A DIALOGUE
TO THE MEMORY OF MR. ALEXANDER POPE.
"Non injussa cano."
Virg.
Poet. I sing of Pope—
Friend. What, Pope, the Twitnam Bard,
Whom Dennis, Cibber, Tibbald push'd so hard!
Pope of the Dunciad! Pope who dar'd to woo,
And then to libel, Wortley-Montagu!
Pope of the Ham-walks story—
P. Scandals all!
Scandals that now I care not to recall.
Surely a little, in two hundred Years,
One may neglect Contemporary Sneers:—
Surely Allowance for the Man may make
That had all Grub-street yelping in his Wake!
And who (I ask you) has been never Mean,
When urged by Envy, Anger or the Spleen?
No: I prefer to look on Pope as one
Not rightly happy till his Life was done;
Whose whole Career, romance it as you please,
Was (what he call'd it) but a "long Disease:"
Think of his Lot,—his Pilgrimage of Pain,
His "crazy Carcass" and his restless Brain;
Think of his Night-Hours with their Feet of Lead,
His dreary Vigil and his aching Head;
Think of all this, and marvel then to find
The "crooked Body with a crooked Mind!"
Nay rather, marvel that, in Fate's Despite,
You find so much to solace and delight,—
So much of Courage, and of Purpose high
In that unequal Struggle not to die.
I grant you freely that Pope played his Part
Sometimes ignobly—but he lov'd his Art;
I grant you freely that he sought his Ends
Not always wisely—but he lov'd his Friends;
And who of Friends a nobler Roll could show—
Swift, St. John, Bathurst, Marchmont, Peterb'ro',
Arbuthnot—
Fr. Atticus?
P. Well (entre nous),
Most that he said of Addison was true.
Plain Truth, you know—
Fr. Is often not polite
(So Hamlet thought)—
P. And Hamlet (Sir) was right.
But leave Pope's Life. To-day, methinks, we touch
The Work too little and the Man too much.
Take up the Lock, the Satires, Eloise—
What Art supreme, what Elegance, what Ease!
How keen the Irony, the Wit how bright,
The Style how rapid, and the Verse how light!
Then read once more, and you shall wonder yet
At Skill, at Turn, at Point, at Epithet.
"True Wit is Nature to Advantage dress'd"—
Was ever Thought so pithily express'd?
"And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line"—
Ah, what a Homily on Yours ... and Mine!
Or take—to choose at Random—take but This—
"Ten censure wrong for one that writes amiss."