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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
drop of English blood in his body.” The Commissioners thereupon
declined further dealing with him.
The reason of the above absurd conduct we suspect to have been,
that Harrison desired, in addition to the large reward claimed by
him, to have a monopoly of the manufacture of his watches, such as
would have necessarily been created for his benefit, had he been
allowed to keep his actual methods of working a secret. For he
offered, upon receiving the reward, “to employ a sufficient number
of hands, so as with all possible speed to furnish his Majesty’s navy,
&c. &c., not doubting but the public will consider the charge of the
outset of the undertaking.” We quote here from the Biographia
Britannica, in the last volume of which, published in 1766, is an
account of him, from materials avowedly furnished by himself, and
plainly written by a partisan. It is the only instance we can find in
which a memoir of a living person has been inserted in that work.
The next circumstance we find, (for there is no connected history of
this discussion, which exists only in a number of detached
pamphlets,) is the delivery of the watch to Dr. Maskelyne, at the
Royal Observatory, in May, 1766, that its rate of going might there
be tried. The Report of the Astronomer Royal states, that it could not
be depended upon within a degree of longitude in a voyage of six
weeks; and a very angry pamphlet, published by Harrison in the
following year, accuses Maskelyne of having treated the instrument
unfairly. Many circumstances are stated which now appear ludicrous,
and some which, if true, would have reflected discredit on the
Commissioners. But nothing can be inferred, after the refusal of
Harrison to accede to the very reasonable demand of the
Commissioners, except that he was most probably as wrong in his
suspicions as he had been foolish in his dealings. The end of this
dispute was, that in 1767 Harrison complied with the conditions
insisted upon; and, it having been found that his improvements were
such as admitted of execution by another person, he received the
whole sum awarded to him by the Act of Parliament.
Harrison was not a well-educated man, and was deficient in the
power of expressing his meaning clearly. It was easier for him, no
doubt, to make two watches than to explain one; and hence,
perhaps, his aversion to “men of theory,” who troubled him for
descriptions and explanations.
He died in 1776, at his house in Red Lion Square, having been
engaged during the latter years of his life in bringing his
improvements still nearer to perfection. His last work, which was
tried in 1772, was found to have erred only four seconds and a half
in ten weeks.
In his younger days, some church-bells, which were out of tune, set
him upon examining the musical scale, with a view to correct them.
He communicated his ideas on the subject to Dr. Smith, who
confirmed and extended them in his well-known work on Harmonics.
In the Preface it is stated that Harrison made the interval of the
major-third bear to that of the octave the proportion of the diameter
of a circle to its circumference. This, he said, he did on the authority
of a friend, who assured him it would give the best scale. Harrison
himself wrote a treatise on the scale, but we do not know whether it
was published.
He is, on the whole, a fine instance of the union of originality with
perseverance. The inventions, of which it takes so short a space to
tell the history, were the work of fifty years of labour, and to them
the art of constructing chronometers, and consequently the science
of navigation, is indebted for much of its present advanced state.
 Engraved by C. E.
Wagstaff.

MONTAIGNE.

From an original Picture at

Paris, in the “Dépot des
Archives du Royaume.”

Under the Superintendance

of the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

London, Published by
Charles Knight, Ludgate
Street.
 MONTAIGNE.

