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TO THE AUTHOR OF A POEM ENTITLED SUCCESSIO [ ] - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

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The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

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TO THE AUTHOR OF A POEM ENTITLED SUCCESSIO[ ]

Elkanah Settle, celebrated as Doeg in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, wrote Successio in honor of the incoming Brunswick dynasty. Warburton (or possibly Pope) in a note on Dunciad, I. 181, says that the poem was ‘written at fourteen years old, and soon after printed.’ A good instance of Pope’s economy of material will be found in the passage upon which that note bears: an adaptation of lines 4, 17 and 18 of this early poem. It was first published in Lintot’s Miscellanies, 1712.

  • Begone, ye Critics, and restrain your spite,
  • Codrus writes on, and will forever write.
  • The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone,
  • As clocks run fastest when most lead is on;
  • What tho’ no bees around your cradle flew,
  • Nor on your lips distill’d their golden dew;
  • Yet have we oft discover’d in their stead
  • A swarm of drones that buzz’d about your head.
  • When you, like Orpheus, strike the warbling lyre,
  • Attentive blocks stand round you and admire.
  • Wit pass’d thro’ thee no longer is the same,
  • As meat digested takes a diff’rent name;
  • But sense must sure thy safest plunder be,
  • Since no reprisals can be made on thee.
  • Thus thou may’st rise, and in thy daring flight
  • (Tho’ ne’er so weighty) reach a wondrous height.
  • So, forc’d from engines, lead itself can fly,
  • And pond’rous slugs move nimbly thro’ the sky.
  • Sure Bavius copied to the full,
  • And taught to be dull;
  • Therefore, dear friend, at my advice give o’er
  • This needless labour; and contend no more
  • To prove a dull succession to be true,
  • Since ’t is enough we find it so in you.

[Page 2.]To the Author of a Poem entitled Successio.

[Lines 19, 20.] Bavius, Mævius, Chærilus, Codrus. Minor Latin poets. See The Dunciad, Book III. 24; and note.