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.

GG

broke, Cobham and Bathurst, he maintained on the other the same friendly intercourse with Pulteney, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield."

These remarks betray a strange ignorance of the politics of the period, as well as of the motives of individual statesmen: they are also founded on a complete misconception of Pope's character. The poet no doubt liked to think of himself as superior to sect in religion and to faction in politics. But in respect of esprit de corps, he was a staunch adherent both of his church and of his party. He made no response to the endeavours of Atterbury for his conversion. On the contrary, his hostility to the Church of England became more active as he grew older, and he rarely neglected the opportunity of a stroke at a bishop or a church dignitary, particularly if these happened to be Whigs. So in his politics. He seldom praises a Ministerial Whig (Craggs and Pelham were exceptions) but for the purpose of reflecting credit on himself, as in his allusions to his early intimacy with Somers and Halifax; or of discrediting the Court, as when he compliments Jekyll on his fidelity to the old Whig principles, which the Ministerialists had turned into ridicule. When he eulogises Addison as a writer, he takes exception to his "courtly stains." His most poignant sarcasms are levelled at Marlborough, Hervey, Devonshire, Selkirk, Dodington, and others, all prominent members of the Whig party. A graceful personal compliment is paid to Walpole in return for the favour he had conferred on the poet's friend, Southcote; but it is soon after balanced by a bitter sneer at the Minister's conjugal relations. The Tory leaders, on the other hand, are the constant theme of Pope's praise, and I do not remember a single stroke of satire aimed at a member of that party, except in the unfinished piece called Seventeen Hundred and Forty. As for his compliments to Pulteney, Chesterfield, Cobham, and Lyttelton, on which Roscoe (who, by the way, seems to have fancied Cobham to have been a Tory) relies, it is obvious that they are paid not to the Whig principles of those statesmen, but to their energy as members of the combined Opposition.

It has been already said that Pope's politics as well as his philosophy were derived from Bolingbroke. Whoever wishes thoroughly to understand the spirit of the Epilogue to the Satires should read Bolingbroke's Dissertation upon Parties: in that treatise will be found the political groundwork of Pope's glowing rhetoric, just as the philosophical principles of Bolingbroke are found underlying the poetical fabric of the Essay on Man. The following extracts will show how completely the poet had imbibed the spirit of his master. Bolingbroke ascribing the evils of his time to the substitution of the system of indirect influence for the direct exercise of prerogative, says: "As the means of influencing by prerogative and governing by force were considered to be increased formerly upon every increase of power to the Crown, so are the means of influencing by money, and

of governing by corruption, to be considered as increased now upon that increase of power which hath accrued to the Crown by the new constitution of the revenue since the revolution."

He proceeds to describe the probable consequences of this corrupting influence:

"Britain will then be in that very condition in which, and in which alone, her constitution, and her liberty by consequence, may be destroyed; because the people may, in a state of universal corruption, and will in no other, either suffer others to betray them or betray themselves. How near a progress we have made towards this state, I determine not. This I say, it is time for every man who is desirous to preserve the British Constitution, and to preserve it secure, to contribute all he can to prevent the ill effects of that new influence and power, which hath gained strength in every reign since the revolution; of those means of corruption which may be employed, one time or other, on the part of the Crown, and of that proneness to corruption on the part of the people, that hath been long growing, and still grows. It may otherwise happen that these causes remaining in force, their effects will become too strong to be checked, and will ensure the ruin of the best constitution upon earth, whenever the men in power, shall think their grandeur, or their safety, concerned in the ruin of it. We are not exposed, at present, most certainly, to any such contingency, but the bare possibility of being so is a reason sufficient to awaken and alarm every honest man. Hath not every such man, indeed, reason to be alarmed when he hears the cause of corruption publicly pleaded, and when men are suffered, nay paid by somebody or other, to plead this unrighteous cause as if it was that of our most righteous government?"

The remedy for this prevailing corruption was, according to Bolingbroke, to be found in the appearance of a Patriot King, ruling with the consent, and by means of the affections, of his subjects.

And

"There is," said he in his Idea of a Patriot King, "no eligible remedy that can so surely and effectually restore the Virtue and Public Spirit essential to the preservation of Liberty, and well nigh lost even in Europe, as the reign of a good and wise Prince. let me say that it is in Britain alone, and in no other part of Europe that we can expect that most uncommon of all Phenomena in the Physical or Moral World, I mean a Patriot King, to arise. Nil oriturum alias, nil ortum tale fatentes."

