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So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors' bills' to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,

Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled' so much as they ;
Some dryly plain, without invention's aid,

Write dull receipts how poems may be made;
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then whose judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ancient's proper character;

His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may,' but never criticise."

1 The prescription of the physician was formerly called his bill. Johnson, in his Dictionary, quotes from L'Estrange, "The medicine was prepared according to the bill," and Butler, in Hudibras, speaks of

him who took the doctor's bill, And swallowed it instead of the pill. The story ran that a physician handed a prescription to his patient, saying, "Take this," and the man immediately swallowed it.

2 This is a quibble. Time and moths spoil books by destroying them. The commentators only spoiled them by explaining them badly. The editors were so far from spoiling books in the same sense as time, that by multiplying copies they assisted to preserve them.

3 Soame and Dryden's Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:

Keep to each man his proper character;
Of countries and of times the humours
know;

From diffrent climates diff'ring customs
grow.

The principle here is general. Pope, in terms and in fact, applied it only

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to the ancients. Had he extended the precept to modern literature he would have been cured of his delusion that every deviation from the antique type arose from unlettered tastelessness.

In the first edition,

You may confound, but never criticise, which was an adaptation of a line from Lord Roscommon :

You may confound, but never can translate.

The author, after this verse, originally inserted the following, which he has however omitted in all the editions:

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Zoilus, had these been known, without a
[to fame;
Had died, and Perrault ne'er been damned
The sense of sound antiquity had reigned,
And sacred Homer yet been unprophaned.
None e'er had thought his comprehen-
sive mind
[fined;

To modern customs, modern rules con-
Who for all ages writ, and all mankind.
Be his great works, &c.-POPE.

Perrault, in his Parallel between the ancients and the moderns, carped at Homer in the same spirit that Zoilus had done of old.

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;'

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse ;'
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.

When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t'outlast' immortal Rome designed,'
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,
And but from nature's fountain scorned to draw:
But when t'examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.

1 Horace, Ars Poet., ver. 268: vos exemplaria Græca

Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.

Tate and Brady's version of the first psalm:

But makes the perfect law of God His business and delight; Devoutly reads therein by day, And meditates by night. -WAKEFIELD.

2 Dryden, Virg. Geor. iv. 408:

And upward follow Fame's immortal spring.
-WAKEFIELD.

3 Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse:

Consult your author with himself compared.

4 The word outlast is improper ; for Virgil, like a true Roman, never dreamt of the mortality of the city.WAKEFIELD.

5 Variation:

When first young Maro sung of kings and
wars,
[bling cars.
Ere warning Phoebus touched his trem-

Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius

aurem

Vellit. Virg. Ecl. vi. 3.

It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs, which he found above his years, and descended, first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, and afterwards to

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copy Homer in heroic poetry. — POPE.

The second line of the couplet in the note was copied, as Mr. Carruthers points out, from Milton's Lycidas:

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling

ears.

The couplet in the text, with the variation of "great Maro" for "young Maro," was Pope's original version, but Dennis having asked whether he intended "to put that figure called a bull upon Virgil" by saying that he designed a work "to outlast immortality," the poet wrote in the margin of his manuscript "alter the seeming inconsistency," which he did, by substituting the lines in the note. In the last edition, he reinstated the "bull." The objection of Dennis was hypercritical. The phrase only expresses the double fact that the city was destroyed, and that its fame was durable. The manuscript supplies another various reading, which avoids both the alleged bull in the text, and the bad rhyme of the couplet in the note:

When first his voice the youthful Maro tried,

Ere Phoebus touched his ear and checked his pride.

Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design:
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,'
As if the Stagyrite' o'erlooked each line.'
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them."

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each

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Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend,"
(Since rules were made but to promote their end,)
Some lucky licence answer to the full

Th' intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,

May boldly deviate from the common track.

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Concluding all were desp'rate sots and
fools,

Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. -
DR. AIKIN.

The argument of Pope is sophistical and inconsistent. It is inconsistent, because if Virgil found Homer and nature the same, his work would not have been confined within stricter rules when he copied Homer than when he copied nature. It is sophistical, because though Homer may be always natural, all nature is not contained in his works.

