willing to lose the two next lines, which yet are dearly bought if they cannot be retained without the four that follow them. X. ON MR. ELIJAH FENTON. AT EASTHAMSTEAD, IN BERKSHIRE, 1730. This modest stone, what few vain marbles can, A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate, Whom Heaven kept sacred from the proud and great: Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, Content with science in the vale of peace. Calmly he look'd on either life, and here Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear; From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfy'd, Thank'd Heaven that he had liv'd, and that he dy'd. The first couplet of this epitaph is borrowed from Crashaw. The four next lines contain a species of praise peculiar, original, and just. Here, therefore, the inscription should have ended, the latter part containing nothing but what is common to every man who is wise and good. The character of Fenton was so amiable, that I cannot forbear to wish for some poet or biographer to display it more fully for the advantage of posterity. If he did not stand in the first rank of genius, he may claim a place in the second; and, whatever criticism may object to his writings, censure could find very little to blame in his life. XI. ON MR. GAY, IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY, 1732. Of manners gentle, of affection mild; Above temptation, in a low estate; As Gay was the favourite of our author, this epitaph was probably written with an uncommon degree of attention; yet it is not more successfully executed than the rest, for it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labour. The same observation may be extended to all works of imagination, which are often influenced by causes wholly out of the performer's power, by hints of which he perceives not the origin, by sudden elevations of mind which he cannot. produce in himself, and which sometimes rise when he expects them least. The two parts of the first line are only echoes of each other; gentle manners and mild affections, if they mean any thing, must mean the same. That Gay was a man in wit is a very frigid commendation; to have the wit of a man is not much for poet. The wit of man", and the simplicity of child, make a poor and vulgar contrast, and raise no ideas of excellence either intellectual or moral. In the next couplet rage is less properly introduced after the mention of mildness and gentleness, which are made the constituents of his character; for a man so mild and gentle to temper his rage, was not difficult. The next line is inharmonious in its sound, and mean in its conception; the opposition is obvious, and the word lash, used absolutely, and without any modification, is gross and improper. To be above temptation in poverty, and free from corruption among the great, is indeed such a peculiarity as deserved notice. But to be a safe companion is a praise merely negative, arising not from possession of virtue, but the absence of vice, and that one of the most odious. As little can be added to his character, by asserting, that he was lamented in his end. Every man that dies is, at least by the writer of his epitaph, supposed to be lamented; and therefore this general lamentation does no honour to Gay. The first eight lines have no grammar; the adjectives are without any substantive, and the epithets without a subject. The thought in the last line, that Gay is buried in the bosoms of the worthy and the good, who are distinguished only to lengthen the line, is so dark that few understand it; and so harsh when it is explained, that still fewer approve. XII. INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON, IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY. ISAACUS NEWTONIUS: Quem immortalem Testantur, Tempus, Natura, Cælum : Mortalem Hoc Marmor fatetur. Nature, and Nature's laws, lay hid in night; Of this epitaph, short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why part should be Latin, and part English, it is not easy to discover. In the Latin the opposition of immortalis and mortulis is a mere sound, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any sense contrary to that in which he is mortal. In the verses the thought is obvious, and the words night and light are too nearly allied. • Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. Dryden on Mrs. Killigrew. C. XIII. ON EDMUND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, WHO DIED IN THE NINETEENTH YEAR OF HIS AGE, 1735. If modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd, Pays the last tribute of a saint to Heaven. This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the rest; but I know not for what reason. To crown with reflection is surely a mode of speech approaching to nonsense. Opening virtues blooming round, is something like tautology; the six following lines are poor and prosaic. Art is in another couplet used for arts, that a rhyme may be had to heart. The six last lines are the best, but not excellent. The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of criticism. The contemptible Dialogue between He and She should have been suppressed for the author's sake. In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular upon one of the few things that make wise men serious, he confounds the living man with the dead: Under this stone, or under this sill, When a man is once buried, the question under what he is buried, is easily decided. He forgot that, though he wrote the epitaph in a state of uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over him till his grave was made. Such is the folly of wit when it is ill employed. The world has but little new; even this wretchedness seems to have been borrowed from the following tuneless lines: Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu Sub quicquid voluit benignus hæres Sive hærede benignior comes, seu Opportunis incidens Viator: Nam scire haud potuit futura, sed nee Tanti erat vacuum sibi cadaver Ut urnam cuperet parare vivens, Vivens ista tamen sibi paravit. Quæ inscribi voluit suo sepulchro Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have ever had such an illustrious imitator. DR. WARBURTON'S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE OCTAVO EDITION OF MR. POPE'S WORKS, 1751. Ms. Pope, in his last illness, amused himself, amidst the care of his higher concerns, in preparing a corrected and complete edition of his writings; and, with his usual delicacy, was even solicitous to prevent any share of the offence they might occasion, from falling on the friend whom he had engaged to give them to the public. In discharge of this trust, the public has here a complete edition of his works, executed in such a manner, as, I am persuaded, would have been to his satisfaction. The editor hath not, for the sake of profit, suffered the author's name to be made cheap by a subscription; nor his works to be defrauded of their due honours by a vulgar or inelegant impression; nor his memory to be disgraced by any pieces unworthy of his talents or virtue. On the contrary, he hath, at a very great expense, ornamented this edition with all the advantages which the best artists in paper, printing, and sculpture, could bestow upon it. If the public hath waited longer than the deference due to it should have suffered, it was owing to a reason which the editor need not to make