INTRODUCTION
The meagre information known about James Bramston's life has been ably summarized by F. P. Lock in his introduction to The Man of Taste (ARS 171). For our present purposes, we need only add that Bramston seems to have been acquainted with Pope, who saw The Art of Politicks before it was printed and thought it "pretty". [A] Bramston quite likely met Pope through John Caryll, whose Sussex estate, Lady-Holt, was in the neighborhood of Bramston's parishes.
The Art of Politicks, Bramston's first English poem, was published anonymously in 1729 and advertised in the Monthly Chronicle of 8 December. Several reimpressions followed, as did another London edition, one from Edinburgh, and two from Dublin, all dated 1729, and a London edition of 1731. [B] It was reprinted in Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems, by Several Hands (1748), where it was attributed to Bramston, and in John Bell's Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry, Volume 5 (1789), with a few notes. [C] Horace Walpole's copy of Dodsley's Collection, with a few rather uninformative manuscript notes, is now in the British Library (C.117.aa.16).
It seems likely that the poem was completed in the summer of 1729. The most recent events that Bramston alludes to are Thomas Woolston's trial for blasphemy of 4 March (p. 27) and Sir Paul Methuen's resignation as Treasurer of the King's Household, which was reported in May (p. 13). [D]
Horace's Ars Poetica was one of the most fertile sources for eighteenth-century imitations and adaptations. Some were completely serious attempts to marry one art to another or to show that all arts share the same fundamental principles; an example of this type is John Gwynn's Art of Architecture (1742; ARS 144). Others, like William King's Art of Cookery (1708) are downright burlesques.
Bramston's usual method falls somewhere between these extremes. He often uses the dignity of poetry to show up the indignity of politics or political writing, as on pp. 5-6 where Horace's advice on choice of subject is transformed into advice to "Weekly Writers of seditious News," or on page 7, where the rise and fall of South Sea stock fills the place of Horace's famous comparison of archaic and new-coined words to the leaves of the forest. But Bramston's poem more often aspires to the same level as its model; in this respect it resembles Absalom and Achitophel more than Mac Flecknoe.
Several factors help to bring Ars Poetica and The Art of Politicks together. Perhaps most important, Bramston conceives of politics primarily as a verbal art, the use of speech to persuade others to a course of action. Bribes and other crasser incentives appear in the poem, of course, but they are clearly the result of declining standards. For Bramston, rhetoric should govern politics; the House of Commons is a reincarnation of a Roman senate or courtroom. Bramston's inclusion of political writing as well as politics itself in his poem also helps to keep him in Horace's orbit. On Horace's side, his conception of poetry is basically rhetorical and persuasive; it should instruct and delight, move to laughter or tears. Horace's readiness to digress into literary history gives Bramston many opportunities to bring in political history. The Ars Poetica is very much concerned with the world of men; poets are seen in their social roles, and Horace's standards of literary decorum are usually based on social norms: young men in plays should behave the way young men are observed to behave in real life. The Ars Poetica also contains several sharp satiric darts; Horace's contrast between the eloquence of ancient Greece and the commercial arithmetic of modern Rome slides easily into a contrast between Elizabethan learning and Hanoverian place-hunting (pp.32-33). Finally, Horace's urbane and chatty style is as suitable for other subjects as it is for poetry. To appreciate Horace's adaptability, one need only imagine the difficulty of writing an art of politics in imitation of Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica" or Aristotle's Poetics.
Though he does not pretend to Pope's image of himself as a new Horace bringing the whole weight of Roman tradition to bear on contemporary society, Bramston is very clever on the local level at transposing Horace for his own purposes. Horace recounts the increasing complexity and sophistication of theatrical music, Bramston the increasingly elaborated musical celebrations of victorious candidates (pp. 22-23), and Horace's implication that the sophistication of taste is really a decline—"an impetuous style brought in an unwonted diction" (217)—constitutes an unspoken comment on Bramston's subject. [E] Bramston's page 27 corresponds to Horace's brief history of the theatre, from Thespis's tragedies that he staged on wagons to the silencing of the excessively outspoken chorus of Old Comedy (275-84). Bramston replaces Thespis with Defoe, and the wagon-mounted stage with the cart and pillory. Instead of deploring the silencing of the chorus, Bramston applauds the silencing of Woolston. The contrast between Thespis and Defoe is clearly mock-heroic, but Bramston implies that Woolston's similarity to an ancient satyr is a decline from the character expected of a modern clergyman.
