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Dialogues of the Dead

<h3>DIALOGUE XIV.</h3> Boileau—Pope. Boileau.—Mr. Pope, you have done me great honour.  I am told that you made me your model in poetry, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths which I had trod. Pope.—We both followed Horace, but in our manner of imitation, and in the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance.  We both were too irritable and too easily hurt by offences, even from the lowest of men.  The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against those whom it was more a shame to contend with than an honour to vanquish. Boileau.—Yes.  But in general we were the champions of good morals, good sense, and good learning.  If our love of these was sometimes heated into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger to be blamed? Pope.—It would have been nobler if we had not been parties in the quarrel.  Our enemies observe that neither our censure nor our praise was always impartial. Boileau.—It might perhaps have been better if in some instances we had not praised or blamed so much.  But in panegyric and satire moderation is insipid. Pope.—Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue.  Mere historical truth is better written in prose.  And, therefore, I think you did judiciously when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted his fame to your poems. Boileau.—When those poems were published that monarch was the idol of the French nation.  If you and I had not known, in our occasional compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe of poets in England and France.  Besides, sharp satirists want great patrons. Pope.—All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought.  In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau. Boileau.—A pension in France was an honourable distinction.  Had you been a Frenchman you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an Englishman I should have proudly declined it.  If our merit in other respects be not unequal, this difference will not set me much below you in the temple of virtue or of fame. Pope.—It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works.  But, if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject, my “Rape of the Lock” is not inferior to your “Lutrin;” and my “Art of Criticism” may well be compared with your “Art of Poetry;” my “Ethic Epistles” are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my “Satires” much better. Boileau.—Hold, Mr. Pope.  If there is really such a sympathy in our natures as you have supposed, there may be reason to fear that, if we go on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good friendship. Pope.—No, no; the mild air of the Elysian Fields has mitigated my temper, as I presume it has yours.  But, in truth, our reputations are nearly on a level.  Our writings are admired, almost equally (as I hear) for energy and justness of thought.  We both of us carried the beauty of our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection that our languages would admit.  Our poems were polished to the utmost degree of correctness, yet without losing their fire, or the agreeable appearance of freedom and ease.  We borrowed much from the ancients, though you, I believe, more than I; but our imitations (to use an expression of your own) had still an original air. Boileau.—I will confess, sir (to show you that the Elysian climate has had its effects upon me), I will fairly confess, without the least ill humour, that in your “Eloisa to Abelard,” your “Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,” and some others you wrote in your youth, there is more fire of poetry than in any of mine.  You excelled in the pathetic, which I never approached.  I will also allow that you hit the manner of Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any other man who has written since his time.  Nor could I, nor did even Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with such charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more properly) of some of his modern disciples, in your celebrated “Essay on Man.” Pope.—What do you think of my “Homer?” Boileau.—Your “Homer” is the most spirited, the most poetical, the most elegant, and the most pleasing translation that ever was made of any ancient poem, though not so much in the manner of the original, or so exactly agreeable to the sense in all places, as might perhaps be desired.  But when I consider the years you spent in this work, and how many excellent original poems you might, with less difficulty, have produced in that time, I can’t but regret that your talents were thus employed.  A great poet so tied down to a tedious translation is a Columbus chained to an oar.  What new regions of fancy, full of treasures yet untouched, might you have explored, if you had been at liberty to have boldly expanded your sails, and steered your own course, under the conduct and direction of your own genius!  But I am still more angry with you for your edition of Shakespeare.  The office of an editor was below you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires.  Would anybody think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture? Pope.—The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the honour of Shakespeare; and, if you knew all his beauties as well as I, you would not wonder at this zeal.  No other author had ever so copious, so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind.  He painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force.  If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings. Boileau.—You say he painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force.  I can’t deny that he did so; but I wish he had not jumbled those characters together in the composition of his pictures as he has frequently done. Pope.—The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite inexcusable.  But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote. Boileau.—A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the taste of his contemporaries. Pope.—Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of Shakespeare broke forth!  What were the English, and what, let me ask you, were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he nourished?  The advances he made towards the highest perfection, both of tragedy and comedy, are amazing!  In the principal points, in the power of exciting terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has excelled him, and very few have equalled. Boileau.