Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/64

Rh of blasphemy. And can we say less of this brave man's, who having told us that he placed "his Summum bonum in those follies, which he was not content barely to possess but would likewise glory in," adds, "If I am misguided, ', and I follow ." Nor can we be mistaken in making this happy quality a species of Courage, when we consider those illustrious marks of it, which made his Face "more known (as he justly boasteth) "than most in the kingdom," and his Language to consist of what we must allow to be the most daring Figure of Speech, that which is taken from the Name of God.

Gentle Love, the next ingredient in the true Hero's composition, is a mere bird of passage, or (as Shakespear calls it) summer-teeming Lust, and evaporates in the heat of Youth; doubtless by that refinement it suffers in passing through those certain strainers which our Poet somewhere speaketh of. But when it is let alone to work upon the Lees, it acquireth strength by Old age; and becometh a standing ornament to the little Epic. It is true indeed, there is one objection to its fitness for such an use: For not only the Ignorant may think it common, but it is admitted to be so, even by Him who best knoweth its nature. "Don't you think (saith he) to say "only a man has his Whore, ought to go for little or nothing? Because defendit numerus, take the first ten thousand men you meet, and I believe "you would be no loser if you betted ten to one, that every single sinner of them, one with another, had been guilty of the same frailty ." But here he seemeth not to have done himself justice: The man is sure enough a Hero, who has his Lady at fourscore. How doth his Modesty herein lessen the merit of a whole well-spent Life: not taking to himself the commendation (which Horace accounted the greatest in a theatrical character) of continuing to the very dregs, the same he was from the beginning,

Servetur ad Qualis ab incepto processerat

But let us farther remark, that the calling her his whore, implieth she was his own, and not his neighbour's. Truly a commendable Continence! and such as Scipio himself must have applauded. For how much Self-denial was necessary not to covet his Neighbour's whore? and what disorders must the coveting her have occasioned, in that Society, where (according to this Political Calculator) nine in ten of all ages have their concubines?

We have now, as briefly as we could devise, gone through the three constituent Qualities of either Hero. But it is not in any, or all of these, that Heroism properly or essentially resideth. It is a lucky result rather from the collision of these lively Qualities against one another. Thus, as from