[In the essay which follows, Weinbrot contends that “An Allusion to Horace” is unsatisfying because it lacks complexity and depth of the Horatian satire to which it alludes, and states that the main reason for this lack of depth is that the creative strengths of Imitation as a genre are not yet clear in Rochester's work.]

In recent years students of Restoration and eighteenth-century satire have learned a new respect for the variety and sophistication of the Augustan Imitation.¹ No longer do we praise the modern poet for imitating, say, Horace, closely, or blame him for imitating freely.² Nor are we surprised to find him both free and close at different moments in the same poem, or to find that he has imitated only a portion of the parent-poem or that he has, in Dryden's words, written in a manner “not to translate his [the author's] words, or to be confined to his sense, but only to set him as a pattern, and to write, as he supposes that author would have done, had he lived in our age, and in our country.”³ For Dryden, however, this is a pernicious form, since it violates the translator's demand to show his “author's thoughts” and thus is “the greatest wrong which can be done to the memory and reputation of the dead.”⁴ Another of Dryden's objections, however, may be taken as a central aspect of the creative power of the Imitation—a form that is not a malign species of translation, but a separate, if related, genre which, depending upon the author's intention, uses the parent-poem as an integral part or as a central backdrop for its own purposes. Dryden observes that in Imitation “'tis no longer to be called [the initial poet's] work, when neither the thoughts nor words are drawn from the original; but instead of them there is something new produced, which is almost the creation of another hand. By this way, 'tis true, somewhat that is excellent may be invented, perhaps more excellent than the first design.”⁵

It is ironic that Rochester, so great a literary enemy of Dryden, should adapt this loose form of Imitation—though, of course, like Boileau, from whom he also learned a great deal, he never pretends to offer his reader a translation.⁶ Rochester knew of the more literal or close form of Imitation as translation, and must have found it an inadequate vehicle for his purposes and temperament. In July of 1673 Dryden wrote to Rochester informing him of Etherege's alteration of Boileau's First Satire: Etherege, “changing the French names for English, read it so often that it came to their ears who were concern'd, and forced him to leave off the design, ere it were half finish'd.”⁷ During the following year, Rochester wrote his poem “Timon,” a free version of Boileau's Third Satire which, in turn, freely adapts Horace, Satires, II, 8. Sometime between 1674 and early 1676, he wrote A Satyr Against Mankind, and late in 1675 or early in 1676 he wrote his “Allusion to Horace.”⁸ The “Allusion” is closer to the original's structure and intention than the Satyr; but both fall under that class of Imitation which radically alters the original's meaning and offers something new from another hand.

The term “allusion” is discussed by Thomas Dilke, in the Preface to his own work, XXV Select Allusions to Several Places of Horace, Martial, Anacreon, and Petron. Arbiter (1698). Dilke has “familiarly adapted” his authors to the “present Circumstances of Time and Custom,” so that they might easily be understood. “'Tis true,” he continues, “I have taken a great deal of liberty both as to the manner of Composure, and as to the Matter itself, and may sometimes seem to be very foreign from the subject propos'd.” But such freedom is inherent in this sort of Imitation: “Indeed 'tis my Opinion that Allusions properly admit of this scope, as soon as the hint is receiv'd, I think the Alluder may be allow'd to follow the Thread of his own Fancy.”⁹ The term has also been defined in Johnson's Dictionary (1775): “That which is spoken with reference to something supposed to be already known, and therefore not expressed; a hint; an implication.”

Other contemporary lexicons and encyclopaedias also offer helpful definitions or illustrations. Although Edward Bysshe does not define the word in his Art of English Poetry (1702), he does use it to mean the pointing to, or abstracting of, parts of a poem for one's own purposes.¹⁰ John Kersey states that allusion is “speaking a Thing in reference to another.”¹¹ Edward Phillips borrows this definition and adds that “an Allusion is made to an History, Custom, Wise-saying, & c. when we Speak or Write any thing that has relation to it.”¹² Nathan Bailey, in his turn, borrows the Kersey-Phillips definition and Phillips' amplification, but adds another meaning: “A Dalliance or Playing with Words alike in Sound, but unlike in Sense, by changing, adding or taking away a Letter or two.”¹³ Bailey's source for the latter definition may be Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728). “ALLUSION*,” Chambers reports, is

ALLUSIO, in rhetoric, a figure whereby something is applied to or understood of, another, by reason of some similitude of name, or sound.

* The word is formed of the Latin ad, and ludere to play. Camden defines allusion as dalliance, or playing with words like in sound, but unlike in sense; by changing, adding, or subtracting a letter or two; whence words resembling one another become applicable to different subjects.

Thus the almighty, if we may use sacred authority, changed Abram, i.e. high father, into Abraham, i.e. father of many. Thus the Romans played on their tippling emperor Tiberius Nero, by calling him Biberius Mero: and thus in Quintillian the sour fellow Placidus is called Acidus.

