the "Dunciad; " and I believe in my heart that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was occasioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those. Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author. The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read! to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one's self his conqueror. It is easy to shoot but not as Pope did. Addison and his men should look ness, and held up those wretched rather contemptuously down on it shifts and rags to public ridicule. It from their balcony; so it was natural was Pope that has made generations for Dennis and Tibbald, and Web- of the reading world (delighted with ster and Cibber, and the worn and the mischief, as who would not hungry pressmen in the crowd below, be that reads it?) believe that author to howl at him and assail him. And and wretch, author and rags, author Pope was more savage to Grub Street and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowthan Grub Street was to Pope. The heel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, thong with which he lashed them squalling children and clamorous was dreadful; he fired upon that landladies, were always associated howling crew such shafts of flame and together. The condition of authorpoison, he slew and wounded so fierce-ship began to fall from the days of ly, that in reading the "Dunciad" and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men's want; he gloats over poor Dennis's garret, and flannel nightcap, and red stockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll's authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen; at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and Steele a Commissioner, and Swift all but a Bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that libel of the "Dunciad." If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least nobody came to disturb them in their straw; if three of them had but one coat between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at the coffeehouse, and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged forcible melodious manner, the conclud* "He (Johnson) repeated to us, in his into light all this poverty and meaning lines of the Dunciad.'"- BOSWELL. The shafts of his satire rise sublimely: no poet's verse ever mounted higher than that wonderful flight with which the "Dunciad " concludes : * She comes, she comes! the sable throne Of Night primeval and of Chaos old; As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppressed, Closed, one by one, to everlasting rest; Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night. See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head; before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven with armies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since society began. more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all,”* In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what it actually is, for that were vain ; but what it is like, and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in considering Pope's admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from In these astonishing lines Pope other courage and greatness, and into reaches, I think, to the very greatest comparing him with those who height which his sublime art has at- achieved triumphs in actual war. I tained, and shows himself the equal think of the works of young Pope of all poets of all times. It is the as I do of the actions of young Bobrightest ardor, the loftiest assertion naparte or young Nelson. In their of truth, the most generous wisdom, common life you will find frailties illustrated by the noblest poetic fig- and meannesses, as great as the vices ure, and spoken in words the aptest, and follies of the meanest men. But grandest, and most harmonious. It in the presence of the great occasion, is heroic courage speaking: a splen- the great soul flashes out, and condid declaration of righteous wrath quers transcendent. In thinking of and war. It is the gage flung down, the splendor of Pope's young victoand the silver trumpet ringing defi- ries, of his merit, unequalled as his ance to falsehood and tyranny, deceit, renown, I hail and salute the achievdulness, superstition. It is Truth, ing genius and do homage to the the champion, shining and intrepid, pen of a hero. and fronting the great world-tyrant | HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. I SUPPOSE, as long as novels last | through a certain number of pages, is and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after secming to triumph * "Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired these lines so much that when he repeated them his voice faltered. 'And well it might, sir,' said Johnson, for they are noble lines.'"-J. BOSWELL, junior. sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own. There never was perhaps a greatly popular story but this simple plot was carried through it: mere satiric wit is addressed to a class of readers and thinkers quite different to those simple souls who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought to like "Gulliver" heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference of manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of "Jonathan Wild." In that strange apologue, the author takes for a hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable him to devise or depict; he accompanies this villain through all the actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a wonderful mock respect and doesn't leave him, till he is dangling at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow, and wishes the scoundrel good day. It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his reputation.* His art is quite simple, he speaks popular parables to interest simple hearts, and to inspire them with pleasure or * Coleridge speaks of the "beautiful female faces" in Hogarth's pictures, “in whom," he says, "the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet." The Friend. "I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who, being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered 'Shakspeare:' being asked.which he esteemed next best, replied 'Hogarth.' His graphic representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pic tures we look at his prints we read... "The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would almost unvulgarize every subject which he might choose. "I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily something in them to make us like them; some are indifferent to us, some in their nature repulsive, and only made interesting by the wonderful skill and truth to nature in the painter; but I contend that there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of the bad. They have this in them, besides, that they bring us acquainted with the every-day human face, they give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the circumstances of the world about us; and prevent that disgust at common life, that tædium quotidianarum formarum, which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this, as in many pity or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easy as Goody Twoshoes; it is the moral of Tommy was a naughty boy and the master flogged him, and Jacky was a good boy and had plum-cake, which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous English moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must remember how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, and like other things, they are analogous to the best novels of Smollett and Fielding."CHARLES LAMB. "It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly unlike any other other representations of the same kind of subjects that they form a class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general distinction consists. "In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of Tom Jones' ought to be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular development of fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than many which have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves, When we say that Hogarth treated his subject historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humors of mankind in action, and their characters by varied expression. Every thing in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas for ever. The expression is always taken en passant, in a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. His figures are not like the back-ground on which they are painted: even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life. . . . His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it." — HAZLITT. |