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Title: The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1
       New Edition

Author: Alexander Pope

Contributor: Whitwell Elwin

Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32190]

Language: English

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THE WORKS

OF

ALEXANDER POPE.

NEW EDITION.

INCLUDING

SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER NEW MATERIALS.

COLLECTED IN PART BY THE LATE

R^T. HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER.

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES.

BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN.

VOL. I.

POETRY.—VOL. I.

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.

[The right of Translation is reserved.]


LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

[Pg vi]

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME OF POETRY.

PAGE
Catalogue of Pope's collected Editions of his Works vii

Pope's Memorial List of Relations and Friends ix

Advertisement of Warburton To his Edition of Pope's Works xi

Introduction xv

The Author's Preface 1

Recommendatory Poems 17

Translations 37
The First Book of Statius's Thebais 41
Sappho To Phaon from Ovid 87
The Fable of Dryope from Ovid 104
Vertumnus and Pomona from Ovid 108

January and May, from Chaucer 113

The Wife of Bath, from Chaucer 155

The Temple of Fame 185

Pastorals 231
Discourse of Pastoral Poetry 257
1. Spring, to Sir William Trumbull 265
2. Summer to Dr. Garth 276
3. Autumn to Mr. Wycherley 285
4. Winter, to the Memory of Mrs. Tempest 292

Messiah, a Sacred Eclogue 301

Windsor Forest 319

[Pg vii]

CATALOGUE

Of Pope's Collected Editions of his Works.

This volume consists of all the acknowledged poems which Pope had hitherto published, with the addition of some new pieces.

The volume of 1735 contains, with a few exceptions, the poems which Pope had printed since 1717. The pages of each group of pieces—Epistles, Satires, Epitaphs, etc.—are numbered separately, and there are other irregularities in the numbers, arising from a change in the order of the Moral Essays after the sheets were struck off.

This is Pope's first avowed edition of his letters. A half-title, "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope in Prose," precedes the title-page.

The half-title is more precise: "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose. Vol. ii. Containing the rest of his Letters, with the Memoirs of Scriblerus, never before printed; and other Tracts written either singly, or in conjunction with his friends. Now first collected together." The letters are the Swift correspondence, and they are in a different type from the rest of the book. The numbers of the pages are very irregular, and show that the contents and arrangement of the volume had been greatly altered from some previous impression. The folio copies of the two volumes of poetry, and the two of prose, are merely the quarto text portioned out into longer pages, without a single leaf being reprinted. The trifling variations from the quartos were introduced when the matter was put into the folio size.[Pg viii]

This is the first volume of an edition which extended to nine volumes, and which from the want of uniformity in the title-pages, the dates, and names of the publishers appears to consist of odd volumes. The copyright of Pope's works belonged to different proprietors, and they at last agreed to print their respective shares in small octavo, that the several parts united might form a complete set. Each proprietor commenced printing his particular section of the octavos when the previous sizes he had on hand were sold, and thus it happened that the second volume of the edition came out in 1735 before the first, which was published in 1736. The series was not finished till 1742, when the fourth book of the Dunciad was added to the Poems, and the Swift Correspondence to the Letters. Some of the volumes were reprinted, and the later editions occasionally differ slightly from their predecessors. The Poems and Letters of Pope are more complete in the octavos than in the quartos, but the octavos, on the other hand, omit all the prose works except the Letters, and the Memoirs of Scriblerus, and octavos and quartos combined are imperfect in comparison with the editions which have been published since Pope's death.

[Pg ix]

A MEMORIAL LIST

OF

DEPARTED RELATIONS AND FRIENDS.

WRITTEN BY POPE IN AN ELZEVIR VIRGIL, NOW IN THE LIBRARY OF THE EARL OF MANSFIELD.[1]

NATUS MAJI 21, 1688, HORA POST MERID. 6-3/4.

Anno 1700, Maji primo, obit, semper venerandus, poetarum princeps, Joannes Dryden, æt. 70.[2]

Anno 1708, mens. Aprili, obiit Gulielmus Walsh, criticus sagax, amicus et vir bonus, æt. 49.

Anno 1710, Jan. 24, Avita mea piissimæ mem., Eliz. Turner, migravit in cœlum, annum agens 74.

Anno 1710, mens. Aprili, Tho. Betterton, Roscius sui temporis, exit omnium cum plausu bonorum, æt. 74.

Anno 1712, mens. Januario, decessit vir facetissimus, juventutis meæ deliciæ, Antonius Englefleld, æt. 75.

Anno 1718, obit Tho. Parnell, poetica laude, et moribus suavissimis insignis.

Anno 1715, mens. Martio, decessit Gul. Wycherley, poeta morum scientia clarus, ille meos primus qui habebat amores, æt. 75.

Anno 1716, mens. Decemb. obit Gulielmus Trumbull, olim Regi Gul. a secretis, annum agens 75. Amicus meus humanissimus a juvenilibus annis.

Pater meus, Alex. Pope, omnibus bonis moribus præditus obit, an. 1717.

Simon Harcourt, filius, obit, mens. Junio 1720, Lutet. Parisior. Quem sequitur Pater, olim M. Britann. Cancellar., mense Julio 1727.

Jacobus Craggs R.M.B. a secretis, natura generosus et ingenuus, amicus animosus, charissim. memor., e vita exc. Feb. 1720/1.

Robertus Oxoniæ Comes, mihi perfamiliaris et jucundus, fortiter obit, 1724.

Jo. Sheffield, Buckinghamiæ Dux, mihi lenis et amicissimus, fato functus est Feb. 1720/1 æt. 73.

Nutrix mea fidelissima M. Beech, obiit 5 Novem. 1725, æt. 77.[Pg x]

Robertus Digby, ex Patre antiquis præditus moribus, e vita migravit, Apr. 1726.

Edwardus Blunt, vir amicissimus obit, Aug. 1726.

Anno 1728/9, Jan. 20, æt. 57, mortuus est Gulielmus Congreve, poeta, eximius, vir comis, urbanus, et mihi perquam familiaris.

Elijah Fenton, vir probus, et poeta haud mediocris, decessit men. Julio 1730, æt. 48.

Francisc. Atterbury, Roffens Episcopus, vir omni scientia clarus, animosus, ex Anglia exilio pulsus, an. 1723. Obiit Parisiis, mense Febr. 1732, æt. 70.

Joan. Gay, probitate morum et simplicitate insignis, socius peramabilis, sub oculis meis mortuus est, Dec. 4, 1723, æt. 44.

Mater mea charissima, pientissima et optima, Editha Pope, obiit septima die Junii 1733, annum implens nonagesimum tertium.

G. Garth, MD. homo candidus et poeta urbanus, obiit 1719.

Joan. Arbuthnot, MD. vir doctiss., probitate ac pietate insignis, obiit Febr. 27, 1734/5, æt. 68.

Carolus Mordaunt. Com. Peterbor., vir insigniss. bellica virtute, ac morum comitate, obiit Ulyssipont. anno ætatis 78, 1735, mense Octobris.

[Pg xi]

ADVERTISEMENT OF WARBURTON TO HIS EDITION OF POPE'S WORKS, 1751.

Mr. Pope, in his last illness, amused himself, amidst the care of his higher concerns, in preparing a corrected and complete edition of his writings;[1] and, with his usual delicacy, was even solicitous to prevent any share of the offence they might occasion, from falling on the friend whom he had engaged to give them to the public.[2] In discharge of this trust, the public has here a complete edition of his works, executed in such a manner, as, I am persuaded, would have been to his satisfaction. The editor hath not, for the sake of profit, suffered the author's name to be made cheap by a subscription;[3] nor his works to be defrauded of their due honours by a vulgar or inelegant impression; nor his memory to be disgraced by any pieces unworthy of his talents or virtue. On the contrary, he hath, at a very great expense, ornamented this edition with all the advantages which the best artists in paper, printing, and sculpture could bestow upon it.[4]

If the public hath waited longer than the deference due to its generous impatience for the author's writings should have suffered, it was owing to a reason which the editor need not be ashamed to tell. It was his regard to the family interests of his deceased friend. Mr. Pope, at his death, had left large impressions of several parts of his works, unsold, the property of which was adjudged to belong to his executors; and the editor was willing they should have time to dispose of them to the best advantage, before the publication of this edition (which hath been long prepared) should put a stop to the sale. But it may be proper to be a little more particular concerning the superiority of this edition above all the preceding, so far as Mr. Pope himself was concerned. What the editor hath done, the reader must collect for himself.

The first volume, and the original poems in the second, are here first printed from a copy corrected throughout by the author himself, even to the[Pg xii] very preface,[5] which, with several additional notes in his own hand, he delivered to the editor a little before his death. The juvenile translations, in the other part of the second volume, it was never his intention to bring into this edition of his works, on account of the levity of some, the freedom of others, and the little importance of all. But these being the property of other men, the editor had it not in his power to follow the author's intention.

The third volume (all but the Essay on Man, which together with the Essay on Criticism, the author, a little before his death, had corrected and published in quarto, as a specimen of his projected edition,) was printed by him in his last illness, but never published, in the manner it is now given. The disposition of the Epistle on the Characters of Men is quite altered; that on the Characters of Women much enlarged; and the Epistles on Riches and Taste corrected and improved. To these advantages of the third volume must be added a great number of fine verses, taken from the author's manuscript copies of these poems, communicated by him for this purpose to the editor. These, the author, when he first published the poems to which they belong, thought proper, for various reasons, to omit. Some, from the manuscript copy of the Essay on Man, which tended to discredit fate, and to recommend the moral government of God, had, by the editor's advice, been restored to their places in the last edition of that poem.[6] The rest, together with others of the like sort, from his manuscript copy of the other Ethic Epistles, are here inserted at the bottom of the page, under the title of Variations.

The fourth volume contains the Satires, with their Prologue,—the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; and Epilogue,—the two poems intitled mdccxxxviii. The Prologue and Epilogue are here given with the like advantages as the Ethic Epistles in the foregoing volume, that is to say, with the Variations, or additional verses from the author's manuscripts. The Epilogue to the Satires is likewise inriched with many and large notes, now first printed from the author's own manuscript.

The fifth volume contains a correcter and completer edition of the Dunciad than hath been hitherto published, of which, at present, I have only this further to add, that it was at my request he laid the plan of a fourth book. I often told him, it was pity so fine a poem should remain disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insignificant of all dunces,—bad rhymers and malevolent cavillers; that he ought to raise and ennoble it by pointing his satire against the most pernicious of all,—minute philosophers and free-thinkers. I imagined, too, it was for the interests of religion to have it known, that so great a genius had a due abhorrence of these pests of virtue and society. He came readily into my opinion; but, at the same time, told me it would create him many enemies. He was not mistaken, for though the terror of his pen kept them for some time in respect, yet on his death they rose with unrestrained fury in numerous coffee-house tales, and Grub Street libels. The plan of this admirable satire was artfully contrived to show, that the follies and defects of a fashionable education naturally led to, and necessarily ended in, freethinking, with design to point out the only remedy adequate to so destructive an evil. It was to advance the same ends of virtue and religion, that the editor prevailed on him to alter everything in his moral writings that[Pg xiii] might be suspected of having the least glance towards fate or naturalism, and to add what was proper to convince the world that he was warmly on the side of moral government and a revealed will. And it would be great injustice to his memory not to declare that he embraced these occasions with the most unfeigned pleasure.

The sixth volume consists of Mr. Pope's miscellaneous pieces in verse and prose. Amongst the verse several fine poems make now their first appearance in his works. And of the prose, all that is good, and nothing but what is exquisitely so, will be found in this edition.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes consist entirely of his letters, the more valuable, as they are the only true models which we, or perhaps any of our neighbours, have of familiar epistles.[7] This collection is now made more complete by the addition of several new pieces. Yet, excepting a short explanatory letter to Col. M[oyser], and the letters to Mr. A[llen] and Mr. W[arburton] (the latter of which are given to show the editor's inducements, and the engagements he was under, to intend the care of this edition) excepting these, I say, the rest are all here published from the author's own printed, though not published copies delivered to the editor.[8]

On the whole, the advantages of this edition, above the preceding, are these,—that it is the first complete collection which has ever been made of his original writings; that all his principal poems, of early or later date, are here given to the public with his last corrections and improvements; that a great number of his verses are here first printed from the manuscript copies of his principal poems of later date; that many new notes of the author are here added to his poems; and lastly, that several pieces, both in prose and verse make now their first appearance before the public.

The author's life deserves a just volume, and the editor intends to give it. For to have been one of the first poets in the world is but his second praise. He was in a higher class. He was one of the "noblest works of God." He was an "honest man,"[9]—a man who alone possessed more real virtue than, in very corrupt times, needing a satirist like him, will sometimes fall to the share of multitudes. In this history of his life,[10] will be contained a large account of his writings, a critique on the nature, force, and extent of his genius, exemplified from these writings; and a vindication of his moral character, exemplified by his more distinguished virtues,—his filial piety, his disinterested friendships, his reverence for the constitution of his country, his love and admiration of virtue, and (what was the necessary effect) his hatred and contempt of vice, his extensive charity to the indigent, his warm benevolence to mankind, his supreme veneration of the Deity, and above all his sincere belief of Revelation. Nor shall his faults be concealed. It is not for[Pg xiv] the interests of his virtues that they should. Nor indeed could they be concealed, if we were so disposed, for they shine through his virtues, no man being more a dupe to the specious appearances of virtue in others.[11] In a word, I mean not to be his panegyrist but his historian. And may I, when envy and calumny have taken the same advantage of my absence (for, while I live, I will freely trust it to my life to confute them) may I find a friend as careful of my honest fame as I have been of his! Together with his works, he hath bequeathed me his dunces. So that as the property is transferred, I could wish they would now let his memory alone. The veil which death draws over the good is so sacred, that to tear it, and with sacrilegious hands, to throw dirt upon the shrine, gives scandal even to barbarians. And though Rome permitted her slaves to calumniate her best citizens on the day of triumph, yet the same petulancy at their funeral would have been rewarded with execration and a gibbet.[12] The public may be malicious; but is rarely vindictive or ungenerous. It would abhor all insults, on a writer dead, though it had borne with the ribaldry, or even set the ribalds on work, when he was alive. And in this there is no great harm, for he must have a strange impotency of mind indeed whom such miserable scribblers can disturb or ruffle. Of all that gross Beotian phalanx who have written scurrilously against the editor, he knows not so much as one whom a writer of reputation would not wish to have his enemy, or whom a man of honour would not be ashamed to own for his friend.[13] He is indeed but slightly conversant in their works, and knows little of the particulars of their defamation. To his authorship they are heartily welcome. But if any of them have been so far abandoned by truth as to attack his moral character in any respect whatsoever, to all and every one of these and their abettors, he gives the lie in form, and in the words of honest Father Valerian, mentiris impudentissime.

[Pg xvii]

INTRODUCTION.

In his will, dated December 12, 1743, not quite six months before he died, Pope bequeathed his printed works to Warburton, on condition that he published them without "future alterations." Warburton states that the object of the proviso was to relieve him from the obloquy he might incur by reproducing offensive strokes of satire. A few slight alterations which had not the sanction of any prior edition were nevertheless introduced by Warburton into some of the poems, and he announced on the title-page and in the preface, that they were taken from a corrected copy delivered to him by Pope. Mr. Croker mistrusted the genuineness of the "alterations," and he intended to reject the text of Warburton, and adopt in the main the text of the last octavo edition which had appeared during the lifetime of the poet. The honour of Warburton is not above suspicion, but Mr. Croker was misled by erroneous inferences when he accused him of tampering with the text, and falsely pleading the authority of "a copy corrected by the author himself."

Fantastic in his conceptions, violent in his animosities, hasty and imperious in the expression of his opinions, Warburton sometimes repented his rashness, and cancelled numerous leaves in his Shakespeare and Pope after the volumes were printed off. Mr. Kilvert, who edited his Literary Remains, found among his papers a cancelled leaf of the Pope, containing the commencement of the Prologue to the Satires. On the first page Warburton had inserted among the "Variations" a couplet which he said was copied from the manuscript of Pope:

The allusion was to the ballad of William and Margaret, written by Mallet. He was the ally of Pope and Bolingbroke, and when Pope was dead he was employed by Bolingbroke to blast the memory of their former friend.[1] The mention of Margaret's ghost gave Warburton the opportunity of appending a bitter note upon Mallet, whom he accused of "arraigning his dead patron for a cheat," and the leaf was cancelled to get rid of both note and variation. Mr. Croker believed that Warburton "forged" the variation to gratify his spleen against Mallet, whom he detested, and that before the volume was published "either his own conscience, or some prudent friend, suggested that such manifest fraud would not be tolerated." The conjecture was unfounded. Pope presented several of his manuscripts to the son of Jonathan Richardson, the portrait-painter, for his trouble in collating them with the printed text. Richardson's interlined copy of the first quarto volume of Pope's poetry passed into the hands of Malone, and was ultimately bought by Mr. Croker. The manuscripts which Richardson possessed in the handwriting of Pope were purchased by Dr. Chauncey, and are still the property of his descendants. Among them is the Prologue to the Satires, and it contains the couplet Mr. Croker believed to have been forged. In every instance where the manuscripts exist the variations printed by Warburton are found to be authentic.

The inference of Mr. Croker from the variations must be reversed. They do not invalidate, but attest, the fidelity of Warburton, and the "alterations" in the text of the poems must pass unchallenged unless there is some direct proof of their inaccuracy. The arguments, on the contrary, are altogether in their favour. Four printed pages of the first Moral Essay, with the corrections in manuscript, were discovered by Mr. Kilvert among Warburton's papers. "Some of the words," says Mr. Croker, "are so neatly written as to leave a strong impression on my eye of their being Pope's; other portions of the manuscript are more like Warburton's looser hand." The faint doubt expressed by Mr. Croker would hardly have arisen if his suspicion had not been previously awakened, for the corrections[Pg xix] are all indubitably in the handwriting of the poet. Nor was the manuscript in this instance the guide of Warburton. He followed a copy of the Moral Essays printed by Pope in his last illness, though never published. "Warburton has the propriety of it as you know," wrote Bolingbroke to Lord Marchmont, one of the executors; "alter it he cannot by the terms of the will."[2] This of itself is an answer to Mr. Croker. The executors had access to Pope's latest printed version of the Moral Essays, which was Warburton's avowed authority, and he could not alter a single word without certain detection, and the consequent forfeiture of his legacy. He was alive to the risk. A portion of Pope's revised edition of his poetical works was passing through the press at the time of his death, and Warburton directed the printer to give the sheets, when the executors inquired for them, to their colleague the celebrated Murray, who was afterwards Lord Mansfield, adding, "Pray preserve all the press copy to the least scrap."[3] The terms of the will bound the editor to be faithful to his trust, under a penalty of 4,000l., the estimated value of the bequest,[4] and he saw the necessity of having the voucher of the poet's handwriting for the minutest departure from the previous text in such of the proofs as had not received Pope's final imprimatur. A more ample guarantee could not be desired for the authenticity of the particulars in which Warburton's text differs from the printed copies superintended by Pope. All the displaced readings, which are not utterly insignificant, are preserved in the notes to the present edition, as well as numerous unpublished variations, which are taken from the manuscripts of Pope, or the transcripts of Richardson.

The text of Pope's poems is more easily settled than elucidated. No other poet so near to our own time presents equal difficulties. His satires abound in uncertain allusions, and controverted topics which require a large amount of illustration and discussion. His philosophy was not understood by himself, and it is a study to disentangle his confused arguments, and interpret his doubtful language. He often[Pg xx] expressed his opinions with wilful ambiguity, took refuge in equivocations, or had recourse to falsehoods, and we are constantly forced upon perplexing investigations to recover the truth he endeavoured to conceal. Fortunately his best poems and choicest passages are least incumbered with puzzling questions, and his obscurities have not much interfered with his popularity because the mass of readers are content to enjoy the beauties and leave the enigmas unsolved.

The number and eminence of the commentators on Pope, the diversity of their attainments, and the extent of their annotations appear to promise all the help which knowledge, acuteness, and taste could supply. The result is far below what might reasonably have been anticipated. Warburton, Pope's first editor, had a vigorous understanding, and possessed the enormous advantage that he carried on the work in concert with the poet, and could ask the explanation of every difficulty. A diseased ambition rendered his talents and opportunities useless. Without originality he aspired to be original, and imagined that to fabricate hollow paradoxes, and torture language into undesigned meanings was the surest evidence of a fertile, penetrating genius. He employed his sagacity less to discover than to distort the ideas of his author, and seems to have thought that the more he deviated from the obvious sense the greater would be his fame for inventive power. He has left no worse specimen of his perverse propensity than the spurious fancies, and idle refinements he fathered upon Pope. They are among his baldest paradoxes, are conveyed in his heaviest style, and are supported by his feeblest sophistry. His lifeless and verbose conceits soon provoke by their falsity, and fatigue by their ponderousness. Lord Marchmont said laughingly to Pope that "he must be the vainest man alive, and must want to show posterity what a quantity of dulness he could carry down on his back without sinking under the load."[5] The exuberant self-sufficiency of Warburton deluded him into the belief that the text derived its principal lustre from the commentary. He selected for the frontispiece to his edition a monument on which were hung medallions of himself[Pg xxi] and the poet, and Blakey, the draughtsman, told Burke that "it was by Warburton's particular desire that he made him the principal figure, and Pope only secondary, and that the light, contrary to the rules of art, goes upwards from Warburton to Pope." A gentleman remarked, when Burke related the anecdote, that they were drawn looking in opposite directions.[6] The sarcasm summed up the opinion which has always prevailed. The clumsy inventions of Warburton had not the semblance of plausibility, and scarce anybody except his shadow, and fulsome echo, Bishop Hurd, ever doubted that the text and commentary looked different ways.[7]

Proud of his dreary paradoxes, Warburton scorned the humble office of furnishing useful information. Pope had said, in his Imitations of Horace, that because three ladies liked a luckless play, a spendthrift had taken the whole house upon the poet's night,[8] which drew from Warburton the following note:—"The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry, even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been in Mr. Pope's purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings. Which defect in these notes, the periodical scribblers, however, have been stupid and shameless enough to object to them."[9] Warburton's reserve was praiseworthy when his motive was respect for private feelings. His general neglect to clear up the allusions in Pope's poems did not admit of this apology, and in default of a better defence he called his critics "stupid and shameless." His habit when reasons failed him was to supply their place with abuse.

The edition of Warburton was published in 1751, and no attempt was made to supersede it till Gilbert Wakefield commenced[Pg xxii] a new edition in 1794. He was "labouring," he says, "for a subsistence," and the cost of the work, which was printed at his own expense, obliged him to bring out a volume at a time. Before the first volume was quite through the press he learned that Joseph Warton was engaged on a similar undertaking. Warton had the support of the London booksellers, and the edition of Wakefield ended with his opening volume. The world did not lose the benefit of his annotations. He published in 1796 his Observations on Pope, which consist of notes on the remaining poems, and of supplemental notes to the poems he had previously edited. Wakefield said that an "inculpable perfection pervaded the whole body of Pope's compositions," and in the extravagance of his admiration he overlaid the volume of his unfinished edition with weak rhapsodies which masked the useful part of his labours. He restrained his eulogistic excesses in his Observations, and kept more closely to his main design of tracing Pope's "imitations of his predecessors." All persons tolerably read in poetry could perceive that the obligations Pope acknowledged in his notes were but a fraction of the whole, and in 1740, Bowyer, the printer, with the assistance of Mr. Clarke, a clergyman, commenced a collection of parallel passages. From the letters of Clarke to Bowyer it appears that Pope was annoyed. Bowyer profited by his irritation, and offered to treat with him. "I think," wrote Clarke in 1742, "you buy his friendship cheap with a whole hecatomb of notes, essays, illustrations, and the mob of commentators."[10] The progress of the negociation is not recorded. The result is revealed in the fact that Bowyer shortly afterwards became Pope's printer. The sensitiveness which was disturbed at the gleanings of Bowyer would have shuddered at the abundant harvest of Wakefield. He himself had no intention of depreciating the merits of Pope. He only wished to illustrate a favourite author. Many of the parallelisms are too slight to be applicable, or they are common phrases the property of every Englishman. A vast number remain which are a curious exhibition of Pope's patience and skill in the art of poetical mosaic, and of the[Pg xxiii] large amount of borrowed beauties he intermixed with his undoubted originality. The interpretation of the text, though subordinate with Wakefield, was not neglected by him. He and a friend who assisted him, Dr. William Bennet, Bishop of Cloyne, have explained more allusions than all the other commentators, and the least known and appreciated of the editors of Pope is the man who has done the most for his author.

The edition of Warton appeared in 1797. "His reason," he says in his preface, "for undertaking the work was the universal complaint that Dr. Warburton had disfigured and disgraced his edition with many forced and far-sought interpretations, totally unsupported by the passages which they were brought to elucidate." Warton had the stimulus of a second motive. He published in 1756 the first volume of his Essay on Pope, and his criticisms were roughly attacked in many passages of Ruffhead's Life of the poet, which was prompted and partly written by Warburton. While Warburton lived Warton did not venture to retaliate. The thirty years which intervened had not extinguished his resentment, and he seized the opportunity to revenge the ancient grudge. His consciousness of Warburton's defects did not keep Warton from repeating the error of filling page upon page with irrelevant matter. His Essay on Pope had been a receptacle for his store of miscellaneous reading, and in a separate work there was no objection to a medley of anecdote and criticism. He was seventy-five when he published his edition of Pope, and to save himself trouble he apportioned out the old farrago in notes. Profuse in digressions, he is sparing of needful explanations. His turn was for the lighter portions of criticism and biography, and most of his apposite remarks are critical opinions. They are often just, but never profound, for he had neither fervid feelings nor a robust understanding, and his highest qualities are a fair poetical taste, and a tolerable acquaintance with ancient and modern authors.

Bowles was a school-boy at Winchester when Warton was head-master, and he intimated that this early connection was the cause of his being employed to revise the next edition of Pope. It appeared in 1806. His poetic sensibility was[Pg xxiv] exquisite, and he was well-read, shrewd, and candid. His failing was a hurry of mind which disqualified him for a painstaking commentator. He was content to jot down in a careless, colloquial style the off-hand thoughts of his quick and cultivated intellect, and he did not add much to the scanty explanations of Warton and Warburton. The chief merit of his edition is his excellent literary criticism, which is truer, deeper, and more refined than that of his old Winchester master. The estimate Bowles formed of the poetry and character of Pope was allowed to pass unchallenged for thirteen years, when some remarks of Campbell, in his Specimens of British Poets, commenced a controversy which lasted from 1819 to 1826. In the series of pamphlets he published to vindicate his opinions, Bowles exhibited his wonted acuteness, courage, and negligence. With all his slips in minor points the fresh facts which have come to light have more than confirmed his view of Pope's moral obliquities, and in the discussion on the principles of poetry he reduced the whole of his adversaries to silence. He and Hazlitt were the only persons among the disputants, eminent or obscure, who showed any real comprehension of the subject.