Michel, Seigneur, or Lord, of Montaigne, a feudal estate in the

province of Perigord, near the river Dordogne, was born February
28, 1533, of a family said to have been originally from England. He
was a younger son; but, by the death of his elder brother, inherited
the estate by the title of which he is known. His father, a blunt
feudal noble, who had served in the wars of Francis I., placed him
out at nurse in a village of his domain, and directed that he should
be treated in the same manner as the children of the peasants. As
soon as he could speak, he was placed under the care of a German
tutor, selected for his ignorance of the French, and intimate
acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages. All Montaigne’s
intercourse with his preceptor was carried on in Latin; and even his
parents made a rule never to address him except in that language,
of which they picked up a sufficient number of words for common
purposes. The attendants were enjoined to follow the same practice.
“They all became latinized,” says Montaigne himself, “and even the
villagers around learnt words in that language, some of which took
root in the country, and became of common use among the people.”
Thus, without any formal course of scholastic teaching, Montaigne
spoke Latin long before he could speak French, which he was
afterwards obliged to learn as if it had been a foreign language.
When, at a mature age, he was writing his Essays, he professed to
be still ignorant of grammar, having learnt various languages by
practice, and not knowing yet the meaning of adjective, conjunctive,
or ablative, (Essais, b. i. c. 48.) This last assertion probably is not to
be taken strictly to the letter. He studied Greek also by way of
pastime, rather than as a task. The object of his father was to make
him learn without constraint and from his own wish; and, as an
instance of the old soldier’s whimsical notions on education, he
caused his son to be awakened in the morning to the sound of
music, that his nervous system might not be injured by any sudden
shock. At six years old Montaigne was sent to the College of
Guienne, at Bordeaux, an establishment which then enjoyed a very
high reputation. He soon made his way to the higher classes; and at
thirteen years of age had completed his college education. Having
no taste for military life, which was then the usual career of young
noblemen, he studied the law; and in 1554 was made Councillor (or
Judge) in the Parliament of Bordeaux, in which capacity he acted for
several years. He went several times to Court, and enjoyed the
favour of Henry II., by whom, or as some say, by Charles IX., he was
made a Gentleman of the King’s Chamber, and Knight of the Order
of St. Michel. Among his brother councillors at Bordeaux there was a
young man of distinguished merit, called La Boëtie, for whom
Montaigne conceived a feeling of the most romantic friendship,
which soon became reciprocal. The sentiments and opinions of the
two seem to have sympathized in an extraordinary degree. La Boëtie
died young, but his friend’s affection survived: a chapter of the
Essays is devoted to his memory, and in other parts of Montaigne’s
writings we find frequent recurrence to the same subject.
Montaigne married Françoise de la Chassaigne when he was thirty-
three years of age; and this he did, as he says, in consequence of
external persuasions, and in order to please his friends rather than
himself, for he was not inclined to a married life; “but once married,
although he had been till then considered a licentious man, he
observed the conjugal laws more strictly than he had himself
expected.” On succeeding to the family estate, on which he generally
resided, he took the management of it into his own hands; and
although his father, judging from his habits of abstraction and
seeming carelessness of worldly objects, had foretold that he would
ruin his patrimony, Montaigne, at his death, left the property if not
much better, certainly not worse than he found it. He was not rich,
for we are told, by Balzac, that his income did not exceed 6000
livres, which was no great revenue for a country gentleman even at
that time. In 1569 he translated into French a Latin work of Sebonde
or Sebon, in defence of the mysteries and doctrines of the Church of
Rome, against Luther and other Protestant writers. France was at
that time desolated by civil and religious war. Montaigne, although
he evidently disapproved of the conduct of the Court towards the
Protestants, yet remained loyal to the King. He lived in retirement,
and took no part in public affairs, except by exhorting both parties to
moderation and mutual charity. By this conduct he became, as it
generally happens, obnoxious to both factions, and he incurred some
danger in consequence. The massacre of St. Bartholomew plunged
him into a deep melancholy. He detested cruelty and the shedding of
blood, and in several passages of his Essays has animadverted in
strong terms upon the atrocities committed against the Protestants.
It was about this dismal epoch of 1572, when, solitude and
melancholy urging him to the task, he began to write that celebrated
work, of which we shall presently speak more at length. It was first
published in March, 1580; and had great success. After some time,
Montaigne printed a new edition of it, with additions; but without
making any alterations in the part which had appeared before. The
popularity of the book was such that in a few years there was hardly
a man of education in France who had not a copy of it.
Soon after the first publication of his Essays, Montaigne undertook a
journey for the sake of his health. He went to Germany, Switzerland,
and, lastly, to Italy. He visited several bathing-places, among others,
Baden, and the baths of Lucca in Tuscany. He proceeded to Rome,
where he was well received by several Cardinals and other persons
of distinction, and was introduced to Pope Gregory XIII. Montaigne
was delighted with Rome; he found himself at home among those
localities and monuments which were connected with his earliest
studies, and with the first impressions of his childhood. His remarks
on what he saw in the course of his journey are those of a man of
penetration, sincere and plain spoken, and written in his peculiar
antique style. His MS. journal, after lying forgotten for nearly two
centuries, was discovered in an old chest in the château of his
family, and published in 1775, by M. de Querlon, under the following
title, ‘Journal du Voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie, par la
Suisse et l’Allemagne, en 1580–1.’ It is one of the earliest
descriptions of Italy in a modern language. In this journey,
Montaigne received the freedom of the city of Rome, by a special
bull of the Pope, which he valued as the proudest distinction of his
life.
While he was abroad, he was elected mayor of Bordeaux by the
votes of the citizens; an honour which he would have declined, but
that the king, Henry III., insisted on his accepting of it. This was a
mere honorary office, no emolument being attached to it. The
appointment was for two years; but Montaigne was re-elected at the
expiration of that period, which was a mark of public favour of rare
occurrence.
On retiring from his office, Montaigne returned to his estate. The
country was then ravaged by the war of the League. He had great
difficulty in saving his family and property in the midst of the
contending parties, and once narrowly escaped assassination in his
château. To add to the miseries of civil war, the plague broke out in
his neighbourhood in 1586; and he then, with his family, left his
home and became a wanderer, residing successively at several
friends’ houses in other parts of the country. He was at Paris in
1588, busy about a new edition of his Essays. It appears from De
Thou, that about this time he was employed in negotiation with a
view to mediate peace between Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry
IV., and the Duke of Guise. At Paris, he made the acquaintance of
Mademoiselle de Gournay, a young lady, who had conceived a kind
of sentimental affection for him by reading his book. In company
with her mother, she visited and introduced herself to him, and from
that time he called her his “fille d’alliance,” or adopted daughter, a
title which she retained for the rest of her life, as she never married.
This attachment, which, though warm and reciprocal, has every
appearance of being of a purely platonic nature, is one of the
remarkable circumstances of Montaigne’s life. At the time of his
death, Mademoiselle de Gournay and her mother crossed one-half of
France, in spite of the civil troubles and the insecurity of the roads,
to mix their tears with those of his widow and daughter.
On his return from Paris, in the latter part of 1588, Montaigne
stopped at Blois, with De Thou, Pasquier, and other friends. The
famous States-General were then assembled in that city, where the