Allusions come very near to what we popularly call puns.¹⁴

Johnson's definition and illustrative quotation for the noun parody also cast light upon the nature of allusion. Parody is a “kind of writing in which words of an author or his thoughts are taken, and by a slight change adapted to some new purpose.” Johnson then quotes a passage from the 1729 edition of the Dunciad in quarto, with notes, and in the process suggests the relationship between serious parody and allusion: “The imitations of the ancients are added together with some of the parodies and allusions to the most excellent of the moderns.”¹⁵

The conflated meanings of “allusion” current during—and after—the writing of Rochester's poem, then, include “speaking a thing in reference to another,” “changing, adding, or taking away a letter or two,” and adapting the thought of the work to the “present circumstances of Time and Custom” according to the alluder's “own Fancy.” Even allusion as brief as partial reference or quasi-pun includes awareness of the original and the author's right to change it as he sees fit. Rochester extends this notion to a complete poem and practices allusion as an extremely free form of Imitation: he supposes that we already know Boileau's Eighth Satire and Horace's Tenth Satire of the First Book. Indeed, in most contemporary printed and manuscript versions of the latter poem, he (or the copyist or bookseller) offers part of Horace's first line as a reminder,¹⁶ in others it is called an “Imitation,”¹⁷ and in 1714 it was printed together with Horace's poem.¹⁸

John L. Moore has ably shown how independent from Boileau Rochester is, though one suspects that examination of the complete Satyr, including its “new” conclusion, would strengthen his case even more. But criticism of the “Allusion to Horace” has not advanced significantly beyond Johnson's remarks in his “Life of Rochester”:

His Imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the second began that adaptation, which since has been very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and, perhaps, few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The versification is, indeed, sometimes careless, but it is sometimes vigorous and weighty.¹⁹

For our immediate purposes, the question of parallelism is essential, for upon reading the two poems it becomes clear that, though they often proceed in the same direction, they often diverge as well, and that Rochester has designed that they never meet. Moreover, comparison and contrast of these satires, and a brief analysis of the varieties of “Augustan” poetic Imitation, may suggest reasons for the modest success of Rochester's poem.

I

Horace's Satires, I, 10, actually begins with I, 4, in which Horace had praised Lucilius's wit and satiric sharpness, but criticised his speed of writing, harsh metrics, and refusal or inability to write correctly (ll. 6-13). The contemporary partisans of Lucilius attacked Horace and rushed to the defence of their apparently maligned idol.²⁰ Horace thus begins the latter poem with direct reference to the former: he is defensive, troubled, forced to insist that he praised Lucilius and is not a mere scoffer attempting to lower the past in order to elevate the present and his role in it. Accordingly—in about the first half of the poem—he carefully creates the image of a modest and judicious critic, one who offers praise and blame to poets of the past or present without prejudice or self interest. He is instructive, aware of distinctions between poetic modes and styles, offers advice regarding the tone of satire as presently conceived, and makes clear that he is aware of the limitations of his own genius. Hence he insists—as he did in I, 4—that the satiric sharpness of Lucilius is admirable, but adds that this virtue hardly implies all others, just as Laberius' low scenes of mime may be splendid as mime, but utterly different from distinguished poetic discourse. The satiric poet should add terseness, variety of styles—whether of orator, poet, or wit—and jesting humor in addition to his harsher laughter. On the other hand, he should exclude a mixture of Greek and Latin verse. It is not only tiresome old stuff indeed, but also a disservice to the development of native Latin poetry. At this point, Horace finds two ways to bolster his character in the reader's eyes: he admits that he too was tempted to write in such a mingled form, and adds that Romulus himself appeared in a dream and warned him away from this error.

When I, a Latin, once design'd to write
Greek Verse, Romulus appear'd at night;
'Twas after Twelve, the time when dreams are true,
And said: Why Horace, what do'st mean to do?
'Tis full as mad the Greeks vast heaps t' encrease,
As 'tis to carry Water to the Seas.(21)

Horace, then, is aware of the temptation of such a hybrid mode, and could resist only through quasidivine and patriotic intervention; he thus lessens the degree to which Lucilius, presumably innocent of such help, is culpable, and also reinforces his commitment to Rome, a commitment that an attacker of the Roman literary heritage would not be likely to share.

Horace also makes clear his awareness of others' strengths within different genres. He knows that among the moderns Fundanius excells in comedy, Pollio in tragedy, Varius in epic, and Virgil in pastoral, and that there is still room for a contemporary's success in satire. Others who have attempted the form (like Varro of the Atax) are below his own achievement; yet he himself admittedly remains inventore minor (I.48):

Yet than Lucillius less I freely own,
I would not strive to blast his just renown,
He wears and best deserves to wear the Crown.

(p. 417)

Only after Horace employs effective precept and example of good and bad poets, shows awareness of his own strengths and shortcomings, and has established both the sanity of his evaluation of his peers and of himself, does he directly reintroduce what had been obliquely discussed after the first verse paragraph of the poem—his “attack” upon Lucilius' blemishes and his own stature.

Doth not Lucillius Accius Rhimes accuse?
And blame our Ennius's correcter Muse?
For too much lightness oft his Rhimes deride,
And when He talks of his own Verse, for Pride?

(p. 417)

Having thus added Lucilius' authority to his own, Horace addresses himself to an audacious question. At this point the unbiased reader is aware that Horace has not malevolently attacked Lucilius and that he is correct regarding Lucilius' faults. The question then raised is why was Lucilius so deficient? Was it lack of genius or the rough nature of the satiric themes he employed? The answer is—neither. Instead, Horace argues that Lucilius' deficiencies stem from a desire to please an unpolished audience. In so doing, Horace continues to shift away from defence of himself for unjustly attacking Lucilius and towards a demonstration that he is Lucilian. Moreover, he also suggests that those to whom he is responding, the implied adversarii of the poem, are actually the enemies of Lucilius; they would propagate what Lucilius himself would abandon if he were living in the Augustan age of more correct literary values which insist that one improve his work:

… did He now again new life Commence,
He would correct, he would retrench his Sense,
And pare off all that was not Excellence;
Take pains, and often when he Verses made,
Would bite his Nails to th' quick, and scratch his Head.