The next edition of Pope, justly considered by Mr. Croker to be the worst, came out in 1824, and was superintended by Roscoe, the author of the Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and Leo X. He barely contributed a single illustrative note, his criticisms are platitudes, and his vindications of Pope a tissue of blunders. He was misled by his credulous faith in his hero, by the rashness with which he imposed his own guesses for facts, and above all by his want of penetration and research. His half-knowledge was worse than ignorance. A few of his multitudinous errors were exposed by Bowles whom he had attacked. Roscoe replied in a feeble, disingenuous pamphlet, which drew from Bowles his taunting and crushing retort, Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq. This ended the Pope controversy.

The faults of plan and execution in the editions of Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe stand out in strong relief, and Mr. Croker resolved, as far as possible, to correct[Pg xxv] the mistakes, retrench the superfluities, and supply the omissions. Warton and Bowles dismissed a large proportion of the barren, oppressive commentaries of Warburton. Roscoe put back the whole of the bulky excrescence. Most of it had been adopted by Pope, and to relieve the text, without excluding interpretations sanctioned by the poet, Mr. Croker determined to print the pedantic lumber in appendixes. The notes of the other editors rested upon their intrinsic merits, and he intended to sift out the surplusage, and only retain what was pertinent. To curtail is easy. The difficulty was to clear up the many obscurities which remained, and Mr. Croker was anxious to furnish his share of explanation, though he was convinced that numerous contemporary allusions would always baffle curiosity. His chief attention was directed to the satires, and he continued for many years to pursue his investigations, and accumulate materials. His busy life was succeeded by failing health, and he died before he had prepared his notes for the press. The results of his research have luckily all been preserved, for his habit was to write them out in full at the time. He was an acute and eager enquirer into political, personal, and social history, and no man could have been more competent to bring to the surface the under-current of forgotten circumstances.

I have kept to the plan sketched out by Mr. Croker. "A commentary," says Johnson, "must arise from the fortuitous discoveries of many men in devious walks of literature," and few poets have had more commentators than Pope. I have borrowed whatever I met with in previous writers that throw light upon his meaning, faults, and beauties, have cast aside what was plainly inapplicable and erroneous, and have done what I could to fill up deficiencies. My own notes will be recognised by the absence of any signature; all other notes throughout the work have the names of their authors attached, even when a note is by the same author as the text. The extracts from Warton are sometimes taken from his Essay, and both in his case and that of Bowles I have occasionally joined together scattered fragments which were connected in their subject. The rest of the arrangements will be understood at a glance.[Pg xxvi]

The letters of Pope demand a more particular discussion. Estimated by their intrinsic merits they would call for little notice. "He laboured them," says Horace Walpole, "as much as the Essay on Man, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been written to anybody."[11] Their dry and frigid generalities could not be more happily exposed. The chief importance of the correspondence is in its relation to the morality of Pope, and the fame of men whose reputation is involved in the question of his uprightness. His real nature has always been hotly debated. "His detractors," says De Quincey, "fancy that in his character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles; or, to adopt the distinction of Shakespeare, they see nothing but 'dust a little gilt,' and we 'gold a little dusted.'"[12] Pope boasted loudly of his virtue, and his champions judge him by his own representations. His accusers hold that his professions were hypocritical, as when Lord Macaulay speaks of his "spite and envy, thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface."[13] The charges brought against him are thickly scattered over his life, and either the guilty appearances are deceptive, or we must admit that his mind was essentially corrupt. His correspondence brings up the ever-recurring[Pg xxvii] enquiry, and we have to decide whether his letters are not many of them fraudulent, and the circumstances attending their publication a series of ignominious plots, infamous false accusations, and impudent lies.

Every examination into the history of the letters was slight before Mr. Dilke engaged in the laborious task. His familiarity with the books, pamphlets, and periodicals of the time could not be exceeded, and his doubts once awakened he accepted nothing upon trust. With an immense amount of research and skill he proceeded to track Pope through his tortuous courses. He laid bare the ramifications of the plot against Curll, which was only known in a few of its prominent particulars. He detected, what none of the editors and biographers had perceived, the base manœuvres and deceit which accompanied the publication of the "Letters to and from Dr. Swift." He was originally put upon his investigations by the manuscript collection of Pope's letters to Caryll, and these revealed a new set of frauds in the evidence they supplied of letters converted into a fictitious correspondence. His inclination was to favour Pope whenever there was an opening for a liberal interpretation, and it was not from hostility that he exposed the net-work of fraud, and brought out the dark traits of a dishonourable disposition with new and terrible force. He printed his discoveries in the Athenæum[14], and after studying the facts afresh by the light of his essays, I am compelled to adopt his conclusions. The evidence upon which they rest is often circumstantial and intricate, and cannot be followed to the end without steady attention, and some trial of patience.

The letters of the poet which were first sent to the press were given by Cromwell to his mistress, Elizabeth Thomas, who sold them in her distress to Curll for ten guineas. She was a shameless woman, and boldly justified her conduct. "Everyone," she said, "knows that the person to whom a letter is addressed has the same right to dispose of it as he has of goods purchased with his money." The right which originally belonged to Cromwell, of publishing to the world[Pg xxviii] whatever had been written to him in the confidence of friendship, he had, by his gift, transferred to herself; and thus it appeared that Cromwell had a right to be treacherous to Pope, and Mrs. Thomas a right to be treacherous to both Pope and Cromwell. With more reason she inferred that neither of them at heart would be vexed at the proceeding. Cromwell, she urged, could not be angry that the world should know "the professions of love, gratitude, and veneration made him by so celebrated an author," and Pope could not resent the exhibition of the "early pregnancy of his genius." "And yet," she continued, "had either of you been asked, common modesty would have obliged you to refuse what you would not be displeased with if done without your knowledge."[15] There can be little doubt, from his subsequent conduct, that this was the light in which the publication was viewed by the poet, notwithstanding his assertion in a note to the Dunciad, "that he was ashamed of the letters as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of the writer." Mrs. Thomas did him an incalculable injury, not by revealing his secrets, but by flattering his vanity. The favourable reception of his correspondence originated the desire to give some further specimens to the world, and led him into the miserable series of falsehoods and frauds by which he endeavoured to accomplish his design without seeming to be privy to it.

The letters to Cromwell were published in Curll's "Miscellanea," of which the title-page says "Printed in the year 1727;" but the dedication to the letters themselves is dated June, 1726, and it was in 1726 that they appeared. The incidental and scanty notices of them at the time are sufficient to indicate the impression they produced. Thompson, writing in October to Aaron Hill, says that "though careless and uncorrected, they are full of wit and gaiety." There may have been many who thought that they did as much credit to the heart as to the head of the poet. "I have read the collection of letters you mention," Fenton wrote to Broome in September,[Pg xxix] 1726, "and was delighted with nothing more than that air of sincerity, those professions of esteem and respect, and that deference paid to his friend's judgment in poetry which I have sometimes seen expressed to others, and I doubt not with the same cordial affection. If they are read in that light, they will be very entertaining and useful in the present age; but in the next, Cicero, Pliny, and Voiture may regain their reputation." The comments on Pope's sincerity were plainly ironical. Fenton considered him to be extremely hypocritical, and some person concerned in the publication of 1726 must have formed the same opinion of his character, if the ludicrous tail-piece is intended to be typical of the letters. A little man whose diminutive stature did not permit him to clasp the taller figure in his arms while they stood upon a level, is represented as having jumped off the ground and seized his companion round the waist, who, with his hands thrown into the air at the painful vehemence of the embrace, is struggling to get loose. Undiscerning persons, who judged the poet by his words, would form a different estimate, and would perceive only proofs of his excellence where Fenton saw examples of his habitual insincerity. "His correspondence," says Johnson, of the later collection of 1735, "filled the nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship."[16]

The letters to Cromwell had more than an ephemeral success. Curll, in his reply in 1729 to the attack on him in the Dunciad, after noticing Pope's affected depreciation of them, says, "However, they sell very well; price 5s."[17] The poet had already devised an excuse for following them up by a second set. Theobald, who had earned his lasting enmity by pointing out the errors in his edition of Shakespeare, was employed by some booksellers to edit the posthumous papers of Wycherley, which had been purchased from his heir. The work appeared in 1728. Pope saw in this circumstance a pretence for dragging his own letters before the world, and an opportunity of gratifying his spleen against Theobald. He said that the poems[Pg xxx] were disreputable to the memory of his early friend, and that the correspondence was published because it showed that it was his last resolution to have suppressed them.[18] It showed the reverse. The last printed letter of Wycherley exhibits him as intent as ever upon preparing his poems for the press, and if we are to believe that he subsequently abandoned the design, we must accept the fact upon the bare assertion of Pope, which derives no support from any part of the correspondence. But though it failed to answer the purpose avowed by its editor, it answered purposes not avowed which were much nearer to his heart. It shows that the verses of Wycherley were rugged, feeble, and full of repetitions, and that whatever they possessed of strength and harmony was due to the revision of Pope. It shows that he furnished entire passages, and where the text is not explicit on the point he is careful to reclaim his contributions in the notes. It displays on the one hand the "first sprightly runnings" of the precocious young poet, and on the other the "last dull droppings" of the veteran author, who was verging upon his dotage. "If we were to judge," says Warburton, "of this set of letters by the manner of thinking and turn of expression, we should conclude that they were all mistitled, and that those given to the boy of sixteen were written by the man of seventy, and the contrary,—such sober sense, such gravity of manners, and so much judgment and knowledge of composition, enlivened with manly wit, distinguish those of Mr. Pope, while a childish jealousy, a puerile affectation, a lying at catch for points, together with a total contempt of method, make up the character of those of Mr. Wycherley." Warton transcribes the judgment of Warburton, and adds his testimony to the superiority of the letters of Pope. He says that he "has excelled Wycherley in his own way of striving to be always witty," and that "the perpetual attempt of the vain old man to be brilliant, the accumulation of simile upon simile, the antithesis, the cant of satire, the severity on authors, critics, and women, are sufficiently disgusting." In short, the whole effect of the correspondence[Pg xxxi] was to display the infirmities of Wycherley and the merits of Pope; and his mode of relieving his departed friend from the reproach of the posthumous poems was to reveal the secret that the only portions of them which might have done him credit were not his own, but the work of this zealous vindicator of his fame.

With such a futile excuse for printing the letters, Pope was anxious to throw the responsibility upon some other person. He was the intimate friend of Edward, the second Earl of Oxford, who, without being possessed of much ability, courted the society of eminent men, and who, with no great tincture of literature, had inherited from his father a passion for collecting books and manuscripts. His correspondence with the poet descended, with the rest of his personal papers, to his only child, who married the Duke of Portland in 1734. From the Duchess the papers passed to her eldest daughter, Lady Elizabeth, wife to the third Viscount Weymouth, who subsequently became the first Marquess of Bath. The Oxford manuscripts were consequently removed to Longleat, where they have remained ever since among the treasures of a library which is worthy of the regal edifice it adorns.[19] In Pope's letters to his friend we have his own record of the device he adopted. He wrote to Lord Oxford in September, 1729, and complained that the publication of Wycherley's posthumous poems was derogatory to their author, as well as to the critic who had advised him to re-cast them. "Something," he said, "will be necessary to be done to clear both his and my reputation, which the letters under his hand will abundantly do; for which particular reason I would desire to have them lodged in your lordship's hands." He had been slow in discovering that something was necessary to be done to clear the reputation of his deceased friend; for Theobald's book had come forth in 1728, and it was now the autumn of 1729. His tardy zeal appears to have been entirely begotten by the idea that it could be made the pretext for producing[Pg xxxii] the correspondence; but having once conceived the scheme, he did not allow it to languish. On the 6th of October he advanced a step further, and began to shadow forth the real object of the request. He informed Lord Oxford that some of the letters were to be printed, and asked permission to state that they were already in his library, "which," says he, "they shall be as soon as you will give orders to any one to receive them." "I would not," he went on, "appear myself as publisher of them, but any one else may, or even the bookseller be supposed to have procured copies of them,—formerly or now, it is equal. Certain it is that no other way can justice be rendered to the memory of a man to whom I had the first obligations of friendship, almost in my childhood." Lord Oxford merely replied that if the documents were left in a box with the porter, the man had orders to place it in the library, and that any mention of that library would be agreeable to its owner;[20] but he took no notice of the intimation that the poet designed to ascribe the publication to an imaginary agent. Pope now considered him to be sufficiently prepared, and his next letter disclosed the whole of the scheme, and at the same time announced its execution. It then appeared that his noble dupe, who, as he was both weak and amiable, was expected to prove a submissive tool, had been asked to become the keeper of the manuscripts, that he might be held up to the world as their publisher. "I am extremely obliged to you," Pope wrote to him, "for your kind permission to quote your library, and to mention it in what manner I pleased. I consulted Mr. Lewis upon the turn of the preface, and have exceeded perhaps my commission on one point, though we both judged it the right way; for I have made the publishers say that your lordship permitted them a copy of some of the papers from the library, where the originals remain as testimonies of the truth. It is indeed no more than a justice due to the dead and to the living author."[21] In other words, his lordship was asserted to have permitted the bookseller to print the papers in his library, when they were not even sent to his house till after they were printed,[Pg xxxiii] and this fiction was fathered upon him without so much as his leave being asked, or his having been suffered to read a single line of the work he was stated to have authorised. When Pope alleged that the proceeding was "no more than a justice due to the dead and the living author," he must have hoped that the outrage to Lord Oxford of which he had been guilty in committing the act, would appear to be diminished by the assurance with which he communicated it. His deceptions were not confined to the preface. He shortly afterwards wrote to Swift, and contrived to mention that he had contracted a friendship at sixteen with a man of seventy. "I speak," he said, "of old Mr. Wycherley, some letters of whom, by-the-bye, and of mine, the booksellers have got and printed, not without the concurrence of a noble friend of mine and yours. I do not much approve of it, though there is nothing in it for me to be ashamed of, because I will not be ashamed of anything I do not do myself, or of anything that is not immoral, but merely dull."[22] The booksellers had printed the letters with the concurrence of a noble friend, and the noble friend had never heard a word on the subject till the printing was completed. Pope did not much approve of it, and he had protested to Lord Oxford that in no other way could justice be rendered to the memory of a man to whom he had the first obligations of friendship. He would not be ashamed of what he did not do himself, and he alone had edited the work and sent it to the press. The value of his asseverations may be measured by the triple falsehood he volunteered to Swift. He was aware that the arguments by which he hoped to persuade Lord Oxford to become his dupe would not impose upon the penetrating understanding of the Dean, and he therefore openly repudiated what he was unable to excuse. If the publication had vindicated Wycherley, it would have been its own justification; but as it was put forth to do honour to Pope, he sacrificed his veracity to avoid the imputation of vanity. He cruelly sneered, in his "Prologue to the Satires" at the poor garretteer, who urged the plea for printing his compositions that he was "obliged by hunger and request of friends." The poet had not the excuse of hunger, and he improved[Pg xxxiv] upon the model he satirised when he pretended that his friends had taken his papers, and printed them against his will.

The deception which Pope practised was never suspected till it was revealed by his correspondence with Lord Oxford, which has hitherto remained in manuscript. The repetition of the attempt on a more elaborate scale was less successful, and it has always been believed by the immense majority of inquirers that the promulgation of the collection of 1735, which the poet vehemently denounced as an act of intolerable treachery, was from first to last his own deed. "It seems," says Johnson, "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."[23] Fresh facts have rendered the evidence against him stronger than ever, and the whole derives increased force from the information we now possess that he had previously had recourse to a kindred falsehood. In the first case he made a tool of a friend; in the second, he varied his plan, and made a tool of an enemy.

Pope tells us, in the preface to the authorised edition of his correspondence, which he brought out in quarto in 1737, that his disgust at the publication of his letters to Cromwell, and "the apprehension of more treatment of the same kind, put him upon recalling as many as he could from those who he imagined had kept any."[24] He applied to his friend Caryll, in December, 1726, to surrender his collection; and, on renewing the request a few days later, he added, "I have desired the same thing of Mrs. Blount, with whose late worthy husband I entertained so long a correspondence, and of all others." It was more than two years before Caryll could be induced to comply with the demand, and it would seem that Mrs. Blount was little less backward; for, on November 28, 1729, Pope wrote to Swift, "I lately received from the widow of one dead correspondent, and the father of another,[25] several of my own[Pg xxxv] letters of about fifteen and twenty years old." When the poet had gleaned together all the letters he could extort, "he immediately," he says, "lessened the number by burning three parts in four of them: the rest he spared, not in any preference of their style or writing, but merely as they preserved the memory of some friendships which will ever be dear to him, or set in a true light some matters of fact from which the scribblers of the time had taken occasion to asperse either his friends or himself." He was not more anxious to destroy the three parts than to secure the fourth from destruction. "He laid by the originals together with those of his correspondents, and caused a copy to be taken to deposit in the library of a noble friend, that in case either of the revival of slanders, or the publication of surreptitious letters during his life or after, a proper use might be made of them."[26] The noble friend was Lord Oxford, and the request to be allowed to place the letters in his library was made by Pope in September, 1729, when he stated that "he had had it at heart for half a year and more." Upon obtaining Lord Oxford's consent, he had the correspondence transcribed under his own inspection; and on October 16 he says, "I am causing the manuscripts to be fairly written, and hope at your lordship's return to be the presenter of them in person." By his own avowal he had carefully culled his letters, had prepared the selected portions for some public purpose, and had taken the unusual precaution of preserving them in duplicate. The end which he declared they were intended to serve was a palpable pretence. He never specified any slanders they refuted, and he could have had little idea of employing them to test the truth of surreptitious letters when he began by burning three parts of the collection, and only retained a fourth. The manifest fact was, that, while he was desirous of consigning to oblivion those portions of his correspondence which would not add to his reputation, he was eager to circulate the picked specimens which he imagined would promote his fame.

No advance seems to have been made towards the accomplishment of his design till 1733, when Curll advertised a[Pg xxxvi] life of Pope. An unknown person who wrote a feigned hand, and who signed his letters with the initials P. T., then opened a correspondence with the bookseller, and furnished some information upon the genealogy of the poet. He vindicated him from the charge of plebeian descent, and affirmed that he sprung from the same stock as Lord Downe.[27] This assertion was repeated by Pope in one of the notes to his "Prologue to the Satires," though Mr. Pottinger, his cousin, ridiculed the "fine pedigree," which had never been heard of in the family, and which there is nothing to confirm.[28] There is thus at starting a curious identity between the apocryphal statements of P. T. and the apocryphal statements of Pope. But as P. T. must have had access to the manuscripts in the keeping of Lord Oxford, he might be supposed to have found the account among the memoranda of the poet, and no great stress could be laid upon the coincidence to prove that P. T. was Pope in disguise, if the general tenor of the correspondence did not indicate its origin.

There was a feud between Pope and Curll. The bookseller believed that the poet had drugged him with an emetic, he had been subsequently satirised in the Dunciad, and he had lost no opportunity of retaliating. An uncompromising panegyric upon his antagonist would have run counter to his prejudices, and while P. T. is careful to tell nothing which is not for the honour of Pope, he has the precaution to consult the antipathies of Curll. He pretends that the poet, with whom he was formerly well acquainted, has treated him like a stranger, and that he cannot give so good an account of his manners as of his parentage. He promises, if he receives encouragement, to make these moral deficiencies the subject of a future letter, "without entering into anything in anywise libellous." He omitted, however, in his next communication, to keep this part of his engagement, and never reverted to it. He had spoken of Pope's family in the same flattering and perhaps fictitious terms as Pope himself; but, in spite of his pledge, and his animosity, he forbore to relate the minutest[Pg xxxvii] particular to the discredit of the poet. The inconsistency between the assumed character and the actual conduct of P. T. is much too glaring. An enemy would have been far less partial and considerate.

The first communication of P. T. was dated October 1733. He directed Curll to signify the acceptance of his offer by inserting in the Daily Advertiser the notice, "E. C. hath received a letter, and will comply with P. T." This Curll did, and on the 15th of November got an answer from P. T., in which the true purpose of the manœuvre transpires. Instead of sending traits of the defects in Pope's manners, he announces that he has "a large collection of his letters from the former part of his days till the year 1727, which will alone make the most authentic memoirs of him that could be." He adds that they will form a four or five shilling volume, and "yet I expect no more," he says, "than what will barely pay a transcriber, that the originals may be preserved in mine or your hands to vouch for the truth of them." He appealed to the hatred as well as to the avarice of the bookseller. He again asserted that he had experienced bad treatment from Pope and that his sole motive was "to bestow upon him" the same "care" which Curll had done already.[29] Again his thirst for retaliation ended in homage, for the collection consisted of the identical letters which the poet had prepared for the press, and which were intended to raise instead of to lower his reputation. The conduct of P. T., who, having abjured profit and only feigned revenge, was to get nothing by his roguery, is altogether incomprehensible, if we are to suppose that he was what he professed; but his conduct ceases to be a mystery if P. T. was Pope, who, having finished editing his letters, may be presumed to have had the same desire to find a pretext for printing them as he had exhibited in the instance of the correspondence with Wycherley.

The point upon which the bargain went off for a time is equally significant. P. T. enclosed an advertisement of the letters, and required as a preliminary that it should be put forth by Curll, "for I shall not," he said, "be justified to some people on whom I have dependence, unless it seem to the[Pg xxxviii] public eye as no entire act of mine; but I may be justified and excused if, after they see such a collection is made by you, I acknowledge I sent some letters to contribute thereto."[30] This reasoning carries its own refutation. If his patrons could believe that Curll, without his aid, had got at the bulk of the correspondence, they would quite as readily have credited that he had not assisted the bookseller to the remainder. Nor is it likely that the men who would have renounced P. T. if he had been a principal in the business, would have connived at his becoming an accomplice. His plea was as fanciful as his desire for revenge; but assume that Pope was the real negotiator and his motive is transparent. The advertisement would have threatened that very surreptitious publication of his letters, against which he affirmed that he kept his own version in readiness. He would have repudiated the impending piracy, and hastened in self-defence to commit the genuine edition to the press. The promise contained in the advertisement, that "the originals would be shown at Curll's when the book was published," would have empowered him to give an air of imposture to the transaction, and to damage his foe, who when challenged would not have been able to produce the documents. According to the language which Pope uttered in the name of P. T. he did expect to be justified in his proceedings by means of the advertisement, but not at all in the manner which he wished the bookseller to believe.

All the conditions required by Pope seemed met together in Curll. He was an enemy, and could be denounced when he had been deceived. He had printed the letters to Cromwell without the consent of the poet, and it would readily be credited that he had repeated the act. He was not nice in his notions of honour, and he might be expected to catch at an offer, however discreditable, which promised both profit and revenge. But whatever might be his greediness and his malice, they had not swallowed up his caution, and notwithstanding that P. T. wrote again to express his dissatisfaction that no advertisement appeared, Curll forbore to announce letters he did not possess, at the bidding of a conspirator whose name and person he did not know. The subject in consequence slept[Pg xxxix] from November 1733 till March 1735, when the poet was meditating some fresh proceeding respecting his correspondence, for on the third of that month, he requested Lord Oxford to send him by the hearer "the bound book of copies of letters," which, he wanted, he said, "to inspect for a day or two." There are transcripts among the Oxford papers of some of the letters of Wycherley to Pope, which appeared in 1729. There are transcripts of Pope's correspondence with Atterbury, which appeared in 1737. There are transcripts of a large part of the Swift correspondence, which appeared in 1741. But while the earlier and later letters are preserved on loose sheets the bound book has vanished, and there is not a single transcript of any letter which was first given to the world in the collection of 1735. The probability is that the book which Pope professed to require for a day or two was never returned. The circumstance is the more suspicious because he had the originals at home, which would have served him for reference, whereas if his object was to commit the letters clandestinely to the press he would use the copy which had been specially prepared for the purpose,—which had been expurgated, altered, and sometimes remodelled. Accordingly we find that P. T. reappears at this crisis with the correspondence in print. He had failed to lure Curll by a promise of letters which he would not produce. He now changed his tactics, and offered him an entire impression of the book.

This second act of the plot was opened by a communication of Curll to Pope on the 22nd of March, three weeks after the letters had been withdrawn from the library of Lord Oxford. He invited the poet to close their differences, and, as a proof of his readiness to oblige him, sent him the old advertisement of P. T. Curll asserted that he took the step "by direction."[31] When he republished this statement he volunteered another, which seems to be inconsistent with it, and says that the discovery of the advertisement, when arranging his papers, determined him to propose a cessation of hostilities.[32] As he was unconscious, however, of any contradiction in the double account, it is probable that he may have been influenced by some concurring advice. It strengthens this view that Pope, in an anonymous[Pg xl] "Narrative," which he subsequently put forth, reports what Curll told a few days later, "to persons who sifted him in the affair,"[33] which shows that the bookseller had people about him in the interest of the poet, and these sifters, as the critic in the Athenæum remarks, might, when needful, become prompters. The progress of events proved that the letter of Curll was at least singularly opportune, and if not written "by direction," was one of those fortunate chances which often contribute to the success of the best laid schemes. Pope replied to it by inserting an advertisement in the "Grub Street Journal," the "Daily Journal," and "The Daily Post Boy." He stated in this manifesto, that Curll "pretended that P. T. had offered him to print a large collection of Pope's letters," that he would have no correspondence with Curll, that he knew no such person as P. T., that he believed the letters to be a forgery, and that he should not trouble himself in the matter.[34] The poet might not choose to have any intercourse with a former enemy of no good fame, but it was a strange return for his peace-offering that he should advertise an insult on him, and equally singular when he was incredulous, and had resolved not to trouble himself about the matter, that he should parade in the newspapers the contents of a private note. Yet extraordinary as was his conduct, if he had not any covert design, it was consistent enough if he was the agent in the plot for bringing his letters before the world. His advertisement would convey the impression that he could not have connived at the publication he was contriving; it would afford an opening for P. T. to come again upon the stage; and by infuriating Curll it would induce him to close at once with the proposal which was ready to be made to him. In conformity with this supposition P. T., who had not communicated with the bookseller for upwards of two years, saw the advertisement directly it appeared, and he lost not an instant in informing Curll that since their last negotiation he had printed the letters.[35] It was true that Curll had betrayed him to Pope, but P. T. was generous and would still give him the preference. The game required that Pope[Pg xli] should be incapable of being conciliated, and P. T. of taking offence.

P. T. demanded that Curll should show he was in earnest by putting forth the old advertisement. Curll complied, and the negotiation went forward. An agent was sent to him who assumed the name of Smythe and professed to be a clergyman, but who was so little conversant with the character he personated that he wore a clerical gown and lawyer's bands. On the 7th of May he went to Curll's house at night; and, to bring the bargain to a conclusion, exhibited to him most of the sheets of the volume, and a dozen original letters.[36] Before Curll had published this statement Pope, for the purpose of discrediting the promise which had been made in the advertisement, that the originals should be produced when the book appeared, had committed himself to the assertion that they all remained in their proper place.[37] They must nevertheless, observes the critic in the Athenæum, have been out of his possession, and doing service on the evening when Smythe trafficed with Curll. The bookseller was not likely to be deceived, for he had the Cromwell correspondence in his keeping, and knew the poet's handwriting well.[38] He was as little likely to deceive, for he told the fact in the course of a straight-forward story, without perceiving, or at least without pointing out, its force in attesting the connivance of Pope.

