ment of Boileau to Addison, and a pure compliment of ceremony upon Addison's early Latin verses, was (credite posteri!) the making of Addison in England. Understand, Schlosser, that Addison's Latin verses were never heard of by England, until long after his English prose had fixed. the public attention upon him; his Latin reputation, so far from being the foundation upon which he built, was a slight reaction from his English* reputation: and, secondly, understand that Boileau had at no time any such authority in England as to make anybody's reputation; he had first of all to make his own. A sure proof of this is, that Boileau's name was first published in London by Prior's burlesque of what the Frenchman had called an ode. This gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the Rhine in 1672, and the capture of a famous fortress ("le fameux fort de Skink") by Louis XIV., known to London at the time of Prior's parody by the name of "Louis Baboon."† That was not likely to recommend Master Boileau to any of the allies against the said Baboon, had it ever been heard of out of France. Nor was it likely to make him popular in England, that his name was first mentioned amidst shouts of laughter and mockery. It is another argument of the slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England, that no attempt was ever made to translate even his satires, epistles, or "Lutrin," except by booksellers' hacks; and

* In Oxford, where naturally an academic reputation forestalls for any scholarlike student his more national reputation, some of Addison's Latin verses were probably the ground of his first premature notoriety. But in London, 1 believe that Addison was first made known by his "Blenheim" in 1704; most assuredly not by any academic exercise whatever. +"Louis Baboon :"-As people read nothing in these days that is more than a month old, I am daily admonished that allusions the most obvious to anything in the rear of our own time need explanation. Louis Baboon is Swift's allegorico-jocular name for Louis Bourbon-i. e., Louis XIV.

that no such version ever took the slightest root amongst ourselves, spite of Skink, from Addison's day down to our own. Boileau was essentially, and in two senses-viz., both as to mind and as to influence-un homme borné.

Addison's "Blenheim " is poor enough; one might think it a translation from some German original of those times. Gottsched's aunt, or Bodmer's wet-nurse, might have written it; but still no fibs even as to "Blenheim." His "enemies" did not say this thing against "Blenheim ""aloud,” nor his friends that thing against it "softly." And why? Because at that time (1704-5) he had made no particular enemies, nor any particular friends; unless by friends you mean his Whig patrons, and by enemies his creditors.

As to "Cato," Schlosser, as usual, wanders in the shadow of ancient night. The English "people," it seems, so "extravagantly applauded" this wretched drama, that you might suppose them to have "altogether changed their nature," and to have forgotten Shakspere. That man must have forgotten Shakspere, indeed, and from ramollissement of the brain, who could admire "Cato." "But," says Schlosser, "it was only a 'fashion;' and the English soon repented." The English could not repent of a crime which they had never committed. Cato was not popular for a moment, nor tolerated for a moment, upon any literary ground, or as a work of art. It was an apple of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess of faction between two infuriated parties. "Cato," coming from a man without parliamentary connections, would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigs have always affected a special love and favour for popular counsels: they have never ceased to give themselves the best of characters as regards public freedom. The Tories, as contradistinguished from the Jacobites, knowing that without their aid, the Revolution could not have been carried, most

justly contended that the national liberties had been at least as much indebted to themselves. When, therefore, the Whigs put forth their man Cato to mouth speeches about liberty, as exclusively their pet, and about patriotism and all that sort of thing, saying insultingly to the Tories, "How do you like that? Does that sting?" "Sting, indeed!" replied the Tories; "not at all; it's quite refreshing to us, that the Whigs have not utterly disowned such sentiments, which, by their public acts, we really thought they had." And, accordingly, as the popular anecdote tells us, a Tory leader, Lord Bolingbroke, sent for Booth, who performed Cato, and presented him (populo spectante) with fifty guineas "for defending so well the cause of the people against a perpetual dictator." In which words, observe, Lord Bolingbroke at once asserted the cause of his own party, and launched a sarcasm against a great individual opponent— viz., Marlborough. Now, Mr Schlosser, I have mended your harness: all right ahead: so drive on once more.

But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither-in what direction is it that the man is driving us? Positively, Schlosser, you must stop and let me get out. I'll go no further with such a drunken coachman. Many another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point-blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his official character, which was not that "he could not prepare despatches in a good style," but diametrically the opposite case: that he insisted-so microscopically insisted on scruples of diction, that a serious retardation was threatened to the course of public business. But all these things are as nothing to what Schlosser says elsewhere. He actually describes Addison, on the whole, as a "dull prosaîst,”

and the patron of pedantry! Addison, the man of all that ever lived most hostile even to what was good in pedantry, to its tendencies towards the profound in erudition, to its minute precision and the non-popular; Addison, the champion of all that is easy, natural, superficial-Addison a pedant, and a patron of pedantry!

Pope, by far the most important writer, English or continental, of his own age, is treated with more extensive ignorance by Mr Schlosser than any other, and (excepting Addison) with more ambitious injustice. A false abstract is given, or a false impression, of any one amongst his brilliant works, that is noticed at all; and a false sneer, a sneer irrelevant to the case, at any work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice. The three works selected as the gems of Pope's collection are, the "Essay on Criticism," the "Rape of the Lock," and the "Essay on Man." On the first, which (with Dr Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical multiplication-table, of commonplaces the most mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps; since nothing is said worth answering, it is sufficient to answer nothing. The "Rape of the Lock" is treated with the same delicate sensibility that we might have looked for in Brennus, if consulted on the picturesque, or in Attila the Hun, if adjured to decide æsthetically between two rival cameos. Attila is said (though no doubt falsely) to have described himself as not properly a man so much as the divine wrath incarnate. would be fine in a melodrama, with Bengal lights burning on the stage. But, if ever he said such a naughty thing, he forgot to tell us what it was that had made him angry. By what title did he come into alliance with the divine

This

wrath, which was not likely to consult a savage? And why did his wrath hurry, by forced marches, to the Adriatic? Now so much do people differ in opinion, that, to me, who look at him through a telescope from an eminence, fourteen centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of a Mahratta trooper painfully gathering chout, or a Scottish cateran levying black-mail, or a decent tax-gatherer with an ink-horn at his button-hole, and supported by a select party of constabulary friends. The very natural instinct which Attila always showed for following the trail of the wealthiest footsteps, seems to argue a most commercial coolness in the dispensation of his wrath. Mr Schlosser burns with the wrath of Attila against all aristocracies, and especially that of England. He governs his fury, also, with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's "duty it was," says this demoniac, to "scourge the follies of good society," and also "to break with the aristocracy." No, surely? something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of duty? Possibly; but it would not have satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's guilt consists in having made his poem an idyl or succession of pictures representing the gayer aspects of society as it really was, and supported by a comic interest of the mock-heroic derived from a playful machinery, instead of converting it into a bloody satire. Pope, however, did not shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy, if these made any part of his duties. Such assaults he did actually make four times over, and twice at least* too often for his own peace, and

"Twice at least:"-Viz., upon Aaron Hill, and upon the Duke of Chundos. In both cases the aggrieved parties sharpened the edge of the