(p. 418)

Significantly, Horace follows these lines with others in his own voice, reiterating the value of painful revision. As a result, such a Lucilian-Horatian author would reject the popularity of the schoolroom and its teachers, and the professional authors' guild: that is, precisely those critics who berated Horace at the beginning of the poem.²² Since Horace and Lucilius are allied, the pedagogues' quarrel with Horace is also a mistaken quarrel with the author they presume is a model for emulation; such a bad, non-Augustan audience willing to accept Lucilius' flaws is responsible for them. Horace concludes by exemplifying those for whom he and, if it were chronologically possible, Lucilius, prefer to write—not Demetrius, a trainer for the mimes, or the bad poets Fannius and Hermogines Tigellius, but those who are clearly Augustan:

Let Plotius, Varius, and Mecaenas love,
Let Caesar, Virgil, Valgius all approve
What I compose; to these would I could joyn
The Visci, and Messala's Learned Line,
And Pollio, and some other Friends of mine.

(p. 418)

The relevant Latin of I.82 (the second line above) is Octavius, not Caesar: it is now thought to refer to Octavius Musa, a poet and historian, and not to Augustus Caesar. But Creech's error—that of many of his contemporaries—is understandable and reiterates the exalted nature of Horace's audience, which would make Lucilius even greater by insisting that he blot and amend.²³ Demetrius and Tigellius, in contrast, urge the transcendence of Lucilius in his uncorrected form and thereby reproduce the sort of audience that endangers the poet it praises. Horace has moved from apparent attack upon Lucilius to real alliance with him, and from apparent defense of himself against foolish critics to real attack upon them.

Thus for Horace, Lucilius is blemished but great; Horace is on Lucilius' side; the attackers are wrong, and the refined court of Augustus is responsible for much of the success of Horace and would be responsible for improving the quality of Lucilius' efforts. Horace shows his kinship with Lucilius by borrowing an important device from him. Eduard Fraenkel observes:

In a section of his earliest published book (the twenty-sixth in the collection of his works), presumably a kind of proem to what was to follow, Lucilius had spoken, both in general terms and naming some individual persons, of the readers whom he did not wish to have and of those he would like to have. To that section belonged the line (593) Persium non curo legere, Laelium Decumen volo; the gist of a pronouncement made in the same context is preserved in Cicero's well-known paraphrase [De orat. 2. 25] neque se ab indoctissimis neque a doctissimis legi velle, quod alteri nihil intelligerent, alteri plus fortasse quam ipse. Horace borrows from Lucilius the idea of listing desirable and undesirable readers, but he uses it not in a proem but in the epilogue of his book. Lest such an outspoken pronouncement might seem vain or ponderous, Horace makes it arise easily and naturally from a discussion on the risks of hankering after the wrong kind of popularity.²⁴

Though I have only touched upon a few of the major historical issues behind the poem, I believe that this analysis is a reasonably accurate gloss upon Horace's intention as understood in the later seventeenth century. It will immediately be clear that Rochester's position is different from Horace's in numerous respects, but especially so in his attitude towards the main satiric target—John Dryden.

II

Significant differences between the two poems begin in Rochester's second line. Horace sincerely praises Lucilius as an inventor of satire; but Rochester regards Dryden's dramatic verses as “stol'n.” Similarly, Horace's genuine regard for Lucilius as a sharp satirist is replaced by Rochester's dubious praise of Dryden's “plays, embroidered up and down / With wit and learning [which] justly pleased the town” (ll. 5-6). Rochester thus dissociates himself from Dryden: we do not see a satirist defending himself for having attacked the inventor of the form and his admitted superior; instead, we see a satirist attacking a dramatist who is neither his superior nor an inventor. Moreover, the term embroidered suggests that what intelligence there is in Dryden's plays is ornamental and decorative rather than an intrinsic part of the drama.²⁵ Lines 11 and 12 confirm our suspicion regarding the praise of Dryden and his “just” pleasing of the town, since we now hear that “your false sense / Hits the false judgment of an audience.” The illicitly pleased audience is not in Horace's corresponding lines (though it is assumed later in the poem): Lucilius-induced laughter is a lesser but genuine pleasure. Though Lucilius' audience is not of the best, it is surely a notch above the “clapping fools” and “the rabble” who praise Dryden. Furthermore, “the Court” (ll. 14-19) must be added to the list of those who improperly praise, and so Rochester again diverges from the parent-poem, since there Horace's friends were not only from the Court but seemed to include Caesar himself. Rochester baits his monarch; Horace flatters his. Rochester gives grudging and damning praise to Dryden, and concludes that pleasing “the rabble and the Court”—the vulgar of low or high social rank—is something, at least,

Which blundering Settle never could attain,
And puzzling Otway labors at in vain.

(ll. 18-9)

In the following section (ll. 21-40) Rochester evaluates Elizabethan and contemporary dramatists. The parallel passage in Horace contains praise for the mingled jesting and serious mode of the old comedy, advises the moderns to adapt this, and criticizes Hermogenes and his school for never reading, and thus not profiting from, these plays. But Rochester is talking about Dryden as a modern dramatist; and so when he praises other modern dramatic wits he is obliquely condemning Dryden. Horace associates himself with Lucilius and discredits those who claimed he had attacked him; Rochester dissociates himself from Dryden, amplifies his original attack, and covertly, as well as overtly, criticizes him:

          Of all our modern wits, none seems to me
Once to have touched upon true comedy
But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.