—Do you think that he was equal in comedy to Molière? Pope.—In comic force I do; but in the fine and delicate strokes of satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to that admirable writer.  There is nothing in him to compare with the Misanthrope, the École des Femmes, or Tartuffe. Boileau.—This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to acknowledge.  A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are fanatics. Pope.—He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste. Boileau.—I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays—absurdities which no critic of my nation can pardon. Pope.—We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his beauties.  But you would admire him still more if you could see the chief characters in all his test tragedies represented by an actor who appeared on the stage a little before I left the world.  He has shown the English nation more excellencies in Shakespeare than the quickest wits could discern, and has imprinted them on the heart with a livelier feeling than the most sensible natures had ever experienced without his help. Boileau.—The variety, spirit, and force of Mr. Garrick’s action have been much praised to me by many of his countrymen, whose shades I converse with, and who agree in speaking of him as we do of Baron, our most natural and most admired actor.  I have also heard of another, who has now quitted the stage, but who had filled, with great dignity, force, and elevation, some tragic parts, and excelled so much in the comic, that none ever has deserved a higher applause. Pope.—Mr. Quin was, indeed, a most perfect comedian.  In the part of Falstaff particularly, wherein the utmost force of Shakespeare’s humour appears, he attained to such perfection that he was not an actor; he was the man described by Shakespeare; he was Falstaff himself!  When I saw him do it the pleasantry of the fat knight appeared to me so bewitching, all his vices were so mirthful, that I could not much wonder at his having seduced a young prince even to rob in his company. Boileau.—That character is not well understood by the French; they suppose it belongs, not to comedy, but to farce, whereas the English see in it the finest and highest strokes of wit and humour.  Perhaps these different judgments may be accounted for in some measure by the diversity of manners in different countries.  But don’t you allow, Mr. Pope, that our writers, both of tragedy and comedy, are, upon the whole, more perfect masters of their art than yours?  If you deny it, I will appeal to the Athenians, the only judges qualified to decide the dispute.  I will refer it to Euripides, Sophocles, and Menander. Pope.—I am afraid of those judges, for I see them continually walking hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with Corneille, Racine, and Molière.  Our dramatic writers seem, in general, not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and give themselves airs of superiority.  They slight their reprimands, and laugh at their precepts—in short, they will be tried by their country alone; and that judicature is partial. Boileau.—I will press this question no further.  But let me ask you to which of our rival tragedians, Racine and Corneille, do you give the preference? Pope.—The sublimest plays of Corneille are, in my judgment, equalled by the Athalia of Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand.  I need not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more harmonious and noble in his versification.  Corneille formed himself entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil.  How much better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing his model! Boileau.—My friendship with Racine, and my partiality for his writings, make me hear with great pleasure the preference given to him above Corneille by so judicious a critic. Pope.—That he excelled his competitor in the particulars I have mentioned, can’t, I think, be denied.  But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille.  Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought.  Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note.  Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the god. Boileau.—I am glad to find, Mr. Pope, that in praising Corneille you run into poetry, which is not the language of sober criticism, though sometimes used by Longinus. Pope.—I caught the fire from the idea of Corneille. Boileau.—He has bright flashes, yet I think that in his thunder there is often more noise than fire.  Don’t you find him too declamatory, too turgid, too unnatural, even in his best tragedies? Pope.—I own I do; yet the greatness and elevation of his sentiments, and the nervous vigour of his sense, atone, in my opinion, for all his faults.  But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic poet, Milton. Boileau.—Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant fictions, would place him far below Virgil. Pope.—His genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his poem seems beyond the limits of criticism, as his subject is beyond the limits of nature.  The bright and excessive blaze of poetical fire, which shines in so many parts of the “Paradise Lost,” will hardly permit the dazzled eye to see its faults. Boileau.—The taste of your countrymen is much changed since the days of Charles II., when Dryden was thought a greater poet than Milton! Pope.—The politics of Milton at that time brought his poetry into disgrace, for it is a rule with the English, they see no good in a man whose politics they dislike; but, as their notions of government are apt to change, men of parts whom they have slighted become their favourite authors, and others who have possessed their warmest admiration are in their turn undervalued.  This revolution of favour was experienced by Dryden as well as Milton; he lived to see his writings, together with his politics, quite out of fashion.  But even in the days of his highest prosperity, when the generality of the people admired his Almanzor, and thought his Indian Emperor the perfection of tragedy, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Rochester, the two wittiest noblemen our country has produced, attacked his fame, and turned the rants of his heroes, the jargon of his spirits, and the absurdity of his plots into just ridicule. Boileau.—You have made him good amends by the praise you have given him in some of your writings. Pope.—I owed him that praise as my master in the art of versification, yet I subscribe to the censures which have been passed by other writers on many of his works.  