Sometimes the mere fact of changing from a poetic to a political context produces the satire or humour. What is praiseworthy in a poet—the ability to mingle fact and fiction skillfully (151)—becomes highly ironic when applied to a politician who
In Falsehood Probability imploys,
Nor his old Lies with newer Lies destroys.(p. 16)
Horace's "ut pictura poesis" (361) produces this bland but destructive couplet:
Not unlike Paintings, Principles appear,
Some best at distance, some when we are near. (p. 36)
More humourous than satirical is the relation between Horace's declaration that there's no place for a mediocre poet (372-73) and Bramston's
The Middle way the best we sometimes call.
But 'tis in Politicks no way at all.
The conclusion of the poem involves a somewhat more complex transformation. Horace closes with a humourously self-deprecating description of the "poetic itch": the afflicted poet stumbles into ditches as he babbles his verses aloud; people flee from him, and with good reason; if he catches anyone, he hangs on like a leech and reads his victim to death. Bramston describes another "sort of itch," parliamenteering. Sir Harry Clodpole knows better than to make speeches to the electors; he solicits their votes by feasting them, and they run towards him (or his table), not away. They, not he, are the leeches; "they never leave him while he's worth a groat" (p. 45).
Bramston—it seems an excessive refinement to speak of a persona or narrator—presents himself as a rather simple, naive political observer who yearns for clear-cut distinctions between parties; he wants to know where politicians stand on issues. The confusion, the blurring of old party lines, in present-day England is like the monster in the frontispiece. Though simple, he is also well informed. He seems to have a good knowledge of British history since the Restoration, referring casually to the Exclusion Crisis of 1680-81 (p. 15), the Kentish Petition of 1701 (p. 10), and the South Sea Bubble of 1720 (p. 7). All these past events are used to reinforce present lessons. He is up-to-date, as shown by his reference to the recent events in the careers of Methuen and Woolston. He professes familiarity with the characters of the leading politicians and also knows something about what is going on in the constituencies. He knows, or claims to know, how different kinds of listeners will react to different kinds of speeches.
For a son of Christ Church, one of the most Tory Colleges of Tory Oxford, he seems remarkably non-partisan, though his Opposition biases do show through. When he says that "Addison's immortal Page" shows us how "to screen good Ministers from Publick rage" (p. 9), he is clearly aiming at Walpole, known as the "Screenmaster General" since his success in shielding many of the perpetrators of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. (I have not been able to discover the passage of Addison that Bramston had in mind.) When the aspiring orator is urged not to "join with silver Tongue a brazen Face" (p. 24), Walpole is again present by innuendo, for "brazen-face" was another of his nicknames. On the other hand, Bramston also makes fun of the "everlasting Fame" that results from quibbling on Sir Robert's name (p. 6). Bramston perhaps has it both ways here; while ridiculing commonplace puns, he also invites us to remember that "Robin" does indeed sound very much like "robbing."
Sometimes he is more subtle and ironic. This subtlety caused difficulty for at least one contemporary reader, and may do the same for us. Consider the following passage, which parallels Horace's advice always to show Achilles wrathful, Orestes mourning, and the like:
To Likelihood your Characters confine;
Don't turn Sir Paul out, let Sir Paul resign.
In Walpole's Voice (if Factions Ill intend)
Give the two Universities a Friend;
Give Maidston Wit, and Elegance refin'd;
To both the Pelhams give the Scipios Mind;
To Cart'ret, Learning, Eloquence, and Parts;
To George the Second, give all English Hearts. (p. 13)
One of Bramston's early readers found his poem very faulty, and many of his complaints were directed against the passage just quoted.
