have suggested the idea more naturally. Both these, there is proof that Pope had read: there is none that he had read the "Lutrin," nor did he read French with ease to himself. The "Lutrin," meantime, is as much below the "Rape of the Lock" in brilliancy of treatment, as it is dissimilar in plan or the quality of its pic

tures.

which his own previous share of the Homeric
labour had been executed. It was disgraceful
enough, and needs no exaggeration.
Let it,
therefore, be reported truly: Pope personally
translated one-half of the "Odyssey"-a dozen
books he turned out of his own oven; and, if you
add the Batrachomyomachia, his dozen was a
baker's dozen. The journeymen did the other
twelve; were regularly paid; regularly turned
off when the job was out of hand; and never once
had to "strike for wages." How much beer was
allowed, I cannot say. This is the truth of the
matter. So no more fibbing, Schlosser, if you

please.

But there remains behind all these labours of Pope, the "Dunciad," which is by far his greatest.

The "Essay on Man" is a more thorny subject. When a man finds himself attacked and defended from all quarters, and on all varieties of principle, he is bewildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He must not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose; he must not disown a zealous defender, though making concessions on his own behalf not agreeable to himself; he must not explain away ugly | I shall not, within the narrow bounds assigned phrases in one direction, or perhaps he is recanting the very words of his " guide, philosopher, and friend," who cannot safely be taxed with having first led him into temptation; he must not explain them away in another direction, or he runs full tilt into the wrath of mother Churchwho will soon bring him to his senses by penance. Long lents, and no lampreys allowed, would soon cauterise the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope did wisely, situated as he was, in a decorous nation, and closely connected, upon principles of fidelity under political suffering, with the Roman Catholics, to say little in his own defence. That defence, and any reversionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the Quixote undertaker, he left-meekly but also slyly, humbly but cunningly to those whom he professed to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All parties found their account in the affair. Pope slept in peace; several pugnacious gentlemen up and down Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each other's jackets; and Warburton, the attorney, finally earned his bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a writer, who was aghast at finding himself first trampled on as a deist, and then exalted as a defender of the faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's courtesy, when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord Bolingbroke sincere in their whole extent.

to me, enter upon a theme so exacting; for, in this instance, I should have to fight not against Schlosser only, but against Dr. Johnson, who has thoroughly misrepresented the nature of the "Dunciad," and, consequently, could not measure its merits. Neither he, nor Schlosser, in fact, ever read more than a few passages of this admirable poem. But the villany is too great for a brief exposure. One thing only I will notice of Schlosser's misrepresentations. He asserts (not when directly speaking of Pope, but afterwards, under the head of Voltaire) that the French author's trivial and random Temple de Gout "shows the superiority in this species of poetry to have been greatly on the side of the Frenchman." Let's hear a reason, though but a Schlosser reason, for this opinion: know, then, all men whom it concerns, that "the Englishman's satire only hit such people as would never have been known without his mention of them, whilst Voltaire selected those who were still called great, and their respective schools." Pope's men, it seems, never had been famous-Voltaire's might cease to be so, but as yet they had not ceased; as yet they commanded interest. Now mark how I will put three bullets into that plank, riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped by all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser will have to swim for his life. First, he is forgetting that, by his own previous confession, Voltaire, not less than Pope, had "immortalised a great many insignificant persons;" consequently, had it been any fault to do so, each alike was caught in that fault; and insignificant as the people might be, if they could

Of Pope's "Homer" Schlosser thinks fit to say, amongst other evil things, which it really does deserve (though hardly in comparison with the German "Homer" of the ear-splitting Voss), "that Pope pocketed the subscription of the Odyssey,' and left the work to be done by his understrap-be pers." Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do that any more. True it is, and disgraceful enough, that Pope (like modern contractors for a railway or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions of the undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his contracts. At least I know of people now-a-days (much better artists) that would execute such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping time at thirty per cent. less. But navies and bill-brokers, that are in excess now, then were scarce. Still the affair, though not mercenary, was illiberal in a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more pointedly Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in

"immortalised," then we have Schlosser himself confessing to the possibility that poetic splendour should create a secondary interest where originally there had been none. Secondly, the question of merit does not rise from the object of the archer, but from the style of his archery. Not the choice of victims, but the execution done is what counts. Even for continued failures it would plead advantageously, much more for continued and brilliant successes, that Pope fired at an object offering no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is the grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire were obscure by comparison with Voltaire's. True, the Frenchman's example of a scholar,

