III.-POETRY.

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