(ll. 41-3)

Both the subsequent praise of Shadwell as a poet of nature, and of Wycherley as a poet of art, exclude Dryden from the higher ranks of comedy. Shadwell “scorns to varnish his good touches o'er / To make the fools and women praise 'em more” (ll. 48-9); Dryden had his “false sense” please “the false judgment, of an audience / Of clapping fools” (ll. 12-4). Similarly, Wycherley “earns hard whate'er he he gains: / He wants no judgment, nor he spares no pains” (ll. 50-1), whereas Dryden's rhymes were not earned but “stol'n, unequal, nay dull many times” (l. 2), and he is a poet of primarily quantitative output (ll. 8-9, 93-7).

Rochester again departs from the original in the rest of his discussion of the genres and the poet who excells in each. At this point in his poem Horace shows that he must succeed in “correct” satire, which Lucilius had ignored. The poet remains personal and positive: Horace is not competing with Lucilius but fulfilling the form which he had so brilliantly invented. But the notion of Horace as a refined extension of Lucilius is foreign to Rochester's purpose, since—in terms of the poem, at least—Rochester has no desire to follow Dryden as a dramatist; he thus chooses Buckhurst “For pointed satyrs” (l. 59), and Sedley for amorous love-poetry (a genre not discussed by Horace) as a way of returning to qualitative evaluation of Dryden. Where Sedley is seductive and successful—“the poor vanquished maid dissolves away / In dreams all night, in sighs and tears all day” (ll. 69-70)—the amatory songs in Dryden's plays are merely gross, and may also reveal something about Dryden's limp sexuality:²⁶

          Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit,
For he to be a tearing blade thought fit.
But when he would be sharp, he still was blunt:
To frisk his frolic fancy, he'd cry, “Cunt!”

(ll. 71-4)

Rochester, then, ironically praises and really attacks Dryden, excludes him from the ranks of good dramatists, and shows him to be ineffectual in his dramatic “love” poems. With all this in mind, the reader again doubts the sincerity of Rochester's praise of Dryden.

But, to be just, 'twill to his praise be found
His excellencies more than faults abound;
Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear
That laurel which he best deserves to wear.

(ll. 77-80)²⁷

Rochester then introduces lines with an important reservation, and proceeds to tear away Dryden's laurels. These same lines also further distinguish him from Rochester at precisely the point at which Horace was cementing his relationship with Lucilius:

          But does not Dryden find ev'n Jonson dull;
Fletcher and Beaumont uncorrect, and full
Of lewd lines, as he calls 'em; Shakespeare's style
Stiff and affected; to his own the while
Allowing all the justness that his pride
So arrogantly had to these denied?

(ll. 81-6)

Dullness, pompous fullness, and lewdness are the traits which, according to Rochester, belong to Dryden himself. Of course Horace carefully avoids any such presumption in describing Lucilius' quarrels with his predecessors, and assumes that Lucilius' accurate strictures serve as proper precedent for his own. Dryden's pride and arrogance thus contrast with the normative behavior of both Lucilius and Horace. The latter honestly praises his great master; Rochester shows a despicable contemporary berating his betters, and places Dryden in the distasteful situation that Horace's detractors attempted to place him in.

Unlike Horace, Rochester thus “impartially” (l. 87) attacks his author's pride and arrogance. Horace gains our sympathy through association with a good man of letters; Rochester through dissociation from a bad man of letters. Horace throws the burden of Lucilius' deficiencies on to the inadequate demands of his rough age, but this alternative is impossible for Rochester, since Dryden is of the present age. Hence he raises three questions regarding Dryden's lack of literary merit, and each depends solely upon Dryden's internal literary state. He wonders whether

… those gross faults his choice pen does commit
Proceed from want of judgment, or of wit;
Or if his lumpish fancy does refuse
Spirit and grace to his loose, slattern muse?

(ll. 89-92)

The questions are not overtly answered because, unlike Horace's answer, by implication all three charges are accurate. It is, presumably, Dryden's lack of Wit, among other things, that makes him so poor an amatory poet (“Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit” [l. 71]); his lack of judgment leads him to substitute quantity for quality (ll. 93-101); and as “a vain, mistaken thing” (l.104) he wishes to please a poor theatrical audience. It thus follows that Dryden does not refuse spirit and grace to his muse: as a man of neither wit nor judgment he has none to give.

Rochester's strategy continues to be radically different from Horace's. The latter argues that were Lucilius now alive “he would correct, he would retrench his sense.” Rochester's same advice (ll. 98-101) is given to one who is alive, chooses not to follow it, and seeks to please the rabble. Rochester himself has “no ambition on that idle score” (l. 110) and prefers, instead, to be censured by a few critics and poets he respects.

I loathe the rabble; 'tis enough for me
If Sedley, Shadwell, Shepherd, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,
And some few more, whom I omit to name,
Approve my sense: I count their censure fame.

(ll. 120-4)²⁸

Horace is truly pro-Lucilian; Rochester truly anti-Drydenian. The former's main intentions are to defend himself and to define the best satiric mode for a correct age; the latter's to attack Dryden and bad drama that seeks the favor of the mob, whether high or low. Horace discusses his own satiric role in the literary culture of the Court; Rochester functions as a gadfly in literary culture and attacks the Court. The throne is at the center of value in the former; the throne is associated with the playhouse and rabble in the latter. In short, when compared to Horace's Satires, I, 10, Rochester has in fact produced something new which is the creation of another hand; but that new creation can be seen only when set against the old, since as an allusion it is “spoken with reference to something supposed to be already known, and therefore not expressed.”²⁹ Such an Imitation, in which some parallelism is preserved and some altered, could not have been ignored by poets who either translated or carried the Imitation as a form to its highest level of achievement. It is not only the source of much phrasing for Creech's translation of the same poem in 1684,³⁰ but may also have been one of Pope's main models of imitative freedom from the original.³¹ And it is surely an example of what Thomas Rymer meant when he said of Rochester's method:

