Dr. Arbuthnot to Alexander Pope-Friendly Feelings and Advice. III.-FRIENDLY FEELINGS AND ADVICE. Dr. Arbuthnot to Alexander Pope. HAMPSTEAD, July 17, 1734. I little doubt of your kind concern for me, nor of that of the lady you mention. I have nothing to repay my friends with at present, but prayers and good wishes. I have the satisfaction to find that I am as officiously served by my friends, as he that has thousands to leave in legacies; besides the assurance of their sincerity. God Almighty has made my bodily distress as easy as a thing of that nature can be. I have found some relief, at least sometimes, from the air of this place. My nights are bad, but many poor creatures have worse. As for you, my good friend, I think, since our first acquaintance, there have not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies that often affect the sincerest friendships; I am sure not on my side. I must be so sincere as to own that, though I could not help valuing you for those talents which the world prizes, yet they were not the foundation of my friendship; they were quite of another sort; nor shall I at present offend you by enumerating them; and I make it my last request, that you will continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice which you seem naturally endued with; but still with a due regard to your own safety; and study more to reform than chastise, though the one cannot be effected without the other. Lord Bathurst I have always honored for every good quality that a person of his rank ought to have; pray, give my respects and kindest wishes to the family. My venison stomach is gone, but I have those about me, and often with me, who will be very glad of his present. If it is left at my house, it will be transmitted safe to me. Alexander Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot-In Reply. Functions of Satire. A recovery in my case, and at my age, is impossible; the kindest wish of my friends is Euthanasia. Living or dying, I shall always be, Yours, etc. IV.-IN REPLY.-FUNCTIONS OF SATIRE. Alexander Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot. July 26th, 1734. I thank you for your letter, which has all those genuine marks of a good mind by which I have ever distinguished yours, and for which I have so long loved you. Our friendship has been constant, because it was grounded on good principles, and, therefore, not only uninterrupted by any distrust, but by any vanity, much less any interest. What you recommend to me with the request, shall have its due weight with me. solemnity of a last That disdain and indignation against vice is (I thank God) the only disdain and indignation I have; it is sincere, and it will be a lasting one. But sure it is as impossible to have a just abhorrence of vice, without hating the vicious, as to bear a true love for virtue, without loving the good. To reform, and not to chastise, I am afraid, is impossible; and that the best precepts, as well as the best laws, would prove of small use, if there were no examples to enforce them. To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed; but it is fighting with shadows. General propositions are obscure, misty, and uncertain, compared with plain, full, and home examples. Precepts only apply to our reason, which, in most men, is but weak ; examples are pictures, and strike the senses; nay, raise the passions, and call in those (the strongest and most general of all motives) to the aid of reformation. Every vicious man makes Alexander Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot-In Reply. Functions of Satire. the case his own; and that is the only way by which such men can be affected, much less deterred; so that to chastise is to reform. The only sign by which I found my writings ever did any good, or had any weight, has been that they raised the anger of bad men; and my greatest comfort and encouragement to proceed has been to see that those who have no shame, and no fear of any thing else, have appeared touched by my satires. As to your kind concern for my safety, I can guess what occasions it at this time. Some characters I have drawn, are * such that, if there be any who deserve them, 'tis evidently a service to mankind to point those men out; yet such as, if all the world gave them, none, I think, will own they take to themselves; but if they should, those of whom all the world think in such a manner, must be men I cannot fear. Such, in particular, as have the meanness to do mischiefs in the dark, have seldom the courage to justify them in the face of day; the talents that make a cheat or a whisperer, are not the same that qualify a man for an insulter; and as to private villainy, it is not so safe to join in an assassination, as in a libel. I will consult my safety, so far as I think it becomes a prudent man; but not so far as to omit any thing which I think becomes an honest one. As to personal attacks beyond the law, every man is liable to them; as for danger within the law, I am not guilty enough to fear any. For the good opinion of all the world, I know it is not to be had; for that of worthy men, I hope I shall not forfeit it; for that of the great or those in power, I may wish I had it but if, through misrepresentations (too common about persons in that station), I have it not, I shall be sorry, but not miserable in the want of it. * The character of Sporus in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Alexander Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot-In Reply. Functions of Satire. It is certain much freer Satirists than I have enjoyed the encouragement and protection of the princes under whom they lived. Augustus and Mæcenas made Horace their companion, though he had been in arms on the side of Brutus; and allow me to remark, it was out of the suffering party too, that they favored and distinguished Virgil. You will not suspect me of comparing myself with Virgil and Horace, nor even with another court-favorite, Boileau. I have always been too modest to imagine my panegyrics were incense worthy of a court; and that I hope will be thought the true reason why I have never offered any. I would only have observed that it was under the greatest princes and best ministers that moral satirists were most encouraged; and that then poets exercised the same jurisdiction over the follies as historians did over the vices of men. It may also be worth considering whether Augustus himself makes the greater figure in the writings of the former or of the latter; and whether Nero and Domitian do not appear as ridiculous for their alse tastes and affectation, in Persius and Juvenal, as odious for their bad government in Tacitus and Suetonius. In the first of these reigns it was that Horace was protected and caressed; and in the latter that Lucan was put to death, and Juvenal banished. I would not have said so much, but to show you my whole heart on this subject, and to convince you I am deliberately bent to perform that request which you make your last to me, and to perform it with temper, justice, and resolution. As your approbation (being the testimony of a sound head and an honest heart) does greatly confirm me herein, I wish you may live to see the effect it may hereafter have upon me, in something more deserving of that approbation; but if it be the will of God (which, I Alexander Pope to Mr. Steele-Criticism of the Emperor Adrian's Verses to his Soul. know, will also be yours) that we may separate, I hope it will be better for you than it can be for me. You are fitter to live, or to die, than any man I know. Adieu, my dear friend! and may God preserve your life easy, or make your death happy. V.-CRITICISM OF THE EMPEROR ADRIAN'S VERSES TO HIS SOUL. Alexander Pope to Mr. Steele. November 7th, 1712. I was the other day in company with five or six men of some learning, where, chancing to mention the famous verses which the Emperor Adrian spoke on his death-bed, they were all agreed that it was a piece of gayety unworthy of that Prince in those circumstances. I could not but differ from this opinion; methinks it was by no means a gay, but a very serious soliloquy to his soul at the point of its departure; in which sense I naturally took the verses at my first reading of them, when I was very young, and before I knew what interpretation the world generally put upon them: Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis Nec (ut soles) dabis joca! "Alas my soul! Thou pleasing companion of this body; thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! Whither art thou flying? To what unknown scene? All trembling, fearful, and pensive? What now is become of thy former wit and humor? Thou shalt jest and be gay no more." * This excellent person died Feb. 27, 1734–’5. |