Say rather his verses on John Dennis, beginning "Adieu, unsocial excellence!" which are implicitly a finer satire on Pope than twenty Caveats. All that Pope could or did say against Dennis, is there condensed; and what he should have said, and did not, for him, is there too.[44]
Adieu, unsocial excellence! at last Thy foes are vanquish'd, and thy fears are past: Want, the grim recompense of truth like thine, Shall now no longer dim thy destined shrine. The impatient envy, the disdainful air, The front malignant, and the captious stare, The furious petulance, the jealous start, The mist of frailties that obscured thy heart-- Veil'd in thy grave shall unremember'd lie; For these were parts of Dennis born to die. But there's a nobler deity behind; His reason dies not, and has friends to find:
_Address to the Angler to spare the young fish_
If yet too young, and easily deceived, A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod, Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven, Soft disengage, and back into the stream The speckled infant throw.----
The praise bestowed on a preceding passage, cannot be justly given to this. There is in it an attempt at dignity above the occasion. Pathos seems to have been intended, but affectation only is produced.
It is not affectation, but it is the mock heroic of pathos, introduced purposely and wisely to attract the reader to a proposal, which from the unimportance of the subject--a poor little fish--might else have escaped his attention--as children learn, or may learn, humanity to animals from the mock romantic "Perambulations of a Mouse."
----Infant hands Trail the long rake; or, with the fragrant load O'er-charged, amid the kind oppression roll.
"Kind oppression" is a phrase of that sort, which one scarcely knows whether to blame or praise: it consists of two words, directly opposite in their signification; and yet, perhaps, no phrase whatever could have better conveyed the idea of an easy uninjurious weight--
--and yet he does not know whether to blame or praise it!
Though here revenge and pride withheld his praise, No wrongs shall reach him through his future days; The rising ages shall redeem his name, And nations read him into lasting fame.