Whatsoever he imitated or Translated, was Loss to him. He had a Treasure of his own, a Mine not to be exhausted. His own Oar and Thoughts were rich and fine: his own Stamp and Expression more neat and beautiful than any he cou'd borrow or fetch from abroad.³²

III

Rochester's poem tells us much about his allusive mode of satiric Imitation; but it also provides a paradigm of that sub-species of Imitation which both hopes for the reader's awareness of the parent-poem and is largely neutral in its attitude towards it. With the exception of implied differences between the quality of Horace's Emperor and Rochester's King, there is little thematic interplay between the two poems; and even this contrast is blunted by means of Rochester's praise of noble figures—like Buckhurst—whom he hopes to please. There is no real sign that we are to judge Horace's age as better or worse than Rochester's. Though Lucilius is superior to Dryden, the intentions of Horace and Rochester are so different that, though the former clarifies the latter, we cannot draw any further inference.

“Augustan” Imitation is remarkably complex; we do not fully understand the modern poem unless we understand its attitude towards the poem imitated. In the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (to Fortescue, 1733), Pope is aware that “an Answer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I cou'd have made in my own person.”³³ There is an implicit metaphor in Pope's attitude and posture: like his illustrious forbear he too must defend his satiric role from those who would silence him in order to harm virtue. Horace was the victor and convinced Trebatius, a guardian of the law in the legal sphere, that he should continue to write; Pope's defense of himself and use of Fortescue are similar. The poem is thus essentially optimistic; it assumes an historic community of thought, problems, and rational men who exist and have some power, however grim the world might in fact appear. In Fortescue Pope regards his parent-poem as normative and full of dignity.

This was not the only alternative for an imitator. One thinks of Prior's English Ballad, On the Taking of Namur (1695), a comic parody of Boileau's Ode sur la prise de Namur (1692), in which Boileau's flattery of his King and glorification of a minor victory are ridiculed. Or, on a more serious level, one turns to Johnson's Imitation of Juvenal's Tenth Satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), in which Juvenal's pagan harshness, the philosophic laughter of Democritus, and the unpredictable quality of the goddess Fortune, are replaced by Johnson's Christian piety, the speaker's rejection of laughter at the human situation, and the safe, stable, world that “celestial wisdom” can make for mankind. In these poems—and many more like them—the original is used not as a subdued argument from authority, but as a clear argument for the superiority of the imitator and his culture—whether English as opposed to French, or Christian as opposed to pagan.

Yet another imitative mode is the mingling of acceptance and rejection of the parent-poem, as in Pope's Epistle to Augustus (1737). Here the literary values of Augustus and his age contrast with those of George Augustus in England, but the Roman political values are regarded as negative models all too extant in contemporary England.³⁴ One suspects, as well, that a poem like Johnson's London (1738), from Juvenal's Third Satire, also falls into this broad class. Only the worst attributes of Domitian's bad Rome can be evoked to characterize Walpole's London; yet Johnson, nevertheless, uses Juvenal's conclusion—in which Umbricius promises to listen to Juvenal's satires when he too quits Rome—as a sign that, today as yesterday, the virtuous retreat but continue to fight the vicious. Like Umbricius before him, Thales must write satire and define the good life.

Rochester's characteristic mode of Imitation provides still a fourth way—the way which I have called relatively neutral in attitude towards the parent-poem. Though there are occasional lapses, he generally follows his own path, with minimal use of the original. He may invite challenge on qualitative grounds, and comparison and contrast on thematic grounds; and he may—or may not—show his own genius thereby. But he also shows the limitations of such neutrality. Boileau and Horace, their values and culture, are not actors in Rochester's poems; they are known but static figures who provide the backdrop but not much more. Johnson's change of the pagan “Fortuna” to the Christian “celestial wisdom” functions as the culmination of two movements in the Vanity of Human Wishes: the acceptance of Christian values in the modern poem, and the rejection of pagan values in the Roman. Similarly, Pope's substitution of Bolingbroke for Maecenas in his Imitation of Horace, Epistles, I.1, immediately warns his audience that the poet is in political opposition to the English court, whereas Horace is in sympathy with his. The contrast of English discord with Roman concord structures our understanding of the relationship between the two poems and the cultures they represent.

It is clear that Rochester's poem lacks such resonance, such sustained qualitative assessment of the past and comparison with the present. The “Allusion to Horace” has neither the striking independence of the Satyr Against Mankind, nor the eloquent “dependence” of Pope's Epistle to Augustus. I would thus suggest that collateral analyses of the Imitation and the parent-poem, together with discussion of the role the latter poem plays in the former, can be a tool of both understanding and evaluation. Of course it is evident that Rochester is not as great a poet as Horace, and simply pales in comparison. Moreover, in the poem before us his attack on Dryden is not only personal and unjustified, but unconvincing, since the poetic “world” within which Dryden exists is not fully realized, as the world of Shadwell or Cibber in other unjustified attacks surely is. As both Pope and Johnson observed, the versification sometimes is harsh and inelegant. And, as I have implied, the character of Rochester's speaker lacks Horace's convincing tones of an essentially disinterested, patriotic, personally involved yet ethical and fair poet.

