How are these blessings thus dispensed and giv'n?
To us from William, and to him from heav'n.
[90] After this verse followed another, to complete the triplet, in the first impressions:
Set up themselves, and drove a sep'rate trade.—Wakefield.
[91] A feeble line of monosyllables, consisting of ten low words.—Warton.
The entire passage seems to be constructed on some remarks of Dryden in his Dedication to Ovid: "Formerly the critics were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works, to illustrate obscure beauties, to place some passages in a better light, to redeem others from malicious interpretations. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? Are they from our seconds become principals against us?" The truth of Pope's assertion, as to the matter of fact, will not bear a rigorous inquisition, as I believe these critical persecutors of good poets to have been extremely few, both in ancient and modern times.—Wakefield.
[92] 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.
[93] 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.
[94] Soame and Dryden's Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry: