or refined sentiment; and, for images and descriptions, Satyrs and Fauns, and Naiads and Dryads, were always within call, and woods and meadows, and hills and rivers, supplied variety of matter, which, having a natural power to sooth the mind, did not quickly cloy it'.

Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the 14 novelty of modern Pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek 2, and finding nothing in the word Eclogue of rural meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions Eglogues, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds, though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by subsequent writers, and amongst others by our Spenser 3.

More than a century afterwards (1498) Mantuan published his 15 Bucolicks with such success that they were soon dignified by Badius with a comment, and, as Scaliger complained, received into schools and taught as classical; his complaint was vain,

For pastoral poetry see ante, MILTON, 181. Burns, in his lines On Pastoral Poetry, shows how Allan Ramsay succeeded in it where modern poets failed.

2 'As Petrarch advanced in life the attainment of the Greek language was the object of his wishes rather than of his hopes. . . . Boccace composed and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch.' GIBBON, The Decline and Fall, vii. 119, 121.

3

Johnson, in 1754, wrote to T. Warton:-There is an old English and Latin book of poems by Barclay, called The Ship of Fools; at the end of which are a number of Eglogues; so he writes it, from Egloga, which are probably the first in our language.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 277.

4'HOLOFERNES. Fauste, precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice;

Venetia, Venetia,

Chi non ti vede non ti pretia. Old Mantuan, old Mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.' Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 90. Johnson in his Shakespeare, ii. 160,

quotes from Warburton a note of La Monnaye's:-'Il désigne le Carme de Baptiste Mantuan, dont au commencement du 16 me siècle on lisait publiquement à Paris les Poésies, si célèbres alors que, comme dit plaisamment Farnabe dans sa préface sur Martial, les Pédans ne faisaient nulle difficulté de préférer à l'Arma virumque cano le Fauste, precor, gelida, c'est-à-dire à l'Enéide de Virgile les Eglogues de Mantuan.'

Mantuan was included by Colet in the list of Christian authors' to be taught in St. Paul's School. Masson's Milton, i. 76.

[These are Bucolica F. Baptistae [Spagnuoli] Mantuani . . . in Aeglogas divisa: Mantuae, 1498. The reference is to the elder Scaliger, who, after praising Baptista Fiera, also of Mantua, as doctus valde, valde accuratus sed durus,' continues, 'Eius popularis Carmelita (his fellow townsman the Carmelite) longe diversissimus, mollis, languidus, fluxus, incompositus. ... Hoc propterea dico quia in nostro tyrocinio literarum triviales quidam paedagogi etiam Virgilianis pastoribus huius hircos praetulere. Adeo sui quisque sequitur Ideam ingenii.' Iul. Caesaris Scaligeri Poetices, 1561, libr. vi. p. 304 D.

16

17

and the practice, however injudicious, spread far and continued long. Mantuan was read, at least in some of the inferior schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present century1. The speakers of Mantuan carried their disquisitions beyond the country, to censure the corruptions of the Church2; and from him Spenser learned to employ his swains on topicks of controversy.

The Italians soon transferred Pastoral Poetry into their own language: Sannazaro wrote Arcadia in prose and verse3; Tasso and Guarini wrote Favole Boscareccie, or Sylvan Dramas1; and all nations of Europe filled volumes with Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.

Philips thinks it 'somewhat strange to conceive how, in an age so addicted to the Muses, Pastoral Poetry never comes to be so much as thought upon 5. His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never, from the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of Arcadia and Strephon, and half the book in which he first tried his powers consists of dialogues on queen Mary's death, between Tityrus and Corydon or Mopsus and Menalcas 6. A series or book of Pastorals, however, I know not that any one had then lately published".

There are in the British Museum five English editions of Mantuan's Bucolics printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they were translated into English verse by George Turbervile in 1567 and by Thomas Harvey in 1656.]

'Casimir's Latin poems were reprinted at 'Staraviesia ' in 1892 (624 pages) ad usum alumnorum S. I.' A copy is in the British Museum. For Casimir see ante, COWLEY, 137. 2 So did Milton in Lycidas.

3 'Sannazaro introduces sea-calves in the room of kids and lambs, and presents his mistress with oysters instead of fruits and flowers.' The Guardian, No. 28. See also No. 32; The Rambler, No. 36; ante, COWLEY, 121 n. 6.

'The Bachelor bid Don Quixote be of good courage, and rouse himself to enter upon his pastoral exercise; telling him he had already composed an eclogue for the occasion not inferior to any written by Sannazarius.' Jervas's Don Quixote, iv. 411.

It was in the Court of Ferrara

that the Italians invented and refined the pastoral comedy, a romantic Arcadia which violates the truth of manners and the simplicity of nature, but which commands our indulgence by the elaborate luxury of eloquence and wit. The Aminta of Tasso was written for the amusement of Alphonso II.... Of the numerous imitations the Pastor Fido of Guarini, which alone can vie with the fame and merit of the original, is the work of the Duke's Secretary of State.' GIBBON, Misc. Works, iii. 456.

For Guarini see ante, WALLER, 153. 5 Johnson quotes Philips's Preface. Eng. Poets, lvii. 5. Addison wrote of it to Philips :-'I am wonderfully pleased with your little essay of Pastoral in your last, and think you very just in the theory as well as in the practical part. Our poetry in England at present runs all into lampoon, which has seldom anything of true satire in it besides rhyme and ill-nature.' Works, v. 381.

6 Ante, PHILIPS, I.

' For interesting remarks on pasto

Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers 18 in four Pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenser, and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural, Pope laboured to be elegant 1.