66

not steal, Jove's thunderbolts; hissing, bubbling, snorting, fuming; demoniac gas, you think-gas from Acheron must feed that dreadful system of convulsions. But pump out the imaginary gas, and, behold! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly thinks, was all of a piecesimple in his manners, simple in his style, sim

viz., the French Salmasius, was most accomplished. But so was the Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each was absolutely without a rival in his own day. But the day of Bentley was the very day of Pope. Pope's man had not even faded; whereas the day of Salmasius, as respected Voltaire, had gone by for more than half a century. As to Da-ple in his thoughts. No waters in him turbid cier, which Dacier, Bezonian?" The husband was a passable scholar-but madame was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a boarding-school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's two-fold ignorance-first, of English authors; second, of the Dunciad ;"-else he would have known that even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer man than most of those alluded to by Voltaire. Cibber, though slightly a coxcomb, was born a brilliant man. Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom fell off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a pheasant, leaving him to "mount far upwards with the swans of Thanes"—and, finally, let it not be forgotten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, and Sir Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting the knout; if that rather impeaches the equity, and sometimes the judg-tiger-chase with a German poodle. To think, in ment of Pope, at least it contributes to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection-that the population of the Dunciad, the characters that filled its stage, were inconsiderable.

FOX AND BURKE.

It is, or it would be, if Mr. Schlosser were himself more interesting, luxurious to pursue his ignorance as to facts, and the craziness of his judgment as to the valuation of minds, throughout his comparison of Burke with Fox. The force of antithesis brings out into a feeble life of meaning, what, in its own insulation, had been languishing mortally into nonsense. The darkness of his " Burke" becomes visible darkness under the glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate common-places of his "Fox." Fox is painted exactly as he would have been painted fifty years ago by any pet subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well what is coming. Fox is" formed after the model of the ancients" -Fox is "simple"-Fox is "natural"-Fox is "chaste"-Fox is "forcible;" Why yes, in a sense, Fox is even "forcible :" but then, to feel that he was so, you must have heard him; whereas, for forty years he has been silent. We of 1847, that can only read him, hearing Fox described as forcible, are disposed to recollect Shakespere's Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff's recruits, who also is described as forcible, viz., as the "most forcible Feeble." And, perhaps, a better description could not be devised for Fox himself --so feeble was he in matter, so forcible in manner; so powerful for instant effect, so impotent for posterity. In the Pythian fury of his gestures-in his screaming voice-in his directness of purpose, Fox would now remind you of some demon steamengine on a railroad, some Fire-king or Salmoneus, that had counterfeited, because he could

with new crystallisations; everywhere the eye can see to the bottom. No music in him dark with Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gentlemen by "allusions to all the sciences, from the integral calculus and metaphysics to navigation!" Fox would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which fills an 8vo page in Schlosser; and Schlosser crowns his enormities by charging him, the said Burke (p. 99), with "wearisome tediousness. Among my own acquaintances are several old women, who think on this point precisely as Schlosser thinks; and they go further, for they even charge Burke with "tedious wearisomeness." Oh, sorrowful woe, and also woeful sorrow, when an Edmund Burke arises, like a cheeta or hunting leopard coupled in a

a merciful spirit, of the jungle-barely to contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incomprehensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that bloody cheeta will drag that unoffending poodle!

But surely the least philosophic of readers, who hates philosophy "as toad or asp," must yet be aware, that, where new growths are not germinating, it is no sort of praise to be free from the throes of growth. Where expansion is hopeless, it is little glory to have escaped distortion. Nor is it any blame that the rich fermentation of grapes should disturb the transparency of their golden fluids. Fox had nothing new to tell us, nor did he hold a position amongst men that required or would even have allowed him to tell anything new. He was helmsman to a party; what he had to do, though seeming to give orders, was simply to repeat their orders- "Port your helm,” said the party; "Port it is," replied the helmsman. But Burke was no steersman; he was the Orpheus that sailed with the Argonauts; he was their seer, seeing more in his visions than he always understood himself; he was their watcher through the hours of night; he was their astrological interpreter. Who complains of a prophet for being a little darker of speech than a postoffice directory? or of him that reads the stars for being sometimes perplexed?

But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always blundering. Post-office directories would be of no use to him; nor link-boys; nor blazing tar-barrels. He wanders in a fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. He fancies that Burke, in his lifetime, was popular. Of course, it is so natural to be popular by means of "wearisome tediousness,” that Schlosser, above all people, should credit such a tale. Burke has been dead just fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time from this accident-that my own nearest relative

stepped on a day of October 1797, into that same not in the House of Commons. Yet, also, on the suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, other side, it must be remembered, that an intellect six hours before, the great man had been carried of Burke's combining power and enormous comout to die at Beaconsfield. It is, therefore, you pass, could not, from necessity of nature, abstain see, fifty years. Now, ever since then, his col- from such speculations. For a man to reach a lective works have been growing in bulk by the remote posterity, it is sometimes necessary that he incorporation of juvenile essays, (such as his should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch "European Settlements," his "Essay on the Sub-it must sweep a parabola-which, therefore, blime," on "Lord Bolingbroke," &c.,) or (as more rises high above the heads of those next to him, recently) by the posthumous publication of his and is heard by the bye-standers but indistinctly, MSS.;* and yet, ever since then, in spite of grow-like bees swarming in the upper air before they ing age and growing bulk, are more in demand. settle on the spot fit for hiving, At this time, half a century after his last sigh, Burke is popular; a thing, let me tell you, Schlosser, which never happened before to a writer steeped to his lips in personal politics. What a tilth of intellectual lava must that man have interfused amongst the refuse and scoria of such mouldering party rubbish, to force up a new verdure and laughing harvests, annually increasing for new generations! Popular he is now, but popular he was not in his own generation. And how could Schlosser have the face to say that he was? Did he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one period Burke obtained the sobriquet of "dinner-bell?" And why? Not as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking refuge in a literal dinner from the oppression of his philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this great

orator

"went on refining,

And thought of convincing, whilst they thought of dining." I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of any popular body that it should be patient of abstractions amongst the intensities of party-strife, and the immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative body would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbitations from public business than the agora of Athens, or the Roman senate. So far the error was in Burke,

Of his MSS.:"-And, if all that I have heard be true, much has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Commons, a well-known M.P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in connexion with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M.P., twenty-five years ago, well known as River Sharpe, from the asgaroλoya of his conversation, used to say, that one or both of the executors had offered him (the river) a huge travelling trunk, perhaps an Imperial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family), filled with Burke's MSS., on the simple condition of editing them with proper annotations. An Oxford man, and also the celebrated Mr. Christian Curwen, then member for Cumberland, made, in my hearing, the same report. The Oxford man, in particular, being questioned as to the probable amount of MS., deposed, that he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents; but this he could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he had endeavoured, by such poor machinery as nature had allowed him, to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there were none; with his middle finger he could find no bottom; for it was stopped by a dense stratum of MS.; below which, you know, other strata might lie ad infinitum. For anything proved to the contrary, the trunk might be bottomless.

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of misconception. Of all public men, that stand confessedly in the first rank as to splendour of intellect, Burke was the least popular at the time when our blind friend Schlosser assumes him to have run off with the lion's share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as the leader of opposition, was at that time a household term of love or reproach, from one end of the island to the other. To the very children playing in the streets, Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke's generation, were pretty nearly as broad distinctions, and as much a war-ery, as English and French, Roman and Punic. Now, however, all this is altered, regards the relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent,

"Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer"

As

for that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man whose true mode of power has never yet been truly investigated; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an echo is known, and for any real effect of intellect upon this generation, for anything but "the whistling of a name," the Fox of 1780-1807 sleeps where the carols of the larks are sleeping, that gladdened the spring-tides of those years-sleeps with the roses that glorified the beauty of their summers.

JUNIUS.

*

Schlosser talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an

A man in Fox's situation is sure, whilst living, to draw after him trains of sycophants; and it is the evil necessity of newspapers the most independent, that they must swell the mob of sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day. Those who, for the moment, modify, or may modify the national condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping public; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Having the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living, on his knowlege of Homeric Greek, which was a jest: he knew neither more nor less of Homer, than, fortunately, most English gentlemen of his rank; quite enough that is to read the "Iliad" with unaffected pleasure, far too little to revise the text of any three lines, without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slenderness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen in the letters published by his Secretary, Trotter. But his fragment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guineas, and currently sold for two shillings, (not two pence, or else I have been defrauded of 1s. 10d.) most of all proclaims the tenuity of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge oracle; and, having read even less than Hume, a thing not very easy, with great naiveté, cannot guess where Humme picked up his facts.

