[1573] Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden, Cantos i.:
Happy, who in his verse can gently steer
From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.—Wakefield.
[1574] MS.:
And while the muse transported, unconfined,
Soars to the sky, or stoops among mankind,
Teach her like thee, through various fortune wise,
With dignity to sink, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, steer an equal flight
From grave to gay, from profit to delight
Artful with grace, and natural to please,
Intent in business, elegant in ease.
[1575] From Statius, Silv. Lib. i. Carm. iv. 120:
immensæ veluti connexa carinæ
Cymba minor, cum sævit hyems, pro parte, furentes
Parva receptat aquas, et eodem volvitur austro.—Hurd.
Mr. Pope forgot while he wrote ver. 383-6, the censures he had so justly cast, ver. 237, upon that vain desire of an useless immortality—Crousaz.
[1576] An unfortunate prophecy. Posterity has more than confirmed the contempt in which Bolingbroke's character was held by his contemporaries.
[1577] "Pretend" is used in the old and literal sense "to stretch out before any one." Its exact synonym in Pope's line is "proclaim."
[1578] Pope professes to believe that all his poetry up to the Essay on Man was made up of "sounds" to the exclusion of "things," and was addressed as little "to the heart" as to the understanding. His change of subject, and his panegyrics on virtue, had at least not taught him that the manly simplicity of truth was to be preferred to insincere hyperboles.