Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass, COMMENTARY. them, proposing to do them right hereafter. But the men spoiled by false taste are innumerable; and these are his proper concern: he therefore [from ver. 35 to 46.] sub-divides them again into the two classes of the volatile and heavy: he describes, in few words, the quick progression of the one through Criticism, from false wit, to plain folly, where they end; and the fixed station of the other between the confines of both; who under the name of Witlings, have neither end nor measure. A kind of half-formed creature from the equivocal generation of vivacity and dulness, like those on the banks of Nile, from heat and mud. NOTES. Ver. 38. Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,] These lines, and those preceding and following them, are excellently satirical; and are, I think, the first we find in Pope's works, that give an indication of that species of poetry to which his talent was most powerfully bent. The simile of the mule heightens the satire, and is new; as is the application of the insects of the Nile. Pope never shines so brightly as when he is proscribing bad authors. "The Nile (says Fenton on Waller) has been as fruitful of English similes as the sun; from both which it would be as severe to restrain a young poet, as forbidding the use of fire and water was esteemed among the Romans." Warton. Ver. 43. Their generations so equivocal,] It is sufficient that a principle of philosophy has been generally received, whether it be true or false, to justify a poet's use of it to set off his wit. But to recommend his argument, he should be cautious how he uses any but the true. For falsehood, when it is set too near the truth, will tarnish what it should brighten up. Besides, the analogy between natural and moral truth makes the principle of true philosophy the fittest for this use. Our poet has been pretty careful in observing this rule. Warburton. 45 To tell 'em would an hundred tongues require, COMMENTARY. Ver. 46. But you who seek, &c.] Our Author having thus far, by way of INTRODUCTION, explained the nature, use, and abuse of Criticism, in a figurative description of the qualities and characters of Critics, proceeds now to deliver the precepts of the art. The first of which [from ver. 45 to 68.] is, that he who sets up for a Critic should previously examine his own strength, and see how far he is qualified for the exercise of his profession. He puts him in a way to make this discovery, in that admirable direction given ver. 51. AND MARK THAT POINT WHERE SENSE AND DULNESS MEET. He had shewn above, 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. From this state of coordination in the mental faculties, and the influence and effects they have upon one another, the poet draws this CONSEQUENCE, that no one Genius can EXCEL in more than one Art or Science. The consequence shews the necessity of the precept, just as the premises, from which the consequence is drawn, shew the reasonableness of it. Warburton. NOTES. Ver. 51. And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.] Besides the peculiar sense explained above in the Comment, the words have still a more general meaning, and caution us against going on, Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit, NOTES. 55 on, when our ideas begin to grow obscure; as we are then most apt to do; though that obscurity be an admonition that we should leave off, for it arises, either from our small acquaintance with the subject, or the incomprehensibility of its nature. In which circumstances a genius will always write as badly as a dunce. An observation well worth the attention of all profound writers. Warburton. Ver. 56. Thus in the Soul] The beauty of imagery in these lines should not make us blind to the want of justness in the thought. To represent strength of memory as incompatible with solidity of understanding, is so obviously contrary to fact, that I presume the author had in his eye only the case of extraordinary memory for names, dates, and things, which offer no ideas to the mind; which has, indeed, been often displayed in great perfection by mere idiots. For, it is difficult to conceive how the faculty of judgment, which consists in the comparison of different ideas, can at all be exercised without the power of storing up ideas in the mind, and calling them forth when required. From the second couplet, apparently meant to be the converse of the first, one would suppose that he consulted the understanding and the imagination as the same faculty, else the counterpart is defective. Further, so far is it from being true that imagination obliterates the figures of memory, that the circumstance which causes a thing to be remembered, is principally its being associated with other ideas by the agency of the imagination. If the poet only meant, that those ideas about which imagination is occupied, are apt to exclude ideas of a different kind, the remark is true, but it should have been differently expressed. Warton. One science only will one genius fit; NOTES. 60 Ver. 60. One science only will one genius fit;] When Tully attempted poetry, he became as ridiculous as Bolingbroke when he attempted philosophy and divinity. When Fontaine, whose Tales indicated a truly comic genius, brought a comedy on the stage, it was received with a contempt equally unexpected and deserved. Terence has left us no tragedy; and the Mourning Bride of Congreve, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on it by Pope, in the Dunciad, is certainly a despicable performance; the plot is unnaturally intricate, and overcharged with incidents, the sentiments trite, and the language turgid and bombast. The Biter of Rowe is wretched. Heemskirk and Teniers could not succeed in a serious and sublime subject of history painting. The latter, it is well known, designed cartoons for tapestry, representing the history of the Turriani of Lombardy. Both the composition and the expression are extremely indifferent; and certain nicer virtuosi have remarked, that in the serious pieces of Titian himself, even in one of his Last Suppers, a circumstance of the ridiculous and the familiar is introduced, which suits not with the dignity of his subject. Hogarth's Sigismonda disgraced his pencil. The modesty and good sense of the ancients is, in this particular, as in others, remarkable. The same writer never presumed to undertake more than one kind of dramatic poetry, if we except the Cyclops of Euripides. A poet never presumed to plead in public, or to write history, or indeed any considerable work in prose. The same actors never recited tragedy and comedy: this was observed long ago, by Plato, in the third book of his Republic. They seem to have held that diversity, nay universality, of excellence, at which the moderns frequently aim, to be a gift unattainable by man. We therefore, of Great Britain, have, perhaps, more reason to congratulate ourselves, on two great phenomena; I mean Shakspeare's being able to pourtray characters so very different as Falstaff and Macbeth; and Garrick's being able to personate so inimitably a Lear, or an Abel Drugger. Warton. Neither the authority of the poet nor the efforts of the annotator can Not only bounded to peculiar arts, But oft in those confin'd to single parts. 66 NOTES. 65 can establish the authority of these and the six following lines, which seem to be the result of that tendency to depreciate the powers of the human mind, which is observable in some other parts of the writings of Pope. So far is it from being true, that one science only will one genius fit," that it may safely be asserted that no man ever made a great proficiency in any one department of science, or art, without a considerable acquaintance with many collateral branches, which were necessary to enable him to prosecute his studies to any great or useful extent. But of all subjects, that to which this maxim is the most inapplicable, is the science of Criticism, which requires not only the most various endowments of the human intellect, but the most extensive acquaintance with all the works of nature and of art. Instead of asserting that the human mind loses, on the one hand, what it acquires on the other, "Like kings who lose the conquests gain'd before," it might be with more truth asserted, that every new acquisition strengthens those we already possess, and that the mind is invigorated by exercise as well as the body. CICERO, it is true, was no poet, but in how many departments of knowledge did he excel? What were the diversity and extent of those acquisitions that filled up the mind of a BACON? Can SHAKSPEARE's talents be said to have been confined to one science? or are we, like Dr. Warton, to consider him merely as a phenomenon peculiar to our own country? Turn to MICHELAGNOLO, "the sculptor, painter, poet, architect; to LioNARDO DA VINCI, to RAFFAELLE, to SALVATOR ROSA,-men who have devoted themselves to different branches of science and of art, and who have excelled in whatever they have attempted; whose examples alone, if no others could be produced, are sufficient to refute the assertion that " One science only will one genius fit.” |