murder of the Duke of Guise, and of his brother, the Cardinal, soon
after took place (23d and 24th December, 1588). Montaigne had
long foreseen that the civil dissensions could only terminate with the
death of one of the great party leaders; and he also said to De Thou
that Henry of Navarre was inclined to embrace the Catholic faith,
were he not afraid of being forsaken by his party; and that, on the
other side, Guise himself would not have been averse from adopting
the Protestant religion, if he could thereby have promoted his
ambitious views. After these events, Montaigne returned to his
château. In the following year, he became acquainted with Pierre
Charron, a theological writer of considerable reputation. An intimate
friendship ensued between the two authors; and Charron, in his
book ‘De la Sagesse,’ borrowed many thoughts from the Essays,
which he held in high estimation. Montaigne, by his will, empowered
Charron to assume the coat of arms of his family, as he himself had
no male issue.
Montaigne’s health had been declining for some time; he was
afflicted with gravel and cholic, and he was obstinately resolved
against consulting physicians. In September, 1592, he fell ill of a
malignant quinsy, which kept him speechless for three days, during
which he had recourse to his pen to signify to his wife his last
intentions. He desired that several gentlemen of the neighbourhood
should be requested to come and take leave of him. When they
were assembled in his room, a priest said mass, and at the elevation
of the host, Montaigne half raised himself on his bed, with his hands
joined together, and in that attitude expired, September 13, 1592, in
the sixtieth year of his age. His body was buried at Bordeaux, in the
church of the Feuillans, where a monument was erected to him by
his widow. He left an only daughter, heiress of his property.
Montaigne’s Essays have been the subject of much and very
conflicting criticism. If we consider the age and the intellectual
condition of the country in which the author was born, we must
pronounce them a very extraordinary work, not so much on account
of the learning contained in them, as for the philosophical spirit and
the frank, independent, liberal tone that pervades their pages.
Civilization and literature were then at a low ebb in France; the
language was hardly formed, the country was still torn by the rude
turbulence, and subject to the oppression, of feudal lords and feudal
laws; and was, moreover, distracted by ignorant fanaticism, by
deadly intolerance, and by civil factions, rendered more fierce by
religious feuds. It is very remarkable that, in a remote province of a
country so situated, a country gentleman, himself belonging to the
feudal aristocracy, should have composed a work full of moral
maxims and precepts, conceived in the spirit of the philosophers of
Greece and Rome, and founded, not on the sanctions of revealed
religion, but on a sort of natural system of ethics, on the beauty of
virtue, on the innate sense of justice, on the lessons of history. It is
almost more remarkable that such a book should have been read
with avidity amidst the turmoil of factions, the din of civil war, the
knell of persecution and massacre.
The morality of the Essays has been called, and justly so, a pagan
morality: it is not founded on the faith and the hopes of a Christian;
and its principles are in many respects widely different from those of
the Gospel. Scepticism was the bias of Montaigne’s mind; his
philosophy is, in great measure, that of Seneca, and other ancient
writers, whose books were the first that were put into his hands
when a child. Accordingly, Pascal, Nicole, Leclerc, and other Christian
moralists, while rendering full justice to Montaigne’s talents and the
many good sentiments scattered about the Essays, are very severe
upon his ethics, taken as a system. Yet he was not a determined
infidel, for not only in the Essays, but in the journal of his travels,
which was not intended for publication, he manifests Christian
sentiments; and we have seen that the mode of his death was that
of a Christian. In his chapter on prayers, (Essais, b. i. 56,) he
recommends the use of the Lord’s Prayer in terms evidently sincere;
and in a preceding chapter, after speaking of two sorts of ignorance,
the one, that which precedes all instruction, and the other, that
which follows partial instruction, he says, that “men of simple minds,
devoid of curiosity and of learning, are Christians through reverence
and obedience; that minds of middle growth and moderate
capacities are the most prone to error and doubt; but that higher
intellects, more clear-sighted and better grounded in science, form a
superior class of believers, who, through long and religious
investigations, arrive at the fountain of light of the Scriptures, and
feel the mysterious and divine meaning of our ecclesiastical
doctrines. And we see some who reach this last stage, through the
second, with marvellous fruit and confirmation; and who, having
attained the extreme boundary of Christian intelligence, enjoy their
success with modesty and thanksgivings, accompanied by a total
reformation of their morals, unlike those men of another stamp,
who, in order to clear themselves of the suspicion of their past
errors, become violent, indiscreet, unjust, and throw discredit on the
cause which they pretend to serve.” (Essais, b. i. ch. 54.) And a few
lines after, he modestly places himself in the second rank, of those
who, disdaining the first state of uninformed simplicity, have not yet
attained the third and last exalted stage, and who, he says, are
thereby rendered “inept, importunate, and troublesome to society.
But I, for my part, endeavour, as much as I can, to fall back upon
my first and natural condition, from which I have idly attempted to
depart.” Although we may not trust implicitly to the sincerity of this
modest admission, yet we clearly see from this and other passages,
that Montaigne’s mind was anything but dogmatical, and that he felt
the insecurity of his own philosophy, which was made up of impulses
and doubts, rather than of argumentation and conviction.
Montaigne has been also censured for several licentious and some
cynical passages of his ‘Essais.’ This licentiousness, however, is
rather in the expressions than in the meaning of the author. He
spoke plainly of things which are not alluded to in a more refined
state of society, but he did so evidently without mischievous
intentions, and as a thing of common occurrence in his days. His
early familiarity with the Latin classics probably contributed to this
habit.
Notwithstanding these faults, Montaigne’s Essays are justly admired
for the sound sense, honesty, and beauty which abound in them.
‘The best parts of them (says a French critic) are those in which he
speaks of the passions and inclinations of men; as for his learning, it
is vague, not methodical, and uncertain; and his philosophical
maxims are often dangerous.’ (Mélanges d’Histoire et de Litterature,’
Rouen, 1699, tom. i. p. 133.) Montaigne combats most earnestly all
the malignant feelings inherent in man, inhumanity, injustice,
oppression, uncharitableness; cruelty he detests, his whole nature
was averse from it. His chapters on pedantry and on the education
of children are remarkably good. He throws, at times, considerable
light on the state of society and manners in France in his time, which
may be considered as the last period of feudal power in that country.
In his chapter on the inequality among men, he speaks of the
independence of the French nobility, especially in the provinces
remote from the Court, as Britanny; where the feudal lords living on
their estates, surrounded by their vassals, their officers and valets,
their household conducted with an almost royal ceremonial, heard of
the king but once a-year as if he were some distant king or Sultan of
Persia, and only remembered him on the score of some distant
relationship, which they hold carefully registered among their
ancestral documents.
Mademoiselle de Gournay edited Montaigne’s ‘Essais’ in 1635, and
dedicated the edition to the Cardinal de Richelieu. She wrote a long
preface to it, which is a zealous apology for Montaigne and his works
against the charges of the earlier critics. An edition of the ‘Essais’
was published by Pierre Coste, 3 vols. 4to. London, 1724, enriched
with valuable notes and several letters of Montaigne at the end of
the third volume. The edition of Paris, 3 vols. 4to. 1725, is, in great
measure, a reprint of that of Coste, except that the publishers have
added extracts of the various judgments of the most distinguished
critical writers concerning the ‘Essais,’ and also two more letters of
Montaigne’s at the end. These additions render this Paris edition the
most complete. The ex-senator Vernier published in 1810, ‘Notices et
Observations pour faciliter la Lecture des Essais de Montaigne,’ Paris,
2 vols. 8vo. It is a useful commentary.
 POPE.

