The Augustan Reprint Society
THE SCRIBLERIAD
(Anonymous)
(1742)
LORD HERVEY
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
VERBAL AND PRACTICAL VIRTUE
(1742)
Introduction byA. J. SAMBROOK
PUBLICATION NUMBER 125
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1967
GENERAL EDITORS
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
ADVISORY EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
[Pg i]
Though they are never particularly edifying, literary quarrels may attimes be educative. Always savage, attacks on Pope reached their lowestdepths of scurrility in 1742, when, in addition to the usual prose anddoggerel verse pamphlets, engravings were being circulated portraying Popein a brothel—this on the basis of the story told in the notorious Letterfrom Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, dated 7 July 1742.[1] The Augustan ReprintSociety has already reissued three of the anonymous Grub Street attacksmade upon Pope in this busy year,[2] but the present volume is intended tocomplete the picture of the battle-lines by reprinting a verse attacklaunched from the court—by Hervey presenting himself as Cibber’sally—and a verse defence that comes, in point of artistry, clearly fromor near Grub Street itself.
Lord Hervey’s verses, The Difference between Verbal and PracticalVirtue, were published between 21 and 24 August 1742, less than a weekafter the same author’s prose pamphlet (A Letter to Mr. C—b—r, On hisLetter to Mr. P——.) which had compared the art of Pope and Cibber toCibber’s advantage, and had roundly concluded that Pope was “asecond-rate Poet, a bad Companion, a dangerous Acquaintance, aninveterate, implacable Enemy, nobody’s Friend, a noxious Member ofSociety, and a thorough bad Man.” In the course of the prose pamphletHervey had suggested that there was a certain incongruity between Pope’strue character and his assumed persona of the “virtuous man,” and thisincongruity forms the main subject of his verse attack. Here Hervey findsexamples of “the difference between verbal and practical virtue” in thelives of Horace, Seneca, and Sallust, before turning to lampoon Popecrossly and ineptly. The attac