One should grant these as convincing reasons for Rochester's diminished achievement; but at least as convincing a reason is that he chose a form whose finest conventions were just evolving and just beginning to be defined. Perhaps it is unfair to judge Rochester's “Allusion” on the standards of the Epistle to Augustus, written some sixty years later, for each man is attempting a different sort of poem. Yet, I believe, one reason that Pope's poem is so complex in its attitude toward the original is that Rochester's is so simple. Though Rochester's imagination is fertilized by the poem imitated, he nevertheless, as Rymer claims, disdains help “from abroad.” In so doing, however, he limits himself to his own mine or its immediate environs, and thereby limits the expanse of his poem. He normally parallels or diverges from Horace and only rarely touches him. The reader innocent of Horace can read Rochester's “Allusion” with relatively little loss of understanding;³⁵ nor is his understanding substantially enriched after reading Horace. The hint or implication that allusion implies remains precisely that; the reader is teased by a promise that is never fulfilled, whereas in the Satyr against Mankind—which, unlike the “Allusion,” was never printed next to its original—the reader is not directly referred to another text through the very title of the poem,³⁶ and in the Letter from Artemisia (1679) there is neither a specifically announced nor implied literary parent. In the “Allusion,” on the other hand, the reader is frustrated by a static backdrop, by suggestions of historial similitude and dissimilitude which remain inchoate. One of the central reasons why Rochester's poem is not fully satisfying is that the creative strengths of Imitation as a genre were not yet clear; these could not be fully realized until the limitations of Rochester's mode in the “Allusion to Horace” were absorbed. Paradoxically, Rochester's refusal to be substantially in debt has limited his wealth, and Pope grew rich by inverting his example.

Notes

1. For relevant works concerning Augustan Imitation, see William Francis Galloway, English Adaptations of Roman Satire, 1660-1800 (unpublished Ph.D. Diss., Unversity of Michigan, 1937); William K. Wimsatt, Jr., “Rhetoric and Poems: The Example of Pope,” in English Institute Essays 1948 (Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), p. 183; Harold F. Brooks, “The ‘Imitation’ in English Poetry, Especially in Formal Satire Before the Age of Pope,” RES, XXV (1949), 124-40; Ian Jack, Augustan Satire (Oxford, 1952), pp. 97-114, 135-45; Reuben A. Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford, 1959); John Butt, ed., Alexander Pope: Imitations of Horace, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, IV (London, 1953), xxvi-xxx; Butt, “Johnson's Practice in the Poetical Imitation,” in New Light on Dr. Johnson, ed. Frederick W. Hilles (Yale Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 19-34; Mary Lascelles, “Johnson and Juvenal,” Ibid., pp. 35-55; G.K. Hunter, “The ‘Romanticism’ of Pope's Horace,” ECl, X (1960), 390-404; John M. Aden, “Pope and the Satiric Adversary,” SEL, II (1962), 267-86; Aubrey L. Williams, “Pope and Horace; The Second Epistle of the Second Book,” in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Essays in Honor of Alan Dugald McKillop, ed. Carroll Camden (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 309-21; Thomas E. Maresca, Pope's Horatian Poems (Ohio State Univ. Press, 1966); Jay Arnold Levine, “Pope's Epistle to Augustus, Lines 1-30,” SEL, VII (1967), 427-51; M. N. Austin, “The Classical Learning of Samuel Johnson,” Studies in the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. F. Brissenden (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1968), pp. 285-306; John Hardy, “Johnson's London: The Country versus the City,” ibid., pp. 251-68; Manuel Schonhorn, “The Audacious Contemporaneity of Pope's Epistle to Augustus,” SEL, VIII (1968) 431-44; Leonard A. Moskovit, “Pope and the Tradition of the Neoclassical Imitation,” SEL, VIII (1968), 445-62; Howard D. Weinbrot, The Formal Strain: Studies in Augustan Imitation and Satire (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969); John M. Aden, Something Like Horace: Studies in the Art and Allusion of Pope's Horatian Satires (Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1969); Aden, “Bethel's Sermon and Pope's Exemplum: Towards a Critique,” SEL, IX (1969), 463-70; Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope 1731-1743 (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1969); P.J. Koster, “Arbuthnot's Use of Quotation and Parody in His Account of the Sacheverell Affair,” PQ, XLVIII (1969), 201-11; Koster, “Means and Meanings: Translation as a Polemic Weapon,” Echos du Monde Classique: Classical News and Views, XIV (1970), 13-20; Wimsatt, “Imitation as Freedom, 1717-1798,” New Literary History, I (1970), 215-36; Weinbrot, “Augustan Imitation: The Role of the Original,” in Proceedings of the Modern Language Association Conferences on Neo-Classicism, 1967-1968, ed. Paul J. Korshin (New York, 1970), pp. 53-70; R. L. Selden, “Dr. Johnson: A Problem in Critical Methods,” CL, XXII (1970), 289-302; Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, “Johnson's London and its Juuvenalian Texts,” “Johnson's London and the Tools of Scholarship,” HLQ, XXXIV (1970), 1-23, 115-39.

2. The conventional procedure in eighteenth-century France and England was to note the author's imitation of Horace or Juvenal and praise or blame him regarding the individual passage. This technique is particularly clear in the edition of Boileau by Charles Brosette in 1717, and M. de Saint-Marc in 1747. On July 6, 1700, Brosette wrote to Boileau regarding his projected edition of the works, “avec des notes, et surtout avec la conférence, et le parallel des endroits d'Horace et Juvénal que vous avez imités.” Correspondence entre Boileau Despreaux et Brosette, ed. Auguste Laverdet (Paris, 1858), pp. 47-8. Warburton performs a similar task—a sort of piecemeal comparison and contrast—for Pope in 1751. This practice may probably be traced to the habit of reading commentators for particular lines and phrases, and is severely criticized by Joseph Spence in Polymetis (London, 1747), p. 287.

3. Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson (London, 1967), I, 270.

4. Ibid., 271.

5. Idem.

6. Bishop Gilbert Burnet relates that “Boileau among the French, and Cowley among the English Wits were those Rochester admired most.” See Some Passages of the Life and Death of … Rochester (London, 1680), p. 8. I briefly discuss Rochester's free adaptation of Boileau's Third and Eighth Satires in The Formal Strain, pp. 46-9.

7. As quoted in Harold F. Brooks, RES, XXV, 132.

8. For the dating of these works, see David Vieth, The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Yale Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 194, 201-2, and 207, respectively. Quotations are from this edition.

9. London, sig. A2^v. Rochester also uses the word in (apparently) the narrower sense of reference to part of a poem in “An Epistolary Essay from M. G. to O. B. upon their Mutual Poems” (1680). The dim-witted M. G. proclaims: “But why am I no poet of the times? / I have no allusions, similes, and rhymes.” Complete Poems, p. 146.

10. In Part III of the second edition (London, 1705), Bysshe includes A Collection of the Most Natural, Agreeable, and Sublime Thoughts, viz. Allusions, Similes, Descriptions and Characters of persons and Things that are in the Best English Poets, and adds: “I have inserted not only Similes, Allusions, Characters, and Descriptions; but also the most Natural and Sublime Thoughts of our Modern Poets on all Subjects whatever” (sig. F4^v).

11. Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, 2nd ed. (London, 1715).

12. The New World of Words (London, 1720).

13. Dictionarium Britannicum (London, 1730).

14. 6th ed. (London, 1750).

15. For the full context of Pope's remark, see Alexander Pope: The Dunciad, the Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, V, ed. James Sutherland, 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 9.

16. See David Vieth, Attribution in Restoration Poetry (Yale Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 386-90.

17. In, for example, The Works of the Right Honourable the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon, 3rd ed. (London, 1709), p. 15, and The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon, Dorset, the Duke of Devonshire, & c. (London, 1721), p. 10.

18. See Poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto, 2nd ed. (Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), p. 192. In spite of this and the poem's publication as a translation in The Odes and Satyrs of Horace that Have Been Done into English by the Most Eminent Hands (London, 1715; 1717; 1721; 1730; Dublin, 1730), I must disagree with Brooks's judgment that the poem “belongs to the English line of imitations that were also translations.” RES, XXV, 133. The subsequent analysis should make clear the grounds of this view. See also my comment on David Vieth's observations in n. 35, below.

19. For Moore see “The Originality of Rochester's Satyr Against Mankind,” PMLA, LVIII (1943), 398-9, and for Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford, 1905), I, 224. James Osborn believes that this remark was prompted by Johnson's knowledge of Pope's opinion: “Rochester has very bad versification sometimes. (He instanced this from his tenth satire of Horace, his full rhymes, etc.).” Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966), I, 202. As I hope to show shortly, Johnson's remark is misleading, not only because of Rochester's different treatment of his main target, but also because of his barely Horatian conception of harsh satire. He told Bishop Burnet: “A man could not write with life unless he were heated by Revenge: For to make a Satyre without Resentment, upon the cold Notions of Phylosophy, was as if a man would in cold blood, cut mens' throats who had never offended him: And he said, the Lyes in these Libels came as often as Ornaments that could not be spared without spoiling the beauty of the Poem.” Some Passages of … Rochester, p. 26.

20. Valuable discussions of the relationship between Lucilius and Horace may be found in George Converse Fiske, Lucilius and Horace: A Study in the Classical Theory of Imitation, Univ. of Wisconsin Studies in Lang. and Lit., no. 7 (1920), pp. 25-63, 219-368, passim; Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford, 1957), pp. 128-35; Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 61-131.

21. The Odes, Satyrs, and Epistles of Horace, tr. Thomas Creech (London, 1684), p. 416. Subsequent references are to this edition and are cited in the text.

22. See Rudd, The Satires of Horace, pp. 118-24, especially his brief summation on pp. 123-4.

23. The line represented a minor interpretive crux. Jacobus Cruquius argues: “Ego certe propter epitheton optimus [in Octavius optimus] potius iudiciarium hic signari Octavius Augustum, qui mansuetudine & morum facilitate mirabiliter ab omnibus commendatur, & poeta fuit non incelebris.” Q. Horatius Flaccus (Leiden, 1597), p. 405. Ludovicius Desprez says: “Optimus nempe is poeta historias etiam scripsit. Cave, lector, ne Augustum accipias.” Quintus Horatii Flaci, Opera … In Usum Serenissimi Delphini [169] (Philadelphia, 1814), p. 428 n. And thus William Baxter: “Ego plane sentio cum Jacobo Cruquio Octavium optimum non fuisse alium quam ipsum Augustum, etsi vir doctus Ludovicus Desprez hoc caveri jubeat.” Q. Horatii Flaci. Eclogae (London, 1701), p. 310n. Somewhat later, both Dacier and Sanadon believe that Octavius is the poet, not the Emperor: see the Oeuvres d'Horace (Amsterdam, 1735) V, 428-9. The little controversy is not yet dead, as witnessed by Oeuvres d'Horace … Satires publiès par Paul Lejay ([first ed., Paris, 1911] Hildesheim, 1966), p. 280 n.

24. Horace, pp. 131-2.

25. Johnson defines the verb embroider in this way: “To border with ornaments; to decorate with figured works; to diversify with needlework; to adorn with raised figures” (1755).

26. By the later 1670's Dryden was exposed to such innuendo, as well, in the anonymous An Exclamation against Julian, Secretary to the Muses; with the Character of a Libeller. By a Person of Quality (London, 1697): in “Bed-rid Age” Dryden “has left his Sting upon the Stage” (p. 1).