Alexander Pope was born in London, June S, 1688. His father was a
merchant, of good family, attached to the Roman Catholic religion;
and his own childish years were spent, first under the tuition of a
priest, then at a Roman Catholic Seminary at Twyford, near
Winchester. He taught himself to write by copying printed books, in
the execution of which he attained great neatness and exactness.
When little more than eight years old he accidentally met with
Ogilby’s Translation of Homer. The versification is insipid and lifeless;
but the stirring events and captivating character of the story so
possessed his mind, that Ogilby became a favourite book. When
about ten years old he was removed from Twyford to a school at
Hyde Park Corner. He had there occasional opportunities of
frequenting the theatre; which suggested to him the amusement of
turning the chief events in Homer into a kind of play, composed of a
succession of speeches from Ogilby, strung together by verses of his
own. In these two schools he seems, instead of advancing, to have
lost what he had gained under his first tutor. When twelve years old
he went to live with his parents at Binfield, in Windsor Forest. He
there became acquainted with the writings of Spenser, Waller, and
Dryden. For the latter he conceived the greatest admiration. He saw
him once, and commemorates the event in his correspondence,
under the words “Virgilium tantum vidi:” but he was too young to
have made acquaintance with that master of English verse, who died
in 1701. He studied Dryden’s works with equal attention and
pleasure, adopted them as a model of rhythm, and copied the
structure of that author’s periods. This was, however, so far from a
grovelling imitation, that it enabled him to raise English rhyme to the
most perfect melody of which it is capable.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.

POPE.

From the Picture by

Hudson in the possession
of His Grace the Duke of
Buckingham.