Now it must be admitted that Bolingbroke's Monarchical idea of the English Constitution, which in many respects resembles that expounded by Swift in his letter to Pope of 10th January, 1721, has a much stronger foundation in reason than the old Whig Theory as defined by Burke in his Thoughts on the present Discontents. But it is not less certain that such political views as he put forward in the

two volumes from which these extracts are made, were incapable of being translated into practice under the aristocratical form of government which was established on the Revolution of 1688. And looking to Bolingbroke's character, we can scarcely believe that they were intended to be employed except as an instrument of Opposition. This end they served to perfection. They gave a rhetorical basis of action to the landed as opposed to the monied interest; to the party of the Prince of Wales as opposed to the party of the King; to the combined attack of Pulteney and Wyndham as opposed to the mere defensive strategy of Walpole.

The practical application of Bolingbroke's ideas to the politics of the period is full of interest, both as a curious example of the mixed nature of human motives, and also as illustrating the spirit of the following Dialogues. It was the main object of the Opposition to procure the downfall of Walpole, whom they accused of sacrificing for his own purposes the independence of Parliament to the authority of the Crown. Walpole's power rested partly on the confidence reposed in him by the King, partly on the influence, fair or foul, which his position enabled him to exercise in the House of Commons. The Opposition hoped that they might be able to win over some of the Minister's supporters, and so expose him to a Parliamentary defeat, which would probably cause the King to withdraw from him his confidence. Their calculations were not ill-grounded. In 1738, the year of the grand combined attack of the Opposition, the Queen, Walpole's steady supporter, was dead; the King was in bad health; and Walpole's own constitution was believed to be impaired. It was thought that a number of waiters on Providence were ready to leave the falling house in which they had hitherto taken shelter. What the Opposition wanted was a common centre round which they might rally, forgetful of the jealousies and antipathies which divided them. This rallying point for their homage they found in the Prince of Wales, and their scheme, fantastic as it appears to us, was to set him up as the model of a constitutional ruler in contrast to his father, who, as they pretended, was, under the misleading influence of Walpole, gradually acquiring absolute power. These ideas are advocated very earnestly in a letter from Lord Stair to Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, dated Jan. 1, 1738: " There is another thing which does not depend upon many different persons, which, if steadily pursued, must, in a very little time, get the better of all opposition, and that is the conduct of the P of WIf by his conduct, steady and uniform,

it appears as well as by his words, that he is really a friend to liberty, and that it appears by his actions and the actions of his friends, that he does not desire that the King should have more power than our Constitution allows-I say such conduct will very soon give the Prince such a character, as will unite all true lovers of

their country in his favour." The "patriotic" heir-apparent unfortunately brought nothing but ridicule on the party whose interests he was intended to promote.

The opinions which Bolingbroke propounded as a politician Pope put forward in his two Dialogues as a poet and a satirist. He too lashed the monied Whigs, with Walpole at their head, in his tremendous invective against the corruption of the times; he too exalted the patriotism of the courtiers of the Prince of Wales as contrasted with the sycophants of the King and Queen. But the remedy for the national evils which he suggested was very different from Bolingbroke's Patriot King. It was his own Satire. Self-love and party spirit have rarely displayed themselves in a more subtle, and it must be added, in a more splendid shape.

The design of the two Dialogues is singularly artful. In the first the friend who is his interlocutor remonstrates with him as a man of the world on the severity of his satire, and the poet humorously makes this prudent person suggest the most immoral objects for ridicule, on the plea that they would be safe. Pope, pretending to fall in with his views, bursts forth into a strain of flattery, more biting in its irony than the severest satire, winding up with the ejaculation,

So-Satire is no more-I feel it die

No gazetteer more innocent than I

And let a-God's name, every fool and knave

Be graced through life, and honoured in his grave.

Why so?" says his Friend, with the same innocence as before, "you still may lash the greatest-in disgrace." Even here, however, he keeps up his character for prudence by advising him to spare "immortal Selkirk and grave Delaware," who, through all changes of Government, will be sure to remain in place. The poet, taking up the cue, acknowledges that Vice must be respected in high stations, and only rebuked when it exhibits itself in the vulgar,—

Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth,

And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth,
But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore:

Let greatness own her, and she's mean no more.

Fired with this idea, his imagination calls up the splendid picture of the Triumph of Vice, and, having raised his invective to the highest pitch of indignation, he concludes the Dialogue, in a kind of undertone, by a brief allusion to his own disdain for the universal corruption of the age. This Satire requires to be very carefully read, as almost every phrase has a double allusion, and the marvellous skill of the workmanship is only appreciated when the irony is thoroughly understood.