a secret; it was his regard to the family-interests of his deceased friend. Mr. Pope, at his death, left large impressions of several parts of his works, unsold; the property of which was adjudged to belong to his executors; and the cditor was willing they should have time to dispose of them to the best advantage, before the publication of this edition (which hath been long prepared) should put a stop to the sale. But it may be proper to be a little more particular concerning the superiority of this edition above all the preceding, so far as Mr. Pope himself was concerned. What the Editor hath done, the reader must collect for himself. The first volume, and the original poems in the second, are here printed from a copy corrected throughout by the author himself, even to the very preface; which, with several additional notes in his own hand, he delivered to the editor a little before this death. The juvenile translations, in the other part of the second volume, it was never his intention to bring into this edition of his works, on account of the levity of some, the freedom of others, and the little importance of any but these being the property of other men, the editor had it not in his power to follow the author's intention. The third volume, all but the Essay on Man, (which, together with the Essay on Criticism, the author, a little before his death, had corrected and published in quarto, as a specimen of his projected edition) was printed by him in his last illness (but never published) in the manner it is now given. The disposition of the Epistle on the Characters of Men is quite altered; that on the Claracters of Women, much enlarged; and the Epistles on Riches and Taste, corrected and improved. To these advantages of the third volume must be added a great number of fine verses taken from the author's manuscript copies of these poems, communicated by him for this purpose to the editor. These, when he first published the poems to which they belong, he thought proper, for various reasons, to omit. Some from the manuscript copy of the Essay on Man, which tended to discredit fate, and to recommend the moral government of God, had, by the editor's advice, been restored to their places in the last edition of that poem. The rest, together with others of the like sort from his manuscript copy of the other Ethic Epistles, are here inserted at the bottom of the page, under the title of Variations. VOL. XIL The fourth volume contains the Satires, with their Prologue, the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; and Epilogue, the two poems entitled MDCCXXXVIII. The Prologue and Epilogue are here given with the like advantages as the Ethic Epistles in the foregoing volume, that is to say, with the variations, or additional verses, from the author's manuscripts. The Epilogue to the Satires is likewise enriched with many and large notes, now first printed from the author's own manuscript. The fifth volume contains a correcter and completer edition of the Dunciad than hath been hitherto published; of which, at present, I have only this further to add, that it was at my request he laid the plan of a fourth book. I often told him, it was a pity so fine a poem should remain disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insignificant of all dunces, bad rhymers, and malevolent cavillers; that he ought to raise and ennoble it, by pointing his satire against the most pernicious of all, minute-philosophers and free-thinkers. I imagined too, it was for the interest of religion, to have it known, that so great a genius had a due abhorrence of these pests of virtue and society. He came readily into my opinion; but, at the same time, told me it would create him many enemies: he was not mistaken; for, though the terrour of his pen kept them for some time in respect, yet on his death they rose with unrestrained fury, in numerous coffee-house tables, and Grub-street libels. The plan of this admirable satire was artfully contrived to show, that the follies and defects of a fashionable education naturally led to, and necessarily ended in, free-thinking; with design to point out the only remedy adequate to so fatal an evil. It was to advance the same ends of virtue and religion, that the editor prevailed on him to alter every thing in his moral writings that might be suspected of having the least glance towards fate, or naturalism; and to add what was proper to convince the world, that he was warmly on the side of moral government and a revealed will: and it would be injustice to his memory not to declare, that he embraced these occasions with the most unfeigned. pleasure. The sixth volume consists of Mr. Pope's Miscellaneous Pieces, in verse and prose1. Amongst the verse several fine poems make now their appearance in his works: and of the prose, all that is good, and nothing but what is exquisitely so, will be found in this edition. The seventh, eighth, and ninth yolumes, consist entirely of his Letters; the more valuable, as they, are the only true models which we, or perhaps any of our neighbours have, of familiar epistles. This collection is now made more complete by the addition of several new pieces. Yet, excepting a short, explanatory letter to Col. M. and the letters to Mr. A. and Mr. W. (the latter of which are given to show the editor's inducements, and the engagements he was under, to intend the care of this. edition) excepting these, I say, the rest are all published from the author's own printed, though not published, copies, delivered to the editor. On the whole, the advantages of this edition, above the preceding, are these: That it is the first complete collection which has ever been made of his original writings; that all his principal poems, of early or later date, are here given to the public with his last corrections and improvements; that a great number of his verses are here first printed from the manuscript copies of his principal poems of later date; that many new notes of the author's are here added to his poems; and lastly, that several pieces, both in prose and verse, make now their first appearance before the public. The author's life deserves a just volume; and the editor intends to give it. For to have been one of the first poets in the world is but his second praise. He was in a higher class: he was one of the noblest works of God: he was an honest man2; a man who alone possessed more real virtue than, in very corrupt times, needing a satirist like him, will sometimes fall to the share of multitudes. In this history of his life, will be contained a large account of his writings; a critique on the nature, force, and extent of his genius, exemplified from these writings; and a vindication of his moral character, exemplified by his more distinguished virtues; his filial piety, his disinterested friendship, his reverence for the constitution of his country, his love and dmiration of virtue, and (what was the necessary effect) his hatred and contempt of vice, his extensive charity to the indigent, his warm benevolence to mankind, his supreme veneration of the deity, and, above all, his sincere belief of revelation. Nor shall his faults be concealed; it is not for the interest of his virtues that they The prose is not within the plan of this edition. 2 A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod; An honest man 's the noblest work of God, |