Under the Superintendance

of the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

London, Published by
Charles Knight, Ludgate
Street.
In the retirement of Binfield, Pope laboured successfully to make
amends for the loss of past time. At fourteen years of age he had
written with some elegance, and at fifteen had attained some
knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, to which he soon
added French and Italian. In 1704 he began his pastorals, published
in 1709, which introduced him, through Wycherley, to the
acquaintance of Walsh, who proved a sincere friend to him. That
gentleman discovered at once that Pope’s talent lay less in striking
out new thoughts of his own, than in easy versification, and in
improving what he borrowed from the ancients. Among other useful
hints, he pointed out that we had several great poets, but that none
of them were correct; he therefore admonished him to make that
merit his own. The advice was gratefully received; and Pope’s
correspondence shows that it was carefully followed. His melodious
numbers, so marked a feature of his style, were in a great measure
the result of that suggestion.
In the same year, 1704, he wrote the first part of his ‘Windsor
Forest’: the whole was not published till 1713. The fault charged on
this poem is, that few images are introduced which are not equally
applicable to any other sylvan scenery. It was dedicated to Lord
Lansdowne, whom he mentions as one of his earliest acquaintance.
To those already named, may be added Bolingbroke, Congreve,
Garth, Swift, Atterbury, Talbot, Somers, and Sheffield, whose
friendship he had gained at sixteen or seventeen years of age. Pope,
to his credit be it set down, cultivated friendships not only with the
great, but with his brethren among the poets. Wycherley indeed was
infected with the weakness of the archbishop in ‘Gil Blas,’ touching
his own compositions, and the young poet was imprudently caustic
in his criticism on the old one. Their correspondence was
consequently dropped; and though renewed through the mediation
of a common friend, it was with no revival of cordiality. But in 1728,
some time after Wycherley’s death, his poems were republished; and
in the following year Pope printed several letters which had passed
between them, in vindication of Wycherley’s fame as a poet, in
answer to certain misrepresentations prefixed to that edition. This
quarrel was a trying affair in the outset of Pope’s career, and his
conduct had been above his years; but young as he was, his talents
were now beginning to ripen. His example confirms the truth of Lord
Bacon’s remark, that personal deformity acts as a spur to that
improvement of the mind, which is most likely to rescue him who is
curtailed of his due proportion from a sense of degradation.
To this early period of Pope’s life belong the ‘Messiah,’ the ‘Ode for
St. Cecilia’s Day,’ ‘Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,’ and
other of Pope’s minor pieces, which were collected and published in
a small 8vo. volume in 1720. It is stated in a note to Dr. Johnson’s
Life, that Pope himself was the object of the passion commemorated
in the last-mentioned poem. The date of that most brilliant
composition, ‘Eloisa to Abelard,’ is uncertain. The ‘Essay on Criticism’
was written in 1709, “A work,” says Johnson, “which displays such
extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such
acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient
and modern learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age
and longest experience.” Pope’s fame was carried to its height by the
‘Rape of the Lock.’ That poem originated in an impertinence offered
by Lord Petre to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, which led to a quarrel
between their respective families. Both parties were among Pope’s
acquaintance, and this lively piece was written to produce a
reconciliation, in which it succeeded. The universal applause given to
the first sketch induced the author to enrich it with the machinery of
the Sylphs. In that new dress the two cantos, extended to five, came
out in 1712, accompanied by a letter to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, to
whom he afterwards addressed another after her marriage, in the
spruce and courtly style of Voiture. A sentence or two may be
quoted as a sample of the poet’s epistolary manner. “Madam, you
are sensible, by this time, how much the tenderness of one man of
merit is to be preferred to the addresses of a thousand; and by this
time, the gentleman you have made choice of is sensible how great
is the joy of having all those charms and good qualities which have
pleased so many, now applied to please one only.... It may be
expected, perhaps, that one who has the title of being a wit should
say something more polite upon this occasion; but I am really more
a well-wisher to your felicity, than a celebrator of your beauty.... I
hope you will think it but just that a man, who will certainly be
spoken of as your admirer after he is dead, may have the happiness,
while he is living, to be esteemed, Yours, &c.” This letter is
sometimes annexed to the poem, and not injudiciously, as it
completes the winding-up in the happy marriage of the heroine. In
the same year he published his ‘Temple of Fame,’ which, according
to his habitual caution, he had kept two years in his study. It
appears from one of his letters, that at that time he had made some
progress in translating the Iliad: in 1713, he circulated proposals for
publishing his translation by subscription. He had been pressed to
this undertaking some time before by several of his friends, and was
now encouraged in the design by others. The publication of the first
four books, in 1715, gave general satisfaction; and so materially
improved the author’s finances, that he resolved to come nearer to
his friends in the capital. With that view, the small estate at Binfield
was sold, and he purchased a house at Twickenham, whither he
removed with his father and mother before the end of the year
1715. While employed in the decoration of his seat, he could not
forbear doubling his pleasures by boasting of it in his
communications with his friends. In a letter to Mr. Blount he says, in
his customary tone of gallantry, “The young ladies may be assured
that I make nothing new in my gardens, without wishing to see
them print their fairy steps in every corner of them.... You’ll think I
have been very poetical in this description, but it is pretty nearly the
truth.” This letter was written in 1725. Warburton tells us that the
improvement of his celebrated grotto was the favourite amusement
of his declining years: not long before his death, by enlarging and
ornamenting it with ores and minerals of the richest and rarest kind,
he had made it a most elegant and romantic retirement. But modern
taste will scarcely confirm the reverend editor’s assertion, that “the