Fifty copies of the letters were in the possession of Curll by the 12th of May, and were speedily sold. Smythe sent for him at one o'clock to a tavern in Leicester Fields, and half an hour afterwards one hundred and ninety additional copies were brought by a couple of porters, who were directed to carry them to the shop of the bookseller. There they were immediately seized by an order from the House of Lords, and Curll was commanded to attend next day.[39] The peers in 1722 had voted it a breach of privilege to publish the writings of any member of their body without his consent. Curll, in an advertisement which appeared for the first time that morning, had given a list of the persons to whom Pope's letters were addressed, and among the names were[Pg xlii] those of the Earl of Halifax and the Earl of Burlington. To print letters to lords was no offence. It was necessary that there should be letters from them, and of this there was no other indication than that the list of names was followed by the words,—"with the respective answers of each correspondent."[40] Curll asserted that the advertisement came to him through Smythe,[41] and the proceedings founded upon it in the hour that it issued wet from the press were, as Johnson states, instigated by Pope, "who attended to stimulate the resentment of his friends."[42] If he had never set eyes upon the book before it was published, curiosity would still have prompted him to turn over the leaves, and he must immediately have discovered that it did not contain a single letter from a peer. The wording of the advertisement may, therefore, be suspected to have been devised by him to afford a colour for what he must have known was a groundless prosecution. A committee was appointed to investigate the complaint. It met on the 14th of May, and the case would have ended as soon as it was begun, if Pope's spokesman, Lord Hay, who resided at Twickenham, and was one of his associates, had not adduced from a letter to Jervas a passage which he alleged to be a reflection on Lord Burlington. But the person who furnished the work to Curll had, by an elaborate device, provided against a charge which no one except its contriver could have foreseen. The fifty copies, which were sold on the morning of the 12th, before the power of the House of Lords was put in motion, contained the letter. Those which were furnished in the middle of the day, as if to meet the messenger sent to seize them, were all defective, and in every case the letter to Jervas was among the omissions.[43] Nor had the leaves which contained it been simply kept back, but every trace of it had[Pg xliii] been obliterated by an alteration at the printing-press. In the complete work the missing letter commenced on p. 115 of vol. ii.[44] and ended on p. 117. In the imperfect books a note on Trumbull, which began at p. 114, is carried on to the top of p. 115, and Pope's epitaph upon him, which appears in no other copies of the correspondence, is added to cover a little of the vacant space. The word "Finis" follows the note, though, in spite of this indication that the whole is concluded, the work recommences on p. 117 with the letters to Gay, which continue to p. 154.[45] The coincidence was far too extraordinary to be undesigned. Pope, who had incited the prosecution the very hour the book was published, and who had been in such haste to instruct Lord Hay that the debate in the House of Lords was concluded, and the sheets seized by two o'clock, could alone have adapted one batch to afford a pretext for the proceeding, and another batch to render the proceeding abortive,—he alone could have arranged the delivery of the respective parcels, and sent the fifty copies which contained the obnoxious passage, in time to be sold in the morning, and the one hundred and ninety copies in which it was wanting, just in time to be captured by the messenger from the House of Lords. His object was not to procure the confiscation of the correspondence, and stop the sale. He wished to simulate indignation, and divert suspicion from himself without interfering with the success of the work, and he conducted the prosecution with so much care to ensure defeat that we may readily credit the assertion of Curll, "that the lords declared they had been made Pope's tools."[46]

While the copies seized by the messenger had not the letter to Jervas, they contained in compensation an address "to the reader," which was not in the first fifty copies sent to Curll. This preface betrays throughout the hand of Pope. The original proposition was that it should be furnished[Pg xliv] by Curll; and, notwithstanding the revenge by which he professed to be actuated, P. T. maintained that the poet ought to be mentioned with praise. "We must by no means," he said, "seem to use him with disregard, but rather commend, lest by any circumstances I writ to you the publisher be detected."[47] I This was seven years after the appearance of the Dunciad, and Pope was not so universally beloved as that the intimation that the correspondence was put forth by an enemy could direct suspicion to the culprit. The pretence was too palpable to impose upon any one, and P. T., who, among other motives for his procedure, probably mistrusted Curll's cordiality or skill in a panegyric, determined upon consideration to supply it himself. He was not sparing in his tribute. "Mr. Pope," he wrote, "has not any great cause to think the publication much offence to his modesty, or reflection on his judgment, when we take care to inform the public that there are few letters of his in this collection which were not written under twenty years of age. On the other hand, we doubt not the reader will be much more surprised to find at that early period so much variety of style, affecting sentiment, and justness of criticism in pieces which must have been writ in haste, very few perhaps ever re-viewed, and none intended for the eye of the public."[48] This was the very language of the poet. He coveted the distinction of precocity of talent, and was perpetually directing attention to the early age at which he affirmed, and sometimes falsely, that many of his letters and poems were penned. He asserted that his most finished epistles were thrown off in haste, which, as they were always held to bear the marks of labour in every sentence, is the last topic of praise that would have been selected by anybody else. He was anxious to persuade the world that they were not revised before they were published, and he prevaricated to foster the deception.[49] He protested that they were never meant for the press, which no one believed, and which could least of all be credited by the assumed traitor who transcribed them from the[Pg xlv] copy that had been deposited in the library of Lord Oxford to ensure their preservation. The vindictive P. T. was both so fortunate and so hearty in his commendations that he proved the mere echo of Pope in his self-applauding moods.

The other topics in the address "to the reader" were the same topics which were subsequently reiterated by the poet. In his narrative of the P. T. plot, and in the preface to the authorised edition of his correspondence, he relates the method by which the Cromwell letters were obtained as affording a vindication of his own collection.[50] P. T. was beforehand with him in citing the precedent to explain the means by which his piratical volume was formed, and to justify its publication.[51] The similarity of language and ideas in the mention of the Wycherley letters was much more peculiar. Lord Oxford appears to have refused to father the volume of 1729, for Pope never again alleged that he sent it to the press. But neither did the poet avow that he himself was responsible for its appearance. On the contrary, he renewed the false statement that the letters were not printed till after they were deposited in Lord Oxford's library, and spoke indefinitely of the agency through which they were given to the world. "It happened soon after," he says in his Narrative, "that the posthumous works of Mr. Wycherley were published in such a manner as could no way increase the reputation of that gentleman, who had been Mr. Pope's first correspondent and friend; and several of these letters so fully showed the state of that case that it was thought but justice to Mr. Wycherley's memory to print a few to discredit that imposition."[52] "The next year," he says, in the preface to the quarto of 1737, "the posthumous works of Mr. Wycherley were printed in a way disreputable enough to his memory. It was thought a justice due to him, to show the world his better judgment, and that it was his last resolution to have suppressed those poems. As some of the letters which had passed between him and our author cleared that point, they were published in 1729, with a few marginal notes added by a[Pg xlvi] friend."[53] "The letters to Mr. Wycherley," says P. T.'s address to the reader, "were procured some years since on account of a surreptitious edition of his posthumous works. As those letters showed the true state of that case, the publication of them was doing the best justice to the memory of Mr. Wycherley."[54] Pope misrepresented the tenor of the letters as an excuse for divulging them; but how came the vindictive P. T. to be the first to hit upon an untruth in which he had no sort of interest, and to serve the cause of his antagonist by promulgating the fanciful description? Pope ascribed the publication to an indefinite agency, to avoid acknowledging that he was the sole originator of the work; but how came his enemy P. T. to anticipate his wishes, and the ambiguous phraseology in which he conveyed them? The identity of thought and expression was the more singular that P. T., in a private communication to Curll, had confirmed the original story of the poet, and asserted that "a noble lord had handed to the press the letters of Wycherley."[55] To the world he varied the tale, and the variation was the same which was adopted a week or two afterwards by Pope.

A coincidence remains which more than all the rest proclaims Pope to be the author of the address "to the reader." Nothing would have served better his purpose in the prosecution than to prevail upon Curll to confess that the letters were of his own procuring and printing. Upon the seizure of the books Smythe wrote to him in the name of P. T., promising that he should have the work upon easier terms, and holding out the prospect of a second and more important volume of correspondence if he would keep secret the whole transaction, would assert that he had the letters from different hands, and avow that he had printed them, as he did Cromwell's before.[56] The preface, which had never been seen by Curll, and which was appended, as if in anticipation of the event, to all the copies carried off to the House of Lords,[Pg xlvii] contained the same tale he was instructed to tell. "The collection," it said, "hath been owing to several cabinets, some drawn from thence by accidents, and others, even of those to ladies, voluntarily given. It is to one of that sex we are beholden for the whole correspondence with H. C[romwell] Esq., which letters being lent her by that gentleman she took the liberty to print." On the 12th of May, the day the work was published, Pope gave a similar account to Caryll of the mode by which the contents were procured. "What," he said, "makes me sick of writing is the shameless industry of such fellows as Curll, and the idle ostentation, or weak partiality of many of my correspondents, who have shown about my letters (which I never writ but in haste, and generally against the grain, in mere civility; for almost all letters are impertinent further than Si vales, bene est; ego valeo) to such a degree that a volume of two hundred or more are printed by that rascal. But he could never have injured me this way, had not my friends furnished him with the occasion, by keeping such wretched papers as they ought to have burned." The whole of this passage is an egregious specimen of misrepresentation and hypocrisy. A glance at the work must have revealed to Pope that the new letters it contained were those which had been returned to him,—the letters to Gay, Digby, Blount, and Caryll; that it comprised letters to as well as from him,[57]—letters of which he was the sole depositary; that the text was not taken from the originals, but from the copy he had amended and re-cast; and that it was, therefore, impossible that his acquaintances should have furnished materials which could only have been derived from one source,—the bound book in the Oxford library. His pretence that his letters were hasty and insignificant expressions of civility, when he[Pg xlviii] had spared no pains in collecting and editing them; his affected indignation at his friends "for keeping such wretched papers as they ought to have burned," when he himself had preserved them in duplicate, and designed them for publication; his transparent fiction that almost the entire circle of his correspondents,—Addison, Steele, Congreve, Gay, Walsh, Trumbull, Craggs, Digby, Blount, and others,—had been guilty of "idle ostentation or weak partiality," in showing these "wretched papers" to somebody who transcribed them for the press,—are all so many additional arguments to show the conscious guilt of Pope, and the gross and clumsy inventions by which he endeavoured to divert suspicion. The fable he concocted is, in its essential circumstance, identical with the fabulous story of P. T. While P. T. on his part is telling a falsehood to the public in the preface, and begging the bookseller to tell it in the House of Lords, Pope on his own behalf is telling the same falsehood in private to Caryll. This concurrence of misrepresentation between the letter of the poet, and P. T.'s address "to the reader" and instructions to Curll, could not have proceeded from independent and hostile persons.

Curll did not choose, when he was before the Committee of the House of Lords, to father the lie which had been suggested to him. The proceedings were adjourned from the 14th to the 15th, that the clerk might search through some more copies of the book for the missing letter to Jervas, and P. T. employed the interval in again pressing Curll to assume the entire responsibility of the work. He gently rebuked him for owning that the books were sent by an unknown hand which might, he said, "be thought shuffling, and induce inquiry and suspicion of some dark transaction;" and he assured him that the lords would consider him more sincere if he professed that he had the letters from different hands, and had printed them himself.[58] Curll repudiated the notion of evidencing his sincerity by deposing to a falsehood, and of silencing inquiry and suspicion by pretending that he had procured a quantity of manuscripts from a variety of persons whom he must have refused to name. "My defence," he replied, "is right; I only told the Lords I[Pg xlix] did not know from whence the books came. This was strict truth and prevented all further inquiry."[59] The pertinacity of P. T. in endeavouring to persuade the bookseller to commit himself to a lie was as gratuitous as it was shameless, for he had no interest in the deception he urged. Curll had several weeks before announced to Pope that this mysterious agent was the collector of the letters, and Pope in communicating the intelligence to the public declared that he knew no such person. The renewed mention of a couple of fanciful initials could not increase P. T.'s risk of detection, any more than it could signify whether he had sold the correspondence to Curll to be printed, or had printed it first and sold it afterwards. But what would have been purposeless in P. T. was important to Pope. The friends who had returned him the letters which appeared in the volume must have joined with the public in ascribing the work to him, and it was of the utmost moment that Curll should absolve him from the imputation. Having entrapped his victim into a false confession, he would have loudly appealed to it to prove that he was not only innocent but injured. He would have complained to the world, as he had done to Caryll, of the "idle ostentation and weak partiality" which had caused his hasty and artless letters to be printed, and his vanity would have been doubly gratified by the appearance that his choicest compositions were the careless scratchings of his pen, and that the personal and literary merits they displayed had been forced into day to the grievous annoyance of his reluctant modesty.

Every incident which arose in the progress of the controversy strengthened the case against Pope. At the same time that Smythe, on the behalf of P. T., exhorted Curll to give false evidence before the House of Lords, he informed the bookseller of the method by which a portion of the correspondence had been acquired. P. T. had been engaged with a noble friend of Mr. Pope in preparing for the press the letters of Wycherley, and had caused some extra copies to be struck off. These, he said, "put into his head the thought of collecting more," and when he printed the materials he had since accumulated he imitated as closely as possible the type and paper[Pg l] of the stored up sheets.[60] P. T. made a merit of the revelation, and wished that Curll should see in it a proof of the openness and confidence with which he was treated. In reality it was an endeavour to explain the awkward circumstance that the prose part of Pope's Wycherley had been done up with the letters of 1735. The publication of 1729 was entitled the second volume of Wycherley's "Posthumous Works," and contained a couple of notes referring to poems which were inserted or omitted in what was called "the present edition." But as Pope's letters were not an edition of Wycherley's Works, the absurdity of the reference might have led at any moment to the exposure of the fact that the sheets of the old book had been transferred to the new, and it was better at once, by an air of candid confession, to account for the importation than to run the risk of discovery. Curll had soon a rival version to give of the manner in which these sheets were procured. He announced that Gilliver, who published the Wycherley volume of 1729, had declared that Pope bought of him the remainder of the impression, consisting of six hundred copies, and directed the other letters comprised in the volume of 1735 to be printed to match them.[61] There can be no difficulty in deciding between these opposite statements. The assertion of P. T. we know to be a falsehood, for Pope himself, and not the noble friend, prepared the letters of Wycherley for the press. None of the inferior agents could have carried off any large number of books, without detection, nor could have stowed them away from 1729 to 1735. The motive to thieve what was already published could only have been lucre, and yet thirty pounds were taken for three hundred octavos of 470[62] pages each, when but 50 of these pages were derived from the sheets that cost nothing. If, too, there was any truth in P. T.'s story, he was encumbered with the pile of stolen goods when he opened the correspondence with Curll in 1733, whereas it is clear from his communications at that time that the idea of supplying printed books had not then occurred to him. The trick which had been practised was known to Pope when he put forth his "Narrative," and he might have obtained a clue to the culprit by an investigation[Pg li] at the printing-office. He nevertheless made no comments on the subject, nor, loudly as he exclaimed against the abstraction of his letters, did he breathe a whisper against the abstraction of the sheets of the Wycherley. Not a single specimen, again, of the work of 1729 is now known to exist, which is in some degree explained by its absorption into the volume of 1735; but, on the supposition that the sheets transferred to that volume were merely extra copies, struck off secretly for P. T., there is no reason why the Wycherley of 1729 should have disappeared. The conflicting statement of Curll is not embarrassed by any of these difficulties, and was never denied by either Gilliver or Pope, which is of itself sufficient to establish its truth, when we bear in mind that, instead of confronting calumny with silence, the poet denounced every charge he could repel.

The letter urging Curll anew to make a false statement of the means by which he obtained the correspondence, was received by him on the morning of May 15. "I am," he said, in his reply, "just again going to the Lords to finish Pope."[63] He verified his boast. In place of adopting the advice of P. T., he showed the letter which contained it.[64] Pope's double dealing had been strongly suspected on the previous day, when it was discovered that the copies seized had been altered in anticipation of the charge he preferred. There was now a second coincidence to connect him with the plot. The letter produced by Curll revealed that the correspondence had been taken from the archives of Lord Oxford, and that the story Pope had volunteered to Caryll, and which he undoubtedly reiterated to his friends among the Lords, was not only an invention to conceal the truth, but the same invention which P. T. exhorted the bookseller to adopt. Some step was necessary to save the poet from discomfiture. He therefore put forth an advertisement in the "Daily Post-boy," acknowledging, what he was no longer able to deny, that "some of the letters could only be procured from his own library, or that of a noble Lord," and promising twenty guineas to either Smythe or P. T. if they would "discover the whole affair," and forty guineas if they "could prove that they had acted by the direction of[Pg lii] any other person."[65] This was an old device of the poet. To escape from the obloquy he incurred by an impious and indecent parody of the First Psalm, he inserted an advertisement in the "Postman," offering a reward of three guineas for the discovery of the person who sent it to the press. The publisher, Mrs. Burleigh, declared that she possessed the manuscript in his own handwriting, and expressed her readiness to produce it, but he never ventured to accept the challenge or to contradict her assertion.[66] Pope did not acknowledge that the essence of a falsehood was in the deceit. "If you have seen a late advertisement," he wrote to Miss Blount, August 7, 1716, alluding probably to this transaction, "you will know that I have not told a lie, which we both abominate, but equivocated pretty genteelly." Without in strict language disclaiming the authorship, he intended that the reader should understand it as a disclaimer. His advertisement respecting the letters was a kindred case. He meant it to be received as a denial of all connivance at the publication of his correspondence, and in strict language he denied nothing. He said that the book was printed by P. T., in combination with Smythe, which was equally true, if P. T. was Pope. He could use the phrase "some of the letters," when driven to confess that they were procured from the library of Lord Oxford, because the volume contained the Cromwell and Wycherley letters, which had been printed before. He could hold out the bait of rewards to himself without any risk of betrayal, and the manœuvre must have been adopted in concert with his accomplice Smythe, upon whose secresy and fidelity he was already dependent.

The Committee of the Lords reported that there was not a letter from any peer in the work, and since no law had been infringed, they recommended that the seized copies should be restored.[67] Motte, the bookseller, writing to Swift in July 31, 1735, says, that when Curll was before the House, "he was ruffled for the publication in a manner as, to a man of less impudence than his own, would have been very uneasy." With whatever virulence he may have been attacked by the partisans of the poet, he was invulnerable from his want of[Pg liii] character as well as from his want of shame, and he had the gratification of inflicting wounds he could not receive. "Pope," he said to the Lords, "has a knack of versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him."[68] He afterwards boasted that he had not only vindicated his assertion, but that he might affirm "with regard to all the attacks made upon him by the petulant little gentleman,—veni, vidi, vici."[69] His ally, P. T., derived no satisfaction from this victory over their common antagonist. Curll had proved a less ready dupe than had been anticipated, and his insidious prompter reproached him for his adherence to the truth. Smythe informed him that P. T. was out of humour with him for not "owning the printing" at his final attendance before the Committee of the House of Lords; that he had probably by his wilfulness lost a future copyright of immense value, and that his imperfect sheets would not be completed, nor additional books supplied, unless he paid twenty pounds in advance.[70] The reply of Curll was lofty and defiant. He said he cared nothing for any man's ill-humour; that he would never stoop to own a fact of which he was innocent; that he had acted justly, which was what he should always think wisely; that he despised the future copyright of which hopes were held out to him; that he would have no more dealings with such dark suspicious characters, and that unless he was frankly and fairly treated, he would print all the letters he had received from them.[71] P. T. had previously stipulated that his letters should be given up to him,[72] but Curll had the precaution to take copies before he returned the originals, and, to avoid cavil, he stated that he would make an affidavit of their accuracy. The effect of the threat showed the alarm it excited. Smythe completely changed his tone. He no longer prefers complaints against Curll, nor exacts conditions. He is his friend and servant, and will bring him the remainder of the impression on Thursday. He professes to be tired with the caprice of P. T. and has hardly written the words when he announces that he has been sent[Pg liv] for by him, and hears from the messenger that he is in good humour.[73] Though P. T. was awed, Curll no longer trusted him, and before Thursday came the bookseller had advertised what he called, from the signature of the chief conspirator, the "Initial Correspondence."[74]

P. T. and Smythe put forth a counter-advertisement on the 23rd of May, in which they declared that they would retaliate by committing to the press the letters of Curll.[75] The ostensible motive of the mock clergyman and his employer was to cover the bookseller with infamy. The effect, they said, will be, "to open a scene of baseness and foul-dealing that will sufficiently show to mankind his character and conduct." The correspondence does not bear out this description. The documents show that the lying and trickery rested with P. T., while the bookseller was veracious in his assertions and straight-forward in his proceedings. "That Curll," says Johnson, "gave a true account of the transaction it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood was ever detected."[76] It was his boast that falsehood had been his abhorrence throughout the discussion, and he drew vaunting comparisons between Pope's addiction to the vice, and his own detestation of it.[77] His very failings in one direction had helped to sustain his virtue in another. He had too much effrontery to care to descend to duplicity, and it is impossible to read his many controversial manifestoes without perceiving that he was in general as truthful as he was impudent. In the instance of Pope's letters, there is the original blot, that he saw no discredit in publishing papers which he supposed to be purloined; but he had already avowed the fact before the House of Lords, and the crime was more than shared by P. T. In everything else the acts and language of the bookseller contrast favourably with the meanness and falsehoods of his correspondent, who would not have assisted to disseminate the record of his own misdeeds. But it was different with the poet. He must have seen that the inevitable tendency of the "Initial Correspondence"[Pg lv] would be to convict him of the offences he had tried to fasten upon Curll. His single chance of diminishing its disastrous effect was to promulgate it as evidence upon his own side, and not to allow it to come forth solely as the hostile statement of an opponent. The proceeding in P. T. would have been to aid in propagating the proofs of P. T.'s "baseness and foul-dealing." In Pope it was an effort to throw upon the initials the stigma which would otherwise have fallen upon Pope himself.

The resolution of P. T. to proclaim his own disgrace was less extraordinary than his manner of doing it. It was announced on the 24th of May, that "the clergyman concerned with P. T. and Edmund Curll to publish Mr. Pope's letters hath discovered the whole transaction, and a narrative of the same will be speedily printed."[78] Hence it appears that Smythe had made a full confession to the author of the "Narrative," and P. T. must be presumed to have been a party to it, since he transmitted the originals of the communications he had addressed to Curll, together with Curll's replies. This "Narrative" was the work of Pope. He alone could have furnished several of the particulars, together with the letter which Curll wrote to him in March, 1735; and the statements, the misrepresentations,[79] the reflections, and sometimes the words, are the[Pg lvi] same which he employed in the preface to the quarto of 1737. Hitherto, P. T. had been so fearful of detection by the poet, that in the language of Smythe, he suspected his own shadow. He now unmasked himself without a motive, and without reserve, to the man he had injured. He had nothing to tell of Curll but what Curll had insisted upon relating before the House of Lords, and the only novel information he could give was the details of his own thefts and frauds. This, indeed, was what Pope would chiefly have cared to learn. He would have been eager to ascertain who the person could be that had got access to his letters, and the means by which they were copied and printed; and he certainly would not have called anything "a discovery of the whole transaction," which contained no revelation upon the only points of the least importance. But it is extremely improbable that the wary P. T. should have wantonly turned self-accuser. To the last this fabulous personage continued to act in the manner which was most convenient to Pope, and the true explanation of the pretended confession is, that it was a fiction of the poet to account for his possession of the correspondence with Curll.

More inexplicable than all was the forbearance of Pope to produce the facts in his "Narrative." He might feel bound to suppress the names of culprits who had volunteered a confession of their crime; but he might have told the manner of the theft, and specified the printer employed by P. T. He refrained, on the contrary, from revealing the particulars which would have absolved him from an odious imputation. He kept back every tittle of evidence which would have acquitted him if he was innocent, and have implicated him if he was guilty. His story has none of the circumstantiality of an actual occurrence; his statements are as indefinite as the agents were shadowy. He disclosed the dealings of P. T. with Curll, which Curll had noised abroad, and was about to publish, but he does not bestow a thought upon the far more essential[Pg lvii] question of the mode in which the correspondence was purloined, and seems to be satisfied himself, and wishes that the world should be satisfied likewise, with learning that a person, whose only designation was a couple of initials, sent the letters ready printed to the bookseller. Obliged to abandon his original story of the means by which they found their way to the press, Pope had now some powerful reason for diverting attention from the subject, and leaving the mystery unexplained.

He speedily manifested his desire to consign P. T. to oblivion, and reverted to his former scheme of imputing the publication to Curll. In the very "Narrative" which showed that the bookseller had no share in gathering together the correspondence, Pope inculcated the idea that he had been active in the task. He charged him with having put forth an advertisement of the letters to Cromwell, in which "he promised encouragement to all persons who should send him more," and adds, a little lower down, "By these honest means Mr. Curll went on increasing his collection."[80] The accused challenged him to produce the advertisement, and the accuser was silent. He persevered nevertheless in misrepresenting to his acquaintances Curll's part in the business. Writing to Fortescue, on March 26, 1736, of the volume of 1735, he calls it "the book of letters which Curll printed and spared not," though the poet's own witnesses, P. T. and Smythe, had demonstrated, even in their anger against Curll, that he had nothing to do with procuring or printing the letters, and was merely the vendor of the copies he had bought. In Pope's complaints to his other friends, Curll is the single culprit to whom he ascribed the injury he had suffered, and on no one occasion did he go through the form of keeping up his P. T. fiction. His misrepresentations to the world at large were more covertly expressed. He spoke in his authorised edition of the "publisher's own accounts in his prefaces," and, as his first example, quotes P. T.'s address "to the reader," which he knew from the letters of Smythe had never been seen by the publisher till it was shown him at the bar of the House of Lords. To help out the mis-statement in the text his reference[Pg lviii] in a note is made to Curll's reprint of the collection of 1735, instead of to the volume in which the address "to the reader" was originally produced.[81] Nor was it, perhaps, without design that in the catalogue of surreptitious editions, prefixed to an octavo impression of his letters which appeared in 1737, he put first in the list, as if it had been the parent of the rest, an edition of Curll, which was taken from the volume of P. T., and allotted the second place to the primitive text. He never revived the clumsy fabrication he had been compelled to promulgate in his "Narrative." In private he transferred the crimes of P. T. to Curll; in public he insinuated what he dared not assert for fear of retaliation; but neither in public nor private was anything heard of the phantom who had purloined, printed, and sold the correspondence. Had his existence been real, or the invention been credited, Pope would not have persisted in calumniating the bookseller for want of a culprit upon whom to lay the offence.