27. These remarks are often regarded as sincere praise of Dryden: see John Harold Wilson, The Court Wits of the Restoration (Princeton Univ. Press, 1948), p. 188, and Vivian de Sola Pinto, Enthusiast in Wit: A Portrait of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 1647-1680 (London, 1962), p. 99.

28. Ironically, the argument that Rochester adapts from Horace has been applied to Rochester himself. David Hume observes: “The very name of Rochester is offensive to modest ears; yet does his poetry discover such energy of style and such poignancy of satyre, as give grounds to imagine what so fine a genius, had he fallen in a more happy age and followed better models, was capable of producing. The adroit satyrists often used great liberty in their expressions, but their freedom no more resembles the license of Rochester than the nakedness of an Indian dress does that of a common prostitute” (The History of Great Britain [London, 1757], II, 453).

29. Of course this raises a troubling problem regarding analyses of specific Imitations. How can we determine whether the earlier poet has read the poem imitated in the way we suggest? In Pope's case the job is made easier through his reproduction of the classical poem, with certain key words drawn to our attention, on the facing page. Since Rochester does not do this, one's interpretation is on weaker grounds. A contemporary and conventional reading of Horace, Satires, I, 10, however, makes clear that much of the reading discussed above would have been known to Rochester. Lewis Crusius observes:

    “Horace … has not fail'd to censure [Lucilius] on … account [of his extravagance]; and excuses the liberty he took in doing so to one, who was his master in Satire, by that which Lucilius himself had taken to find fault with Ennius. … Horace therefore in gratifying his own good taste, by condemning this style of Lucilius's, pleas'd his prince's at the same time.

    “Besides these faults, Lucilius had a particular affectation of mixing Greek words with the Latin, which absurd as it was, found many admirers. This oblig'd that excellent writer to condemn him for it, and ridicule so absurd a mixture. Nevertheless, he readily grants, that he not only exceeded Ennius, and those that preceded him in his art, but would have been correct himself, had he lived to the Augustan Age”

    (Lives of the Roman Poets, 3rd ed. [London, 1753], I, xv-xvii; the first edition was published in 1726).

    Crusius insists that his views are drawn from the authors' texts and “the most judicious Critics concerning the Roman Poets, whose Labours I am much beholden to” (sig. A4^r); many of these critics wrote prior to, or contemporary with, Rochester.

30. Compare, for example, the opening of Rochester's poem with that of Creech's below:

    Well, Sir, I grant, I said Lucilius Muse Is uncorrect, his way of Writing loose, And who admires him so, what Friend of his So blindly doats as to deny me This? And yet in the same Page I freely own, His Wit as sharp as ever lash't the Town; But This one sort of Excellence allow'd, Doth not infer that all the rest is good: For on the same Account I might admit Labenius Farce for Poems and for Wit.

    (p. 415)

31. James Osborn observes that “despite Pope's disapproval of Rochester's versification, this poem … influenced Pope's own imitations of Horace. It is notable that this is one of Horace's satires that Pope did not choose to imitate.” Observations, I, 202. For Pope's other praise and blame of Rochester, see idem.

32. The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt A. Zimansky (Yale Univ. Press, 1956), p. 81. Rymer may have been aware of Bishop Burnet's similar remarks: “Sometimes other mens' thoughts mixed with his Compositions, but that flowed rather from the Impressions they made on him when he read them, by which they came to return upon him as his own thoughts, then that he servilely copied from any. For few men ever had a bolder flight of fancy, more steadily governed by Judgment than he had.” Some Passages of … Rochester, p. 8. The “originality” of Rochester's imitative poetry was a commonplace: see, for example, the comments of St. Evremond, Robert Wolsely, Anthony à Wood, Robert Parsons, and Bishop Burnet in The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon, Dorset, The Duke of Devonshire, & c, pp. xx, xxix, xxxii, xxxv, xxxviii, respectively.

33. Imitations of Horace, p. 3.

34. On this point, see Levine, SEL, VII, and Weinbrot, Proc. MLA Neo-Classicism, n. 1. To these should be added Ian Watt, “Two Historical Aspects of the Augustan Tradition,” in Brissenden, Studies in the Eighteenth Century pp. 67-88; J.W. Johnson, The Formation of English Neo-Classical Thought (Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 16-30; Howard Eskine Hill, “Augustans on Augustanism: England 1655-1759,” Renaisssance and Modern Studies, IX (1967) 55-83.

35. I hope that the pages above have made clear the grounds of my disagreement with Professor Vieth regarding the “Allusion.” He states: “This poem is an ‘imitation’ in the same sense as Pope's ‘Imitations of Horace’ and is apparently the first such work in the English language. Based on Horace, Satires, I, 10, it requires a close knowledge of the Latin original so that the reader will be aware not only of clever adaptations of Roman circumstances to English ones, but of ironic discrepancies between the two.” Complete Poems of Rochester, p. 120n.

36. None of the manuscript titles of the poem mention Boileau or offer the first line, as do comparable texts for Horace and the “Allusion.” But the 1707 edition of the Works of Rochester and Roscommon (and subsequent reprints) says that the Satyr is “Imitated from Monsieur Boileau” (p. 1). See Vieth, Attribution, pp. 370-5. Contemporary readers were far more aware of the freedom of the Satyr than of the “Allusion”; see the prefatory comments on the former poem in Rochester's Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1680), sigs. A4^v-6^r. I have discussed several aspects of the relationship between Imitation and translation in the The Formal Strain, pp. 14-30.