Lives of the English Poets : Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope

Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise.  He was the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps the text might be improved.  If he inspected the early editions negligently, he taught others to be more accurate.  In his preface he expanded with great skill and elegance the character which had been given of Shakespeare by Dryden; and he drew the public attention upon his works, which, though often mentioned, had been little read.  Soon after the appearance of the “Iliad,” resolving not to let the general kindness cool, he published proposals for a translation of the “Odyssey,” in five volumes, for five guineas.  He was willing, however, now to have associates in his labour, being either weary with toiling upon another’s thoughts, or having heard, as Ruffhead relates, that Fenton and Broome had already begun the work, and liking better to have them confederates than rivals.  In the patent, instead of saying that he had “translated” the “Odyssey,” as he had said of the “Iliad,” he says that he had “undertaken” a translation: and in the proposals, the subscription is said to be not solely for his own use, but for that of “two of his friends who have assisted him in his work.”

In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared before the Lords at the memorable trial of Bishop Atterbury, with whom he had lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspondence.  Atterbury had honestly recommended to him the study of the Popish controversy, in hope of his conversion; to which Pope answered in a manner that cannot much recommend his principles or his judgment.  In questions and projects of learning they agree better.  He was called at the trial to give an account of Atterbury’s domestic life and private employment, that it might appear how little time he had left for plots.  Pope had but few words to utter, and in those few he made several blunders.

His letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, and gratitude.  “Perhaps,” says he, “it is not only in this world that I may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester.”  At their last interview in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a Bible.

Of the “Odyssey” Pope translated only twelve books.  The rest were the work of Broome and Fenton: the notes were written wholly by Broome, who was not over liberally rewarded.  The public was carefully kept ignorant of the several shares; and an account was subjoined at the conclusion which is now known not to be true.  The first copy of Pope’s books, with those of Fenton, are to be seen in the Museum.  The parts of Pope are less interlined than the “Iliad,” and the latter books of the “Iliad” less than the former.  He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled him to write the next with more facility.  The books of Fenton have very few alterations by the hand of Pope.  Those of Broome have not been found, but Pope complained, as it is reported, that he had much trouble in correcting them.  His contract with Lintot was the same as for the “Iliad,” except that only one hundred pounds were to be paid him for each volume.  The number of subscribers were five hundred and seventy-four, and of copies eight hundred and nineteen, so that his profit, when he had paid his assistants, was still very considerable.  The work was finished in 1723; and from that time he resolved to make no more translations.  The sale did not answer Lintot’s expectation, and he then pretended to discover something of a fraud in Pope, and commenced or threatened a suit in Chancery.

On the English “Odyssey” a criticism was published by Spence, at that time Prelector of Poetry at Oxford, a man whose learning was not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful.  His criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought rightly, and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and candour.  In him Pope had the first experience of a critic without malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display beauties as expose faults, who censured with respect, and praised with alacrity.  With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him from that time in great familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled memorials of his conversation.  The regard of Pope recommended him to the great and powerful, and he obtained very valuable preferments in the Church.  Not long after Pope was returning home from a visit in a friend’s coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; the window’s were closed, and, being unable to force them open, he was in danger of immediate death, when the postillion snatched him out by breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of his fingers in such a manner that he lost their use.

Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation.  He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room.  Pope discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the Court, and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence.  He soon afterwards (1727) joined with Swift, who was then in England, to publish three volumes of “Miscellanies,” in which, amongst other things, he inserted the “Memoirs of a Parish Clerk,” in ridicule of Burnet’s importance in his own history, and a “Debate upon Black and White Horses,” written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards Master of the Rolls.  Before these “Miscellanies” is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently written by Pope, in which he makes a ridiculous and romantic complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers.  He tells in tragic strains how “the cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been broken open and ransacked,” as if those violences were often committed for papers of uncertain and accidental value which are rarely provoked by real treasures—as if epigrams and essays were in danger where gold and diamonds are safe.  A cat hunted for his musk is, according to Pope’s account, but the emblem of a wit winded by booksellers.  His complaint, however, received some attestation, for the same year the letters written by him to Mr. Cromwell in his youth were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them.

In these “Miscellanies” was first published the “Art of Sinking in Poetry,” which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in literary quarrels, gave in a short time, according to Pope’s account, occasion to the “Dunciad.”