Such artless art did ever mortal see,
Or politicks so void of policy?
Hail politician bard! we ask not whether
A whig or tory; thou art both and neither.
Poultney and Walpole each adorn thy lays,
Which one for love, and one for money praise.
Alike are mention'd, equally are sung
Will. Shippen staunch, and slight Sir Wm. Young.
Bromley and Wyndham share the motley strain,
With Cart'ret, Maidstone, and the Pelhams twain. [F]
This critic finds two main faults in the poem: misinformation and confusion about particular individuals and, more generally, an inability to distinguish Whigs from Tories and give each their due. This last complaint of course mocks Bramston's lament at the beginning of the poem about the current lack of distinction between parties.
To what extent is this critique justified? What is Bramston trying to do in this passage? There is no problem with the second line: Sir Paul Methuen did indeed resign his office, and one gets the impression from Hervey (pp. 101-2, 250) that he never let anyone forget that he resigned. Thus we have here the most conventional of truisms. Walpole is more difficult. He was certainly no friend of the universities, which were Tory hotbeds. On the other hand, he was reluctant to try to reduce their privileges or bring them more closely under government control, for fear of rousing them to keener opposition. Nowhere else did he follow so faithfully his policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. [G] In a certain sense, then, he might be called a friend of the universities. I have been unable to determine whom Bramston means by "Maidston"—perhaps one of the Finches, the most prominent family in the area of Maidstone, Kent. Bramston's critic is certainly right about the Pelhams: they have nothing whatever in common with the Scipios. Scipio Africanus Major (236-184/3) was one of the most illustrious Roman heroes, consul during the Second Punic War and an outstanding military tactician. Scipio Africanus Minor (c. 185-129) was not only a consul and a military hero but a great patron of letters whom Cicero considered the greatest Roman of them all. [H] Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1693-1768), Walpole's chief election manager, was notoriously muddle-headed, nervous, embarrassed, swamped in petty detail, suspicious, fretful, pompous, and indecisive. [J] His brother, Henry Pelham (1695?-1754), was much less well known; reserved and withdrawn, he preferred to work in the background, and his tactical and organizational abilities were not recognized until considerably later. [K] As far as their public image was concerned, then, no two men could be less like the Scipios. Most contemporaries agreed with Bramston's praise of John Carteret, Earl Granville (1690-1763), though many of them also mention other, less admirable traits. [M] As for George II, it depends on whose hearts you consult. An anonymous journalist:
What an Assurance has the Kingdom already given of an unfeigned Affection to their Majesties Persons and Government? How do the People shew that none are acceptable to them, but those that are so to their Majesties? How can Subjects give stronger Proofs of the high Esteem they have their Sovereign in, for Penetration and Wisdom, than those who entirely rely upon the Royal Discerning, and regulate their Conduct by the King's Direction? [N]
William Pultney:
The Queen is hated, the King despised, their son both the one and the other, and such a spirit of disaffection to the family and general discontent with the present Government is spread all over the Kingdom, that it is absolutely impossible for things to go on in the track they are now in. [O]
By now Bramston's method should be clear: he is praising everyone, but the praise fits the Opposition (such as Carteret) much better than it does the Government (the Pelhams). There is perhaps room for doubt about Walpole and George II, but Bramston's critic's failure to see the irony in the comparison of Pelhams to Scipios must be the result of sheer obtuseness. The rationale for Bramston's technique becomes clearer if we look again at Horace and recall that the basis of his advice is to follow conventional opinion. The conventional opinions that Bramston is by implication urging his pupil to follow are those of the politician's supporters and dependents. It just happens that Bramston has chosen his examples so that the Opposition conventions are closer to reality than the Government conventions. [P]
All this is fun, but it is quite inoffensive. There's no animus, no vehemence, no bite. Politics do not really engage any of Bramston's strong convictions. The self-portrait he offers us on pages 29-30 would be for many political satirists of the period a transparent facade of mock-innocence, but it seems to fit Bramston very accurately:
Alas Poor Me, you may my fortune guess: I write, and yet Humanity profess:
By contrast to the increasing acrimony of most political satire of the late 1720's, this attitude is at least refreshing.
