The narrative of this dark transaction, which seems to have been imperfectly known to Johnson, being too copious for a note, will be found at the close of this article.
A list of all the pamphlets which resulted from the Dunciad would occupy a large space. Many of them were as grossly personal as the celebrated poem. The poet was frequently ridiculed under the names of “Pope Alexander” (from his dictatorial style), and “Sawney.” In “an heroic poem occasioned by the Dunciad,” published in 1728, the poet’s snug retreat at Twickenham is thus alluded to:—
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“Sawney! a mimic sage of huge renown, To Twick’nam bow’rs retir’d, enjoys his wealth, His malice and his muse: in grottoes cool, And cover’d arbours, dreams his hours away.” |
A fragment of Pope’s celebrated grotto still remains; the house is destroyed. Pope spent all his spare cash over his Twickenham villa. “I never save anything,” he said once to Spence; and the latter has left a detailed account of what he meant to do in the further decoration of his garden if he had lived. As he gained a sum of money, he regularly spent it in this way.—Ed.
Pope is, perhaps, the finest character-painter of all satirists. Atterbury, after reading the portrait of Atticus, advised him to proceed in a way which his genius had pointed out; but Arbuthnot, with his dying breath, conjured him “to reform, and not to chastise;” that is, not to spare the vice, but the person. It is said, Pope answered, that, to correct the world with due effect, they become inseparable; and that, deciding by his own experience, he was justified in his opinion. Perhaps, at first, he himself wavered; but he strikes bolder as he gathers strength. The two first editions of the Dunciad, now before me, could hardly be intelligible: they exhibit lines after lines gaping with an hiatus, or obscured with initial letters: in subsequent editions, the names stole into their places. We are told, that the personalities in his satires quickened the sale: the portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atossa, were purchased by everybody; but when he once declared, respecting the characters of one of his best satires, that no real persons were intended, it checked public curiosity, which was felt in the sale of that edition. Personality in his satires, no doubt, accorded with the temper and the talent of Pope; and the malice of mankind afforded him all the conviction necessary to indulge it. Yet Young could depend solely on abstract characters and pure wit; and I believe that his “Love of Fame” was a series of admirable satires, which did not obtain less popularity than Pope’s. Cartwright, one of the poetical sons of Ben Jonson, describes, by a beautiful and original image, the office of the satirist, though he praises Jonson for exercising a virtue he did not always practise; as Swift celebrates Pope with the same truth, when he sings:—
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“Yet malice never was his aim; He lash’d the vice, but spared the name.” |
Cartwright’s lines are:—