In the following year (1728) he began to put Atterbury’s advice in practice, and showed his satirical powers by publishing the “Dunciad,” one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves.  At the head of the “Dunces” he placed poor Theobald, whom he accused of ingratitude, but whose real crime was supposed to be that of having revised Shakespeare more happily than himself.  This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting the characters which it touched.  Ralph, who, unnecessarily interposing in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition, complained that for a time he was in danger of starving, as the booksellers had no longer any confidence in his capacity.  The prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow: the plan, if not wholly new, was little understood by common readers.  Many of the allusions required illustration; the names were often expressed only by the initial and final letters, and if they had been printed at length were such as few had known or recollected.  The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce?  If, therefore, it had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the “Dunciad” might have made its way very slowly in the world.  This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with all his pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes, which had never been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.

The history of the “Dunciad” is very minutely related by Pope himself in a dedication which he wrote to Lord Middlesex in the name of Savage.

“I will relate the war of the ‘Dunces’ (for so it has been commonly called), which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730

“When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified in the preface to their ‘Miscellanies,’ to publish such little pieces of theirs as had occasionally got abroad, there was added to them the ‘Treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry.’  It happened that in one chapter of this piece the several species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at random); but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to himself.  All fell into so violent a fury, that, for half a year or more, the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they could possibly devise, a liberty no way to be wondered at in those people, and in those papers, that, for many years during the uncontrolled license of the Press, had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure.  This gave Mr. Pope the thought that he had now some opportunity of doing good by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind, since, to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show what contemptible men were the authors of it.  He was not without hopes that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation.  This it was that gave birth to the ‘Dunciad,’ and he thought it a happiness that, by the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design.

“On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James’s, that poem was presented to the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, and some days after the whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen and persons of the first distinction.

“It is certainly a true observation that no people are so impatient of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was wonderfully exemplified on this occasion.  On the day the book was first vended a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties, advices, threats of law and battery—nay, cries of treason—were all employed to hinder the coming out of the ‘Dunciad.’  On the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it.  What could a few poor authors do against so great a majority as the public?  There was no stopping a torrent with a finger, so out it came.

“Many ludicrous circumstances attended it.  The ‘Dunces’ (for by this name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of hostilities against the author.  One wrote a letter to a great minister, assuring him Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the Government had, and another bought his image in clay to execute him in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted.  Some false editions of the book, having an owl in their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in his stead an ass laden with authors.  Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to the owl again.  Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements against advertisements, some recommending the edition of the owl, and others the edition of the ass, by which names they came to be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the ‘Dunciad.’”

Pope appears by this narrative to have contemplated his victory over the “Dunces” with great exultation; and such was his delight in the tumult which he had raised, that for a while his natural sensibility was suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without emotion, considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain which he rejoiced in having given.  It cannot, however, be concealed that, by his own confession, he was the aggressor, for nobody believes that the letters in the “Bathos” were placed at random; and at may be discovered that, when he thinks himself concealed, he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he affected to despise.  He is proud that his book was presented to the king and queen by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction.  The edition of which he speaks was, I believe, that which, by telling in the text the names, and in the notes the characters, of those whom he had satirised, was made intelligible and diverting.  The critics had now declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it without fear.  Those who were strangers to petty literature, and therefore unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within their view, and delighted in the visible effects of those shafts of malice which they had hitherto contemplated as shot into the air.

Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity which had for a time been appeased by mutual civilities, and published remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the “Rape of the Lock.”  Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives.  Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with “pious passion,” pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel.  But Pope appeased him, by changing “pious passion” to “cordial friendship,” and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the meaning imputed to the first expression.  Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the prize, expostulated with Pope in a manner so much superior to all mean solicitation, that Pope was reduced to sneak and shuffle, sometimes to deny, and sometimes to apologies; he first endeavours to wound, and is then afraid to own that he meant a blow.

The “Dunciad,” in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift.  Of the notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot, and an apologetical letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to have been written by Pope.

After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged himself a while in tranquillity, but his subsequent productions prove that he was not idle.  He published (1731) a poem on “Taste,” in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of great wealth and little taste.  By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos, a man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the public in his favour.  A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation.  The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping.  The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was satisfied, and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny.  He wrote an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions.  He said that to have ridiculed his taste, or his buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man, but that in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been less easily excused.

Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his poem had found, “owns that such critics can intimidate him, nay almost persuade him, to write no more, which is a compliment this age deserves.”  The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous, for the world can easily go on without him, and in a short time will cease to miss him.  I have heard of an idiot, who used to revenge his vexatious by lying all night upon the bridge.  “There is nothing,” says Juvenal, “that a man will not believe in his own favour.”  Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life.  When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his literary friends.  Pope was now forty-four years old, an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow less flexible, and when, therefore, the departure of an old friend is very acutely felt.  In the next year (1733) he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she had lasted to the age of ninety-three.  But she did not die unlamented.  The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary.  His parents had the happiness of living till he was at the summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or tenderness.  Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle.  Life has, among its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a son.

One of the passages of Pope’s life, which seems to deserve some inquiry, was a publication of “Letters” between him and many of his friends, which, falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller, of no good fame, were by him printed and sold.  This volume containing some letters from noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his friends.  Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence.  “He has,” said Curll, “a knack at versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him.”  When the orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed.  Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.

Curll’s account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman’s gown, but with a lawyer’s band, brought and offered for sale a number of printed volumes, which he found to be Pope’s epistolary correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage.  That Curll gave a true account of the transaction it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood was ever detected; and when, some years afterwards, I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than anybody else how Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent.  Such care had been taken to make them public, that they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might he expected to give Pope information of the seeming injury.  Lintot, I believe, did nothing, and Curll did what was expected.  That to make them public was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private messengers showed that the hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression.  It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his “Letters,” and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion, that, when he could complain that his “Letters” were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.

Pope’s private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with the praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship.  There were some letters which a very good or a wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was impracticable now to retract them.  From the perusal of those letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire of knowing him; and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship which he had newly formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the cost.  This, however, Pope did not accept; but in time solicited a subscription for a quarto volume, which appeared (1737), I believe, with sufficient profit.  In the preface he tells that his letters were reposited in a friend’s library, said to be the Earl of Oxford’s, and that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press.  The story was doubtless received with different degrees of credit.  It may be suspected that the preface to the “Miscellanies” was written to prepare the public for such an incident; and, to strengthen this opinion, James Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine negotiations, but whose voracity was very doubtful, declared that he was the messenger who carried, by Pope’s direction, the books to Curll.  When they were thus published and avowed, as they had relation to recent facts, and persons either then living or not yet forgotten, they may be supposed to have found readers; but, as the facts were minute, and the characters being either private or literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awaked no popular kindness or resentment.  The book never became much the subject of conversation.  Some read it as a contemporary history, and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those who read it did not talk of it.  Not much therefore was added by it to fame or envy, nor do I remember that it produced either public praise or public censure.  It had, however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty.  Our language had few letters, except those of statesmen.  Howel, indeed, about a century ago, published his “Letters,” which are commended by Morhoff, and which alone, of his hundred volumes, continue his memory.  Loveday’s “Letters” were printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known.  Mrs. Phillips’s (Orinda’s) are equally neglected.  And those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living mistress or friend.  Pope’s epistolary excellence had an open field; he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison; but it must be remembered that he had the power of favouring himself.  He might have originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or have afterwards selected those which he had most happily conceived or most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear something more studied and artificial in his productions than the rest, except one long letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill and industry of a professed author.  It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously formed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.  Pope may be said to write always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man that remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who lets thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind.  Before these “Letters” appeared he published the first part of what he persuaded himself to think a system of Ethics, under the title of an “Essay on Man,” which, if his letter to Swift (of September 14, 1723), be rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with great solicitude.  He had now many open, and doubtless many secret, enemies.  The “Dunces” were yet smarting from the war, and the superiority which he publicly arrogated disposed the world to wish his humiliation.  All this he knew, and against all this he provided.  His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, were in the first editions carefully suppressed; and the poem being of a new kind was ascribed to one or another as favour determined or conjecture wandered.  It was given, says Warburton, to every man except him only who could write it.  Those who like only when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it, and those admired it who are willing to scatter praise at random, which, while it is unappropriated, excites no envy.  Those friends of Pope that were trusted with the secret went about lavishing honours on the new-born poet, and hinting that Pope was never so much in danger from any former rival.  To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy or malevolence, he sent his Essay as a present before publication, that they might defeat their own enemity by praises which they could not afterwards decently retract.  With these precautions, in 1733, was published the first part of the “Essay on Man.”  There had been for some time a report that Pope was busy upon a “System of Morality,” but this design was not discovered in the new poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were unacquainted.  Its reception was not uniform.  Some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not without good lines.  While the author was unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured him as an intruder, but all thought him above neglect.  The sale increased, and editions were multiplied.  The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable corrections.  At first, the poet and his friend