NOTES TO THE ART OF POLITICKS
Given the topical nature of The Art of Politicks, the best use of my remaining space is probably to annotate the poem. From what I have learned about its background—and many mysteries remain—I have tried to choose what seems most relevant. In the interests of saving space, and since full annotation is not possible anyway, I have kept documentation to a minimum, especially where the information comes from easily available sources like the DNB or, conversely, has been pieced together from several sources. Some works are occasionally referred to by abbreviation or author's name; the ones not mentioned in the Notes to the Introduction are the following: [Q]
Cobbett: William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: T. C. Hansard, 1806-20).
Ellis: Jonathan Swift, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, ed. Frank H. Ellis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
Grey: Anchitel Grey, Debates of the House of Commons from the Year 1667 to the Year 1694 (London, 1763).
Thomas: Peter D. G. Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
Realey: Charles B. Realey, The Early Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole 1720-1727 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1931).
[Transcriber's Note:
The paragraph and line numbers in bold,which begin the footnotes, i.e. P. 1, line 1.
are referenced to the original text, they do not correspond to the computerized version.]
[] P. 1, line 1. Sir James: Sir James Thornhill (c. 1675-1734). As MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1722-34) and Serjeant Painter to the King (1720-32), he embodies the parallel between art and politics that underlies Bramston's poem. His best-known works were the dome of St. Paul's and the paintings in Greenwich Hospital. Hogarth married his daughter in 1729.
[ii] P. 2, line 4. Cf. Hervey's comment on Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, who "affected to conciliate in himself both characters of Whig and Tory, declaring himself always a Whig in the State and a Tory in the Church" (pp. 90-91). Gibson's attitude can be traced back at least as far as Swift's Sentiments of a Church of England Man (1711).
[iii] line 11. Patriots: the self-awarded designation of the major group of Walpole's opponents.
[iv] P. 3, line 6. Parliament devoted considerable time to fixing turnpike tolls.
[v] Fleury: André Hercule de (1653-1743). Created a cardinal in 1726, he was chief adviser to Louis XV of France from that date till his death, and therefore a person of great interest to England. His guiding principle was to keep France at peace with the rest of Europe.
[vi] P. 4, lines 2-3. "Tory" originally meant an Irish outlaw, and "Whig" a Scottish rebel. For other theories of the origin of "Whig" that were current in 1729, see OED.
[vii] line 12. Repetition Day: a day on which schoolboys recite memorized lessons.
[viii] P. 5, lines 7. The human face in Bramston's frontispiece has been said to resemble Heidegger, but it does not seem to match his reputation for extreme ugliness. See TE, 5, 92, 290, 443-44.
[ix] All Mr. Heydegger's Letters come directed to him from abroad, A Monsieur, Monsieur Heydegger, Surintendant des Plaisirs d' Angleterre.
[x] P. 6, lines 3-4. Ridpath: George Ridpath (d. 1726), Whig journalist. Abel Roper (1665-1726), publisher of the Tory Post Boy.
[xi] P. 7, line 10. Pinkethman: William Pinkethman (or Penkethman) (d. 1725), a comic actor said to have once eaten three chickens in two seconds. See TE, 4, 220, 377.
[xii] line 12. Maypole: This remarkable barometer of intellectual history was razed by the Puritan parliament in 1644. A new one, 134 feet tall, was set up at the Restoration; it, or a successor, had decayed to a height of twenty feet in 1717 when Sir Isaac Newton acquired it and presented it to James Pound to use as a telescope mount.
[xiii] P. 8, line 2. Newer Square: Cavendish Square, according to Horace Walpole's annotation.