Faulkner, the Dublin printer, told Dr. Birch, in 1749, that James Worsdale was the person who went to Curll, by Pope's direction, in the habit of a clergyman.[82] Before the entry in Birch's diary was published, Dr. Johnson had given the same account in his "Lives of the Poets."[83] Worsdale was a painter, dramatist, and actor, and, as if his triple calling was insufficient for his versatile disposition, he followed a fourth, and was hired, Johnson says, to conduct clandestine negotiations. When an attempt was made to extort money from the second son of Sir Robert Walpole, he was engaged to mix with the conspirators, to win their confidence, and to betray it. They were convicted of the fraud, and Worsdale, in giving his evidence, "acted with so much life and spirit the several parts he had performed during the time of sifting out the mystery as gave no small diversion to the court."[84] According to Horace Walpole, the poet had employed this personator and detector of rogues in his more reputable capacity, to make several copies of a portrait of Atterbury.[85] He seemed formed to carry on the traffic with Curll, and since it was his profession to aid in plots, he might[Pg lix] be expected to be a secret as well as a willing assistant. Johnson, who attached some weight to his evidence, says he was of doubtful veracity,—an objection which would have applied to the disclosures of any representative of Smythe; for no upright man would have played a part in a scheme of deception. His assertion would have been worthless, if it had stood alone; but it at least falls in with the numerous circumstances which all conjoin to criminate Pope.

If his impatience to print the Wycherley correspondence renders it probable that he would be anxious to print the more important collection which he had sedulously prepared for the press; if the deception he practised in 1729, to avoid being taxed with the proceeding, and to throw it upon somebody else, favours the belief that he repeated the deception in 1735 with the same intention; and if the various facts connected with the publication unite to prove with accumulative force that he was the sole contriver of it, there is the further argument that no other person had the slightest interest in perpetrating the act. "The numbers," says Dr. Johnson, "offered to sale by the private messengers, showed that the hope of gain could not have been the motive to the impression." Money was so little the object that a parcel of the books was sent to Lintot, "for which no price was ever demanded, as he had made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent."[86] Any person in the employment of Lord Oxford, who had access to the papers, and was competent to transcribe them, would not have undergone the toil, and risked detection, disgrace, and ruin for the sake of a few pounds which he must have shared with his accomplice Smythe. The vaunted revenge of P. T. could not have been the motive; for beyond the empty profession, it was belied alike by his words and deeds. The poet in truth loved himself too well to be able to counterfeit speciously the part of a hater. P. T. published the letters which Pope meant to be published; he lauded Pope in Pope's own strain; he took the measures which were most to Pope's advantage; he reflected Pope's vanities, weaknesses, and falsehoods, and behaved throughout in a manner as identical with[Pg lx] Pope's position as it was remote from his own. Lucre and revenge were propensities to which P. T. was a stranger, though he aspired to a reputation for the latter, and the only passion apparent in his conduct is his mania to gratify by dishonesty and deceit the literary ambition of Pope.

"The engineer was hoist with his own petard," and Curll, the intended victim, had the satisfaction of being the executioner. The poet plainly considered him to be a scoundrel whom he had a right to damage by any means, foul or fair. Walter Scott believed that his inveterate persecutor administered the emetic to him, and extraordinary as it may seem that a celebrated man of letters should adopt this method of punishing an obnoxious bookseller, the language of Pope obliges us to accept the conclusion[87]. The trick was puerile and degrading, but it inflicted no injury. The prosecution in the House of Lords, and the subsequent effort to fasten his own misdeeds upon his enemy was an outrage of a different description. To lure him into purchasing a book, and then to employ the influence conferred by genius in founding charges upon the act which were absolutely groundless, and in branding him with the disgrace which belonged to his accuser, was a baseness of which the lowest Grub-street scribbler satirised in the Dunciad would probably not have been capable. A spirit of unfairness, which, bad as it might be, was less injurious, pervaded his commercial dealings with Curll. The bookseller paid ten pounds in money, and twenty pounds in promissory notes, for three hundred copies of the work. Two hundred and forty only were delivered, and of these one hundred and ninety wanted the letters to Jervas, Digby, Blount, and others[88]. P. T. and Smythe stated in their advertisement of May 23 that Curll's notes "had proved not negotiable," which they seem to have designed as an excuse for not completing the imperfect books[89]. Curll maintained that the defence added slander to treachery; for the notes were not due till the 12th of June, and he indignantly declared that they would be honoured if the terms of the bargain were fulfilled[90]. But these[Pg lxi] terms were never intended to be performed. Smythe had contracted to reserve the whole impression for Curll, and assured him on May 10 that no one else should sell a single copy.[91] The pledge was violated as soon as made by sending a parcel of the books to Lintot, and one of the artifices which marked every part of the transaction was employed in public to counteract the promises which had been given in private. As Curll was to provide his own title-page and preface, and the copies seized by the order of the House of Lords had a title-page and preface by P. T., Smythe wrote to Curll on the 13th of May to explain this departure from the arrangement. A "wonderful caution" had suddenly seized P. T., who, apprehending that an injunction might be obtained in Chancery against Curll, had furnished a preface which "threw the publication entirely off him," and a title-page, in which, substituting the entire trade for an individual, it was said that the volume was "printed and sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster."[92] This was pronounced by Smythe to be "as lucky as could be," and it was certainly a curious piece of fortune which caused P. T. to transmit the fifty early copies without title or preface, and inspired him immediately afterwards to attach both to the copies which were instantly to be pounced upon by a messenger from the Lords. To deceive Curll by promises was the first end to be attained, and he was led to believe that he would have a monopoly of the work. To deprive him of the advantages he imagined he had secured was a second, though a subordinate object of the conspiracy. The whole corporation of booksellers were to be invited to encroach upon his rights, and the preface and title-page affixed to the copies produced at the bar of the House of Lords had been drawn up with the secret purpose of contradicting any claim which might be set up by Curll. When Smythe wrote his deceptive explanation of the motives of P. T., these confederates were endeavouring to coax their dupe into owning that he was the collector of the letters, and it was necessary that he should still be humoured and beguiled. When the mask was thrown off, P. T. and Smythe joined in the declaration that they had neither of them "given or could pretend to give any title[Pg lxii] whatever to Mr. Pope's letters to Curll," and they promised "that every bookseller should be indemnified every way from any possible prosecution or molestation of the said Curll."[93] This invitation to all the world to republish the correspondence of Pope was advertised in the newspapers, and the poet shortly afterwards reprinted it in his "Narrative" without a word of direct remonstrance against the pretension to dispose of his property. P. T. had always hitherto adopted the course which furthered the projects of Pope, and Pope, in return, appeared to smile upon the enormous prerogative to make a general grant of his correspondence which had been assumed by P. T. Commercial honesty was not to be expected in a plan which was based upon falsehood and calumny; but if an ordinary tradesman had conducted his dealings in the same manner as Pope, his custom and character would have been destroyed. The events which followed the publication lead to the same conclusion with the incidents which preceded and attended it. Pope stated in his "Narrative" that there were so many omissions and interpolations in the surreptitious volume, that it was impossible for him to own the contents in their present condition.[94] In two distinct advertisements which he put forth in May and July, 1735, he went further, and declared that some of the letters were not his at all.[95] Nevertheless the bookseller, Cooper, with whom he was now in alliance, reprinted the entire collection, and brought it out on the 12th of June. He at the same time announced that his edition had been entered at Stationers' Hall, according to the Act of Queen Anne, and that "Edmund Curll or any other pirater of the book should be prosecuted." Curll then served upon him a process, the purport of which does not appear, and Pope wrote to his friend and counsel Fortescue, who a few months later was raised to the bench, and informed him that he had bid Cooper send him the document for his legal opinion, begged to be acquainted with the steps which were necessary to be taken, and acknowledged that he had connived at Cooper's publication. In a subsequent note he asks for further directions in the conduct of the case. The poet and the bookseller were therefore working in[Pg lxiii] conjunction, or to speak more correctly, the bookseller was the agent of the poet. It must have been by Pope's authority that he appropriated the copyright of the letters, and threatened proceedings against any one who invaded it. When Curll took up the gauntlet Pope adopted the cause, engaged Fortescue in the defence, and carried on with him the correspondence respecting it. His sanction of the publication is confirmed by the catalogue of surreptitious editions, since this impression of Cooper is omitted from the list, notwithstanding the insertion of a later impression by the same bookseller, containing some slight additions that had not been ordered by Pope. Thus while the poet pretended that he could not own the P. T. collection, with its mutilated, interpolated, and forged letters, he had secretly authorised a reprint which was identical with the collection he denounced. His actions evince the insincerity of his words. He had the power to erase the forgeries and interpolations with a stroke of his pen, and unless he had approved of the book in its primitive state he would not have entered into a league with Cooper to produce it unaltered. He afterwards seemed to disclaim the republication he had espoused. In the preface to his avowed edition in 1737, he spoke of the "piratical printers" of the surreptitious editions, without making any exception, and said that there was "not one of them to whom he had ever given the least title, or any other encouragement than that of not prosecuting them." This was either a direct untruth or, what was more in accordance with his peculiar morality, a deceptive quibble. Though he knew that his readers must infer that the epithet "piratical" was applied to all the printers who had put forth an edition of the volume of 1735, he may yet have justified to himself the assertion that he had never given the least title to any of them, by the reflection that as he had given a title to Cooper he was not a piratical printer.

While the inquiry was going on before the House of Lords in May, Smythe impressed upon Curll that P. T. had his whole heart set upon the publication of the letters, not so much on account of the volume which had been seized, as because it was the precursor of a much more important correspondence with[Pg lxiv] Swift, the late Lord Oxford, the Bishop of Rochester, and Lord Bolingbroke.[96] When P. T. disappeared from the scene, Pope is found to have inherited his ideas and to be animated by the desire to complete the schemes his enemy left unfulfilled. "Since I saw you," he wrote to Lord Oxford, June 17, 1735, "I have learnt of an excellent machine of Curll's, or rather his director's, to engraft a lie upon, to make me seem more concerned than I was in the affair of the letters. It is so artful an one that I longed to tell it you—not that I will enter into any controversy with such a dog. But I believe it will occasion a thing you will not be sorry for relating to the Bishop of Rochester's letters and papers." There are no further particulars to explain in what degree Pope had acknowledged to Lord Oxford that he was "concerned in the affair of the letters,"[97] nor does any record remain of the artful device of Curll, or of the new director who had succeeded to P. T. and Smythe. The want of all foundation for the allegations against the bookseller is probably the cause of the vagueness of the allusions. The single palpable circumstance is that, in spite of his lamentations at the publication of his letters, Pope was already designing to send a fresh instalment of them to the press. Whatever may have been the "excellent machine" to which he darkly referred, Curll had furnished him with the pretence he sought. The bookseller put forth a new edition of the printed copies he purchased from P. T., and called it the first volume of "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence." Partly, perhaps, to vex Pope, and partly to attract purchasers, he affixed the same title to future volumes, which were principally a medley of trash that had no relation to the poet. Among the promised contents of the second volume were "Atterbury's Letters to Mr. Pope." Pope cited the announcement as a reason for publishing his correspondence with the bishop, which P. T. had enumerated among "the much more important[Pg lxv] correspondence" that was intended to follow, and which, the poet, in precise agreement with him, declared was "of a nature less insignificant" than the printed collection.[98] The coincidence of opinion between these bitter antagonists is especially remarkable, because others have not been struck with the superiority of the letters of Atterbury. Mr. Croker thought them, with one or two exceptions, dull, pedantic, and common-place, and Warton complains that they are, many of them, crowded to affectation with trite quotations from Horace and Virgil. The excuse for making them public was weak in the extreme. On the 12th of June Cooper replied to Curll's advertisement of his second volume by a counter-advertisement, and offered him ten pounds for any letter of Atterbury to Pope, or of Pope to Atterbury, of which he could produce the original or a voucher. P. T.'s copy, if it existed, must have been demanded when he made his confession, and it is among the circumstances which show this confession to have been a fiction, that the poet in his Narrative omitted to mention the surrender of the important transcript, and never subsequently alluded to its existence. Without copies or originals Curll could not violate the secrecy for which Pope affected to be anxious. The poet, in fact, did not put forth his pretence for printing the correspondence till he had received practical evidence of the poverty of the bookseller's resources. Curll's volume was published on the 14th of July,[99] and Pope's advertisement did not come out till the following day. It was drawn up on the 13th,[100] when he had probably seen an early copy of the book, or he would have waited till the next morning, when he could have read in conjunction with the rest of the public the letters which Atterbury was alleged to have written to him. They were three in number. The longest was a statement printed by the bishop, and addressed to the entire world, refuting a charge of having corrupted the manuscript of Clarendon's History. The remaining two were pronounced by Pope to be forgeries, and of these one had already appeared in a Biographical Dictionary,[101] and the other consisted[Pg lxvi] chiefly of poetical quotations. Not a line had oozed out from his private papers, and the argument for divulging them was gone. A man who was eager to drag them into day might use the incident as a pretext, but anybody who did not court publicity would have left them in their obscurity upon the discovery that they continued safe from prying eyes and transcribing fingers. Pope's practice and professions were as usual at variance. He raised a cry of distress at the publication of his letters by P. T., and laid hold of the first hollow excuse for completing the obnoxious design, and spreading before the world that portion of his correspondence which P. T. had been unable to smuggle into print, in consequence of Curll's unexpected revelation of the plot.

Pope stated in his advertisement, that along with his correspondence with the Bishop of Rochester he should publish such of the letters as were genuine from the surreptitious volume, and added, that the work would be printed "with all convenient speed."[102] But speed was not convenient. The project slept till March 26, 1736, when he writes to Fortescue, "Your too partial mention of the book of letters, with all its faults and follies, which Curll printed and spared not (nor yet will spare, for he has published a fourth sham volume yesterday), makes me think it may not be amiss to send you—what I know you will be much more pleased with than I can be—a proposal for a correct edition of them, which at last I find must be offered, since people have misunderstood an advertisement I printed some time ago, merely to put some stop to that rascal's books, as a promise that I would publish such a book." His excuse for the delay in redeeming his pledge of supplying an authentic edition, is a curious instance of the absurdity to which a man of genius may be reduced, when, unable to divulge his true reasons, he has recourse to invention. "People" could not have "misunderstood" the advertisement as "a promise that he would publish such a book," for the promise was distinct, and there was no room left for misunderstanding in the matter. But if we allow[Pg lxvii] that an advertisement in the newspapers, asserting that he was under a necessity of putting out a genuine edition, which would be printed with all convenient speed, was only designed to be read as a threat for the purpose of stopping Curll's trade, it is plain that Curll must have become acquainted with an interpretation which was apparent to the rest of the world, and would have paid no attention to a menace that was not intended to be executed. Unless Pope desired that the public should believe he was serious, the whole proceeding was objectless. He was long in learning the misconstruction which had been put upon his words. While the announcement was fresh, and likely to have been a topic of conversation, he remained completely passive, and it was not till after an interval of more than eight months that he discovered he was supposed to have given a pledge, and must immediately redeem it. He had forgotten that he had betrayed to Fortescue that he was in earnest at the time the advertisement appeared. On August 2, 1735, a fortnight after it was issued, Pope wrote to him, and asked to have back his letters; "for," said he, "I find my collection, such as it is, must be hastened, or will not be so effectual." It had not yet occurred to him to maintain that his promised publication was a feint. The true cause of his procrastination has been suggested by the critic in the Athenæum. He had distributed portions of his extensive correspondence with Caryll among other groups, and addressed several of the letters to men of higher position or greater fame. He must have rejected the fictitious compound from his genuine edition, or waited till Caryll, who was sinking with age and illness, was in his grave. The latter was the course which Pope preferred. His friend was no doubt dying at the close of March, 1736, and on the 6th of April he expired. With him disappeared the sole difficulty which stood in the way of the new edition, and the poet from that moment was active in its prosecution.

It is amusing to observe the indifference and distaste which Pope feigned for an undertaking that was entirely within his own discretion. He began by announcing that the work would be printed with speed. He then protested he did not mean what he said, and only yielded because others had[Pg lxviii] erroneously inferred, that by advertising in the papers that he would immediately print a book he intended to signify that a book would be printed. He next resolved to publish by subscription, which was a mode of levying forced contributions through the canvass of the author and his friends. He hoped nevertheless that the subscription would fail, in order that he might be excused from an act to which he had been over-persuaded.[103] His hope that support would be withheld had grown to a belief when he wrote to Allen, on the 30th of April, and Allen, who had sought his acquaintance from admiration of the benevolence and goodness of heart which pervaded his letters, offered to bear the cost of the impression. The public by their backwardness afforded Pope the opportunity he professed to desire of dropping the work, but the patronage of an individual was sufficient encouragement. He at once replied that he would "not serve his private fame entirely at another's expense," but that he would "accept the assistance in any moderate degree," which meant that he would allow Allen to defray the outlay which was in excess of the amount subscribed.[104] Time wore on, the letters were three-quarters printed, and the subscribers were few.[105] In his first receipts the poet had stated that if he did not proceed with the book the money should be returned on demand after midsummer.[106] The unwilling public pleaded the uncertainty as a reason for not putting down their names. He admitted that the doubt they expressed was a pretence, and informed Allen that to deprive them of the pretext he had substituted receipts in which he promised to deliver the volume by Lady Day.[107] His object, he said, was to save Allen's purse. The reluctance had ceased to be with the poet. He began by consenting to print a book he would rather not have printed, that he might oblige the world, and ended by compelling the world to subscribe to a book they would rather not have purchased, that they might oblige Pope.

The subscription was a guinea for a quarto volume, and the[Pg lxix] donation of Allen, which Pope acknowledged in his will, was probably paid in part on this occasion. The copyright was purchased by Dodsley,[108] and from these united sources of emolument the book produced, as Johnson had heard, "sufficient profit."[109] It appeared on May 18, 1737, in folio and quarto, and a little later in octavo, that the various sizes might range with previous editions of the poet's works. In the preface he enters into a history of the fate which had attended his letters, and of the circumstances which compelled him to publish them, but with a studious avoidance of every question which had been raised by the collection of 1735. He says it is notorious what means have been taken to procure his correspondence, and disposes of the single instance which required explanation by enumerating among the methods "the transacting with people who dealt without names in the dark." He says that several letters have been ascribed to him which he did not write, and specifies examples, none of which appeared in the book sold to Curll. He says that the piratical editions contain various passages "which no man of common sense would have printed himself," and this he could assert with truth, because the greater part of the Cromwell series owed their publicity to Mrs. Thomas alone. He declares that he had not authorised any of the surreptitious impressions, but forbore to allege that the primitive impression was surreptitious, and shunned all allusion to its birth and parentage. He laments the need which exists for his own volume, and when he proceeds "to state the case fairly in the present situation," none of his reasons appertain to the work of P. T. He indulges in general declamation upon the enormity of procuring letters by disreputable contrivances, but carefully avoids affirming that any of those which first saw the light in 1735 were obtained in the manner he deprecates. He assures us, indeed, that his epistolary effusions are "emanations of the heart, and not efforts of genius," and adds, "this alone may induce any candid reader to believe their publication an act of necessity rather than vanity," which honestly interpreted implies that he was not the person who originally sent them to the press. The candid writer, however,[Pg lxx] omitted to inform the candid reader of the pains he had taken to render them worthy of his head as well as of his heart, and the falsification of the premises destroys the credibility of the inference. The silence of Pope upon the P. T. collection is, under the circumstances, equivalent to a confession of guilt. He gives an account of the surreptitious publication of his letters to Cromwell. He states the reason of the publication of his letters to Wycherley. He reverts once and again to what he justly called the sham volumes of Curll. He records the minutest wrong he can detect in the execution of any of the hostile schemes. But though the conduct of P. T. was the most flagrant of all; though the poet was believed to be the contriver of the plot, and his enemies taunted him with the fraud; though he professed to have learnt the details of the mystery, and half a dozen sentences, if he was innocent, would have set him right with both friends and foes; though the collection of 1735 was in its nature and extent far more important than the rest, and though it was the basis and primary cause of the edition he was ushering into the world, he yet relates no particulars, he offers no opinion, he ventures upon no denial. He endeavours instead to mask his evasion of the subject, and tries to confound the main point with subsidiary topics. There are wilful misrepresentations in his preface, and he was not restrained in his language by his homage to truth; but he had been baffled by the disclosures of Curll, and he was afraid to risk specific assertions which had been already exposed.

His correspondence with Atterbury, and several other letters, were printed for the first time in the avowed edition of Pope. He omitted as well as added, and left out some of the letters to and from Wycherley, some of the letters to and from Cromwell, some of the letters to ladies, and a few scattered letters from the remaining groups. In the letters he republished he here and there erased a sentence which had appeared in the volume of 1735, or inserted a sentence which was new. The minuter verbal alterations are numerous, but many of them are only corrections of errors of the press. In all essential particulars the collection of P. T., a little more sifted, is reproduced in the quarto of 1737. Pope had profited in the interval[Pg lxxi] by the criticisms of the public. He set aside the portions of his correspondence which were condemned, he endeavoured to rectify the inconsistencies into which he had been betrayed in its reconstruction, and he sometimes altered a word or a phrase in the final revision to which he subjected the work. The changes leave it apparent that the Pope text and the P. T. text are identical in their origin, and neither of them are the text of the actual letters of the poet. His selection affords an imperfect test of the parts which he disowned as being counterfeited. He said in his advertisement of July 15, 1735, that he would reprint whatever was genuine in the surreptitious editions; but he relinquished this design, and wrote to Allen that "he was determined to leave out every syllable that could give the least ill example to an age apt to take it, or the least offence to any good or serious man."[110] He accordingly stated in his preface that he had not only omitted the letters which "were not his," but those which "were not approved of by him." Without committing himself to an assertion which might be refuted, he probably wished to obtain the benefit of the first alternative for letters which he had rejected under the last. Nevertheless in his eagerness to particularise any real forgery, he in effect accredited the entire collection of P. T. He had far greater interest in showing that it was not authentic than in damaging the trumpery volumes of Curll, and his forbearance to select a single instance of imposition from its pages is a plain proof that none existed for which he himself was not responsible. The charge of interpolation, which he had twice put forth in his advertisements,[111] and subsequently repeated to Allen,[112] was still more openly abandoned; for he tells us in his preface that the passages he omitted were "improper, or at least impertinent to be divulged to the public," and he no longer pretended that they were any of them spurious. He did not, in short, disown in his genuine edition one sentence of the volume of 1735, but practically receded from his previous allegations, which were mis-statements intended to persuade Caryll that he was not answerable for the garbling of[Pg lxxii] the letters, and the world that he was not a party to their publication.

His acts continued to confirm his guilt. A little while after the quarto was published there appeared the 5th and 6th volume of the octavo edition of Pope's works, which the title-page says "consists of Letters, wherein to those of the author's own edition are added all that are genuine from the former impressions, with some never before printed."[113] This edition bears internal evidence of having been printed concurrently with the quarto itself. A sheet signed *Dd, the pages of which are numbered from 215 to 222, is interpolated in the quarto between the two last leaves of Dd, and the numbers are of necessity repeated on the succeeding eight pages. The interpolated letters of the quarto are equally an interpolation in the octavo, where they follow p. 116 of Vol. VI., on a duplicate half-sheet signed *I, and the paging is repeated on the half-sheet which follows. Consequently the octavo must have been struck off before the letters were interpolated in the quarto, or they would not have been printed in the octavo on an interpolated half-sheet. A second insertion tells the same tale. A few letters are added at the end of the quarto with the announcement that they had been published "since the foregoing sheets were printed off." These letters appear in like manner at the end of the octavo after finis. At the very moment, therefore, that Pope was compelling his reluctant friends to subscribe to his expurgated quarto, he was clandestinely printing an octavo edition in which he put back the whole of the omitted letters he allowed to be genuine, and his imperfect quarto was simply a fraud upon the purchasers for the purpose of accrediting his feigned reprobation of the P. T. volume.

One Watson, who assumed for the occasion the name of T. Johnson, printed a piratical edition of the new octavos. Dodsley filed a bill against him in Chancery on November 25[Pg lxxiii] for the invasion of the copyright of Pope's edition in folio. On October 31, Dodsley had entered at Stationers' Hall, "The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., Vol. V. and Vol. VI. The second edition corrected. 8vo." He had omitted to enter the previous edition of the octavos, and in a letter which Watson wrote on November 30 he objected that the folio was not the book he had pirated, and that the octavo volumes were only entered at Stationers' Hall on October 31, which he says "was at least a full month after the publication of the edition complained of, and Pope's own first edition entirely sold before the octavo was entered." His meaning was that since the first edition of the octavo had not been entered, the entry of the second edition, which was subsequent to the piracy, came too late to secure the copyright. The greater part, however, of Watson's volumes were identical with the text of the folio which had been entered on May 18, and Watson did not persevere in his defence. He consented to deliver up the 1646 copies in his possession on the receipt of 25l., and to give Pope a bond in which he undertook to pay a penalty of 100l. if he ever again invaded his rights by printing any of his works.[114]

Pope's prohibition of Watson's work, coupled with his own publication of the octavos, is fresh evidence of the insincerity of his professed dissatisfaction with the P. T. selection. His apology for replacing in the octavos the letters he had rejected was that they were in process of being reinstated in a piratical edition of the quarto.[115] Pope had the power, which he used, to stop piratical publications, and at the same time he absurdly made the piracy the plea for publishing himself the condemned letters he had cast aside. His mode of relieving his disgust at their appearance, and of giving effect to his eager desire for their suppression was to lay hold of a hollow excuse for reprinting them.

While Pope proceeded against Watson he submitted to the[Pg lxxiv] piracies of Curll. His conduct once more betrayed that he was the author of the P. T. plot. Curll had all along persisted in printing the P. T. letters. He immediately seized the new letters in the quarto, and inserted them in his fifth volume of "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence." He was not content with usurping Pope's property. He insulted, defied, and accused him. Pope had the strongest motive in self-vindication to grapple with the charges of Curll, and he shrunk from the contest. He resented the infringement of his copyright by an indifferent person, and he could not willingly have endured to be despoiled by his mocking antagonist, and sit down quietly under the contumely and wrong. The bill filed against Watson discovers the cause of his forbearance. There we find that Pope in applying for an injunction was obliged to state that his quarto edition was the first publication of his letters "with his consent, direction, or approbation,"[116] and if he had filed a similar bill against Curll, the bookseller would have proved that he had purchased the P. T. edition, and that Pope had printed and sold it. Curll announced in September, 1735, that he had filed a bill against Smythe to compel the fulfilment of his contract, and he made Gilliver a party to the suit in consequence of his confession that Pope had purchased of him the old sheets of the Wycherley, and directed the rest of the P. T. collection to be printed to match them.[117] Smythe was a shadow who could not be reached. The facts remained, and Pope could not attempt to convict Curll of piracy without being himself convicted of having sold him the work. He had been worsted on this very point when he fought with his best weapon, the pen, and he did not dare to renew the conflict in a court of law where allegations could neither be passed over in silence, nor be met by evasions and[Pg lxxv] quibbles. Any doubt that the motive for his toleration was fear was done away by his filing a bill against Curll the instant he pirated the Swift Correspondence which was entirely distinct from the P. T. transaction.

Pope had shown earlier that he was afraid to join issue with Curll before a legal tribunal. Curll inserted an advertisement in "Fog's Journal" of July 26, 1735, in which he accused Pope of having printed the P. T. collection, and of telling falsehoods in self-defence. The proprietor of "Fog's Journal" was induced by a threat of prosecution to apologise for the insertion of the advertisement, and Curll immediately reprinted it in the second volume of Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence, accompanied by a scornful account of Pope's interference. Pope did not venture to accept the taunting challenge. His vapouring ceased when he was dared to fight. He menaced the publisher of a newspaper, who would not brave a trial in a cause which was not his own, and tamely retreated before the real offender in person.

