Dryden's Prologue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada contains the following couplet:

"They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,

Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite."

31. rival's, from Lat rivalis, which originally meant 'belonging to the same brook (rivus).' Thus rivales were people who used the same stream, so 'neighbours,' and hence naturally 'competitors.'

32-3. The relevance of this couplet here is not obvious. 32. still.

The adverb still once signified 'quietly,' just as the adjective still signifies 'quiet.' This use of the word is obsolete. The surviving meanings of the adverb may be distinguished as follows:

(1) 'constantly,' 'always,' 'ever'; as here, and in lines 69, 70, 128, 264, 307, 318, 385, 453, 502, 600, 632, 684, 742, and perhaps 437. (2) 'up to the time' spoken of whether present or past; e.g. "crowds of these poets still run on," 606, 614, 650, 714, 718.

(3) with comparatives, signifying 'even,' 'to a greater extent'; e.g. "still to make them more," 65; "they're wiser still," 436; "still the more required," 503.

(4) 'nevertheless,' 'for all that'; e.g. "those rules are nature still," 89; "But still the worst with most regret commend," 518.

In the last three meanings we can also use yet.

34. Mævius and Bavius were two wretched poets contemporary with Virgil and Horace. Virgil says, (Ecl. III. 90):

"Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Maevi."

['The man who does not hate Bavius may like your verses, Maevius.'] Horace (Epod. x.) prays that the ship which is bearing to Greece the noisome Maevius-olentem Macvium—may be overtaken by a storm, and promises to sacrifice to the Tempests should Maevius be drowned.

Bavius and Maevius gave their names to two satires written by William Gifford (1756–1826), the virulent editor of the Quarterly Review. In the Baviad, published in 1794, he attacked the odes and elegies of the sentimental poetasters who formed what was called the Della Cruscan school. One Merry, a young gentleman living in Florence, had been admitted a member of the Accademia della Crusca (Academy of the Sieve), and in 1784 had formed a society of English residents who wrote verses which, in spite of their affectation and bad taste, became the vogue. The success of Gifford's onslaught encouraged him to return to the attack with the Maeviad, in which he denounced the members of the Della Cruscan coterie as corrupters of dramatic poetry.

Apollo was the god of divination and, as his oracles were uttered in verse, he was regarded also as the god of poetry and music. Horace speaks of him (Carm. Secul. 62) as Augur...Phoebus acceptus novem Camenis, ['Augur Apollo, dear to the nine Muses,'] and says (Od. IV.

vi. 29),

'Spiritum Phoebus mihi, Phoebus artem

Carminis nomenque dedit poetae.'

['Phoebus has given me inspiration, Phoebus has given me the art of song and the name of poet.']

35.

There are who judge: see note to 1. 30.

38. neither can. The position of neither is wrong. for neither wits nor critics pass" is what Pope meant.

"Some can

39. The mule, a cross between horse and ass, is barren. Similarly the half-learn'd witling,' a cross between wit and critic, is unproductive.

40. The 'half-learn'd witlings' are formed by equivocal generation from vivacity and dulness as are the insects of the Nile from heat and mud.

In the Discourse on Epic Poetry, which was prefixed to his Translation of the Æneid (1697), Dryden speaks of Virgil's half-verses, or unfinished lines, as "the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed, unanimated mud." (Discourses on Satire and on Epi Poetry, p. 179.)

40-3. There is no need to regard the construction here as elliptical, and to supply which before one, or them after call. If we understand "those half-learn'd witlings" as the object, the words would in prose order stand as follows:-"One knows not what to call those halflearn'd witlings (numerous as half-form'd insects)-unfinished thingstheir generation's so equivocal." The passage is inelegant but not ungrammatical.

43. equivocal originally means 'of like sound,' so 'ambiguous.' In this sense of the word, we speak of an equivocal answer,' 'an equivocal reputation.' Applied to 'generation' it denotes generation from parents not of the same species.

44-5. To count these witlings would require a hundred ordinary tongues or the tongue of one vain wit who would talk down even the hundred.

44. tell, 'count': cf. Ger. zählen. This was the original meaning of the verb, and with this meaning it is still used in the House of

Commons. In like manner the noun tale signified 'number': so, in Milton's L'Allegro, 67-8:

tells his tale signifies 'counts his sheep,' and in Exodus v. 8, "the tale of the bricks" signifies the number of the bricks.'

6

'em which survives as a colloquialism is not a corruption of them but a form of hem, the old dative plural of he.

48-9. Imitated from Horace, Ars Poet. 38—40:

"Sumite materiam vestris qui scribitis, aequam

Viribus; et versate diu, quid ferre recusent,

Quid valeant humeri."

['You writers must choose a subject proportioned to your strength, and must consider at length what your shoulders cannot carry and what they can.']

51. Warburton thus interprets "the admirable direction" given in this line :-Pope "had shown above," he says, "that judgment, without taste or genius, is equally incapable of making a critic or a poet. In whatsoever subject then the critic's taste no longer accompanies his judgment, there he may be assured he is going out of his depth. This our author finely calls, 'that point where sense and dulness meet,' and immediately adds the reason of his precept, the Author of Nature having so constituted the mental faculties, that one of them can never greatly excel, but at the expense of another."

