Bentley is,
I think, the only man of real genius of whom Pope has spoken in terms
implying gross misappreciation. With all his faults, Pope was a really
fine judge of literature, and has made fewer blunders than such men as
Addison, Gray, and Johnson, infinitely superior to him in generosity of
feeling towards the living. He could even appreciate Bentley, and had
written, in his copy of Bentley's Milton, "_Pulchre, bene, recte_,"
against some of the happier emendations in the great critic's most
unsuccessful performance. The assault in the Dunciad is not the less
unsparing and ignorantly contemptuous of scholarship. The explanation is
easy. Bentley, who had spoken contemptuously of Pope's Homer, said of
Pope, "the portentous cub never forgives." But this was not all. Bentley
had provoked enemies by his intense pugnacity almost as freely as Pope
by his sneaking malice. Swift and Atterbury, objects of Pope's friendly
admiration, had been his antagonists, and Pope would naturally accept
their view of his merits. And, moreover, Pope's great ally of this
period had a dislike of his own to Bentley. Bentley had said of
Warburton that he was a man of monstrous appetite and bad digestion.
The remark hit Warburton's most obvious weakness. Warburton, with his
imperfect scholarship, and vast masses of badly assimilated learning,
was jealous of the reputation of the thoroughly trained and accurate
critic. It was the dislike of a charlatan for the excellence which he
endeavoured to simulate.
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