single paragraphs of which would have forced | you dream, dotard, that this baby's rattle is the them to cancel their own. The possibility of thing that keeps us from sleeping? Our eyes scepticism, after really reading Mr. T.'s book, are fixed on something else that fellow, whoever would be the strongest exemplification upon record he is, knows what he ought not to know; he has of Sancho's proverbial reproach, that a man had his hand in some of our pockets: he's a good "wanted better bread than was made of wheat-" locksmith, is that Junius; and before he reaches would be the old case renewed from the scholastic | Tyburn, who knows what amount of mischief grumblers "that some men do not know when he may do to self and partners?" The rumour they are answered." They have got their quietus, that ministers were themselves alarmed (which and they still continue to "maunder" on with was the naked truth) travelled downwards; but objections long since disposed of. In fact, it is the why did not travel; and the innumerable not too strong a thing to say-and Chief Justice blockheads of lower circles, not understanding the Dallas did say something like it—that if Mr. real cause of fear, sought a false one in the Taylor is not right, if Sir Philip Francis is not supposed thunderbolts of the rhetoric. OperaJunius, then was no man ever yet hanged on house thunderbolts they were and strange it is, sufficient evidence. Even confession is no abso- that grave men should fancy newspapers, teeming lute proof. Even confessing to a crime, the man (as they have always done) with Publicolas, with may be mad. Well, but at least secing is believ- Catos, with Algernon Sydneys, able by such ing if the court sees a man commit an assault, trivial small shot to gain a moment's attention will not that suffice? Not at all: ocular from the potentates of Downing Street. Those delusions on the largest scale are common. who have despatches to write, councils to attend, What's a court? Lawyers have no better eyes and votes of the Commons to manage, think than other people. Their physics are often out little of Junius Brutus. A Junius Brutus, that of repair, and whole cities have been known to dares not sign by his own honest name, is presee things that could have no existence. Now, sumably skulking from his creditors. A Timoleon, all other evidence is held to be short of this blank who hints at assassination in a newspaper, one seeing or blank confessing. But I am not at all may take it for granted, is a manufacturer of sure of that. Circumstantial evidence, that begging letters. And it is a conceivable case that a multiplies indefinitely its points of internexus with £20 note, enclosed to Timoleon's address, through known admitted facts, is more impressive than the newspaper office, might go far to soothe that direct testimony. If you detect a fellow with a great patriot's feelings, and even to turn aside large sheet of lead that by many (to wit 70) salient his avenging dagger. These sort of people were angles, that by tedious (to wit 30) reëntrant angles, not the sort to frighten a British Ministry. fits into and owns its sisterly relationship to all laughs at the probable conversation between an that is left of the lead upon your roof-this tight old hunting squire coming up to comfort the First fit will weigh more with a jury than even if my Lord of the Treasury, on the rumour that he was lord chief justice should jump into the witness-box, panic-struck. "What, surely, my dear old friend, swearing that, with judicial eyes, he saw the you're not afraid of Timoleon?" First Lord.— vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat at breakfast; or even than if the vagabond should protest before this honourable court that he did cut the lead in order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls and coffee as well as my lord, the witness. If Mr. Taylor's body of evidence does not hold water, then is there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial or not judicial, that will.

66

One

Yes, I am." C. Gent." What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in the papers?" F. L.-"Yes, dreadfully." C. Gent.-"Why, I always understood that these people were a sort of shams— living in Grub Street-or where was it that Pope used to tell us they lived? Surely you're not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think he's a patriot ?" F. L.-" No, not at all; but I am afraid because some people think he's a But I blame Mr. Taylor heavily for throwing housebreaker!" In that character only could away the whole argument applicable to B and Timoleon become formidable to a Cabinet Minister; C; not as any debt that rested particularly upon and in some such character must our friend, him to public justice; but as a debt to the integrity Junius Brutus, have made himself alarming to of his own book. That book is now a fragment; Government. From the moment that B is proadmirable as regards A; but (by omitting B and C) perly explained, it throws light upon C. The not sweeping the whole area of the problem. There Government was alarmed-not at such moonshine yet remains, therefore, the dissatisfaction which is as patriotism, or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric-but always likely to arise-not from the smallest because treachery was lurking amongst their own allegatio falsi, but from the large suppressio veri. households; and, if the thing went on, the conseB, which, on any other solution than the one I quences might be appalling. But this domestic have proposed, is perfectly unintelligible, now be- treachery, which accounts for B, accounts at the comes plain enough. To imagine a heavy, coarse, same time for C. The very same treachery that hard-working government, seriously affected by frightened its objects at the time by the consesuch a bauble as they would consider performances quences it might breed, would frighen its author on the tight rope of style, is mere midsummer afterwards from claiming its literary honours by madness. "Hold your absurd tongue," would the remembrances it might awaken. The mys any of the ministers have said to a friend descant-terious disclosure of official secrets, which had ing on Junius as a powerful artist of style-" do once roused so much consternation within a