They are good critics, but he is still a great poet.  You, sir, I am sure, must particularly admire him as an excellent satirist; his “Absalom and Achitophel” is a masterpiece in that way of writing, and his “Mac Flecno” is, I think, inferior to it in nothing but the meanness of the subject. Boileau.—Did not you take the model of your “Dunciad” from the latter of those very ingenious satires? Pope.—I did; but my work is more extensive than his, and my imagination has taken in it a greater scope. Boileau.—Some critics may doubt whether the length of your poem was so properly suited to the meanness of the subject as the brevity of his.  Three cantos to expose a dunce crowned with laurel!  I have not given above three lines to the author of the “Pucelle.” Pope.—My intention was to expose, not one author alone, but all the dulness and false taste of the English nation in my times.  Could such a design be contracted into a narrower compass? Boileau.—We will not dispute on this point, nor whether the hero of your “Dunciad” was really a dunce.  But has not Dryden been accused of immorality and profaneness in some of his writings? Pope.—He has, with too much reason: and I am sorry to say that all our best comic writers after Shakespeare and Johnson, except Addison and Steele, are as liable as he to that heavy charge.  Fletcher is shocking.  Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar have painted the manners of the times in which they wrote with a masterly hand; but they are too often such manners that a virtuous man, and much more a virtuous woman, must be greatly offended at the representation. Boileau.—In this respect our stage is far preferable to yours.  It is a school of morality.  Vice is exposed to contempt and to hatred.  No false colours are laid on to conceal its deformity, but those with which it paints itself are there taken off. Pope.—It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be the gravest lady in the nation.  Of late she is so grave, that one might almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene.  Molière made her indeed a good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with a merry, laughing face.  Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights. Boileau.—Her business is more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective.  But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of just indignation. Pope.—I like her best when she smiles.  But did you never reprove your witty friend, La Fontaine, for the vicious levity that appears in many of his tales?  He was as guilty of the crime of debauching the Muses as any of our comic poets. Boileau.—I own he was, and bewail the prostitution of his genius, as I should that of an innocent and beautiful country girl.  He was all nature, all simplicity! yet in that simplicity there was a grace, and unaffected vivacity, with a justness of thought and easy elegance of expression that can hardly be found in any other writer.  His manner is quite original, and peculiar to himself, though all the matter of his writings is borrowed from others. Pope.—In that manner he has been imitated by my friend Mr. Prior. Boileau.—He has, very successfully.  Some of Prior’s tales have the spirit of La Fontaine’s with more judgment, but not, I think, with such an amiable and graceful simplicity. Pope.—Prior’s harp had more strings than La Fontaine’s.  He was a fine poet in many different ways: La Fontaine but in one.  And, though in some of his tales he imitated that author, his “Alma” was an original, and of singular beauty. Boileau.—There is a writer of heroic poetry, who lived before Milton, and whom some of your countrymen place in the highest class of your poets, though he is little known in France.  I see him sometimes in company with Homer and Virgil, but oftener with Tasso, Ariosto, and Dante. Pope.—I understand you mean Spenser.  There is a force and beauty in some of his images and descriptions, equal to any in those writers you have seen him converse with.  But he had not the art of properly shading his pictures.  He brings the minute and disagreeable parts too much into sight; and mingles too frequently vulgar and mean ideas with noble and sublime.  Had he chosen a subject proper for epic poetry, he seems to have had a sufficient elevation and strength in his genius to make him a great epic poet: but the allegory, which is continued throughout the whole work, fatigues the mind, and cannot interest the heart so much as those poems, the chief actors in which are supposed to have really existed.  The Syrens and Circe in the “Odyssey” are allegorical persons; but Ulysses, the hero of the poem, was a man renowned in Greece, which makes the account of his adventures affecting and delightful.  To be now and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be always there is irksome. Boileau.—Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem? Pope.—Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and with Camoëns. Boileau.—Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem resembling the “Georgics”?  On his head was a garland of the several kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed. Pope.—Your description points out Thomson.  He painted nature exactly, and with great strength of pencil.  His imagination was rich, extensive, and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and affected.  Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject. Boileau.—I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek model.  For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides. Pope.—He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a moralist.  For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart. Boileau.—St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller.  I was surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs.  His genius was a composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the agreeable.  In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is a finesse and delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never exceeded.  Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly the ladies they admired.  But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first class. Pope.—Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer.  His Muse was as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful wreaths.  But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably mixed with the elegant and the noble, like schoolboys or a mob admitted into a palace.  