[xiv] line 6. The bridge at Putney Ferry was completed in 1729.
[xv] P. 9, lines 4-5. Thomas Tickell's poetical Epistle from a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon went through five editions in 1717.
[xvi] lines 6-7. "Caleb D'Anvers" was the pseudonym under which appeared The Craftsman, the opposition journal directed by Bolingbroke and Pultney. Bramston's expression of ignorance must be ironic.
[xvii] P. 10, lines 1-2. Arthur Onslow, who became Speaker in 1728, insisted that all members bow to the Speaker's Chair when entering or leaving the House (Thomas, p. 356).
[xviii] line 12. The "Kentish Petition" was presented to the Tory-controlled Parliament on 8 May 1701 by five gentlemen of Kent. It urged Parliament to grant speedily to King William the subsidies that would enable him to pursue his European wars against Louis XIV. Parliament did not consider its words soft; it voted the petition seditious, scandalous, and insolent, and arrested the five gentlemen, who thereupon became popular heroes, at least among the Whigs. See Defoe's History of the Kentish Petition (1701) and Ellis, pp. 53-56, 65-66.
[xix] P. 11, lines 3-8. Pultney: William Pultney (1684-1764), later Earl of Bath. The leader of the "Patriot" opposition to Walpole in the House of Commons. Hervey reluctantly concedes that his abilities were outstanding (pp. 790-91).
[xx] P. 12, line 4. the Rod: that is, the rod of the Serjeant-at-Arms, the officer responsible for keeping order in the House of Commons.
[xxi] line 6. the Bar: The Bar marked the outer limit of the House, and, as the lines imply, was where offenders stood to be reprimanded.
[xxii] lines 11-12. The "one cause" is presumably Walpole's patronage. The Cornish constituencies were notoriously corrupt even by eighteenth-century standards, and Walpole cultivated the Scots assiduously. A Scottish "laird" is a landowner, not a "lord" in the English sense.
[xxiii] P. 13, line 12. Flying-Squadron: apparently a group which claimed to vote by principle rather than from attachment to any party. Sir Joseph Jekyll was considered its leader. See Sedgwick, House of Commons, 2, 175; Realey, p. 54; and OED, "Squadron 7," "Squadrone b.," and "Squadronist."
[xxiv] P. 15, lines 2ff. The famous speech of Colonel Silius Titus (7 Jan. 1681) was widely reported in two slightly different versions; see Grey, 8, 279 and Cobbett, 4,1291. In both these versions the question is whether to keep the lion out or to let him in and chain him. Bramston may have been following an independent tradition or merely exercising poetic license. The lion is, of course, James, Duke of York, the Roman Catholic heir to the throne.
[xxv] Lane: Sir Richard Lane (c. 1667-1756), MP for Worcester 1727-34. He was a merchant, sugar baker, and salt trader, and a consistent supporter of the administration. For examples of his indecorous use of biblical allusions see Sedgwick, 2, 197-98 (the "bantering speech" mentioned there used the Book of Revelation to prove that merchants were the best people on earth); and Knatchbull, p. 137.
[xxvi] P. 16, line 5. Rufus: King William II, son of William the Conqueror, known as William Rufus, was often evoked as an example of tyranny, as in Pope's Windsor-Forest.
[xxvii] P. 17, lines 9-10. Prince William: younger son of George II, eight years old in 1729; Louisa: youngest daughter of King George, then five.
[xxviii] P. 18, line 4. William Shippen (1673-1743) was an extreme Tory, noted for his outspoken attacks on the Walpole ministry, one of which landed him in the Tower. Sir William Yonge (c. 1693-1755) was notorious, at least among the opposition, for voluble but empty speeches in support of Walpole, "melodious nothings" as one satirist put it. See also Hervey, p. 36, and TE, 4, 394. The attack on The Art of Politicks quoted above complains that Shippen and Yonge should be mentioned in the same breath, but Bramston's point obviously is that the young MP cares nothing for either side.
