These are petty matters; but it seems desirable to examine Mr. Elwin's charges in detail, in the case of some one poem, after which, we think, the reader will be disposed to distrust in other cases the unfavourable imputations in which he so liberally deals, unless they be otherwise confirmed.

Let it be granted at the outset, that no one, however high a value he set on the genius of Pope, would be so rash as to deny, that his acts were often inconsistent, or passionate, or vindictive. Nor would any one venture to assert that he was eminently veracious and straightforward. Distinct untruths may be proved against him, and his love of mystification, and of coming at results by odd circuitous ways, is notorious. It must also be considered, that when a poet is taxed with having satirized some individual in one of his poems, though under a fictitious name, two reflections may occur to him. One is, that his accuser has no right to bring the charge; since, if he had designed an injurious attack, he might either have introduced the name, or have given the initial and final letters, or, by noticing a variety of' inseparable accidents' of the individual, have rendered identification certain. The other is, that the satire, though suggested, wholly or chiefly, by one person, is yet applicable to many persons, and that the fictitious name points to, and, so to speak, prescribes such wider application. And the poet will hence, perhaps, conclude himself justified in using some degree of mystification, ludification-almost prevarication-in repelling a charge which he thinks ought not to be brought. The difficulty of such positions, as a matter

of casuistry, is well known; nor is any one general principle competent to dispose of them.

With these preliminary remarks let us come to the case of Dennis. John Dennis was a professional critic at the time when Pope's Pastorals were published, in 1709. He seems to have criticized them unfavourably, probably in conversation. For it must be, as Mr. Elwin rightly gathers, to some such hostile criticism that Pope referred, when he wrote, many years later—

Soft were my numbers; who could take offence
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret,
I never answered,-I was not in debt.

Prol. to the Satires, 1. 147.

That this was the provocation which led to Pope's attacking Dennis in the Essay on Criticism is exceedingly probable; we are not at all concerned to deny it. Of his thin-skinned sensitiveness we have already spoken. He defended himself from attack with the weapons which nature gave him: 'dente lupus, cornu taurus petit.' A feeble and sickly body prevented him from fighting his own battles in any of the ways then usual; but he could avenge himself by his pen, and he did so. Dennis therefore (who had published not long before a bad tragedy called Appius and Virginia) is, we can hardly doubt, intended in the Appius of the following passage:

"Twere well might critics still this freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threat'ning eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.

Essay, 1. 584.

The picture in these lines of Dennis's habitual look and gesture is said to have been ludicrously exact. Nevertheless, the adoption of a pseudonym, Pope might urge, deprives any one of the right to say, This is meant for Dennis.' In another passage (1. 270), where the initial and final letters of the name are given, so that there was no room for doubting who was meant, Dennis is mentioned rather favourably :

Once on a time La Mancha's knight, they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage.

But the old critic took the description of the 'tremendous' Appius to himself, and forthwith wrote a pamphlet entitled Reflections, Critical and Satirical, upon a late Rhapsody called an Essay on Criticism;' hitting about him, of course, as hard as he knew how. No one could blame him for doing so, since he had received provocation; and few would think it worth while to disinter his invectives from the oblivion which covers them, except such as had some special motive for maligning Pope. Mr. Elwin approves and adopts Dennis's passionate sallies.

'I

am attacked in a clandestine manner,' cries Dennis. Yes, chimes in Mr. Elwin, the attack was clandestine, 'because the Essay was anonymous, and his assailant was concealed.' Mr. Elwin is not sufficiently calm,

when Pope is in the case, to weigh particular words, and estimate their exact force; otherwise he would have seen that neither of these circumstances was enough to render the attack 'clandestine.' That which is done clam, clandestinely, is opposed to that which is done palam, or openly. But the attack, if it was an attack, was published to all the world; anyone who chose to buy the book might know of it. It would have been a clandestine attack had Pope left copies of verses reflecting upon Dennis with the latter's friends, at the same time enjoining secrecy upon them. A clandestine attack is one that is concealed from its object. The mere circumstance that the assailant is at the moment unknown, does not make the attack itself clandestine. Paris, when bombarded by the Germans from the plateau of Meudon, was not the object of a clandestine attack because the mortars which fired the shells were invisible !

Some remarks which follow in Mr. Elwin's Introduction hardly require a serious answer. Pope, because he declared to Caryll that he meant not to insult Dennis personally, and did not think he had done so, is said to make 'a hasty and ignominious retreat.' We have not space to demolish the edifice of unfriendly deduction which Mr. Elwin builds upon a line written by Pope many years afterwards with reference to Dennis's pamphlet. With singular confidence he proceeds to censure Dr. Johnson for his 'preposterous opinion' in favour of the Essay, and to ascribe Joseph Warton's praise of its critical grasp to his 'relish for platitudes.' Such expressions, used of 1 I never answered,-I was not in debt. Prol. to Sat.

men who, relatively to common critics, were intellectual giants, furnish their own comment. Mr. Elwin thinks the subject matter of the Essay common. place, and the treatment not remarkable. 'A slight acquaintance with books and men is sufficient to teach us that people are partial to their own judgment, that some authors are not qualified to be poets, wits, or critics, and that critics should not launch beyond their depth.' This may be all that Mr. Elwin can see in the Essay, but why should he suppose that the eminent men who saw much more in it were inferior in judgment to himself? Even if this were the sum, baldly stated, of what is found in the poem, Mr. Elwin, if he had understood his author better, might have bethought himself that—

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

It may be granted that the thoughts in the Essay are seldom new; how could they be on a theme so hackneyed?—but it is certain that many of them were 'ne'er so well expressed.' On a subsequent page we are told that, 'The phraseology is frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metres inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell below bald and slip-shod prose.' Again, Where the plain portions of the poem are not positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence.' To all this we have only to reply, that since the poem has been universally admired by Pope's countrymen during more than a century and

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