Pope alleges it as a
palliation of his satiric malice, that it had been forced from him in the
way of retaliation; forgetting that such a plea wilfully abjures the
grandest justification of a satirist, viz., the deliberate assumption of
the character as something corresponding to the prophet's mission amongst
the Hebrews. It is no longer the _facit indignatio versum_. Pope's
satire, where even it was most effective, was personal and vindictive, and
upon that argument alone could not he philosophic. Foremost in the order
of his fulminations stood, and yet stands, the bloody castigation by
which, according to his own pretence, he warned and menaced (but by which,
in simple truth, he executed judgment upon) his false friend, Addison.
To say that this drew vast rounds of applause upon its author, and
frightened its object into deep silence for the rest of his life, like the
_Quos ego_ of angry Neptune, sufficiently argues that the verses must
have ploughed as deeply as the Russian knout. Vitriol could not scorch
more fiercely. And yet the whole passage rests upon a blunder; and the
blunder is so broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness
both in the writer and the reader. The idea which furnishes the basis of
the passage is this: that the conduct ascribed to Addison is in its own
nature so despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary impulse; but
that this laughter changes into weeping, when we come to understand that
the person concerned in this delinquency is Addison.
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