[xxix] P. 20, line 8. Polly Peachum is of course the heroine of Gay's Beggar's Opera. The role was played by Lavinia Fenton, who immediately became the toast of London. "Old Sir John" may be Sir John Hobart (1693-1756), although he was only fifteen years older than Miss Fenton (see Sedgwick, 2, 142). His name was sometimes spelled "Hubbard," and the following stanza appears in "A New Ballad Inscrib'd to Polly Peachum" (British Library C-116.i.4 #38), the cavalier typography of which perhaps indicates hasty composition:
Then came Sir J—— H—— Thundring at thy Cubboard: But you cast them like a Lubboard And did soon dispatch him.
[xxx] P. 21, line 10. The House of Commons had used St.Stephen's Chapel as its meeting place since the mid-sixteenth century. Dover-Court is "a proverbial term for a company, in which all are speakers and none hearers" (Bell).
[xxxi] P. 23, line 2. Waits: "a small body of wind instrumentalists maintained by a city or town at the public charge" (OED).
[xxxii] line 10. To sell bargains is to return indecent answers to civil questions.
[xxxiii] P. 24, line 6. Mother Needham was a prominent bawd, notorious for her foul language. See TE, 4, 374-75, and 5, 293-94.
[xxxiv] lines 7-8. "Oldfieldismus" and "Kibberismus" refer respectively to the styles of Anne Oldfield, a well-known actress, and Colley Cibber, playwright, stage manager, and hero of the Dunciad. Mrs. Oldfield was generally respected, but Pope, like Bramston, seems to have disliked her (TE, 4, 375).
[xxxv] line 11. Tallboy was a booby young lover in Richard Brome's comedy The Jovial Crew (1641), popular throughout the eighteenth century.
[xxxvi] P. 26, line 12.Mist: Nathaniel Mist, Tory journalist. See TE, 5, 448. Eusden: Laurence Eusden, Poet Laureate 1718-30, often ridiculed by Pope.
[xxxvii] line 14. Cibber's opera is Love in a Riddle (1729), designed to capitalize on the craze for ballad opera created by The Beggar's Opera.
[xxxviii] P. 27, line 5. Censor: Sir Richard Steele as Isaac Bickerstaffe, the nominal author of The Tatler.
[xxxix] P. 29, line 6. Where Edmund Curll stood was in the pillory.
[xl] P. 31, line 3. Hugo Grotius's classic of political science, De jure belli ac pacis, was published in 1625 and translated in 1654.
[xli] P. 32, line 1. Wickfort: Abraham de Wicquefort, l'Ambassadeur et ses fonctions (La Haye, 1680). It was summarized in The Craftsman of 23 Sept. 1727.
[xlii] line 4. John Banks was the author of The Unhappy Favourite; or the Earl of Essex (1681) and of The Island Queens, or the Death of Mary, Queen of Scotland (prohibited in 1684; a revision was produced in 1704). Bell says that although "written in the most contemptible language, yet they never fail to melt the audience into tears, merely by the force of judicious and well-arranged plots and incidents."
[xliii] P. 33, line 1. Arch-Bishop: William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury since 1716. He was 72 in 1729. Master of the Rolls: Sir Joseph Jekyll, who had held the office since 1717, was about 66 in 1729.
[xliv] line 12. Spence: Thomas Spence (d. 1737), Serjeant-at-Arms.
[xlv] P. 34, line 3. Toft: In 1726 one Mary Toft claimed to have given birth to seventeen live rabbits, and some who should have known better believed her. See Pope's poem on her, TE, 6, 259, and Hogarth's engraving.
[xlvi] throws: i.e., throes, labor pains.
[xlvii] line 8. Bromley and Hanmer: William Bromley (?1663-1732), MP for Oxford 1701-32, Speaker 1710-13; Sir Thomas Hanmer (1677-1746), who represented several constituencies from 1701-27 and was Speaker 1714-15. They were Tory heroes, at least to Atterbury, for having refused the places offered them by George I in 1715 (Foord, p. 51).
