ty about the desired dedication of
the Iliad. Though Halifax had been dead for twenty years when the
Prologue appeared, Pope may have been in the right in satirizing the
pompous would-be patron, from whom he had received nothing, and whose
pretences he had seen through. But the bitterness of the attack is
disagreeable when we add that Pope paid Halifax high compliments in the
preface to the Iliad, and boasted of his friendship, shortly after the
satire, in the Epilogue to the Satires. A more disagreeable affair at
the moment was the description, in the Epistle on Taste, of Canons, the
splendid seat of the Duke of Chandos. Chandos, being still alive,
resented the attack, and Pope had not the courage to avow his meaning,
which might in that case have been justifiable. He declared to
Burlington (to whom the epistle was addressed), and to Chandos, that he
had not intended Canons, and tried to make peace by saying in another
epistle that "gracious Chandos is beloved at sight." This exculpation,
says Johnson, was received by the duke "with great magnanimity, as by a
man who accepted his excuse, without believing his professions." Nobody,
in fact, believed, and even Warburton let out the secret by a comic
oversight. Pope had prophesied in his poem that another age would see
the destruction of "Timon's Villa," when laughing Ceres would reassume
the land. Had he lived three years longer, said Warburton in a note,
Pope would have seen his prophecy fulfilled, namely, by the destruction
of Canons. The note was corrected, but the admission that Canons
belonged to Timon had been made.

To such accusations Pope had a general answer. He described the type,
not the individual. The fault was with the public, who chose to fit the
cap. His friend remonstrates in the Epilogue against his personal
satire. "Come on, then, Satire, general, unconfined," exclaims the poet,

Spread thy broad wing and souse on all the kind

* * * * *

Ye reverend atheists. (Friend) Scandal! name them! who?
(Pope) Why, that's the thing you bade me not to do.
Who starved a sister, who forswore a debt,
I never named; the town's inquiring yet.
The pois'ning dame-- (F.) You mean-- (P.) I don't. (F.) You
do.
(P.) See, now, I keep the secret, and not you!

It must in fact be admitted that from the purely artistic point of view,
Pope is righ