5 Rapin's Critical Works, vol. ii. p. 173: "There are no precepts to teach the hidden graces, and all that secret power of poetry which passes to the heart."

6 Neque enim rogationibus plebisve scitis sancta sunt ista præcepta, sed hoc, quicquid est, utilitas excogitavit. Non negabo autem sic utile esse plerumque; verum si eadem illa nobis aliud suadebit utilitas, hanc, relictis magistrorum auctoritatibus, seque

Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,'
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;'
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,3
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.

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In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,'
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice."
But though the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,')
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend

Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;

mur. Quintil. lib. ii. cap. 13.POPE.

1 Dryden's Aurengzebe:

Mean soul, and dar'st not gloriously offend! -STEEVENS.

"From

2 This couplet, in the quarto of 1743, was for the first time placed immediately after the triplet which ends at ver. 160. The effect of this arrangement was that "Pegasus," instead of the " great wits," became the antecedent to the lines, vulgar bounds," &c., and the poetic steed was said to "snatch a grace." Warton commented upon the absur dity of using such language of a horse, and since it is evident that Pope must have overlooked the incongruity, when he adopted the transposition, the lines were restored to their original order in the editions of Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe.

3 So Soame and Dryden of the Ode, in the Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:

Her generous style at random oft will part, And by a brave disorder shows her art. And again :

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4 This allusion is perhaps inaccurate. The shapeless rock, and hanging precipice do not rise out of nature's common order. These objects are characteristic of some of the features of nature, of those especially that are picturesque. If he had said that amid cultivated scenery we are pleased with a hanging rock, the allusion would have been accurate.BOWLES.

The criticism of Bowles does not apply to the passage in Sprat's Account of Cowley, from which Pope borrowed his comparison: "He knew that in diverting men's minds there should be the same variety observed as in the prospects of their eyes, where a rock, a precipice, or a rising wave is often more delightful than a smooth even ground, or a calm sea.'

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5 Another couplet originally followed here:

But care in poetry must still be had;
It asks discretion ev'n in running mad:
And though, &c.

which is the insanire cum ratione taken from Terence by Horace, at Sat. ii. 3, 271.-WAKEFIELD.

6 Their" means "their own." -WARTON.

7 Dryden in his dedication to the

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Let it be seldom, and compelled by need;
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.'
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped2 appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,

Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.3
A prudent chief not always must display'
His pow'rs in equal rank, and fair array,
But with th' occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,"
Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.“

Eneis: "Virgil might make this anachronism by superseding the mechanic rules of poetry, for the same reason that a monarch may dispense with or suspend his own laws."

1 Pope's manuscript supplies two omitted lines:

The boldest strokes of art we may despise, Viewed in false lights with undiscerning eyes.

2 A violation of grammatical propriety, into which many of our first and most accurate writers have fallen. "Mishapen" is doubtless the true participle.-Wakefield.

3 Pope took his imagery from Horace, Ars Poet., 361:

Ut pictura, pocsis erit: quæ, si propiùs
stes,
[abstes:

Te capiat magis; et quædam, si longiùs
Hæc amat obscurum; volet hæc sub luce
videri.

He was also indebted to the translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dryden and Soame:

Each object must be fixed in the due place,
And diff'ring parts have corresponding

grace.

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4 Οἷον τι ποιοῦσιν οἱ φρόνιμοι στρατηλά ται κατὰ τὰς τάξεις τῶν στρατευμάτων. Dion. Hal. De Struct. Orat.-WARBURTON.

5 It may be pertinent to subjoin Roscommon's remark on the same subject:

Far the greatest part

Of what some call neglect is studied art.
When Virgil seems to trifle in a line,
'Tis but a warning piece which gives the
sign,

To wake your fancy and prepare your sight
To reach the noble height of some unusual
flight.-WARTON.

Variety and contrast are necessary, and it is impossible all parts should be equally excellent. Yet it would be too much to recommend introducing trivial or dull passages to enhance the merit of those in which the whole effort of genius might be employed.— BOWLES.

6 Modeste, et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent quod non intelligunt. Ac si necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia

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