[xlviii] P. 35, line 1. Tonson: Jacob Tonson, prominent bookseller.
[xlix] line 9. Cler. Dom. Com.: "Clerk of the House of Commons."
[l] P. 36, line 2. Die Martis is Tuesday; Thursday is Die Jovis.
[li] line 6. Wyndham: Sir William Wyndham, MP for Somerset 1710-40, prominent opposition leader from the 1720s. See Sedgwick, 2, 562-64, for his reputation. Hervey believed that his high reputation was partly due to Walpole's henchmen, who inflated it in order to deflate Pultney's (p. 21).
[lii] P. 44, line 4. Sir Robert Fagg was better known for horse-racing and wenching than for politics; he appears in Hogarth's painting of The Beggar's Opera admiring Lavinia Fenton and in the ballad cited in my note to p. 20, line 8. Running for Parliament in the borough of Steyning, Sussex, in 1722, he came in third in a five-man race with nineteen votes. He also ran third in 1727; the vote is not recorded, unless Bramston's "two Voices" is to be taken literally.
Université de Montréal
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[A] Letter to John Caryll, 6 Feb. 1731. Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 3, 173. See also Antony Coleman's introduction to James Miller's Harlequin-Horace (1731; ARS 178).
[B] D. F. Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1975), 1, 77. I should also like to thank Mr. Foxon for generous personal help.
[C] I owe my knowledge of Bell's edition to Kent Mullikin of the University of North Carolina.
[D] Woolston was convicted on four counts of blasphemy on 4 March 1729. His offending works were six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727-29). He never succeeded in paying his fine of £100 (Pope, Poems (Twickenham Edition, genl. ed. John Butt; London: Methuen, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939-69), 5, 459). Hereafter referred to as TE.
Methuen's resignation is erroneously dated in 1730 in DNB and in Romney Sedgwick, The House of Commons 1715-1754 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 2, 254. See Abel Boyer, The Political State of Great Britain, 37 (May 1729), 523, and John, Lord Hervey. Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, ed. Romney Sedgwick (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1931), pp. 101-02. According to Hervey, Methuen's ostensible reason for resigning was his dislike of the general conduct of the court, his real reason his failure to be appointed Secretary of State.
[E] Translations of Horace are taken from the Loeb Library edition, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961). Line numbers of the Latin verse are in the text.
[F] "Verses on the Art of Politicks," Additions to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. Together with Many Original Poems and Letters, of Contemporary Writers, Never Before Published (London, 1776). 1. 158-59. I have been unable to discover where the poem was first printed.
[G] J. H. Plumb. Sir Robert Walpole (London: Cresset). Vol. I (1956). pp. 249-50; Sir Edward Knatchbull, Parliamentary Diary, 1722-30, ed. A. N. Newman (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1963), p.42.
[H] Most of my information about the Scipios comes from the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
[J] DNB; Ray A. Kelch, Newcastle: A Duke without Money (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 9-11; Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. xi-xiii, 80-88.
[K] DNB; Browning, p. 18.
[M] Plumb, Walpole, 2 (1960), 52-53; Hervey, pp. 411-12; Browning, p. 113; Archibald S. Foord, His Majesty's Opposition, 1714-1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 142-45.
[N] The British Journal, 258 (2 Sept. 1727), p. 1.
[O] Reported by Hervey toward the end of 1729 (p. 105).
[P] For illuminating discussions of Opposition ideology and literary strategies, see Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope, 1731-1743 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1969); Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle: The Politicks of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); and J.V. Guerinot and Rodney D. Jilg, eds., The Beggar's Opera: Contexts (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1976), esp. pp. 69-95.
[Q] Part of the research for this introduction was done while I held a Leave Fellowship from the Canada Council, whom I should like to thank for their support.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The facsimile of The Art of Politicks (1729) is reproduced by permission from a copy of the first edition (Shelf Mark: *PR3326/B287A8; Foxon B383) in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The total type-page (p. 19) measures 152 x 93 mm.