Probably Warburton's explanation is right. The precept may be "fine" and "admirable," as he says, but it is certainly expressed in very ambiguous language. "The point where sense and dulness meet" would serve excellently as a description of the common-place.

53. pretending, 'aspiring,' 'ambitious.' 'Pretend,' from Lat. prae, before,' tendere, 'to stretch,' meant (1) 'to put forward'; (2) 'to put forward as a reason,' generally a false reason, so, 'to feign'; (3) 'to put forward as a claim,' 'to aspire to.'

56-9. Pope's psychology here is popular rather than sound. It is commonly assumed that a man of exceptional powers of memory must be deficient in originality as a thinker. But this supposed antagonism between memory and originality has no real existence, although no doubt there are many cases in which the memory has been cultivated to excess at the expense of the rest of the mental faculties. If one man has twice as much mental power as another, his Memory may be twice as retentive and his Reason and Imagination at the same

time twice as vigorous. Pope is writing however as a poet, not as a psychologist, and scientific accuracy is unnecessary.

Another point should be noticed. In lines 56-7 he tells us that a strong Memory implies a feeble Understanding or Reasoning Power. In lines 58-9 we expect the converse proposition, viz., that a strong Understanding' implies a feeble Memory, but we find that it is a strong Imagination that implies a feeble Memory.

Pope's language in this passage is by no means free from ambiguity. We might easily suppose that he is speaking, not of different minds, but of what happens in the same individual mind at different times. Thus, while one is absorbed in the impressions of Memory, the Reasoning powers are comparatively inactive. On the other hand, when the Imagination is vigorously at work, the impressions of Memory vanish into semi-consciousness. And this psychological doctrine admits of a better defence than the doctrine interpreted above. But then in the present context it would have no relevance.

62. peculiar, 'particular.' The word is derived from Lat. peculium, 'private property' and signified 'one's own,' 'private'; hence 'particular.'

64. Thus Francis I., after acquiring the Milanese in 1515, advanced his pretensions to the empire, lost the Milanese in his first struggle with Charles V., was defeated at Pavia in 1525, and concluded the humiliating Treaty of Madrid.

Louis XIV., to whom several important towns in the Netherlands had been secured by the Peace of Nimegen, 1678, encountered disastrous defeats at the hands of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-13.

Charles XII. of Sweden humbled the King of Denmark, dictated the choice of a sovereign to Poland, compelled the Elector of Saxony to sue for peace, and then turned his arms against Russia. Defeated by Peter the Great in the battle of Pultowa, 1709, he fled to Turkey, and during the next five years his enemies stripped Sweden of her possessions in Germany and on the east of the Baltic.

65. still, see note to 1. 32.

68-91. Mr Leslie Stephen says, "Pope would have been puzzled if asked to define precisely what he meant by the antithesis between nature and art. They are somehow opposed, yet art turns out to be only 'nature methodized' (1. 89). We have indeed a clue for our guidance; to study nature, we are told, is the same thing as to study Homer, and Homer should be read day and night, with Virgil for a comment and Aristotle for an expositor. Nature, good sense,

Homer, Virgil, and the Stagyrite, all, it seems, come to much the same thing" (Pope, p. 28). On the other hand, Mr Courthope defends Pope's views of 'Nature' with great ability in his Life of Pope, Vol. v. ch. III. pp. 49–67.

The drift of Pope's exhortation to the critics may be expressed in the following form:-"True poetry contains a simple and intelligible interpretation of nature. The day has gone by for the quaint conceits, fine-drawn analogies, far-fetched metaphors, and bizarre ornamentation, which constituted the poetical stock-in-trade of the Metaphysical school. All this apparatus, used by Donne and Cowley and the rest of the Fantastic writers, is out-of-date. Get rid of it. Eschew scholastic subtleties. Encourage clear thought and clear expression. Do you ask where you are to find the 'just standard' of Nature? I answer, in Homer and the classical writers of antiquity."

The student must understand that, although Poetry is an imitative art, Poetry does not seek to imitate Nature with absolute exactitude. To furnish a strictly correct delineation of Nature is the business of Science, not of Art. "The proper and immediate object of Science," as Coleridge says, "is the acquirement or communication of truth: the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of pleasure." The imitation of Nature, at which the poet, or the painter, or the sculptor aims, is an idealized imitation. A work of Fine Art must arouse emotion in the spectator, and it must have been produced under the stress of emotion by the artist. Now under the stress of emotion the artist's mind is not in a condition to reproduce with faithful impartiality every detail of Nature. Influenced by the sentiment which sways him at the time, he exaggerates in one direction and suppresses in another. Yet his deviations from what Nature presents to us must not be so great as violently to shock our sense of truth. The poet, as an imitative artist, is expected to keep his creations within the limits, not indeed of truth, but of possibility.

69. still, 'always,' as again in the next line. See l. 32, note.

73. Nature, as we have just seen, is the source of Art, furnishing for artistic representation the phenomena of the external world and the emotions of human life. But when Pope describes Nature as also the "end and test of Art," his language is loose. The artist's aim is the imitation of Nature. The ultimate end of Art is the production of pleasure by means of the imitation. The test of Art is the measure of success with which the imitation is executed.

75. Works without show. Ars est celare artem. ['It is the perfection