Philips was now favoured by Addison, and by Addison's com- 19 panions, who were very willing to push him into reputation 2. The Guardian3 gave an account of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical, in which, when the merit of the moderns is compared, Tasso and Guarini are censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements; and, upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry, and the pipe of the Pastoral Muse is transmitted by lawful inheritance from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to Philips *. With this inauguration of Philips, his rival Pope was not much 20 delighted; he therefore drew a comparison of Philips's performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips 5. The design of aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published, however, it was (Guard. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence".

ral poetry see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 28.

1 Ante, GAY, 4; POPE, 68, 314. 2 Addison in The Spectator, No. 523, praises Philips for having 'given a new life and a more natural beauty to this way of writing.... Virgil and Homer might compliment their heroes by interweaving the actions of deities with their achievements; but for a Christian author to write in the Pagan creed... would be downright puerility, and unpardonable in a poet that is past sixteen.' In this last line a stroke seems aimed at Pope, who gave out that his Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen. Addison praises Philips's Pastorals also in The Guardian, No. 119, and Steele quotes them in The Spectator, No. 400.

3 Nos. 15, 22, 23, 28, 30, 32, March and April, 1713.

46

'Our countrymen, Spenser and

21

22

23

In poetical powers, of either praise or satire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought, with Addison's approbation, as disaffected to the government'.

Even with this he was not satisfied; for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated, for in the first edition of his Letters he calls Philips' rascal,' and in the last still charges him with detaining in his hands the subscriptions for Homer delivered to him by the Hanover Club 3.

I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained. 24 Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his

Art of Sinking, ch. vi, places Philips among the Tortoises, who 'are slow and chill, and, like pastoral writers, delight much in gardens: they have for the most part a fine embroidered shell, and underneath it a heavy lump.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 362. He attacks him also in A Farewell to London; The Dunciad, i. 105, 258, iii. 326; The Three Gentle Shepherds; Macer; Prol. Sat. l. 100, 179; Imit. Hor., Epis. ii. 1. 417.

not thrashed; but his littleness is his protection; no man shoots a wren. He should rather be whipped; and it was pleasant enough in Mr. Ambrose Philips to hang up a rod at Button's in terrorem, which scared away the little bard.' Ib. viii. 147.

Pope had this report in mind when, in the letter quoted in the last note, he wrote:-Though I was almost every night in the same room with Mr. Philips he never offered me any indecorum.'

3 His constant cry was that Mr. P. was an Enemy to the Government.' The Dunciad, iii. 326 n.; Ruffhead's Pope, p. 186.

Pope in a letter (probably spurious, ante, POPE, 106 n. 3) dated June 8, 1714, wrote that Philips one evening at Button's, as I was told, said that I was entered into a cabal with Dean Swift and others to write against the Whig interest. . . . Mr. Addison ... assured me of his disbelief of what had been said.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 209. Pope says nothing here of Addison's approbation' of Philips's charge.

2 Broome wrote of Pope to Fenton on May 3, 1728:-'I wonder he is

Philips, as Pope says, was Secretary to the Club. For a note of excuse of Addison's to Philips, beginning 'Dear Mr. Secretary,' see Addison's Works, v. 428. It was not rascal but scoundrel that Pope called him. He wrote:-'Upon the terms I ought to be with a man whom I think a scoundrel I would not ask him for this money, but commissioned one of the players, his equals, to receive it.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 210. In the reprint of the letter in Warburton's Pope, vii. 203, the passage runs:- Upon the terms I ought to be with such a man,' &c.

friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands which the first breath of contradiction blasted".

When upon the succession of the House of Hanover every Whig expected to be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice: he caught few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery could perform. He was only made a Commissioner of the Lottery (1717) 3, and, what did not much elevate his character, a Justice of the Peace*.

25

The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn 26 his hopes towards the stage: he did not, however, soon commit himself to the mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already acquired, till after nine years he produced (1721) The Briton, a tragedy which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected, though one of the scenes, between Vanoc the British Prince and Valens the Roman General, is confessed to be written with great dramatick skill, animated by spirit truly poetical 5.

He had not been idle though he had been silent, for he exhibited 27 another tragedy the same year, on the story of Humphry Duke of Gloucester. This tragedy is only remembered by its title.

'Johnson said to Mrs. Thrale :'I know nobody who blasts by praise as you do; for whenever there is exaggerated praise everybody is set against a character.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 81.

He flattered Halifax, Craggs, Carteret, and Walpole. Eng. Poets, lvii. 48, 50, 56, 75.

3 He was made Paymaster of the Lottery in Jan. 1714-15 'with a salary of £500, for the service of himself, clerks and others.' Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 265.

Paul Whitehead relates that when Addison became Secretary of State, Philips applied to him for some preferment, but was coolly answered that it was thought he was already provided for, by being made a Justice for Westminster. To this Philips replied:-"Though poetry was a trade he could not live by, yet he scorned to owe subsistence to another which he ought not to live by." Addison's Works, v. 428 n.

Fielding, who would not, as Justice for Westminster, like his predecessor plunder the poor, writes:-'I had re

duced an income of about £500 a year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than £300; a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk.' Voyage to Lisbon, Introduction.

Whitehead's anecdote is perhaps not true. In 1710 Addison told Philips he had recommended him to Somers; he ended his letter:- Farewell, dear Philips, and believe me to be, more than I am able to express, Your most affectionate... servant.' Addison's Works, v. 384.

Swift ridiculed Philips in Sandys's Ghost (Works, xiii. 295) :'If Justice Philips' costive head

Some frigid rhymes disburses; They shall like Persian tales be read, And glad both babes and nurses.' 5 Act iii. sc. 8. There is not a quotable line in it.

It was produced on Feb. 15, 1722-3, and ran nine nights. Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 266. 'It met with great applause.' Biog. Dram. ii. 314. A third edition appeared in 1725. [The Briton had been produced the previous year.]