beauty of his poetic genius, in the disposition and ornaments of
those romantic materials, appeared to as much advantage as in any
of his best-contrived poems.”
Pope’s father survived his removal to Twickenham only two years.
The old gentleman had sometimes recommended to his son the
study of medicine, as the best method of increasing his scanty
patrimony. Neglect of pecuniary considerations was not among
Pope’s weaknesses: he did not indeed engage in the medical
profession; but he took other opportunities of pushing his fortune.
With this view, he published an edition of his collected poems in
1717; a proceeding as much suggested by profit as by fame. In the
like disposition, he undertook a new edition of Shakspeare, which
was published in 1721. The execution of it proved the editor’s
unfitness for the task which he had undertaken. Immediately after
the completion of the Iliad, in 1720, Pope engaged, for a
considerable sum, to undertake the Odyssey. Only twelve books,
however, of the translation proceeded from his own pen: the rest
were done by Broome and Fenton under his direction. The work was
completed in 1725. The following year was employed, in concert
with Swift and Arbuthnot, in the publication of miscellanies, of which
the most remarkable is the celebrated ‘History of Martinus
Scriblerus.’ About this time, as he was returning home one day in
Lord Bolingbroke’s chariot, it was overturned on Chase Bridge, near
Twickenham, and thrown with the horses into the river. The glasses
being up, Pope was nearly drowned, and was extricated with
difficulty from his hazardous situation. He lost the use of two fingers,
in consequence of a severe cut from the broken glass.
Having secured an independent fortune, Pope endeavoured to
protect his literary fame from all future attacks, by browbeating
every one into silence: this he hoped to accomplish by the poem of
the ‘Dunciad,’ which came out in 4to. in the year 1727. He
somewhere says, that the life of an author is a state of warfare: he
now showed himself a master in literary tactics, a great captain in
offensive as well as defensive war. The poem made its first
appearance in Ireland, cautiously, as a masked battery; nor was the
triumph completed without the co-operation of an Eugene with this
satirical Marlborough in the person of Swift, who furnished some of
the materials in his own masterly style of sarcasm. The improved
edition was printed in London in 1728. Sir Robert Walpole presented
it to the King and Queen, and, probably at the same time, offered to
procure the author a pension; but Pope refused this, as he had
before, in 1714, rejected a similar proposal from Lord Halifax. In a
letter to Swift, written about this time, he expresses his feelings
thus: “I was once before displeased at you for complaining to Mr.
—— of my not having a pension; I am so again at your naming it to
a certain lord.” In 1710, Mr. Craggs had given him a subscription for
one hundred pounds in the South Sea Fund; but he made no use of
it. These favours must be understood to have been proffered for the
purpose of estranging him from his personal friends; and this
repeated rejection of them is an honourable proof of steadiness to
his attachments.
In 1729, the poet, by Lord Bolingbroke’s advice, turned his pen to
moral subjects; and, with the assistance of his friend, set to work
upon the ‘Essay on Man.’ Bolingbroke writes thus to Swift: “Bid Pope
talk to you of the work he is about, I hope in good earnest; it is a
fine one, and will be, in his hands, an original.” Pope tells the dean,
in his next letter, what this work was. “The work Lord Bolingbroke
speaks of with such abundant partiality, is a system of ethics, in the
Horatian way.” In another letter, written probably at the beginning of
the following year, we trace the general aim which he at all events
wished the public to attribute to this work. “I am just now writing, or
rather planning, a book to bring mankind to look upon this life with
comfort and pleasure, and put morality in good humour.” This
subject was well suited to his genius. He found the performance
more easy than he had expected, and employed his leisure by
following up the design in his Ethic Epistles, which came out
separately in the course of the two following years. The fourth,
addressed to the Earl of Burlington, did no good to the author’s
character, in consequence of the violent attack supposed to be made
on the Duke of Chandos, a beneficent and esteemed nobleman,
under the name of Timon. Pope loudly asserted that in drawing
Timon’s character he had not the Duke in view: but his denials have
not obtained credence; and he has thus incurred the charge of
equivocation and falsehood, without exculpating himself from that of
ingratitude and wanton insolence. The vexation caused by this
business was somewhat softened by the rapid and lucrative sale of
the epistle, which very soon went through the press a third time. In
a letter to Lord Bolingbroke he says, “Certainly the writer deserved
more candour, even in those who knew him not, than to promote a
report, which, in regard to that noble person, was impertinent; in
regard to me, villainous. I have taken an opportunity of the third
edition, to declare his belief not only of my innocence, but of their
malignity; of the former of which my heart is as conscious as I fear
some of theirs must be of the latter. His humanity feels a concern for
the injury done to me, while his greatness of mind can bear with
indifference the insult offered to himself.” He concludes with a threat
of using real instead of fictitious names in his future works. How far
he carried that menace into effect will presently be seen. The
complaints made against the epistle in question by secret enemies
provoked him to write satire, in which he ventured to attack the
characters of some persons in high life: the affront was of course
resented, and he retaliated by renewing his invective against them,
both in prose and verse. In the imitation of the first satire of the
second book of Horace, he had described Lord Hervey and Lady
Mary Wortley Montague so characteristically, under the names of
Lord Fanny and Sappho, that those noble personages, besides
fighting the aggressor with his own weapons, used their interests to
his injury, not only among the nobility, but with the King and Queen.
Pope remonstrated most strongly against this last mode of revenge.
He continued writing satires till the year 1739, when he entertained
some thoughts of undertaking an epic poem on the pretended
colonization of our island by the Trojan Brute. A sketch of this
project, which he never carried into effect, is given in Ruffhead’s ‘Life
of Pope,’ p. 410.
Pope was an elaborate letter-writer; and many of his familiar epistles
found their way into the world without his privity. Under the plea of
self-defence he published a correct and genuine collection of them in
1737. About this time the weak state of his health drew him
frequently to Bath. Mr. Allen, a resident in the neighbourhood,
having been pleased with the letters, took occasion to form an
acquaintance with the author, which soon ripened into friendship.
Hence arose Pope’s intimacy with Warburton, who tells us that,
before they knew each other, he had written his ‘Commentary on the
Art of Criticism, and on the Essay on Man.’ One complaint against
that essay had rested on its obscurity, of which the author had
previously been warned by Swift. But this was comparatively a slight
objection: the philosophic poet was charged with having insidiously
laid down a scheme of deism. A French translation, by the Abbé
Resnil, appeared at Paris in 1738, on which a German professor, by
name Crousaz, animadverted, as a system of ethics embodying the
doctrine of fatalism. Pope thus acknowledges his obligation to
Warburton for his defence: “You have made my system as clear as I
ought to have done, and could not; you understand me as well as I
do myself, but you express me better than I express myself.” The
‘Essay on Man’ was republished with the Commentary annexed in
1740; and at the instance of Warburton, a fourth book was added to
the ‘Dunciad,’ and printed separately in 1742.
In the course of the following year the whole poem of the ‘Dunciad’
was published together, as a specimen of a more correct edition of
Pope’s works, which the author had then resolved to give to the
world; but he did not live to complete it. He had through life been
subject to an habitual headache inherited from his mother, and this
was now greatly increased, with the addition of dropsical symptoms.
He died on the 30th of May, 1744, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
Pursuant to his own request, his body was laid in the same vault
with those of his parents, to whose memory he had erected a
monument, with an inscription written by himself, immediately on
their respective deaths. To this, in conformity with his will, the
simple words, “Et sibi,” with the date of his death, were added. He
bequeathed to Warburton the property of such of his works already
printed as he had written, or should write, commentaries upon,
provided they had not been otherwise disposed of or alienated; with
this condition, that they were to be published without future
alterations. After he had made his will, he wrote a letter to this
legatee, announcing his legacy, and saying, “I own the late
encroachments upon my constitution make me willing to see the end
of all further care about me, or my works. I would rest for the one in
a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by the Father of all
mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be
some example), I would commit them to the candour of a sensible
and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every shortsighted
and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader. And no
hand can set them in so good a light, or so well can turn their best
side to the day, as your own.” In discharge of his trust, Warburton
put forth a complete edition of all Pope’s works in 1751; and,
according to his own persuasion, executed it conformably to the
presumed wishes of the author. In point of elegance, allowing for the
state of typography at the time, no objection could be made, nor
could the poet’s orders have been more faithfully obeyed, in forming
the various pieces into a collection. But some of Warburton’s
remarks are in a less friendly tone than might have been expected;
and if not absolutely injurious to his memory, are such as leave
Pope’s moral character in a measure open to attack. Many
circumstances are related in the large biographies of Pope, which
our inclination would as little allow us as our limits to detail. Some of
them would not compensate in desirable information for the
tediousness of the narrative: others relate to defunct controversies.
To the latter of these classes may be referred Pope’s quarrel with
Colley Cibber, which loaded the press with vulgar indecency on both
sides; also, Bolingbroke’s charge of treachery brought against Pope
in an advertisement prefixed to a tract published by his lordship in
1749, five years after the accused could no longer answer his
accuser.
We shall not devote any part of our confined space to an
examination of the faults and weaknesses of this eminent man: they
have been fully dwelt on in works of easy access. Some apology for
many of them may be found in his bodily infirmities, deformed
frame, and extreme debility of constitution. Pope’s person, character,
and writings are treated of at large by Dr. Warton, in his ‘Essay.’
Ruffhead’s ‘Life of Pope’ contains much curious and entertaining
matter. Dr. Johnson’s examination of Pope’s works is among the most
elaborate and best pieces of criticism in his ‘Lives of the Poets.’ We
cannot better conclude than with his description of Pope’s
appearance, and summing up of his poetical character. “The person
of Pope is well known not to have been formed by the nicest model.
He has, in his account of the ‘Little Club,’ compared himself to a
spider, and by another is described as protuberant before and
behind. He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy: but he was
of a constitution originally feeble and weak; and, as bodies of a
tender frame are easily distorted, his deformity was probably in part
the effect of his application. His stature was so low, that, to bring
him to a level with common tables, it was necessary to raise his
seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his eyes animated and
vivid....” “It is surely superfluous to answer the question that has
once been asked, whether Pope was a poet, otherwise than by
asking, in return, if Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?
To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness
of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not
easily be made. Let us look round upon the present time, and back
upon the past; let us inquire to whom the voice of mankind has
decreed the wreath of poetry; let their productions be examined,
and their claims stated, and the pretensions of Pope will be no more
disputed. Had he given the world only his version, the name of poet
must have been allowed him: if the writer of the Iliad were to class
his successors, he would assign a very high place to his translator,
without requiring any other evidence of genius.” With respect to the
translation of the Iliad, it is fair to give Pope the benefit of Dr.
Johnson’s praise. But we are justified by the consentient voice of
almost all scholars, in condemning it as an unfaithful and
meretricious version, composed in a spirit totally different from that
of Homer, and bearing no resemblance to his manner.
Our engraving is from a copy of the original picture by Hudson,
made by T. Uwins, A.R.A.
 [Entrance to Pope’s
Grotto.]

