Sav. There is very little candour and moderation in the world: even, on Pliny's principle, few, I fear, will be willing to exercise those virtues: so great, as you have just observed, is the malignity of man; they will still, I am of opinion, justify the severity of him whom you have styled "a shallow fellow," and who has remarked, in his poem of the Author, No crime's so great as daring to excel. Johns. The reflection is at once both miserable and mortifying the vice we speak of is one of the most degrading in our nature; but thus, I fear, it will ever be, till reason and philosophy, whose lights, at present, play about us but as coruscations, as glittering yet evanescent meteors, shall break out with a steady and meridian brightness,-when they shall dispel the clouds which we now can scarcely penetrate,—display the beauties of the material world, and teach us to adore the Maker, the great, the glorious, framer of it, whose instruments of knowledge, though he hath been pleased to clothe them in a human form, we are at no time to vilify or contemn. Sav. You think but meanly of the present times: there are some, on the contrary, who consider this as the age of reason and philosophy. Johns. I am well acquainted with their contemptible sophisms: the age of reason! Never will I, for a moment, acknowledge it as such, while War, with all his horrid train of evils, is suffered to stalk at large among mankind. If this be really the age of philosophy, 'tis a philosophy that has taught men to become mad.* If this must actually be styled the age of reason, I well may exclaim with the immortal bard Who talks of reason? 'Twere better to have none than not enough. No, never will I own men to be possessed of reason and Preach some philosophy to make me mad.-SHAKSPEAKE. philosophy until they shall desist from their ridiculous inquiries into the nature and properties of the heavenly mind; until they shall give over the discussion of all abstract, all metaphysical, questions, and confine themselves to the love of their fellows, rendering, at all times, that assistance to each other which must be highly pleasing in the sight of the Author of the universe.-But yonder are Henry the Fourth of France and his minister, the Duc de Sully, who, you may remember, laid down a plan for a perpetual peace. As war is the most dreadful of all terrestrial calamities, let us walk towards them, and ask their present opinion concerning it: nay, hesitate not a moment; all are here on a perfect level; a duke, or even a king, is no more than Johnson or Savage. DIALOGUE XVI. SCENE THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. POPE and CHURCHILL (meeting). Pope. THE author of the "Rosciad," if I mistake not? Church. The same. Pope. The man, whose vanity led him to imagine that he was the first satirist of the age. Church. Something, perhaps, too much of this; nevertheless, I always admired your genius, and had hoped that my own was no way inferior to it: I was, however, cut off in the spring of life; but had I lived a little longer, it is possible I might have equalled you. Pope. If, with such slender abilities, you could imagine yourself my equal, might you not entertain the vainer idea of one day excelling me? Church. Slender abilities! Why truly I had never been engaged in penning moral or didactic essays; neither is there any thing of the pathetic to be found in my writings: your scope was undoubtedly greater than mine, and you have, therefore, received the greater praise; but, in one particular province, that of a satirist, I was, perhaps, your equal. Pope. A satirist! a lampooner, you should rather say; there is a great difference between a satire and a lampoon. Church. I care not for the distinction: I lashed the men who had offended me, or whom I happened not to approve. Pope. Yes, like the furious and frantic Indian, you run full tilt at all; but the business of a satirist is to discriminate, to attack the vice and not the man. Church. Assuredly there is but little to object to me, on that score ; for you may remember that I did not even spare myself. Pope. True; but you dealt too largely in invective and abuse the tomahawk and scalping-knife are disgraceful weapons, and are never made use of by a brave and generous enemy. Church. Could I ever have expected such a reproof from the man who has written the Dunciad? Pope. To hold up ignorance, folly, and pretence to public derision and contempt, is surely to be pardoned, if not commended: we were, no doubt, equally fond of attacking our enemies; mine, however, was nothing more than raillery, yours downright scurrility: Boileau has said Quittons la satire, C'est un méchant métier que celui de médire : En courant à l'honneur, trouve l'ignominie. And I really think him right. Boileau, however, like many others, wrote not according to his own rules; he is frequently a rude and intemperate railer. Pradon, Quinault, and others, whom he attacks with so much. severity (many of whom were in no wise contemptible poets), had never written a line against him. He was always the aggressor; for this he has made an awkward and ridiculous apology in the preface to his works; and it was on account of his satirical humour, that the Duc de Montausier, a man of rigid virtue, so much condemned him, that it was with great difficulty he could be brought to read his poems. The case was widely different with me: I was pestered by a swarm of wasps and hornets, and endeavoured to brush them away. Church. And yet you descended to personalities, even when there was little provocation; nay, sometimes the very reverse of it,-witness the Lord Timon. Pope. Agreed: but mine is the operation of the surgeon; yours the stab of the assassin. Church. The sum of all, I suppose, is this;-you would be considered as the Horace, and rank me as the Juvenal, of our time. Pope. You the Juvenal of your time! By no means: malice and envy blacken not the pages of the Roman satirist: you sometimes present us with a happy line or two, a forcible or brilliant expression, but they are merely the coruscations of a gloomy mind, meteors that sparkle and presently expire. Church. You are mighty free of speech; but this, I suppose, is satire, according to your notion. Pope. Call it what you please; it is certainly not lampooning a man; it savours no way of impertinence or abuse. He who, by his writings, challenges the public opinion, must patiently abide its censure.-I am speaking of the poetry of Mr. Churchill, and not of himself. Church. And yet there is, perhaps, more to censure in the man, than in his writings. Pope. It may be so; but that is not the business of the critic; neither has the satirist, as I have already observed, any thing to do with particular vices-I mean the vices of individuals. Church. Then I have entirely mistaken my business: I was accustomed to exclaim, with Shakspeare's Iago, "O! I am nothing if not critical." Pope. Or rather, as Dr. Johnson explains it, censorious: but you speak ingenuously; you have, indeed, mistaken your business. Your attack on Hogarth, for instance, was wanton and unprovoked; and then to ridicule a man on account of his growing infirmities—such as are consequent of age-what can be more unjustifiable? what more deserving of reprehension ? Church. I feel that your reproof is just: you acknowledge, however, that I had a talent for poetry? Pope. Certainly; and I really wish it had been better employed: but you are merely the poet of a day; your works will have but an ephemeral existence; and this will ever be the fate of the writer who descends to personality and abuse; whose satire, instead of being general, is particular and confined. Many of the characters proscribed by you, were, even in your own time, little known. Bad writers, I say, are open to our attack.— Bad men are amenable to the laws; if superior to those laws, indeed, they will then deserve the poet's lash. Church. The "famosi libelli" of Charles Churchill, (for so, perhaps, his writings would have been styled in the Augustan age,) will then, in your opinion, be shortly forgotten or disregarded? Pope. Such is my opinion: the more especially as, in many parts of your poems, it is difficult to discover your meaning; you are sometimes an absolute Persius for obscurity. Church. My poem of the Ghost is, I must admit, a little obscure; indeed, the circumstance that gave rise to it was a very ridiculous one, and perhaps wholly unworthy the attention of a writer of abilities. Pope. The subject is, in truth, sufficiently comtemptible; you should have left it to some Grub-street poet. |