There was also an intemperance and a luxuriancy in his wit which he did not enough restrain.  He wrote little to the understanding, and less to the heart; but he frequently delights the imagination, and sometimes strikes it with flashes of the highest sublime.  We had another poet of the age of Charles I., extremely admired by all his contemporaries, in whose works there is still more affectation of wit, a greater redundancy of imagination, a worse taste, and less judgment; but he touched the heart more, and had finer feelings than Waller.  I mean Cowley. Boileau.—I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his learned friend, Dr. Spratt.  He seems to me a great wit, and a very amiable man, but not a good poet. Pope.—The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the art of poetry he is always extremely deficient. Boileau.—I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the opinion of the English.  Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse, without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and do them more service than all the rules laid down in my “Art of Poetry” and yours of “Criticism.” Pope.—I am much of your mind.  But I left in England some poets whom you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings. Boileau.—France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since the time of my death.  Of one particularly I hear wonders.  Fame to him is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years.  She brings his praises to me from all parts of Europe.  You know I speak of Voltaire. Pope.—I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his extensive genius.  Other writers excel in some one particular branch of wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to Berlin, he had a whole academy of belles lettres in him alone. Boileau.—That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other monarch in any age or country has ever possessed.  What an astonishing compass must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle with the conduct of Cæsar or Gustavus Adolphus! Pope.—I envy Voltaire so noble a subject both for his verse and his prose.  But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want no historian.  I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his pen, as Cæsar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well as the warrior, in that picture of himself.  Voltaire has shown us that the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there. Boileau.—The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy of a leader’s attention than the revolutions of fortune.  And it is chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history. Pope.—He has not only been the father of it among the moderns, but has carried it himself to its utmost perfection. Boileau.—Is he not too universal?  Can any writer be exact who is so comprehensive? Pope.—A traveller round the world cannot inspect every region with such an accurate care as exactly to describe each single part.  If the outlines are well marked, and the observations on the principal points are judicious, it is all that can be required. Boileau.—I would, however, advise and exhort the French and English youth to take a fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide.  To speak without a metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a critical and laborious investigation.  The composer of a set of lively and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, is not an historian. Pope.—We cannot, I think, deny that name to the author of the “Life of Charles XII., King of Sweden.” Boileau.—No, certainly.  I esteem it the very best history that this age has produced.  As full of spirit as the hero whose actions it relates, it is nevertheless most exact in all matters of importance.  The style of it is elegant, perspicuous, unaffected; the disposition and method are excellent; the judgments given by the writer acute and just. Pope.—Are you not pleased with that philosophical freedom of thought which discovers itself in all the works of Voltaire, but more particularly in those of an historical nature? Boileau.—If it were properly regulated, I should reckon it among their highest perfections.  Superstition, and bigotry, and party spirit are as great enemies to the truth and candour of history as malice or adulation.  To think freely is therefore a most necessary quality in a perfect historian.  But all liberty has its bounds, which, in some of his writings, Voltaire, I fear, has not observed.  Would to Heaven he would reflect, while it is yet in his power to correct what is faulty, that all his works will outlive him; that many nations will read them; and that the judgment pronounced here upon the writer himself will be according to the scope and tendency of them, and to the extent of their good or evil effects on the great society of mankind. Pope.—It would be well for all Europe if some other wits of your country, who give the tone to this age in all polite literature, had the same serious thoughts you recommend to Voltaire.  Witty writings, when directed to serve the good ends of virtue and religion, are like the lights hung out in a pharos, to guide the mariners safe through dangerous seas; but the brightness of those that are impious or immoral shines only to betray and lead men to destruction. Boileau.—Has England been free from all seductions of this nature? Pope.—No.  But the French have the art of rendering vice and impiety more agreeable than the English. Boileau.—I am not very proud of this superiority in the talents of my countrymen.  But as I am told that the good sense of the English is now admired in France, I hope it will soon convince both nations that true wisdom is virtue, and true virtue is religion. Pope.—I think it also to be wished that a taste for the frivolous may not continue too prevalent among the French.  There is a great difference between gathering flowers at the foot of Parnassus and ascending the arduous heights of the mountain.  The palms and laurels grow there, and if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling.  I would have them be perpetual competitors with the English in manly wit and substantial learning.  But let the competition be friendly.  There is nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy.  True wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it is found. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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