Engraved by W. Holl.

BOLIVAR.

From an Engraving by Mr.

H. Ponte.

Under the Superintendance

 of the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

London, Published by
Charles Knight, Ludgate
Street.
 BOLIVAR.

The history of Bolivar is that of the revolutions in Columbia and Peru.

Nothing remarkable is related of his early life; and with respect to
his personal merits as a soldier and statesman, he has shared the
common lot of eminent men, in being extravagantly praised and
violently censured. He has been compared to Cæsar and Napoleon
on the one hand; and he has been accused of frivolity,
incompetency, and even cowardice, on the other. The time for
forming a dispassionate opinion of his character is not yet arrived.
We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to a short sketch of the
establishment of independence on the Spanish Main, so far as
Bolivar was concerned in it; premising that we merely follow the
course of history in giving him the credit of those measures which
were carried into execution under his authority and ostensible
guidance.
Simon Bolivar was born in the city of Caracas, the capital of
Venezuela, on the 24th or 25th of July, 1783. In early childhood he
lost both his parents, who were of noble family, and possessed of
large estates. At the age of fourteen or sixteen, he was sent to Spain
for education. His habits are said to have been dissipated; but he
paid some attention to the study of jurisprudence. After visiting Italy
and France, he returned to Madrid, married, and in 1809 returned to
reside on his estates near Caracas. It is positively asserted, and as
positively denied, that Bolivar had an active share in the decisive
movement at Caracas, April 19, 1810, when the Spanish authorities
were deposed. A congress was summoned, which met March 2,
1811. Bolivar received a colonel’s commission, and was sent to claim
the protection of Great Britain. The date of his return to South
America we do not find: but he is said to have been concerned in
the first military operations of the patriots; and in September, 1811,
he was appointed governor of the strong sea-port of Puerto Cabello.
In March, 1812, a violent earthquake took place. The clergy
succeeded in producing a considerable reaction in favour of royalist
principles, by representing this calamity to be a manifestation of
God’s wrath against revolution. Monteverde, the royal general, then
advanced, and met with rapid success. The strong hold of Puerto
Cabello, the chief depôt of the patriots, was wrested from Bolivar by
an insurrection of the prisoners confined in it; the patriot army
became dispirited; and General Miranda, under the sanction of
congress, concluded a treaty, July 26, 1812, by which an amnesty
was concluded, and the province of Venezuela returned under the
dominion of Spain. Miranda was subsequently arrested on a futile
charge of treachery to the patriot cause, and delivered to the
Spaniards, who kept him in prison to the day of his death. In this
unjustifiable transaction, Bolivar had a principal share.
Bolivar retired for a short time to his estate; but he soon became
uneasy at the frequency of arrests, and obtained a passport to quit
the country. He retired to Curaçoa. In the following September, his
active temper led him to seek employment in the patriot army of
New Granada, which had declared itself independent in 1811, and
still held out, with better fortune than Venezuela. He obtained a
trifling command, not such as to satisfy his ambition; and on his own
responsibility, he undertook an expedition against the Spaniards on
the east bank of the river Magdalena, in which he succeeded;
clearing the country of Spanish posts from Mompox, on the above
named river, to the town of Ocaña, on the frontier of Caracas. This
exploit attracted public notice. He conceived the bold plan of
invading Venezuela with his small forces, and the congress of New
Granada consented to his making the attempt, and raised him to the
rank of brigadier. He crossed the frontier with little more than 500
men; but the country rose in arms to second him; and after several
engagements, in which the patriots were successful, he defeated
Monteverde in person at the battle of Lastoguanes, and, finally,
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