The octavo edition of 1737 enables us to put the veracity of Pope in repudiating the P. T. collection to yet another proof. In May and July, 1735, he published advertisements protesting that several letters ascribed to him in the P. T. volume were not his.[118] He prefixed to the octavo of 1737 a catalogue of surreptitious editions, in which he repeated that the P. T. publication "contained several letters not genuine."[119] He had hitherto been loud in exclaiming against the P. T. forgeries without being imprudent enough to name them. His caution relaxed as time wore on, and he had the courage to state on the title-page of the first octavo edition of 1737 that he had "added to the letters of the author's own edition all that are genuine from the former impressions." The spurious letters in the P. T. collection were thus declared to be the letters which were excluded from the octavo edition of 1737. They were seven in number. Three were letters, or extracts of letters, from Wycherley, two belonged to the section headed "Letters to Several Ladies," and two were[Pg lxxvi] letters to Gay. Unless they were really forgeries, Pope told and retold emphatic lies to discredit the P. T. collection, and establish his innocence, and the deceit would leave no doubt of his criminality.

Four letters out of the seven we know to have been genuine. The three letters of Wycherley were on the sheets transferred from the edition of his posthumous works which was published by Pope, and copies of two of them are among the Oxford papers. One of the suppressed letters to ladies exists in duplicate, and was sent by Pope to Miss Blount, and to Miss Marriot, the friend and neighbour of his coadjutor Broome. The letters are both originals in the handwriting of Pope. There are no means of verifying the remaining three letters, nor is it necessary to test them, when more than half the pretended forgeries are found to be authentic. Once again we have absolute evidence that his accusation of forgery was an acted clamour to screen himself. He finally adopted all the letters but seven, and his assertion that these seven were fabrications was a falsehood.

Besides the necessity Pope was under of rejecting some of the P. T. letters to bear out his mendacious charge of forgery, he had particular reasons for disclaiming three at least of the four letters which proceeded from his own pen. The letter he addressed to Miss Blount and Miss Marriot was a disquisition on a human monstrosity exhibiting in London. He had said in his Essay on Criticism that "vile obscenity should find no pardon." He was among the offenders he pronounced unpardonable, and often revelled in dull and studied indecorums which he mistook for wit. The laboured letter he esteemed so highly that he sent it to two of his female correspondents was more than ordinarily gross and stupid. The fancied humour appeared to the public revolting coarseness, and he cast out the letter because it excited disgust and contempt.

The next letter Pope rejected consisted of a satirical and false description of Blenheim. He represented a fraction of the house to be the whole, and founded upon his mis-statement the reflection, "I think the architect built it entirely in complaisance to the taste of its owners; for it is the most inhospitable thing imaginable, and the most selfish." A second[Pg lxxvii] sarcasm on the Duchess in the P. T. volume was obliterated in the octavo of 1737. "Cleland," Pope writes to Gay, "is at Tunbridge. He plays now with the old Duchess of M——, nay, dines with her after she has won all his money." In the octavo of 1737 he erased the name, and left the passage to be applied to any old duchess who was then alive. He had obviously some inducement to renounce his abuse of the Duchess of Marlborough, and the probable cause was that a friendly intercourse had grown up in the interval. He speaks of her to Swift in 1739 as paying "great court to him."[120]

His desire to disavow an ebullition of enmity which had been succeeded by renewed cordiality, was his apparent motive for cancelling a letter addressed to Gay. Fielding relates that no person during "the reign of King Alexander" would read a work which had not his license, and "this license he granted to only four authors—Swift, Young, Arbuthnot, and Gay—his principal courtiers and favourites."[121] It chanced that one of the courtiers was in disgrace when the P. T. volume appeared, and Pope introduced a sneer at his egotism and pomposity. "In a word," he says to Gay, "Y——g himself has not acquired more tragic majesty in his aspect by reading his own verses than I by Homer's." The offence of Young was a species of remonstrance he sent to the monarch under the guise of advice. Pope completed his Essay on Man in 1734, and Young urged him in "a pressing letter to write something on the side of revelation in order to take off the impression of those doctrines which the Essay seemed to convey." Harte, a minor courtier of king Alexander, told Warton that the sensitive monarch "took the letter amiss."[122] He was annoyed at the censure implied in the exhortation, and retaliated by ridiculing the self-importance of his monitor. When Pope was taxed with personalities he could not defend, he never scrupled, where it was possible, to deny that he alluded to the person who remonstrated. When evasion was impracticable, and the work had not been avowed, the easiest course was to repudiate the authorship.[Pg lxxviii]

These were the circumstances which chiefly governed Pope's selection of the P. T. forgeries. Had there been a single fabricated letter he would have hastened to name it, just as he specified in his preface to the quarto some fictitious letters which were not in the P. T. publication. The P. T. letters being authentic, he was afraid to disclaim in print particular letters which surviving persons might know to be his, and he could not venture to advance beyond the indirect statement that the octavo of 1737 "contained all the letters that were genuine from former impressions." Trusting that no one who could convict him would be at the trouble to collate the editions, he thought himself safe from exposure, and he could privately appeal, with little risk of detection, to the disclaimer on his title-page when he had merely to disown a letter in his individual intercourse with the Duchess of Marlborough or Young. He did not care to increase the hazard of discovery by repeating his title-page. He dropped it in the second edition of the octavo, and the assertion that he had printed "all the letters that are genuine from the former impressions" dwindled down to the assurance that "there is not one but is genuine."[123]

The controversies on Pope's character have naturally drawn forth uncompromising language both from defenders and accusers. Those who believed him incapable of the acts imputed to him could but conclude that he was bitterly calumniated. Those who believed that the charges were true could but brand him with reprobation. The offences were not of a nature to be softened by apologies. De Quincey was in a lenient mood when he wrote his sketch of Pope's Life, and his more favourable impressions necessarily carried with them the conviction that the "disgraceful imputation" against Pope of having made Curll his tool and victim was "most assuredly unfounded."[124] Speaking, on another occasion, of Pope's attack on Hill and the Duke of Chandos, he says, "Evil is the day[Pg lxxix] for a conscientious man when his sole resource for self-defence lies in a falsehood."[125] De Quincey was ignorant of the history of the letters, and he would have altered his opinion if he had known that Pope in self-defence had been prodigal of the falsehoods which are the last refuge of guilt.

There still remains the small episode of the six letters unconnected with the P. T. volume, which were declared by Pope to be spurious in his preface to the quarto. Four of them purported to be from Pope to Miss Blount, and two to be letters of Atterbury to Pope. Those to Miss Blount were forwarded to Curll by a correspondent who signed himself S. E. The bookseller published them in the third volume of "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," and announced that he had discovered them to be translations from Voiture. S. E. only professed to send copies, which are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Mr. Carruthers states correctly that the size and quality of the paper is precisely the same as in the genuine letters of the poet, and that the handwriting appears to be his "a little disguised." The letters bear on their face the marks of their origin, and Pope acted according to usage in endeavouring to delude Curll that he might afterwards build a charge upon his own deceptions. There is, however, a second claimant for the honour of having devised the cheat. In an edition of Pope's works, which belonged to Douce the antiquary, some one has copied an extract from a letter of Mr. J. Plumptre, dated May 1, 1744, in which he informs his wife that their son Charles, who was afterwards Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, and Archdeacon of Ely, was the author of the trick.[126] The incident was nine years old when Mr. Plumptre proudly acquainted Mrs. Plumptre with the secret. He mentioned that the letters were sent to Curll by the penny post, and the original cover in the Bodleian Library shows that they were not sent by post at all. He said that his son translated them, and Pope had proclaimed that they were borrowed from a published translation. The account is false, and the pretended extract from the letter may be itself apocryphal, for its authenticity is guaranteed by[Pg lxxx] no external testimony. The similarity of paper and handwriting, coupled with the pressing necessity Pope was under to supply himself with examples of fabrication, strongly indicate that the person who profited by the imposition contrived it.

Pope affirmed in his preface that the two letters ascribed to Atterbury had never been seen by the bishop or himself, and to show the absurdity of the fraud he adds that "they were advertised even after that period when it was made felony to correspond with him." At length, in 1739, one of the letters was adopted in a reprint of Cooper's octavos, and undoubtedly by the order of the poet himself, since it was included in the collection he delivered to Warburton. "We have ventured," says a note in the Cooper edition, "to insert this letter, which was plainly intended for Mr. Pope, though we are informed that on second thoughts it was not judged proper to send it him. A copy was preserved and published soon after in the English additions to Bayle's Dictionary, under the article of Atterbury." Pope's assertion, in the preface to the quarto, that the letter was fabricated, was either a reckless charge or a falsehood, and there are strong grounds for believing that he was all along aware that the letter was genuine. In the catalogue of surreptitious editions we are told of Curll's second volume that it has no letters to Mr. Pope, "but one said to be Bishop Atterbury's, and another in that bishop's name, certainly not his." The distinction drawn between the two amounts to an admission that the former might be authentic; and this is confirmed in the conclusion of the catalogue, where a reprint of the P.T. collection is described as containing the "forged letter," not letters, "from the Bishop of Rochester," though this very reprint contained them both. They were introduced into all the reprints themselves in a manner which showed that they were not considered of equal authority. In Curll's work, they are represented to be alike by Atterbury, and to be addressed alike to Pope. In the reprints of the P. T. collection, the letter which Pope ultimately accepted is alone given as written by Atterbury, or addressed to the poet. Its fellow has asterisks to represent the person to whom it was sent, and neither[Pg lxxxi] asterisks nor name to represent the sender. Pope's ally, Cooper, is supposed to have been concerned in the volume to which the Atterbury epistles were first transferred from the publication of Curll, and it is obvious that no bookseller would have originated the alteration, and that no other person would have prompted it who had not a peculiar interest in the correspondence of the poet, and who was not aware that these stray productions would be at once appended to a current P. T. impression. The distinction between the letters was made in the reprints of the P. T. collection before Pope published the preface to the quarto, in which he affirmed that both were counterfeited. He made the distinction in the catalogue almost immediately after the quarto appeared. He did not the less preserve the passage in his preface unchanged in every edition of his correspondence, and never uttered a single word of recantation. He allowed the charge of forgery to be circulated till it had served his purpose; and then, without an allusion to his former language, imported the letter into his works with the complacent announcement "that it was plainly intended for Mr. Pope."

The reason assigned by Pope why a letter must be forged which he afterwards admitted to be genuine, was one of his usual deceptions. By the Bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury it was declared to be felony to correspond with him in his exile after June 25, 1723. Pope disregarded the enactment with little risk of discovery, and perhaps without much danger of punishment if his harmless intercourse was detected. He condoled with the bishop on the death of his daughter, Mrs. Morice; and the bishop thus commenced his reply, which is dated Montpelier, November 20, 1729: "Yes, dear sir, I have had all you designed for me, and have read all, as I read whatever you write, with esteem and pleasure. But your last letter, full of friendship and goodness, gave me such impressions of concern and tenderness, as neither I can express, nor you, perhaps, with all the force of your imagination, fully conceive." This again must have drawn forth a response from the poet, for Atterbury says in an answer without date, "I venture to thank you for your kind and friendly letter, because I think myself very sure of a safe conveyance, and I am[Pg lxxxii] uneasy till I have told you what impressions it made upon me. I will do it with the same simplicity with which I wrote to you from Montpelier upon a very melancholy occasion." These extracts testify that the letter which Curll published of November 23, 1731, was not a solitary instance, and that other letters had passed between the poet and Atterbury "even after that period when it was made felony to correspond with him." The proof which Pope urged with triumphant scorn to demonstrate that the letter of November 23 must be counterfeited was therefore an absolute fraud. His disingenuousness did not end here. He printed Atterbury's letter of November 20, 1729, at the same time that he reproduced the letter published by Curll, and said in a note,—"This also seems genuine, though whether written to Mr. P. or some learned friend in France, is uncertain; but we doubt not it will be acceptable to the reader." To support the alleged uncertainty he omitted the passages which showed that it was addressed to a sickly poet in England. The complete letter was inserted by Mr. Nichols in the "Epistolary Correspondence of Atterbury," and his version is confirmed by a copy among the Oxford papers at Longleat. The bishop died in February, 1732; and if in 1739 Pope thought it unsafe to admit that he had held communication with him in his banishment upon literary and domestic topics, he might have left the letter to be published by Warburton, and not have violated truth for the sake of hurrying it before the world.

Such was the series of stratagems which ushered in and accompanied the collection of 1735, from its first appearance in the volume of P. T. to its final shape in the volumes of Cooper. Pope's skill in deception was not equal to his passion for it. Audacity was the chief characteristic of his contrivances, and equivocation and lying his weapons of defence. When a trick or a subterfuge was detected, and could no longer be denied, he yet remained unabashed, and dropping all allusion to the points which had been proved against him, he continued to rely upon the falsehoods or fallacies which had been less completely exposed. His pertinacity in reiterating that he was sinned against when he was sinning, derived support from his literary fame, which gave currency to his representations, and in some[Pg lxxxiii] degree gained credit to them. But his duplicity and his artifices were known to many, and it would be difficult to say whether his effrontery or his hypocrisy was most conspicuous when he affixed to the preface to the quarto of 1737 the punning motto, Vellem nescire literas, bewailed in the preface itself the necessity for the publication, hoped that no honest man might be reduced to a similar dilemma, talked with injured indignation of thefts, forgeries, and piracies, and exhorted the legislature to provide a remedy against the evil. His tone was not moderated by the suspicions he had roused, and the humiliations he had undergone. They had just as little effect in abating his love of treachery, or blunting his appetite for epistolary fame, and he was no sooner clear of one plot than he engaged in another of the same description, and for the same ends.

His correspondence with Swift appeared in 1741. The English edition was a sequel to the quarto of 1737, and formed part of what was called on the title-page, "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose, Vol. II." In a prefatory notice to the reader, the letters are stated to have been "copied from an impression sent from Dublin, and said to have been printed by the Dean's direction," an impression, it is added, "which was begun without our author's knowledge, and continued without his consent." Pope held the same language in private to Allen and Warburton, and professed to be extremely annoyed at the step. His account has been almost uniformly accepted as true till the critic in the Athenæum showed that the publication of the correspondence with Swift was no exception to the previous proceedings of the poet, and that, as in the case of the Wycherley letters of 1729, and the miscellaneous collection of 1735, he himself had sent the manuscripts to the press, and charged the act upon others.

On November 28, 1729, Pope protested to Swift that it was many years since he endeavoured to play the wit in his familiar correspondence. He assured the Dean that as he had a greater love and esteem for him than for others, so he wrote to him with even more than ordinary negligence. "I smile to think," he continues, "how Curll would be bit were our epistles to[Pg lxxxiv] fall into his hands, and how gloriously they would fall short of every ingenious reader's expectations." Warburton tells us that Pope valued himself upon this abstinence from all effort to be brilliant;[127] but his pretence of sinking the author in the friend gained no credit from Swift, who took care to show his incredulity. "I find," he replied on February 26, 1730, "you have been a writer of letters almost from your infancy; and, by your own confession, had schemes even then of epistolary fame. Montaigne says that if he could have excelled in any kind of writing it would have been in letters; but I doubt they would not have been natural, for it is plain that all Pliny's letters were written with a view of publishing, and I accuse Voiture of the same crime, although he be an author I am fond of. They cease to be letters when they become a jeu d'esprit." Pope seems to have suspected that this half-direct, half-oblique criticism was suggested by his recent collection and arrangement of his correspondence, and he denied, in his answer of April 9, that he was open to the censure. "I am pleased," he observed, "to see your partiality, and it is for that reason I have kept some of your letters, and some of those of my other friends. These if I put together in a volume for my own secret satisfaction in reviewing a life passed in innocent amusements and studies, not without the good will of worthy and ingenious men, do not therefore say I aim at epistolary fame. I never had any fame less in my head; but the fame I most covet, indeed, is that which must be derived to me from my friendships." The poet as usual adapted his assertions to the exigencies of the moment; for it was not for "his own secret satisfaction in reviewing a life passed in innocent amusements and studies," that he had deposited a duplicate of the volume with Lord Oxford, or kept it in readiness "against the revival of slanders, and the publication of surreptitious letters." This suppression of facts and motives could have had no effect in deluding Swift. Once on September 3, 1735, when his faculties were waning, and his powers rose and fell with his malady, he echoed back Pope's former language. "Neither," he said, "did our letters contain any turns of wit, or fancy, or politics, or satire, but mere[Pg lxxxv] innocent friendship. I believe we neither of us ever leaned our head upon our hand to study what we should write next." But by the 21st of October he had already returned to his old conviction, and after mentioning the publication of the poet's correspondence by Curll, he added, "I believe my letters have escaped being published because I writ nothing but nature and friendship, and particular incidents which could make no figure in writing,"—a plain intimation that the opposite qualities had, in his opinion, caused the letters of Pope to be communicated to the world.

The poet made the volume of 1735 the plea for pressing Swift to return him his letters. He had ceased to smile at the thought how Curll would be bit by getting hold of them, and earnestly demanded that the Dean should "secure him against that rascal printer."[128] If it is admitted that Pope was the publisher of the P. T. collection, his accusations against the rascal printer were groundless, and his fears were feigned. He was endeavouring, under cover of a false pretence, to obtain possession of his letters to Swift, and it was easy to foresee that when he had succeeded in his object the secret store would soon be laid open to the public. He had previously forced his other friends to surrender his correspondence by the clamorous apprehensions he expressed of Curll. The letters which were safe in their guardianship had not been long committed to his keeping when they came forth from the shop of this very individual, and Pope was now urging the fact as a reason why fresh letters should be transferred from a custody which had been effectual to a custody which had proved to be insecure. Swift, perhaps, by this time, had begun to penetrate the designs of his friend, and he declined to comply with his request. "You need not fear any consequence," he wrote September 3, 1735, "in the commerce that hath so long passed between us, although I never destroyed one of your letters. But my executors are men of honour and virtue, who have strict orders in my will to burn every letter left behind me. Yet I am loth that any letters from you and a very few friends should die before me." No answer could have been less pleasing to Pope than to be told that his letters[Pg lxxxvi] were doomed to destruction. His eagerness to rescue them must have been increased by the announcement, and he offered, if Swift would let him have them at once, to send him copies. The poet's excuse for a proposal which defeated his professed purpose, was "merely that the originals might not fall into the hands of Curll, and thereby a hundred particulars be at his mercy."[129] The particulars would have been as much at Curll's mercy in the copies as in the originals they replaced, unless Pope intended to disavow the transcripts he had himself furnished, which shows how much value is to be attached to his assertion that parts of the collection of 1735 were forged. His remonstrances induced Swift to promise that the letters should not be committed to the flames; but he persevered in refusing to surrender them while he lived. "As to what you say of your letters," he wrote April 22, 1736, "my resolution is to direct my executors to send you all your letters well sealed and pacquetted, and leave them entirely to your disposal. These things are all tied up, endorsed and locked in a cabinet, and I have not one servant who can properly be said to write or read. No mortal shall copy them, but you shall surely have them when I am no more." Since Swift persisted in believing that he could protect private papers from Curll quite as efficiently as the poet, who had signally failed in the attempt, Pope reversed his petition, and disclosing his real intention, begged that he might have them to print. "I told him," he says, in his account to Lord Orrery, "as soon as I found myself obliged to publish an edition of my letters to my great sorrow, that I wished to make use of some of these, nor did I think any part of my correspondence would do me a greater honour, and be really a greater pleasure to me, than what might preserve the memory how well we loved one another. I find the Dean was not quite of the same opinion, or he would not, I think, have denied this." When Pope affected in 1729 to depreciate his correspondence with Swift, that he might mask his design in gathering together his other letters, he had even smiled to reflect "how gloriously our epistles would fall short of every ingenious reader's expectations." He now maintained that "our epistles" would confer[Pg lxxxvii] upon him a vast deal of honour, which he could not suppose would be obtained by balking expectation. But though none of these inconsistencies are immaterial, the most important circumstance, and one which bears upon the whole of the subsequent evidence, is that Pope was pining for the publication of the letters, and Swift would not consent to it.

An event happened opportunely to assist the solicitations of the poet. Towards the close of 1736 Curll printed a couple of letters to Swift, of which the first was written by Pope, and the second by Bolingbroke. The bookseller announced that they were transmitted to him from Ireland, together with several other valuable originals, and Pope on the 30th of December employed this practical proof to convince the Dean that the correspondence was not safe in his custody. The two letters, as they were called, were in fact a joint epistle; for not only does the portion of Bolingbroke purport to be a continuation of the portion of the poet, but Swift, who had been absent, says in the reply, which on his return home he addressed to Pope, "I found a letter from you with an appendix longer than yours from Bolingbroke." The letter and its appendix were printed by Curll at the period when Pope had exhausted his arguments to induce Swift to resign the correspondence, and the occurrence was so well timed for the purposes of the poet, and the device so much in accordance with his practices, that it is impossible not to suspect that he contrived the injury as a means of extorting the redress. The original of his share of the epistle still exists,[130] and shows that the published version has been edited in his usual fashion. The variations, in the aggregate, could not have arisen from carelessness, and they are not of a kind which an independent person could have had any motive to introduce from design. The appendix of Bolingbroke had been in the power of Pope,[Pg lxxxviii] who might have transcribed it, together with his own contribution, before it was sent; but he declared that he never possessed a copy of either,[131] and small as is the credit due to his protestations, he may have spoken the truth in this particular, and been guilty not the less. The Dean was accustomed to lend his acquaintances a volume in which he had stitched specimens of the letters of his eminent friends.[132] The joint letter of August, 1723, was preserved,[133] when the letters of Pope to Swift for a considerable period before and after were lost or destroyed, and it is likely that it escaped the common fate by its insertion in the volume of selections. There it was easily accessible, and as Worsdale, the reputed mock-clergyman, who had personated Smythe, was sometimes resident in Dublin, his old employer had a trusty, or at any rate a trusted agent, ready to his hand. Curll did not print any more of his boasted originals, and he probably only spoke on the faith of promises which had been made him with a view to compel compliance from the Dean, by persuading him that traitors had admission to his cabinet.

The announcement of the publication by Curll of the joint letter of August 23 had not the desired effect upon Swift. In his reply he took no notice of the circumstance, and Pope, finding that nothing he could urge would shake his resolution, addressed, in the beginning of March, 1737, a statement of the case to Lord Orrery, who was then in Ireland, and engaged him to second his entreaties. Lord Orrery obtained a promise from Swift that the correspondence should be returned, and offered to be the bearer of it. The Dean accordingly acquaints Pope, July 23, 1737, that "when his lordship goes over, which will be, as he hopes, in about ten days, he will take with him all the letters I preserved of yours." "I cannot," said Swift, in making the communication, "trust my memory half an hour," and this passage was a proof that he did not exaggerate his infirmity. Lord Orrery had set sail in the middle of June, and under the same date[Pg lxxxix] that Swift wrote from Ireland that his lordship would go over in about ten days, his lordship wrote to Swift from England, "Your commands are obeyed long ago. Dr. King has his cargo, Mrs. Barber her Conversation, and Mr. Pope his letters." Mrs. Barber's Conversation was the manuscript of the "Polite Conversation" of Swift, which she had asked permission to print for her own advantage, and the cargo for Dr. King was the manuscript of the "History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne," which the Dean was anxious to print for his own credit. But much as it was in his thoughts at this time, he only remembered his settled intention to send the papers—whether history, conversation, or letters—by Lord Orrery, and the act by which the intention was fulfilled had already faded from his mind. The understanding of Swift was rapidly yielding to his mournful malady, and the first faculty to suffer was his memory.

The letters of Pope were therefore in his own keeping, and out of the power of Swift, before July 23, 1737. The Dean, however, informed him that "by reading the dates he found a chasm of six years," and that he had searched for the missing correspondence in vain. Pope did not abandon the hope of recovering it, and Swift, apparently in reply to his applications, wrote on August 8, 1738, to acquaint him that every letter received from him for twenty years and upwards had been sealed up in bundles, and consigned to the custody of Mrs. Whiteway, whom he describes as "a very worthy, rational, and judicious cousin of mine." Mrs. Whiteway, who had none of the papers, had a short time before kept Swift from sending a similar fictitious account, but the idea had taken deep root in his mind, and rightly conjecturing that he would reiterate it, she engaged Lord Orrery to inform Pope that she had neither got any of the correspondence herself, nor had the slightest knowledge where it was.[134] On the present, as on the former occasion, Swift showed her what he had written, and on the 24th of August he subjoined a postscript in which, after saying that he would correct, if it were possible, the blunders committed in his letter, he simply added that his cousin had assured him that "a great collection of your/my letters to me/you are[Pg xc] put up and scaled, and in some very safe hand." The counter-assurance of Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery that she had no knowledge of the collection, shows that the corrected version was as fanciful as the original statement. Swift's language in 1738 would imply that the chasm in the correspondence no longer existed, and that no part of the series had yet been transmitted to England; but it was the language of a man labouring under the misapprehension and obliviousness produced by disease, and could have little weight in opposition to the testimony that Pope had received back a packet of his letters in the previous year. Any doubt which could have existed on the point is done away by the admission of Pope himself. Mrs. Whiteway had refused in 1740 to send back some of his letters by the mother of the Mr. Nugent, who afterwards became Lord Clare, because the poet had authorised her to entrust them to a Mr. M'Aulay. "I believe," Pope wrote to Mr. Nugent, "they had entertained a jealousy of you, as the same persons did before of my Lord Orrery. They then prevented the Dean from complying to any purpose with my request. They then sent a few just to save appearances, and possibly to serve as a sort of plea to excuse them of being taxed with this proceeding, which is now thrown upon the Dean himself."[135] The "proceeding" was the committing the correspondence to the press, and Pope, on his own part, to avoid being taxed with it, was privately putting forth the plea that the bulk of his letters had not been returned to him. The confession that he had received a few is a complete answer to the delusion of Swift, and they must have been more than a very few, or they would not have been sufficient "to save appearances." Setting aside the representations of the poet, upon which no dependence can be placed, except when he bears witness against himself, there is nothing to oppose, and much to confirm the idea that they were the identical "few" which were published in the quarto of 1741.

When Swift first collected the letters in May, 1737, he[Pg xci] mentioned that they were not much above sixty, and in July, when they had been sent away, and he described his past act in the language of intention, he said they were not above twenty-five. His account in July, when the correspondence was no longer under his eye, and when his failing memory made him forget the departure of Lord Orrery, is far less reliable than his account in May when he was fresh from the task of sorting the letters. A smaller number than he specified appeared in the quarto which, exclusive of the answers of the Dean, contains only forty. This upon an average does not amount to two a year, and the poet, when he had an end to serve, would not have scrupled to call even sixty "few" in comparison with the many that had been written. Swift imagined that the missing letters might have been lost on some of those occasions when he had been compelled to entrust his papers to friends, and Pope may honestly have believed that they were detained by designing persons; but they were never published, while those which were printed have a chasm of seven years, from June, 1716, to August, 1723, or only one year more than the Dean detected in the series he got ready to despatch to Twickenham. The new correspondence, like Pope's previous volumes, was merely a selection, and there is but a single letter of the poet to Swift in 1714, none whatever in 1715, and again but a single letter in 1716. The suppression of the letters in 1717, as in 1715, or even a slip of memory or a slip of the pen with the Dean, both of which had become a frequent occurrence, will account for the slight discrepancy between the chasm in the printed volume, and the chasm which Swift announced. The letter of August, 1723, is the joint letter of Pope and Bolingbroke, which was sent corrected to Curll, and this is followed by a second gap from August, 1723, to September 14, 1725. The extensive hiatus in the correspondence of which Pope was forewarned by Swift, must in all reason be supposed to be the chief deficiency of which Pope complained, though in language coloured to suit his purpose; and when a similar blank exists in the quarto, there is a strong presumption that the letters which he acknowledged had been sent to save appearances, were the same letters of which the book was composed. A kindred circumstance supports[Pg xcii] the conclusion. The last letter of Pope in the quarto is dated March 23, 1737, which falls in with the fact that the collection was gathered together in May and transmitted to him in June; but if the volume of 1741 had proceeded from Swift, it would be a curious coincidence, that not a single line written by the poet since the time when his correspondence was returned to him should have found its way into the work.

It is against the innocence of Pope that in his public statements he kept out of sight the fact that he had received back a certain portion of the correspondence, and designedly conveyed the impression that the whole of it remained with Swift. In the advertisement to the quarto it is said that Pope could not be prevailed upon to revise the volume printed in Dublin; but that he had furnished the London booksellers with a few more of the letters of the Dean a little to clear up the history of their publication. The reader is informed that he will see this history in one view if he observes the passages marked by inverted commas. The story they reveal is that Swift ultimately promised to send the correspondence, that he collected it for the purpose, and ended by sending none of it. The Dean's communication of August 8 is produced as exhibiting the final result, and Pope marked with inverted commas the declaration, "I can faithfully assure you that every letter you have favoured me with, these twenty years and more, are sealed up in bundles and delivered to Mrs. Whiteway." The sense in which the poet wished the passage to be understood is defined in the table of contents. "The entire collection of his and Mr. Pope's letters for twenty years and upwards found, and in the hands of a lady, a worthy and judicious relation of the Dean's.—This a mistake, not in hers, but in some other safe hands." A note was added by Pope to the letter for the purpose of strengthening the case against Swift; but not one syllable did he let drop to indicate that the Dean was deceived in supposing that the series remained unbroken, and that no part of it had been sent back. The testimony of another witness, which had the appearance of corroborating the error, was produced by the poet. The assertion in the postscript that Mrs. Whiteway vouched for "a great collection being in some very safe hand," seems to have beguiled[Pg xciii] him into the belief that the missing letters had turned up, and Lord Orrery having lately come from Ireland he applied to him on the subject. Lord Orrery answered, that Mrs. Whiteway knew nothing of the letters, that he was satisfied they were neither lost nor burnt, and that his attempts to discover where they were deposited had been fruitless. To us, who are aware that Lord Orrery had been the bearer of an instalment of the correspondence, it is plain that he is referring to that portion of it which could not be found when he carried over the remainder. To those who had only before them the version contained in the quarto, and who merely read of an intention to send letters by him in July, 1737, which had not been forwarded in August, 1738, his general expressions in answer to Pope would appear to apply to the whole of the correspondence, and seem a confirmation of the delusion of Swift. The poet made himself responsible for the misconceptions of the Dean by marking them with inverted commas, by supporting them with specious subsidiary evidence, and attesting that they embodied the history of the publication; and since they leave an impression which he knew to be false upon the precise particular which implicates himself, his disingenuous sanction of the error must be considered to be the act of conscious guilt.

"I should think with you, madam," Lord Orrery wrote to Mrs. Whiteway, "that some of Mr. Pope's servants had stolen the letters, did not many appear from various people to the Dean, of which Mr. Pope cannot be supposed either to have seen the copies or originals." With our present information, the letters in the collection which are not from the pen of Pope tell the other way, and contribute in a powerful degree to fix the publication on him. The replies of Swift, together with much of Swift's correspondence with Gay, are included in the volume, and it will be found upon examination that all these materials were likely to have been furnished by the poet, and that part of them could have been furnished by nobody else. He has twice touched upon the subject in the annotations to the quarto. The first note is attached to the heading, "Letters of Dr. Swift to Mr. Gray," and states that they were "found among Mr. Gay's papers, and returned to Dr. Swift[Pg xciv] by the Duke of Queensberry and Mr. Pope." The second note is appended to that portion of the postscript of August 24, 1738, in which the Dean mentions "a great collection of your/my letters to me/you." "It is written," subjoins the poet, "just thus in the original. The book that is now printed seems to be part of the collection here spoken of, as it contains not only the letters of Mr. Pope, but of Dr. Swift, both to him and Mr. Gay, which were returned him after Mr. Gay's death, though any mention made by Mr. P. of the return or exchange of letters has been industriously suppressed in the publication, and only appears by some of the answers."

The case of Gay is first to be considered. There is not an allusion in any of the "answers," either to the exchange of the letters which passed between Gay and Swift, or the return of the letters which Swift addressed to Gay. An exchange, at all events, had not taken place. The letters of Gay were retained by Swift, and after the death of the Dean they were printed from the originals. Three only are contained in the quarto of 1741, and these are joint productions of Gay and Pope,[136] which would naturally have been made over to the latter when he reclaimed the whole of his correspondence with Swift. If the Dean was the culprit we must believe that while publishing, or permitting others to publish, his own letters to Gay, he deliberately excluded every one of Gay's replies, with the exception of the three in which Pope had a share. If Pope was the culprit the peculiarity is explained. He published the three letters which, being in part his own writing, had been sent back to him in 1737, and he published no others because the rest of the letters of Gay were not in his possession.

As the Duke of Queensberry was living, the introduction of his name is a species of guarantee that Swift had received back his letters to Gay; but the conclusion does not follow, which Pope intended to be drawn, that the Dean must therefore have supplied them to the printer. "One thing," says Swift to[Pg xcv] Gay, Nov. 20, 1729, "you are to consider, because it is an old compact, that when I write to you, or Mr. Pope, I write to both." On the death of Gay the correspondence passed a second time through Pope's hands, and with his habit at that period of getting the letters of his intimates, as well as his own letters, transcribed for future use, it may readily be imagined that he would not miss the opportunity of securing a valuable collection, in which he may be said to have had a common property with his departed friend[137]. Hence it happens that copies of all Swift's letters to Gay, together with one that was not printed, are preserved among the Oxford manuscripts, and with this evidence that the entire series was not less in the power of Pope than of Swift, suspicion must incline to the one who had made elaborate preparations for publication, and who had shown himself eager for it. The suppression too of Gay's replies, contrary to the general rule observed in the work, would here again favour the opinion that the letters of Swift were sent to the press by the person to whom the replies were inaccessible, and not by the person who had the correspondence on both sides at his command.

The assertion that the letters were returned which Swift addressed to Pope, is next to be examined. According to the poet his surrender of them appears from some of the answers of Swift; but the single passage by which it is implied, is that in which the Dean speaks of "a great collection of [your/my] letters to [me/you]." The very letter in which the sentence occurs commences with a lament by Swift that he has "entirely lost his memory," and the strange double form in which he describes the correspondence seems chiefly[Pg xcvi] to indicate a consciousness that his recollection of its nature was uncertain and confused. On one half of the subject he had manifested his misconceptions a few days before. He had forgotten the chasm in the series of Pope's letters, had forgotten that any of them had been restored to their author, had forgotten Mrs. Whiteway's denial that she possessed them, and when she again corrected him, continued to fancy they were deposited with some person he knew not whom, in some place he knew not where. His notions respecting his letters to Pope were not likely to be better founded than his notions respecting the letters of Pope to him. But more than this, he only professed to make the statement upon the authority of his cousin, and his cousin disavowed all knowledge of the collection. Far from being aware that the Dean had received back his letters to Pope, she expressed her conviction that the materials for the printed volume could not have been drawn from Ireland, just because those letters formed part of it.[138] The literal interpretation of a single phrase of Swift, in a letter which bears internal evidence of the grievous extent of his malady, being negatived by the authority upon which it claims to be based, there still exists the ambiguous assurance of Pope that he returned the correspondence after the death of Gay, which happened in December, 1732. The replies, however, of Swift in the quarto, instead of stopping at this date, extend to August, 1738, and those of the last half-dozen years must have remained with the poet. The Dean had said in 1717, that he kept no copies of letters. Mrs. Whiteway testified that he had never taken a copy during the twelve years she had been at his elbow, "excepting of a letter to a lord-lieutenant or a bishop, whom he feared might make an ill use of it;" and as for the letters to Pope she had seen him write them, and send them off immediately. Letters of which Pope had the originals, and Swift no copies, must plainly have owed their publicity to Pope.

There is another inconsistency which makes it very doubtful whether the poet could have sent back the earlier letters of Swift[Pg xcvii] any more than the later. After informing the Dean, on December 30, 1736, that the joint letter of August, 1723, had been recently printed by Curll, Pope went on to say, "Your answer to that letter, he has not got; it has never been out of my custody; for whatever is lent is lost, wit as well as money, to these needy poetical readers." Here we have Pope avowing that he retained in 1736 an answer of the Dean, which belonged to the year 1723. There is no indication that it was an exception to the rest of the correspondence, and the presumption therefore is that none of the letters which Pope received from Swift had been restored upon the death of Gay in 1732. The poet's assertion is rendered more suspicious by the absence of all allusion to the circumstance in the arguments which he addressed through Lord Orrery to Swift, in March, 1737, with a view to convince him that his refusal to return Pope's own letters was unjust. No plea could have had greater force than the statement that Pope had already sent back the letters of Swift, and was only asking the Dean to deal by him as he had dealt by the Dean.

Although we were to suppose, against the evidence, that the poet had given up the whole of the originals, he must still have retained copies. He avowedly inserted six letters of the Dean in the quarto to clear up the history of the publication, and four of the number belong to the years 1732 and 1733, which shows that Pope continued to have the command of the correspondence at the period of its appearance in 1741. Indeed copies of five of the published letters of Swift to Pope, with eight that are unpublished, are in the Oxford papers, and since none of the six, which the poet contributed to the quarto, are among them, more must have existed, unless he had kept the originals. That he had never parted with them is the just conclusion from the facts,[139] and his note is one of those instances in which he had recourse to the licence he allowed[Pg xcviii] himself of "equivocating genteelly." The letters of Swift to Gay may be presumed to have been returned to Swift, when the Duke of Queensberry examined Gay's papers after his death. The expressions in the Dean's child-like postscript of August 24 gave a colour to the notion that he had also got back his letters to Pope. The admission suggested to the poet to draw up a note which, read by the ordinary rules of language, affirms that the letters to himself were returned, as well as the letters to Gay, but in which the return of the letters, by a forced construction, might be made to apply to Gay alone, who is the immediate antecedent. This accounts for the death of Gay having been fixed upon for the era of the alleged restoration to the Dean of his correspondence with Pope, though there was no connection between the events, and though the choice of so early a date left unexplained the appearance in the quarto of the subsequent letters of Swift. That "any mention made by Mr. P. of the return or exchange of letters should be industriously suppressed" by Mr. P. "in the publication," was a necessary consequence, or it would have been manifest that the only letters which had been returned were those of Gay. By evasions like these the poet satisfied a conscience that held a lie to be justifiable, provided it was couched in language which could be wrested by the deceiver into a different sense from what it bore to the deceived.

The correspondence between Swift and Bolingbroke completed the series, which Pope complained was printed without his consent. Of the eight letters from Bolingbroke, seven were written in conjunction with the poet. These joint compositions, like the partnership letters of Gay, are exactly those which would have been returned to Pope. One of the number furnishes evidence, which almost amounts to a demonstration, that the collection of 1741 proceeded from himself. When he brought out the avowed edition of his letters in 1737, he inserted at the end of the volume a letter of Swift, a letter of his own, and the joint letter from himself and Bolingbroke, of which Curll had obtained a copy. This little supplement was ushered in by a notice which says, "Since the foregoing sheets were printed off, the following[Pg xcix] letters having been published without the consent of their writers, we have added them, though not in the order of time." Whatever the motive the announcement was deceptive. The letter of Swift was his reply to the joint letter of Pope and Bolingbroke—that very reply which the poet boasted a month or two before could not be produced surreptitiously, because it had never been out of his custody. Nobody else, by his own showing, had the power to make it public, no earlier impression of it is known to exist, and, as will be seen by comparing it with the copy from the Oxford papers, it was printed with omissions and variations, which must have been the act of the poet, or he would have restored the genuine readings when he included it in his appendix. In juxtaposition with it is a letter from Pope to Swift, dated December 10, 1725, which in like manner has never been found in any prior publication, and which of all his letters to the Dean is the single one we are certain was in his power when the quarto of 1737 was in the press. He transcribed the original at the time it was written, and sent a copy to Lord Oxford, ostensibly to let him see the way in which he was mentioned in it, but partly, perhaps, because the poet thought well of the production.[140] This letter of December, 1725, reappears in tho quarto of 1741, with the addition for the first time of a postscript by Bolingbroke. A copy of the entire performance is among the Oxford papers, and reveals the fact that the Pope portion, and the Bolingbroke portion, are both abridged in the published version. Yet although the persons who brought out the collection of 1741, had the manuscript before them, or they could not have given Bolingbroke's share of the letter, they nevertheless, by a marvellous coincidence, print Pope's share precisely as it had been printed by Pope himself in 1737. The conclusion is irresistible that the editor of the quarto of 1737, was the editor of the collection of 1741. The postscript of Bolingbroke was not written when he was in the house with Pope, but was added subsequently when he got back to Dawley,[141] and its omission from the volume of 1737[Pg c] was due to the circumstance, that the poet had not then received back his correspondence from Swift, and only possessed a copy of his own carefully composed essay.

The letter of Bolingbroke to Swift, in which the poet had no share, was commenced at Aix-la-Chapelle on August 30, 1729, and completed at Dawley on October 5. Pope appears not to have seen it before it was sent; for four days later, on October 9, he says to Swift, "Lord Bolingbroke has told me ten times over, he was going to write to you. Has he or not?" The elaborate epistle of Bolingbroke was a reply to a letter which Swift had addressed to Pope, and the consequent interest that Pope would have had in the answer, may have induced the author, proud of his production, to provide him with a copy; but however he came by it, a copy was deposited by him in Lord Oxford's library, where, as in the quarto of 1741, it is the single example of an epistle by Bolingbroke alone. Swift had by him a quantity of Bolingbroke's correspondence, some of which would have been full as appropriate as the specimen that is given, and it is a weighty fact in the question whether the Dean or the poet furnished the materials to the printer, that the one letter selected was the one letter that Pope possessed. The three letters which are inserted from Swift to Bolingbroke incline the scale to the same side. The first relates in part to Pope, the conclusion of the second is addressed to him, and the third is the answer to the letter of August 30, 1729. It was never pretended that the Dean received back his letters to Bolingbroke, and it was not his habit to make copies; but with our knowledge that the poet and Bolingbroke had much of their correspondence with Swift in common, we may be sure that these three letters, at least, had been in the hands of Pope, and if he did not retain the originals, it would in 1729, the year to which they all belong, have been in accordance with his common practice to transcribe them.

Thus what was printed of the correspondence, and what was not printed, concur to show that Pope must have been the source from which it was derived. The history of the circumstances under which the publication took place will confirm this inference. Pope asserted that the quarto was "copied[Pg ci] from an impression sent from Dublin." There is now proof in abundance that the Dublin edition, which came out as the seventh volume of Swift's works, was copied from an impression sent from England. Mr. Deane Swift, a cousin of his famous namesake, and the son-in-law of Mrs. Whiteway, informed Mr. Nichols, in 1778, that "he was the only person then living who could give a full account how Faulkner's seventh volume, that is, how Swift's and Pope's correspondence came to be, not first printed, but first published in Ireland."[142] The italics are Mr. Swift's own, and the fact on which he laid such especial emphasis is at once attested and explained by the statement of Faulkner himself to Dr. Birch in August, 1749. "Mr. Pope," he said, "sent to Ireland to Dr. Swift, by Mr. Gerrard, an Irish gentleman, then at Bath, a printed copy of their letters, with an anonymous letter, which occasioned Dr. Swift to give Mr. Faulkner leave to reprint them at Dublin, though Mr. Pope's edition was published first."[143] Faulkner also solicited the sanction of Pope, and we have the poet's summary of the application, in the letter he wrote to Mr. Nugent on August 14, 1740: "Last week I received an account from Faulkner, the Dublin bookseller, that the Dean himself has given him a collection of letters of his own and mine, and others, to be printed, and he civilly asks my consent, assuring me the Dean declares them genuine, and that Mr. Swift, Mrs. Whiteway's son-in-law, will correct the press, out of his great respect to the Dean and myself. He says they were collected by some unknown persons, and the copy sent with a letter importing that it was criminal to suppress such an amiable picture of the Dean, and his private character appearing in those letters, and that if he would not publish[Pg cii] them in his lifetime others would after his death." It is manifest from these particulars that Faulkner was not then aware that Pope himself had sent the correspondence to Swift, and the conviction was only forced upon his mind by subsequent events. But the bookseller could not be mistaken on the point that the letters were handed to him in print. As he later told Dr. Birch that the Dean had given him leave to reprint them because they were printed already, so he proclaimed that his volume was a reprint at the time. He inserted at the end of his first edition the few new letters which were added in the quarto of 1741, and says that he found them in the London impression "after he had reprinted the foregoing sheets." Faulkner had no sort of motive to deceive. Whether the letters were in type or in manuscript he had equally received them from Swift, and obtained his authority to publish them.

If further testimony is required it is supplied by Pope. To the mention of Mrs. Whiteway in Lord Orrery's letter of 1738 the poet appended a note in which he says, "This lady since gave Mr. Pope the strongest assurances that she had used her utmost endeavours to prevent the publication—nay, went so far as to secrete the book, till it was commanded from her, and delivered to the Dublin printer, whereupon her son-in-law, D. Swift, Esq., insisted upon writing a preface to justify Mr. P. from having any knowledge of it, and to lay it upon the corrupt practices of the printers in London; but this he would not agree to, as not knowing the truth of the fact." It was therefore a book, and a printed book, which was delivered to Faulkner, since if the collection transmitted to the Dean had been in manuscript, Mrs. Whiteway and her son-in-law would not have laid it upon the corrupt practices of the printers, and it must have been transmitted from England, or they would neither have laid it upon the printers of London, nor have proposed "to justify Mr. P. from having any knowledge of it." The story was told him while it could be refuted if it was false; but he did not venture to question the existence of the printed volume, and had nothing more to say than that he did not personally know that it was due to the corrupt practices of the London[Pg ciii] booksellers. He might have gone further, and stated that he knew the booksellers to be innocent.

The assertion of Faulkner, that it was Pope who sent this volume to Swift, is equally supported by unexceptionable evidence. The collection of 1735 was secretly printed and sold to Curll, and when a secretly printed work turns out to be the origin of the collection of 1741, the nature of the device proclaims its author. But the circumstance which most implicates Pope is his anxiety that it should not transpire that a printed volume had been sent to Swift at all. He informed his friend Allen that he had endeavoured to put a stop to the work, and that this had drawn forth replies from the "Dean's people—the women and the bookseller." With their statements before him, he kept back from Allen the main fact that the Dublin volume was taken entirely from a printed copy, and speaks instead as if it was taken from the originals. He adds that it is too manifest to admit of any doubt how many tricks have been played with the Dean's papers, and accused his "people" of secreting them as long as they feared he would not permit them to be published. This dishonest substitution of "originals" and "papers" for the printed book is a convincing proof that Pope had some motive, incompatible with innocence, for his studious perversion of the truth. The desire to obliterate the traces of his delinquency reappears in the preface to the quarto. He writes with implied censure of Swift for his sanction of the Dublin edition, and has the disingenuousness to conceal that he had merely allowed Faulkner to reproduce in Ireland a volume which had been printed in England—a volume over which the Dean had no control, and which being printed, he knew would inevitably be published.

The artful wording of the very note in which Pope refers to the printed book betrays his desire to keep the fact out of sight. His statement could enlighten no one who was previously ignorant. It was not from choice that he promulgated, however obscurely, the allegation of Mrs. Whiteway that the work had its origin in London. But he was forced upon one of two evils, and he selected the least. Mrs. Whiteway knew that the letters must either have been printed by Pope,[Pg civ] or have found their way to the press by the corruption of those who had access to his papers. She acquitted Pope, out of courtesy, perhaps, to his own protestations, and accepted the second conclusion, that the London booksellers had procured the manuscripts by bribes, though she could hardly have entertained the serious belief that the Curlls had been at the expense of purchasing and printing them, for no other purpose than to ship a solitary copy to Ireland. She was eager to be cleared from any possible imputation of abusing the trust which devolved on her through the imbecility of Swift,[144] and her anxiety to absolve herself and the Dean, is the secret of her son-in-law insisting upon writing a preface to prove that the traitors must have been in England and not in Ireland. He alone would have been responsible for the facts and arguments he adduced, and they would have appeared in the edition of Faulkner, where they would not have claimed the sanction of Pope. His ignorance could be no reason why an independent person should not tell what he knew and believed, and his unwillingness to be justified was in direct opposition to his conduct through life. It was for a different cause that he interfered with the execution of the design. Mr. Swift would have disclosed the fact that the letters of the poet had been returned to him through Lord Orrery, in 1737, that he had exclusive possession of the letters of the Dean, that the ground-work of the collection was at Twickenham, that it had been printed at London, and had come printed to Dublin. When he insisted upon fulfilling his intention, Pope, to divert him from it, must have been driven to propose the insertion of the exculpatory note. He drew it up in a form which would bear one meaning to those who were acquainted with the facts, and another to the multitude who were in the dark. He had the contradictory ends to answer of propitiating Mrs. Whiteway and concealing the truth, and his language, like everything he wrote on the question, is consequently vague and evasive.

In the same letter in which Pope ignored the existence of the printed book to Allen, and pretended that the Irish edition[Pg cv] was taken directly from the originals, he further asserted that the "Dean's people" had at length consented to give up the manuscripts. If the originals were really in their possession there would be strong grounds for concluding that the conspirators were at Dublin. If, on the contrary, the allegation of the poet was a wilful untruth, this additional misrepresentation must lead us to conclude that he was the author of a fraud from which he defended himself by falsehood. Mrs. Whiteway had, it is true, commissioned Mr. Nugent to acquaint him that she had secured several of his letters. Mr. Nugent, having delivered the message in March, 1740, informs her in April that he was authorised to receive them, and begs her to transmit them to him in London by a safe hand.[145] She evidently preferred that they should go direct to their owner, and wrote to Pope in May, that she would forward them by the first trustworthy messenger who would deliver them to Pope himself. It was agreed between them that Mr. M'Aulay should be the person; but they were ultimately sent to Lord Orrery, at his country seat in Ireland, in January or February, 1741, and were, no doubt, conveyed by him to their final destination when he visited England in March. The critic in the Athenæum plausibly conjectures that they were the letters which had been written since the transmission of the collection in June, 1737, and the late period at which they were received would account for none of them appearing in the quarto, which was published by the middle of April, 1741.

When Pope, at the beginning of August, 1740, heard from Faulkner that the Dean had given him permission to print, or rather to reprint, the correspondence, he expressed his conviction to Mr. Nugent, who was still meddling in the business, that the offer of returning the letters was a feint. "I presume now," he added, "that she would have sent but a few of no consequence, for the bookseller tells me there are several of Lord Bolingbroke's, &c., which must have been in the Dean's own custody."[146] Mrs. Whiteway had merely undertaken to[Pg cvi] return to Pope the letters which were written by Pope, and it is not apparent why the printing of several of the letters of Bolingbroke should have involved the conclusion that she was practising a feint, and would only have sent a few of no consequence. The incongruity of the observation seems to have been the result of the guilt which dictated it. The poet was aware that the originals promised him were a comparatively small number, which had no connection with the printed letters, and he was meeting the circumstance by anticipation, in the probable event of its reaching the ears of Mr. Nugent. The rest of the correspondence was already in his possession, and he assigned a foolish reason why Mrs. Whiteway would not have sent it, because the real reason could not be stated.

It was several months subsequent to this communication to Mr. Nugent, and after he had received the comments of Mrs. Whiteway on the volume which came from England, that he opened his griefs to Mr. Allen. The letter is not dated; but a letter to Warburton, which gives a portion of the same information as a piece of novel intelligence, bears the date of February 4, 1741. "They now offer," Pope tells Allen, "to send me the originals, which have been so long detained, and I will accept of them, though they have done their job." A few months later he reverted to the subject and says to Allen, "It will please you to know that I have received the packet of letters safe from Ireland by the means of Lord Orrery."[147] He has not the candour to acknowledge that the letters were voluntarily tendered him by Mrs. Whiteway long before the printed collection had been heard of. He wished to have it believed that they had only been offered to him since the booksellers "had done their job," and the motive for this deception must have been the desire to identify the letters from Mrs. Whiteway with the letters in Faulkner's volume, while he had a secret consciousness that they had nothing in common. It might be conjectured, indeed, that he was speaking of a distinct occurrence, and that Lord Orrery was the bearer of two sets of letters, though Pope mentions only one, if it were not certain, as I shall now proceed to show, that the[Pg cvii] originals of the printed collection sent to Dublin were never offered to him at all.

After the collection had been consigned to Faulkner, Mrs. Whiteway wrote her sentiments at large to Lord Orrery. She asked him, with reference to a letter of Pope's, if he believed the collection genuine, and slight as were her doubts, the question would have been absurd if she had professedly the originals of the correspondence in her hands. She declared her conviction that the poet had been betrayed by his own servants, and since the letters extended over three and twenty years, she could not have imagined that they had all the while been intercepted on their road to the post, but must have assumed that they had been abstracted from the cabinets in which they were stored away at Twickenham. The main stress of her argument against the theory that the work had been concocted in Ireland, was laid upon the presence of the letters of the Dean, which Pope alone could command, and not upon the letters of Pope, which might have been copied while they remained in the possession of Swift; but she pointed out the improbability of the supposition by remarking that no use had been made of the book in which Swift had stitched specimens of the correspondence of various eminent men, and which was peculiarly accessible from his habit of circulating it among his friends. In particular, she noticed that she had formerly his permission to take from it a letter of Pope, and she triumphantly remarks that this letter had not been printed. The boast could have had no force if all the printed correspondence had been the same correspondence she had promised to return. The notion that she had offered to send back the originals of the collection of 1741 is inconsistent with every part of her defence—a defence in which she was not afraid to challenge contradiction, since she authorised Lord Orrery to pass it on to Pope. Neither could the originals have been offered by Faulkner; for both at the time and afterwards he asserted that his volume was only a reprint. Pope may even be said to bear testimony against himself. He was eager to make it appear that the work was composed of materials which must have been drawn from the papers of Swift, and he took advantage of the erroneous[Pg cviii] phrase in Swift's postscript of August 24, to add, in a note, "The book that is now printed seems to be part of the collection here spoken of." The announcement that the "Dean's people" had acknowledged that they possessed a large proportion of the originals would have decided the question, and the silence of the poet is an admission that he dared not repeat in public, where it would meet the eye of the persons implicated, the fable he had palmed off upon Allen in private. Nay, when stating in the quarto that Mrs. Whiteway and her son-in-law charged the whole proceeding upon the corrupt practices of the London printers, he still did not venture to retort that the originals had never left the custody of the "Dean's people," who detained them in Dublin until, according to his own expression, the Dublin printers had "done their job." The fact was, that Allen had intimated his apprehension that Pope would be suspected of being concerned in the publication, and Pope replied that "the whole thing was so circumstanced that this could never be the case." To stifle the suggestion, he based a falsehood upon a foundation of truth, and spoke of the letters which Mrs. Whiteway had offered to send him, in the beginning of 1740, as though they had been the originals of the printed correspondence. His invention of a fiction to establish his innocence, is a sure indication of his guilt.

The Dean's people promised Pope the copy of the correspondence, that he might correct and expunge what he pleased. "I dare not," he wrote to Allen, "even do this, for they would say I revised it." His mind immediately veered from decision to uncertainty, and in the next sentence but one he states that "he knows not whether to make any use of the permission or not." A little further, and he comes to the conclusion that until he sees the letters he can form no judgment of the proper measures to be pursued. "The excessive earnestness," he adds, "the Dean has been in for publishing them makes me hope they are castigated in some degree; or he must be totally deprived of his understanding." Lord Mansfield deposed, from the personal information of Pope, that his imperfect memory of their contents increased his anxiety to stop the publication.[148] [Pg cix]In the midst of his apprehensions, his knowledge of Swift's incapacity, and his conviction that it would be insanity to allow the correspondence to go forth in its integrity, he yet resolved not to expurgate the copy, and then doubted whether he would expurgate it or not. This easy kind of hesitation, which has none of the appearance of genuine alarm, was what might be expected in a man who had already revised the letters to his heart's content, and was poorly performing a borrowed part. Though he ended by refusing to retouch a text of his own preparing, he employed the interval while the sheets were submitted to his criticism in forestalling the Dublin edition. Mr. D. Swift believed that the correspondence was first published in Ireland. Faulkner asserted that it was first published in England, and Faulkner, who could not well be mistaken, was right. No advertisement of the Irish volume is to be found in the "Dublin News Letter" till some time after the English volume was on sale, and no copy exists in the public libraries, or after long search could be heard of from the second-hand booksellers, which does not contain the additional matter inserted in the quarto.[149] In the prefatory notice to the quarto itself we are told that the letters are taken "from an impression sent from Dublin, and said to be printed by the Dean's direction." This was the impression which had been privately forwarded to Pope, and the language seems to have been carefully selected to avoid the assertion that there had been a publication of the work. The poet's scheme may be discerned in the account he gave to Allen. He informed him that the book, being most of it printed, was "put past preventing," but that he was "trying all the means possible to retard it." In plain words, he was manœuvring to keep back the Irish edition till his rival reprint was in the market. When he had succeeded in his device, he repeated his old tactics of advertising that the surreptitious collection was the cause of his own, and at the same time bespoke the preference for his reprint by announcing that it would contain "several additional letters."[150][Pg cx]

Apart from these additions, the quarto of Pope is a reproduction, with some variations, of the Dublin impression, and a few notes which Faulkner had doubtless found in the volume sent from England, are said in the quarto to be taken from Faulkner. Nevertheless there is strong internal evidence that a portion of the quarto had an independent origin, and had been printed off before the Irish edition was received. The correspondence consists of 209 pages, which are numbered consecutively from 1 to 115. At this point the letters of Swift to Gay commence, and instead of the numbers proceeding in regular order, they go back to page 89, and are thence continued without any break to the final page, 182. That the arrangement is not a typographical mistake is clear from the signatures of the sheets being in accordance with the paging,—a coincidence which was barely possible if the figures had been a misprint. The correspondence of Swift with Gay begins on sheet N, which is the letter of the alphabet that answers to page 89 in a quarto volume, and this keeping between the letters and the figures is preserved throughout. But there is a second coincidence which is absolutely fatal to the idea that the confusion in the paging was an error of the press. The quarto edition was accompanied by an edition in folio, which was the same impression with the matter parcelled out into pages of greater length, and with the requisite changes in the numbering of the pages and the signatures of the sheets. In spite of the change there is the identical peculiarity that distinguishes the quarto. The numbers run on unbroken from 1 to 108, when we arrive at the letters to Gay. Here we recommence with page 85, and starting from this new basis the figures proceed in regular succession to the end. The sheet at page 85 is marked Y, the proper letter for the[Pg cxi] folio size, and as in the quarto the signatures, in every instance, correspond with the pages. The defect cannot be explained by the supposition that the work had been divided into portions, which were printed separately for the sake of expedition. With the text of the Dublin copy to guide his calculations, no compositor could have committed the error of pronouncing that matter which covers 115 pages could he contained in 88. The evident cause of the anomaly is that, after the quarto in its original form had passed through the press, Pope saw reason to cancel the opening part of the volume which preceded Swift's correspondence with Gay. The materials in their second form occupied more space than in their first, and instead of filling only 88 pages in the quarto, and 84 in the folio, run on to 115 in the one, and 108 in the other. The consequence is that the pages in excess bear the same numbers with the succeeding uncancelled pages which could not be altered. The process is rendered further apparent by the signatures to the sheets. In both folio and quarto, those on the surplus pages, in the cancelled division of the volume, have an asterisk affixed to denote that the signatures had been already employed;[151] but though the sheets have this mark of repetition, they are placed in the volume before the uncancelled sheets which retain the primitive signatures, and which did not admit of any change. In the quarto, again, a half sheet precedes the letters to Gay, which could not have happened unless it had been a subsequent interpolation, when the matter was insufficient to make the sheet complete. The half-sheet, the duplicate paging, and the duplicate signatures, are all the result of the insertion of fresh materials after the[Pg cxii] work was struck off, and betray that there was an earlier form of the quarto of 1741, which contained less than the Dublin edition, and which, therefore, being prior to it, is a proof that the correspondence was originally printed by Pope. The letters in the quarto are numbered, and since the series is unbroken throughout, the original cancelled division must ostensibly have comprised as many letters as when it was subsequently enlarged. But a letter to Gay, dated Nov. 23, 1727, is found by the copies preserved in the Oxford papers, to be compounded of three distinct letters, and this system of fusion would have permitted the introduction of large additions without deranging the continuity Of the numbers, which Pope would have been anxious to preserve. The cancels he made to suit his varying views were in accordance with his practice. The miscellaneous prose works, which follow the letters, have in one place alone a cancel of upwards of a hundred pages. Equally characteristic was the desire to preserve any of the old sheets which could be retained, regardless of the blemish to the book, and the trace they might afford of his manœuvres. It was a repetition of the paper-sparing policy which led him to incorporate the suppressed sheets of his Wycherley into the volume of 1735.[152]

On the 22nd of March, 1741, Pope called upon Lord Orrery at his house in London, and found him writing to Swift. The poet took the pen from his hand, and continued the letter. After large professions of affection, he went on to say, "I must confess, a late incident has given me some pain; but I am satisfied you were persuaded it would not have given me any, and whatever unpleasant circumstances the printing our letters might be attended with, there was one that pleased me,—that the strict friendship we have borne each other so long is thus made known to all mankind. As far as it was your will, I cannot be angry at what, in all other respects, I am quite uneasy under. Had you asked me, before you gave them away, I think I could have[Pg cxiii] proposed some better monument for our friendship, or, at least, of better materials." Any words addressed to Swift were lost upon him now, and Pope in reality was speaking to Lord Orrery, and to those who might hereafter read his protestations. He had apparently forgotten that just four years before he had complained to the same Lord Orrery, that the Dean had denied his request when he wished to insert some of the letters in the quarto of 1737.[153] The monument he was eager to erect to their friendship in 1737, he repudiated in 1741. He affirmed that he could have proposed a better, but never hinted what it was; or at least of choicer materials, but never troubled himself further about them. This was the smallest part of the contradiction. He refused his consent to the reprint of the book sent to Dublin, and had even tried, he told Allen, to stop it by threats of law. It is true, he confessed to Mr. Nugent at the outset, and continued to confess to Allen, that he had no hope of prevailing; but his efforts are not the less the measure of his pretended disgust. Yet he instantly appropriated the correspondence he was anxious to stifle in its birth, contrived to anticipate the Dublin edition, incorporated the entire collection into his works, and published it simultaneously in folio, quarto, and octavo. He stated in the prefatory notice, that he had refused to revise the letters, because they were committed to the press without his consent; but the annoyance which would not permit him to revise the letters was no check to his haste in adopting, or to his zeal in circulating them. For a man who was "quite uneasy" at their appearance, his eagerness to countenance, to parade, and to propagate them was amazing, and the manifest duplicity is not the least forcible of the arguments which bring the whole contrivance home to Pope. Warburton applauded him for the little resentment "he expressed at the indiscretion of his old friend." He affected far more than his advocate supposed; but if it had been otherwise it is strange that Warburton should not have perceived that to talk of resentment was ridiculous when the poet was espousing "the indiscretion,"[Pg cxiv] and was doing his utmost to disseminate the letters he feigned a wish to suppress.

Curll republished the letters under the title of "Dean Swift's Literary Correspondence." Pope filed a bill in Chancery against Curll on June 4, 1741. The poet not only demanded protection for his own letters, but desired that the bookseller should be restrained from vending the letters of Swift, who was not a party to the suit, nor had commissioned any one to interfere on his behalf. The case was memorable both from its intrinsic importance, and from the celebrity of the plaintiff. In his answer, on the 13th of June, Curll admitted that nobody had authorised his work. He rested his defence on three propositions. He maintained that private correspondence did not come within the Copyright Act of Queen Anne, because the Act was declared in the title to be for the "Encouragement of Learning," whereas letters on familiar subjects were not learned productions; and because the Act was designed to protect books which were avowedly composed for the press, whereas letters were written without the intention of converting them into a literary commodity. He said that he was informed, and believed, that the letters were first "printed"[154] at Dublin, and he contended that all persons in England had a right to reproduce books which were first "published" in Ireland. He finally argued that letters were in the nature of a gift to the receiver, and that after they were delivered to the Dean they became his property. On the motion to dissolve the injunction on these grounds, Lord Hardwicke decided that they were none of them valid. He refused to recognise a distinction between letters and other compositions. He denied that a prior publication in Ireland could deprive an English author of his English rights. He, above all, determined that though the paper on which the letter was written might possibly be the property of the receiver, the matter remained[Pg cxv] the property of the writer. For the same reason that he admitted Pope's title to his own letters, he declined to continue the injunction with respect to the letters addressed to him, which had never ceased to belong to the persons who penned them.[155] The celebrated Murray was one of the counsel for the poet,[156] and afterwards, when Lord Chief Justice, he quoted and confirmed the decision of the Chancellor. "The question," he said, "was whether the property was not transferred to the correspondent. Lord Hardwicke thought not, and that the writer was still the proprietor."[157] "Dean Swift," he said subsequently, "was certainly the proprietor of the paper upon which Pope's letters to him were written; but no disposition, no transfer of paper upon which the composition is written can be construed a conveyance of the copy, without the author's express consent to print and publish, much less against his will."[158] Just and valuable as is the rule of law which prohibits the publication of a letter without the permission of its author, the manner in which Pope invoked it was singular. According to his statement it was Swift that had prepared and put forth a correspondence, in which more of the letters were from the pen of the Dean than from the pen of the poet. Pope, while professing to be vexed beyond measure at this exposure of private papers, asked for an injunction, not for the purpose of suppressing them, but to obtain a monopoly of the sale. He was not even content to reclaim his personal share in the publication of the friend whom he upbraided for[Pg cxvi] the act. He tried to prevent any one except himself from profiting by Swift's part of the book, and at the same time that he was endeavouring to secure goods which did not belong to him, he reproached their owner for displaying them. His conduct once more betrayed the truth he laboured to conceal. He was the compiler of the collection, and instinctively regarded a rival edition as an invasion of his rights. His proceedings were unnatural, if Swift was the sole originator of the work; but if it had a different source we can perceive why Pope was jealous of the least interference with property which, from the outset, he considered to be exclusively his own.

A fatality attended the correspondence of Pope. Curll, in defiance of him, printed his letters to Cromwell. Lord Oxford, in spite of his disapproval, printed his letters to Wycherley. An unknown person, by unknown means, obtained the whole of the collection of 1735, printed it secretly at his own expense, and sold it for a song. To render the history uniform and complete, Swift, who would not permit Pope to print their letters, printed them himself, while Pope, changing sides with him, remonstrated and threatened. That nothing might be wanting to the singularity of the case, the three last sets of letters stole into the world when they were under the vigilant guardianship of the poet, and the two last sets got abroad after the abiding paroxysm of terror, engendered by the indiscretion of a single dissolute friend, had induced him to wrest his correspondence from friends of every degree for the purpose of securing it from the possibility of publication. Mrs. Whiteway remarked to Lord Orrery, that among the letters in the Dean's stitched book were numbers from the greatest men in England for genius, learning, and power,—from Bolingbroke, Oxford, Bathurst, and Peterborough; from Addison, Congreve, Prior, Parnell, and Gay. She said these were as easily pilfered, and would have been as interesting to the world, as the letters of Pope and Swift;[159] but nobody invaded the sanctity of the private correspondence of the poet's contemporaries, even when the papers were open to half the gossips of Dublin. He stood alone in a misfortune which happened to him no less than[Pg cxvii] four times, and which it is to be feared would have happened a fifth if he had lived long enough to accumulate the materials for a fresh volume. He relaxed his correspondence with Caryll in 1729, and with Swift in 1737, as a means to compel them to resign his former letters, and to both he used the same expression,—that "he did not write upon the terms of other honest men."[160] The fallacy of the parallel was in the epithet. If he had resembled other men in their honesty he might have shared in their immunity from the alleged treachery of friends like Oxford and Swift, and of enemies like Curll.

Of all the deceptions which the poet practised to get his correspondence under the eye of the world, his dealings towards Swift are the worst. He had failed to gain his consent to putting forth the letters while any judgment yet remained to him; but no sooner had he sunk into dotage than, trusting to his inability to detect the cheat, Pope beguiled him into sanctioning the publication by sending him the volume ready printed, with a flattering exhortation, the echo of what he had written on a former occasion,[161] "importing that it was criminal to suppress such an amiable picture of the Dean and his private character."[162] The moment Swift fell into the pit his friend had dug for him, his friend denounced him for the act. "I think," he wrote to Mr. Nugent, "I can make no reflections upon this strange incident but what are truly melancholy, and humble the pride of human nature,—that the greatest of geniuses, though prudence may have been the companion of wit (which is very rare) for their whole lives past, may have nothing left them at last but their vanity. No decay of body is half so miserable!" Extraordinary language to come from the pen of the man whose vanity, without any excuse from the decay of his faculties, had made him eager to print the letters in 1737, and who had been only thwarted in his desire because Swift was wanting in the vanity by which he himself was[Pg cxviii] impelled,—infamous language when the deed he reprobated was his own, and Swift the innocent dupe; and when having traded successfully in the mental afflictions of his friend, he proceeded to hold up his victim, as the criminal. But the simulated indignation is less revolting than the simulated fondness. "When the heart is full of tenderness," he said to the Dean, in the letter of March 22, 1741, "it must be full of concern at the absolute impotency of all words to come up to [it]. I value and enjoy more the memory of the pleasure and endearing obligations I have formerly received from you than the perfect possession of any other. Think it not possible that my affection can cease but with my last breath. If I could think yours was exhausted I should grieve, but not reproach you. If I felt myself even hurt by you I should be confident you knew not the blow you gave, but had your hand guided by another." The hand which guided him was the same hand that was at that moment aiming a blow at his reputation. Taking advantage of his cruel malady and prostrate understanding, Pope was even then endeavouring to fasten upon him the stigma of his own personal treachery, and this pretended magnanimity in forgiving a deed which he had contrived and instigated was in itself a calumny and a fraud.

If any doubt could exist that it was Pope who put forth the collection of 1735, and the Swift collection of 1741, we have still in the quarto of 1737 his own avowed version of a large portion of his correspondence. He published it with the express object of correcting the corrupt text of spurious editions, and there remains the inquiry whether he published it truly. When he burnt three-fourths of it, and deposited copies of the rest in the library of Lord Oxford, he professed to have preserved the originals from which the copies were taken. Lord Bolingbroke discovered a great number of returned letters among his papers after his death, and told Dr. Heberden that they contained many alterations and corrections, which he supposed had been made with the intention of printing them some time or other.[163] From this it would be inferred[Pg cxix] that those which had been printed were not part of the collection, and that the poet had found it inexpedient to retain vouchers, which would condemn if they did not acquit him. Unfortunately the whole of the manuscripts were destroyed by Lord Bolingbroke, and beyond the unsatisfactory information conveyed in his remark, nothing can now be known of them. The literal interpretation of his language is favoured by the evidence yet within our reach, and we should conclude that Pope had not kept originals which would have revealed alterations in the published letters of a far more serious nature than any which Bolingbroke appears to have suspected.

John Caryll, a Roman Catholic country gentleman residing in Sussex, was among the intimate correspondents of Pope for twenty-five years, from 1710 to 1735. The poet wrote to him on Nov. 19, 1712, and asked to have the "whole cargo of his epistles returned," which he said might be of use "in a design he had lately engaged in." This design was probably to furnish some essays to the "Guardian," which commenced on the 12th of March, 1713. He promised to restore the letters when he had done with them, and his friend at once complied with his desire. After the surreptitious publication of his correspondence with Cromwell, Pope, in December, 1726, renewed his petition to Caryll to make over to him "all such papers as he had too partially preserved;" but the object of the request this time was "to put them out of the power of Curll." The poet announced that he would send back those which could do no hurt to the character of himself, his friend, or any other person; that he would retain those which "would serve to bear testimony of his own love for good men, or theirs for him;" and implied, as a consequence, that he would destroy those which did not fall under either of these heads. By this division the insignificant letters alone would have been restored to Caryll, and whether he was mistrustful of the use to which Pope might apply the remainder, or whether he was anxious to preserve intact the memorials of his intimacy with a celebrated man, he did not think fit to accede to the demand. A diminution in the frequency and cordiality of their correspondence ensued, and lasted for upwards of two years. Caryll at length complained, and Pope replied in February 1729, that[Pg cxx] he could not open his mind to his acquaintances unless they would return him at the end of every year "the forfeitures of his discretion, and commit to his justice what he trusted only to their indulgence." Upon this intimation that compliance was to be the condition of intimacy, Caryll yielded the point, and the receipt of the letters was acknowledged by the poet on the 8th of April. The Sussex squire defeated the purpose for which they were extorted by copying the greater part of the collection. He persevered in the practice till near the close of his life. The last letter from Pope which he caused to be transcribed is dated July 17, 1735, and he died on the 6th of April, 1736. When his grandson sold the hereditary estate in 1767, and retired from England to the continent, the family papers were left behind, stowed away in boxes, where they remained for nearly three quarters of a century. They then came into the possession of Mr. Dilke, and have since been presented by his grandson, Sir Charles W. Dilke, to the British Museum. Among the manuscripts were a dozen folio books, containing the farm and domestic accounts, and in a volume similar in appearance Mr. Dilke discovered the copies of the letters of Pope, together with copies of others from the Dukes of Berwick, Beaufort, and Norfolk, from Dryden, Wycherley, Steele, Roger Lestrange, St. Evremond, and Le Grand. The external and internal evidence leaves no doubt of their authenticity. One unexpected confirmation of their genuineness turned up in an autograph letter of Pope to the younger Caryll, dated Nov. 8, 1712, and which was sent by Mr. Tuckwell to Mr. Croker. The letters to the younger Caryll remained with his widow. The few which exist are originals in the custody of different collectors, and this letter of Nov. 8 is a link in a series of facts that are only known through the transcripts in the Caryll folio. The recovery of documents, which Pope did not suspect were in existence, discloses to us his mode of dealing with his correspondence when, having no idea that it could rise up against him, he ventured to use it without reserve.

After calling in his letters to his friends, Pope proceeded to arrange them in order, and said "they formed altogether an unimportant, but yet an innocent history of himself." "You make,[Pg cxxi] I assure you," he wrote to Caryll, July 8, 1729, "no small figure in these annals from 1710 to 1720 odd. Upon my word, sir, I am glad to see how long, and how often, and how much I have been obliged to you, as well as how long, how often, and how much I have been sensible of and expressed it." Notwithstanding this assurance, Caryll made a very small figure indeed in the published collection. Four letters only were addressed to the "Hon. J. C., Esq." in the volume of 1735, and these initials, in the quarto of 1737, were added to a fifth letter which had previously been headed, "Mr. Pope to ----." One other letter, in the quarto, bore the title to "Mr. C——"; but it was separated from the former group, and it is from the Caryll copy that we learn how to fill up the blank. Both in the edition of 1735 and 1737 Pope published a letter to the "Hon. James Craggs, Esq.," which induced Roscoe to conclude that he was the person indicated by the initials, and it is not improbable that the poet designed to mislead his readers, especially as the claim of Caryll to be styled Honourable was only a Jacobite assumption, derived from his being heir to his uncle, who had been created a peer by the exiled James II. But though Pope did not wish to repeat in public his profuse professions in private, and appear as the familiar friend and constant correspondent of a Roman Catholic country gentleman, he as little desired to suppress the choicer portions of the effusions he had addressed to him. He conceived the idea of re-directing them, and compiled from them, in whole or in part, four fictitious letters to Blount, four to Addison, two to Congreve, and one each to Wycherley, Steele, Trumbull, and Digby. A second letter to Digby, which appeared in the edition of 1735, was transferred to Arbuthnot in the quarto of 1737. Half a dozen letters at most were allotted to the initials of the Sussex squire, while fifteen were assigned to more imposing names, and a sixteenth was printed in a group of three to the "Hon. ——" Rather than credit an imposition so childish, and yet so unwarrantable, we should have recourse to the theory that Pope sometimes sent the same letter to different persons. Swift assured him that the best system extant for the conduct of human life might be collected from his epistles, and they certainly abound in generalities which, like the[Pg cxxii] clown's answer, that suited all questions, might have been written to anybody. But a comparison of the printed letters with the Caryll copies, shows that this solution is inadmissible, and the observation of the clown, when his answer proved inopportune, is equally applicable to the contrivance of Pope—"I see things may serve long, and not serve ever."[164]

The "Spectator" of the 10th of November, 1712, contained some remarks by Pope on the verses which the Emperor Hadrian composed when he was dying. The poet asked Caryll's opinion of the criticism, and the substance of his reply is embodied in the rejoinder of Pope. "The supposition you draw from the suspicion that Adrian was addicted to magic, seems to me a little uncharitable,—that he might fear no sort of Deity, good or bad,—since in the third verse he plainly testifies his apprehension of a future state by being solicitous whither his soul was going. As to what you mention of his using gay and ludicrous expressions, I have already owned my opinion that the expressions are not so, but that diminutives are often in Latin taken for expressions of tenderness and concern." This comment is introduced, in the printed correspondence, into the letter to Steele of November 29, 1712, and if it was sent to him as well as to Caryll both must have objected to the gay and ludicrous expressions of Hadrian, both must have spoken of the suspicion that he was addicted to magic, both must have inferred from it that he feared no sort of Deity, good or bad, and the language of both must have been as identical as their ideas.

"I know," Pope wrote to Caryll, August 22, 1717, "you will take part in rejoicing for the victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, in the zeal you bear to the Christian interest, though your cousin of Oxford, with whom I dined yesterday, says there is no other difference in the Christians beating the Turks or the Turks beating the Christians, than whether the Emperor shall first declare war against Spain, or Spain declare it against the Emperor." In the published version the passage forms part of a letter to Edward Blount dated September 8, 1717, and either we must admit that it was never written to him, or[Pg cxxiii] believe that Caryll and Blount had each an Oxford cousin, that the poet dined with the Oxford cousin of Caryll on August 21, and with the Oxford cousin of Blount on September 7, that both these cousins made, at their respective dinners, the same epigrammatic observation in the very same words, and that the extraordinary coincidence struck Pope so little that he did not even remark upon it.

Another passage of a letter to Caryll, dated September 20, [1713] reappears in a letter to Blount dated February 10, 1716. "I am just returned from the country, whither Mr. Rowe did me the favour to accompany me, and to pass a week at Binfield. I need not tell you how much a man of his turn could not but entertain me; but I must acquaint you there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition almost peculiar to that gentleman, which renders it impossible to part from him without that uneasiness and chagrin which generally succeeds all great pleasures. I have just been taking a solitary walk by moonshine in St. James's Park, full of reflections of the transitory nature of all human delights, and giving my thoughts a loose into the contemplation of those sensations of satisfaction which probably we may taste in the more exalted company of separate spirits, when we range the starry walks above." Thus Pope, who on his return to town in September, 1713, after a week's companionship with Rowe, took a solitary walk by moonlight and meditated on the transitory nature of human delights, and the happy intercourse of spirits, was led by the power of association, after another week spent at Binfield with Rowe in February, 1716, to renew the solitary walk by moonlight the instant he returned, and indulge in the old contemplation on the transitory nature of human delights, and the happy intercourse of separate spirits. What renders more singular the second moonlight walk is that the date assigned to it was the memorable season when the Thames was frozen over, and when the quantity of snow was as unusual as the intensity of the cold. The thaw commenced the day before the fragile little bard sallied out for his stroll, and he must indeed have been lost in contemplation "of the starry walks above" not to have been checked in his moonlight rambles by the deplorable condition of the walks below. None of the phenomena[Pg cxxiv] which were attracting the attention of the rest of the world,—the breaking up of the long and terrible winter, the deluge of melting snow, the chilling atmosphere, the dreary prospect,—received a passing notice from him. He saw nothing except the moonshine, despite its watery gleam, and thought of nothing except the spirits in the stars.

In the collection of 1735 there appeared a letter to Digby, which is dated September 10, 1724, and is compounded from two letters, to Caryll of November 23 and December 25, 1725. In the letter of November 23, Pope says to Caryll, "My time has been spent in a trembling attendance upon death, which has at last seized one of our family,—my poor old nurse." This sentence was inserted in the letter to Digby, but as the nurse did not die till November 5, 1725, the information could not have been communicated to him in September, 1724. The motive of the poet in altering the dates of his letters when he assigned a fanciful address to them was probably to adapt the chronology to the circumstances of his new dramatis personæ. His earliest letter to Edward Blount is dated August, 1714, and when he transferred the moonlight reverie from 1713 to 1716, he may have been influenced by the consideration that in the former year his correspondence with Blount had not commenced. The letter to Caryll of November 23, and the letter to Digby of September 10, both open with the same compliment on their return from the Continent, and the date may have been altered from 1725 to 1724 to make it harmonise with Digby's travels abroad. In remedying one inconsistency, Pope fell into another. A new use was found for the letter in the quarto of 1737. Arbuthnot died in February, 1735, at the very time when there is reason to suppose that the poet printed the P. T. collection. The final letter in the volume is from the Doctor, and it was apparently added at the last moment. It was then too late to be thinking of a re-distribution of the materials, and the idea was not executed, or perhaps conceived till 1737, when the address, which had been changed from Caryll to Digby, was once more changed from Digby to Arbuthnot. In the interval Pope appears to have detected the anachronism. He retained the day of the month, but struck out the year. He preserved the[Pg cxxv] announcement, "death has seized one of our family," but dropped the words "my poor old nurse." Her death nevertheless could alone have been meant; for in the letters to Caryll, as in the letter to Digby, several contemporaneous particulars are mentioned, which being repeated in the letter to Arbuthnot, limit its date to the period of the poor old nurse's decease. In both cases Pope's time had been spent in attending upon the dying patient, in both cases he and his mother had been ill together, in both cases these incidents had hindered his writing, in both cases he had been questioned respecting the effect produced upon his mind by the attacks upon his translation of the "Odyssey," and in both cases he had been less troubled by the criticisms upon his writings than by the imputations upon his morals, in consequence of some reports which had been spread of his intrigues with Martha Blount. It follows that the letter to Arbuthnot, though dated September 10, must have been written subsequent to the death of the nurse on November 5. But there is unanswerable evidence that at that time, and for weeks and months afterwards, he had constant personal intercourse with the poet. He was at his elbow, and not on the Continent,[165] and the event could not have been communicated to him as news upon his return from any journey he ever made to France. The year was omitted by Pope exactly because he could fix upon none which would bear the test of examination.[166] When it is plain that the letter could not have been addressed to Arbuthnot, it is superfluous to dwell upon the improbability that he and[Pg cxxvi] Caryll should have put the same question with regard to the "railing papers about the 'Odyssey,'" or to enumerate the other coincidences which are beyond the range of belief. The letter in all its shapes contains a passage which forms a strange comment upon Pope's proceedings, and is the bitterest sentence that will ever be pronounced upon them: "Falsehood is folly, says Homer, and liars and calumniators at last hurt none but themselves, even in this world. In the next, it is charity to say, God have mercy on them. They were the devil's vice-regents upon earth, who is the father of lies, and, I fear, has a right to dispose of his children."

On June 12, 1713, Pope wrote to Caryll, "As I hope, and would flatter myself, that you know me and my thoughts so entirely as never to be mistaken in either, so it is a pleasure to me that you guessed so right in regard to the author of that 'Guardian' you mentioned." On June 23 he wrote again, and said, "Your last is the more obliging as it hints at some little niceties in my conduct which your candour and affection prompt you to recommend to me." Both these sentences are inserted in an undated letter to Addison, which is compiled from three letters to Caryll, and no one could credit that Caryll and Addison had independently, and almost simultaneously communicated their guesses to Pope that he was the author of a particular essay in the "Guardian," and at the same time "hinted at little niceties in his conduct." The remainder of the letter to Addison is full of inconsistencies. The result of the imposition is to confound dates, events, opinions, and persons. Addison knows Pope and his thoughts so entirely as never to be mistaken in either; Addison's candour and affection prompt him to advise Pope in little niceties of conduct, and the perfect knowledge, the affection, the candour, and the advice, which are represented as proceeding from the most exquisite genius of the age, all appertain to an obscure country gentleman whose intimacy could not confer, in the eyes of the world, any lustre upon his friend. The whole of the letters to Addison are an absolute fiction. Four out of the five are from the Caryll correspondence, and the internal evidence is opposed to the genuineness of the fifth. The deception is aggravated by the erroneous aspect it imparts to the celebrated quarrel. In the letters which[Pg cxxvii] preceded the commencing rupture Pope appears as the zealous champion and bosom associate of the man he afterwards maligned, and we are left to suppose that the vaunted generosity on one side had been met by envy and hostility on the other. It is of virtual forgeries like these, which were specially concocted for the public, that the poet had the hardihood to say in his preface, "Many of them having been written on the most trying occasions, and all in the openness of friendship, are a proof what were his real sentiments, as they flowed warm from his heart, without the least thought that ever the world should be witness to them." He not only pretended that they derived a value from being the spontaneous expression of his feelings as they rose, but pledged his word that his motive in treasuring them up was to supply an authentic register of historical, literary, and personal events, and especially to provide a corrective to the misrepresentations of less scrupulous chroniclers. "I think more and more of it," he said to Lord Oxford, September 15, 1729, when dwelling upon the value of the collected letters and the importance of preserving them, "as finding what a number of facts they will settle the truth of, both relating to history and criticism, and parts of private life and character of the eminent men of my time." In the preface to the quarto of 1737 he made a statement of the same nature, and protested that the letters he kept were selected from the letters he destroyed, "merely as they preserved the memory of some friendships which would be ever dear to him, or set in a true light some matters of fact from which the scribblers of the times had taken occasion to asperse either his friends or himself." He volunteered the declaration to Lord Oxford when he was engaged in the manufacture of the correspondence which was to falsify the facts he pretended it "would settle the truth of," and he renewed the assertion in public as a prelude to the fabrications themselves.

The Wycherley correspondence furnishes fresh illustrations of the malpractices of the poet. For Pope's own share in it the published version is our only authority. The originals of Wycherley's part in it were placed in Lord Oxford's library in October, 1729, and withdrawn in June, 1735; but there still exist among the Oxford papers copies of six out of the eighteen[Pg cxxviii] published letters, besides six which are unpublished.[167] Imperfect as is the series, it is sufficient to show the infidelity of the work Pope put forth to the world. The letter borrowed from the Caryll group may conveniently be considered in connection with the rest. It was probably not included in the original volume of the Wycherley correspondence, which Pope published in 1729, for it is printed in the edition of 1735 on an interpolated half sheet signed * c. This is placed between sheet b and sheet c, and the numbers of its four pages—11 to 14—are repeated on sheet c. The space being greater than was required the letter has been divided into an unusual number of paragraphs, which are double the ordinary distance from each other, and as this device for spreading out the matter only brought it three or four lines over the top of the fourth page the remainder is left blank, contrary to the plan adopted in the rest of the book.[168] Pope we may presume had not completed in 1729 his task of reconstructing his letters to Caryll, and first introduced the manufactured letter into the old sheets of the Wycherley when he incorporated them into the volume of 1735. A single circumstance is enough to prove that the letter is fictitious. It is made up of extracts from two letters to Caryll of July 31, 1710, and January 25, 1711, and in the former of the two the poet quotes a remark from the "Tatler" on the reason why women are vainer than men. The passage is repeated in the letter to Wycherley which is dated June 23, 1705, nearly four years before the "Tatler" commenced, and Pope imagined he had obliterated the anachronism by changing the phrase "the 'Tatler' observes of women" into the general formula "it is observed of women."

The concoction of the letter to Wycherley out of the letters to Caryll is attended by the usual distortion of facts. The extract from the letter of July 31 is an expostulation against Caryll's extravagant compliments. A few months after the date which Pope assigned to the passage when he applied it to Wycherley, the old dramatist had addressed a kindred remonstrance to Pope. "I must confess," he wrote March 22,[Pg cxxix] 1705-6, "you try my patience, as you say in the beginning of your letter, not by the many lines in it, but the too many compliments you make me for nothing, in which you prove yourself, though a sincere friend, a man of too much fiction; for I have not seen so much poetry in prose a great while, since your letter is filled with so many fine words and acknowledgments of your obligations to me, the only asseverations of yours I dare contradict; for I must tell you your letter is like an author's epistle before his book,—written more to show his wit to the world than his sincerity or gratitude to his friend, whom he libels with praise, so that you have provoked my modesty even whilst you have soothed my vanity; for I know not whether I am more complimented than abused, since too much praise turns irony, as too great thanks for small favours turns ingratitude, or too much ceremony in religion hypocrisy."[169] Pope thought fit in the published letters to reverse the parts. He ascribed the adulation to Wycherley, and the rebuke of it to himself. He gives a false air of manly independence to his youthful character, and does it at the expense of his friend.

The extract from the letter to Caryll of January 25, 1711, which forms the second portion of the made-up letter to Wycherley of June 23, 1705, is a comment on the eulogy lavished by Caryll on some verses of the poet. The change of name and date flattered in a double manner the vanity of Pope,—the applause appeared to proceed from a celebrated wit instead of from a country squire, and to be bestowed upon a lad of seventeen instead of upon a man who was nearly twenty-three. He always aspired to the credit of precocity, and some of his falsifications seem to have had no other purpose than to exaggerate his juvenile fame. Wycherley wrote to him on February 19, 1708-9, and spoke of the genius which promised him immortality, of his great, vigorous and active mind. In a postscript it is mentioned that the "Miscellany," which contained Pope's Pastorals, would not be out for three weeks.[170] Pope suppressed, amongst other passages, the allusion which fixed the period at which the panegyric was penned, and altered the year to[Pg cxxx] 1706-7, for no perceptible reason except that he wished to antedate the praise. There can be little doubt that his opening letter to Wycherley was manufactured or misplaced with a similar object. It is printed in the edition of 1735 on an interpolated half sheet, marked *b, the pages of which are correctly numbered from 1 to 4. As the first page of sheet b which follows is numbered 3, it is evident that it was originally preceded by only two pages, which must have been cancelled, and the present letter put in their place.[171] This new letter is dated December 26, 1704, and contains his reflections on a compliment which he alleges had been paid to him by Wycherley—that his compositions were above the attacks of envious critics. "It is pleasant to remark," says Dr. Johnson, "how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them."[172] He did not in fact publish a single line till more than four years later, and with our present evidence that the letter was an interpolated after-thought, we cannot but suspect that Wycherley's premature compliment, and Pope's premature cant both belonged to a subsequent period, or perhaps were fabricated for the press. "The author's age then sixteen," says the poet in a note, and in this ostentatious announcement we have the motive to the act. The opinion of Warburton, that the letters of the boy displayed all the characteristics of the man, is an argument the more that they were the productions of the man and not of the boy.

"I have received," writes Wycherley, in an unpublished letter, dated December 6, 1707, "yours of the 29th of November, which has so much overpaid mine in kindness that, as Voiture says, I doubt whether the best effects of those fine expressions of your friendship to me can be more obliging than they themselves; and for my humility you talk of, you have lessened while you magnify it, as by commending my good nature with so much more of yours you have made me almost incapable of being grateful to you; for you have said so many kind things of me you have hardly left me anything of the same kind to return you, and the best actions are not[Pg cxxxi] capable of making you amends for so many good words you have given me, by which you justly magnify them and yourself by saying they are sincere, so that you have obliged me to be vain rather than not think you a Plain Dealer. Thus, even against your own opinion, your freedom with me proves not you a fool, but me so, especially if I could think half the good you say of me my due. As for the good book you sent me I took it as kindly as the reprimand from the good man, which I think you heard, and was that I should not stand in my own light."[173] Pope printed his letter of November 29, to which this letter was a reply, and it touches upon none of the topics to which Wycherley refers. There are none of the fine expressions of friendship, none of the many honied words, none of the encomiums on his correspondent's good nature and humility. He reproves him, on the contrary, in rather a lofty tone for his excessive acknowledgments for trifling services, tells him he will continue the revision of the poems the old dramatist had submitted to him, insists that he must be permitted to alter and add as well as omit, and in answer to an observation of Wycherley, that "the sprightliness of wit despises method," assures him that if method is neglected his verses had better be converted into separate maxims in prose. As Pope's letter does not contain one syllable upon the subjects to which Wycherley alludes in his reply, so the reply takes no notice of the subjects which monopolise the epistle of Pope. Though he had discoursed exclusively upon the remodelling of Wycherley's poems, Wycherley himself disdains to offer in return a single word of thanks, of encouragement, of acquiescence, or dissent. The omission cannot be explained by the supposition that the copy was abridged. Whatever passages might have been left out, those would certainly have been retained which confirmed under Wycherley's own hand the particulars which were Pope's professed justification for printing the letters, and his excuse for depositing them in the library of Lord Oxford.

The Wycherley correspondence concludes with a letter from Pope dated May 2, 1710. A coldness then ensued of which[Pg cxxxii] Dr. Johnson gives this account: "The fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His esteem of Pope was such that he submitted some poems to his revision, and when Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was sufficiently bold in his criticisms and liberal in his alterations, the old scribbler was angry to see his pages defaced, and felt more pain from the detection than content from the amendment of his faults. They parted, but Pope always considered him with kindness, and visited him a little time before he died."[174] The statement is incomplete. Pope engaged in the revision as early as April, 1706, when he describes to Wycherley the nature of the emendations he has made: "Some parts I have contracted as we do sun-beams to improve their energy and force; some I have taken quite away, as we take branches from a tree to add to the fruit; others I have entirely new expressed, and turned more into poetry." In November, 1707, he informs his friend that he has subjected the poem on "Dullness" to the same process, that he has condensed the piece one half, suppressed deficiencies, heightened the language, and smoothed the versification. Far from being angry at these "bold criticisms and liberal alterations," the old scribbler was profuse in his thanks, and replied to Pope's request, that he would keep the assistance a secret, by declaring that he always does, and always will own to whose genius and judgment he is indebted for the improvement of his unmusical numbers and harsher sense. Between three and four years afterwards he submitted a fresh set of poems to Pope's castigation, and in two successive letters of April 1 and April 11, 1710, entreats him to show no mercy in his corrections; "for I had rather," he says, "be condemned by my friend in private, than exposed to my foes in public." Pope answered that the repetitions were more numerous than he anticipated, and that crossing them out defaced the copy to a degree that he feared would be displeasing. "Let me know," he added, "if I am to go on at this rate, or if you would prescribe any other method." Wycherley rejoined that tautology was the last fault of which he would be guilty, that he thought with care he could remove the blemish, and that he would not occupy Pope in a task which might "prevent his[Pg cxxxiii] writing on new subjects of his own." "All," he continues, "that I desire of you is to mark in the margin, without defacing the copy at all, any repetition of words, matter, or sense, which if you will be so kind as to do for me, you will supply my want of memory with your good one, and my deficiencies of sense with the infallibilities of yours,—which if you do you will most infinitely oblige me, who almost repent the trouble I have given you, since so much." The comment on Pope's strong criticism is equally cordial: "As to what you call freedom with me, which you desire me to forgive, you may be assured I would not forgive you unless you did use it; for I am so far from thinking your plainness a fault or an offence to me that I think it a charity and an obligation, which I shall always acknowledge with all sort of gratitude to you for it, who am therefore, dear Mr. Pope, your most obliged humble servant." Dr. Johnson overlooked the rude ordeal to which Wycherley's vanity had been exposed in April, 1706, and the proof he then gave that he had not in his character the slightest tincture of irritable impatience at the wholesale correction of his works. He implored a renewal of the rigour when he invoked, with full experience of the treatment he was to expect, the same good offices in April, 1710, and the anger which Johnson imputes to him on that occasion at the detection of his faults is not only in singular contradiction to the whole of his previous conduct, but is belied, as we have seen, by his letter to Pope. The notion that he was offended at the freedom of his friend's remarks was an inference drawn from the tone of Pope's reply, and not from the language of Wycherley himself.

"I am sorry," Pope commences, "you persist to take ill my not accepting your invitation, and to find, if I mistake not, your exception not unmixed with some suspicion." The letter of Wycherley is dated April 27, 1710, and if the contents of the letter of Pope, which is dated May 2, did not show that it was the answer, all doubt would be removed by the fact that it was headed "The Answer" by the poet, both in the octavo of 1735, and the quarto of 1737. This led to the conclusion that Wycherley, while professing to receive the strictures on his verses with kindness, had at the same time[Pg cxxxiv] manifested in his letter some displeasure which his friend thought proper to omit, and which connected their quarrel with the secret soreness of the author at the candour of the critic.[175] Pope did indeed suppress the beginning and the end of Wycherley's communication; but the passages he kept back betray the falsity of his own insinuation. "I answered," the letter begins, "yours of the 15th, which I think was the last I had from you, about three days after my receiving it; but having not yet received any answer to it from you, I doubt your old pain of the head-ache has prevented it, which gives me a great deal of concern for you, insomuch that I have had thoughts of making you a visit before my journey into Shropshire, which has been delayed by delays and disappointments to me out of the country." The end is as follows: "My most humble service pray to Sir William Trumbull, and your good father and mother, whilst I can assure you from hence all the world here are your servants and friends. I know not but I may see you very suddenly at Binfield after all my broken promises."[176] Instead, therefore, of Wycherley being annoyed at Pope's refusal to accept his invitation, it was Wycherley who was designing to visit Pope; and instead of his persisting to take ill any part of his friend's conduct, his language was throughout expressive of cordiality and kindness.

The first intimation of a rupture is in a letter of Pope to Cromwell, on August 21, 1710, in which he says, "Since Mr. Wycherley left London, I have not heard a word from him, though just before, and once since, I writ to him, and though I know myself guilty of no offence but of doing sincerely just what he bid me." On October 28, he reverts to the subject, and protests by everything that is holy that he is not acquainted with the cause of the[Pg cxxxv] estrangement. He goes on, however, to state that he did not suppose any man could have been so suspicious as not to credit his own experience of a friend, and avers that he had done nothing which deserved to be concealed—a defence which seems to indicate a consciousness that Wycherley had heard some disparaging report. It was subsequently asserted by Pope's enemies, and never contradicted by Pope, that the alienation was produced by a copy of satirical verses he had written on the man he affected to caress. His offensive reply of May 2, to the genial letter of April 27, might alone explain the resentment of Wycherley, if the ungracious answer in its printed shape could be received as authentic. But I have shown that the opening sentence, in which Pope regrets that his correspondent persisted in taking ill his not accepting an invitation, is altogether fictitious, and with the evidence before us in the critical epistle of November 29, 1707, that he replaced his complimentary effusions by unvarnished truths, we may suspect that the uncompromising tone of his final letter was softened in the original, and that the published version is merely another instance of his anxiety to conceal the deference he had shown to Wycherley before the celebrity of the old dramatist had been eclipsed by the fame of the youthful poet. The almost eastern style which Pope adopted towards him a year and a half after the close of their correspondence, may be seen in one of his genuine epistles to Cromwell, which was printed by Curll. "I am highly pleased," the poet writes, November 12, 1711, "with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's present temper, which seems so favourable to me. I shall ever have such a fund of affection for him, as to be agreeable to myself when I am so to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the surface of the earth, if you will pardon a poetical similitude, is clearer or gloomier, just as the sun is brighter or more overcast." Whatever may have caused the sun to be overcast, there could have been little ground of complaint against Wycherley, or Pope would not have fabricated the pretence that he had provoked his anger by declining an invitation.

On the appearance of Theobald's edition of the Posthumous Works of Wycherley, the poet poured out his indignation[Pg cxxxvi] to Lord Oxford. "I foresaw," he said, October 6, 1729, "some dirty trick in connection with my friend Wycherley's papers which they were publishing, and nothing can at once do justice so well to him and to me, who was by him employed in them, as the divulging of some parts of his and my letters." At the moment that he was penning this denunciation against "dirty tricks in relation to Wycherley's papers," though no trick had been practised, he was busily engaged in aspersing his friend by garbling the papers he professed to divulge out of justice to his memory. His motives were not malignant. He was simply desirous to do credit to himself, but to effect this end he did not scruple to falsify their private correspondence, and under the plea of justifying a man who was in his grave, took advantage of his death to libel him in safety. When with our scanty means of testing the fidelity of the letters, we find that part of them were misplaced, distorted, and invented, the rest of the series must be received with distrust, and some which cannot be proved to be fabricated are among the most suspicious of the whole.

Where the originals of Pope's letters were in hostile hands, as was the case with his letters to Cromwell and to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he was compelled to be sparing in his operations. He omitted sentences and altered phrases, but could not venture upon wholesale perversions of the truth. Of the bulk of the letters he published we have neither the originals nor reliable copies; but when we chance to light upon the materials from which he worked, we find, as might be expected, that he was not more conscientious in his use of them than in his reckless falsification of his correspondence with Wycherley and Caryll. The volume of 1735 concludes with a letter from Arbuthnot, dated July 17, 1734, and in the quarto of 1737 we have the pretended reply of the poet. Among the Arbuthnot papers in the possession of Mr. Baillie, is the actual answer sent by Pope, and it turns out that the printed substitute is an elaborate composition that has hardly any resemblance to the genuine text. He must have revised the letter of Arbuthnot as well as remodelled his own. "I am almost displeased," he[Pg cxxxvii] remarks in the real, not in the counterfeit reply, "at your expression 'scarcely any of those suspicions or jealousies which affect the truest friendships;' for I know of not one on my part." He accordingly erased from Arbuthnot's letter the expression he disapproved, and fathered upon him the unqualified assertion, "I think since our first acquaintance there has not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies that often affect the sincerest friendships." To what extent he may have carried this principle of altering the opinions of his correspondents to fit his personal views cannot be discovered. A single instance of the artifice in a man so unscrupulous destroys all confidence in the documents which rest on his unsupported authority, and there is often reason to suspect that he gives us not what others said, but what he thought it advantageous to himself that they should say.

In comparison with this perversion of facts, the attempt of Pope to improve his letters, regarded as literary productions, would be of trifling moment, if it did not present another example of the audacious falsehoods he imposed upon the world. Speaking in the preface to the quarto of 1737 of the correspondence he reprinted from what he calls the surreptitious editions, he says "for the chasms in it, we had not the means to supply them, the author having destroyed too many letters to preserve a series." He intends us to infer that the selection was not his own, though the passage is virtually an admission that the collection of P. T. was the collection deposited with Lord Oxford, or there could not have been such an identity between them as that none of the gaps in the P. T. volume could be filled up from the bound book in the Oxford library. "Nor," he continues, "would he go about to amend them, except by the omission of some passages improper, or at least impertinent to be divulged to the public, or of such entire letters as were either not his, or not approved of by him." He would have us believe that they had been dragged before the world in their first crude state, without a single subsequent touch from his pen, though he had previously amended them with studious care—had culled the best passages, blended extracts from two or three letters into one, and constantly corrected composition which had been originally laboured. Some of his[Pg cxxxviii] ambitious epistles, like his letter to Arbuthnot of July 26, 1734, were no doubt mere essays, which were only written when they were committed to the press. In the quarto of 1741, he repeated the device he had employed in the quarto of 1737. He pretended in both cases that the correspondence he printed himself had been printed by others without his knowledge, and in defiance of his wish. He next adopted and republished the letters he affected to repudiate, and having already revised them to the uttermost, asserted that he could not be induced to revise them at all. So completely had truth with him been swallowed up in vanity. "Had he," he tells us in the preface to the quarto of 1737, "sat down with a design to draw his own picture, he could not have done it so truly, for whoever sits for it, whether to himself or another, will inevitably find his features more composed than his appear in these letters; but if an author's hand, like a painter's, be more distinguishable in a slight sketch than a finished picture, this very carelessness will make them the better known from such counterfeits as have been, and may be, imputed to him." He did everything he professed to have left undone. The careless sketch was a studied portrait got up for exhibition, and the minutest details had been disposed with a view to flatter the likeness and increase the effect.

In the conduct of Pope to Bolingbroke there are points of resemblance to his conduct in the case of the correspondence, which render the evidence a material supplement to the present inquiry. Bolingbroke allowed him to get put into type the political letters on "The Spirit of Patriotism," on "The Idea of a Patriot King," and on "The State of Parties," under the promise that the pamphlet should be confined to five or six persons, who were named by the author. Pope fulfilled his pledge by causing a separate edition of 1500 copies to be struck off, and enjoined the printer to lay by the sheets "with great secresy till further orders."[177] In the dangerous manœuvre of printing covertly the original volume of[Pg cxxxix] the Swift correspondence which he sent to the Dean, he may, perhaps, have remained concealed from the inferior agents, and have conducted the details of the business through the medium of Worsdale. In the instance of the pamphlet he was not afraid to put himself into the power of the printer, who, says Bolingbroke, "kept his word with him better than he kept his with his friend."[178] The poet not only committed a breach of trust in preparing a work for sale which he received upon the condition that it should remain strictly private, but he had the boldness to tamper with the substance of the work, and in the impression, which was ultimately designed for the public, "he took upon him to divide the subject, and to alter and omit passages according to the suggestions of his own fancy."[179] From Warburton we learn that Pope "frequently told his acquaintance that Lord Bolingbroke would at his death leave his writings to his disposal,"[180] and the changes he introduced by anticipation into the single instalment within his power show the manner in which he designed to discharge his functions, and strengthen the suspicion that he may have falsified the letters of his correspondents as well as his own. Johnson, in censuring Lyttelton for publishing the posthumous edition of Thomson's poem on "Liberty," in an abridged form, condemns a practice "which, as it has a manifest tendency to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters[Pg cxl] of authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration or kindness of the friend."[181] The freedom used by Pope was especially reprehensible from the concealment he practised. The copy of the pamphlet which he sent to Bolingbroke, and the other privileged persons, did not exhibit the modified text, and though the occurrence took place several years before the death of the poet he never, in all that time, whispered one word upon the subject to the author of the tracts, from which it is clear that he neither intended him to learn what he had done, nor expected him to approve the changes he had made. It was not till he was in his grave that his deception was divulged by the application of the printer to Bolingbroke for instructions how to dispose of the impression. Warburton argued that Pope must have wished his friend to have a knowledge of the clandestine edition and clandestine alterations, or he would have ordered the work to be destroyed during his final illness,[182] as if, in the lingering hope that life would be protracted a little longer, it had not happened times out of number that men had deferred burning tale-telling papers till their minds were diverted from the duty by the lassitude of sickness, and as if such procrastination was not in the highest degree probable when the poet had been first at the pains of revising the work, and next at the cost of an edition of 1500 copies.[183] He may even have believed that his secret, under any circumstances, was safe with the printer. A theory which has been verified by endless examples is a more credible alternative than to assume that Pope had designed to leave behind him evidences of a dishonesty which he had not dared to disclose during years of familiar intercourse, and which, notwithstanding that Bolingbroke was perpetually at his side, he did not venture to reveal in his dying hours when he might have palliated his motives, and obtained pardon for his fault. But if we admit the supposition of Warburton, and allow that he had ultimately arrived at the resolution of suffering the course[Pg cxli] of events to betray the misdoings he had not the courage to confess, there will still remain the facts, which Warburton never questioned, that he pretended to Bolingbroke that some half dozen copies had alone been printed, when he had printed a distinct edition of 1500; that he handed an impression to the author which was taken faithfully from the manuscript, while the impression he hid from him was garbled and adulterated; and that, having concealed the double treachery for years, he left the world without an allusion to the wrongful act he had committed. Johnson justly considered that the resentment of Bolingbroke at this violation of faith was with reason "more acrimonious in proportion as the violator had been more trusted or loved," for the professions which win confidence increase the baseness of betraying it; but with equal justice Johnson condemned the "thirst for vengeance" which excited Bolingbroke "to blast the memory" of the man who had lived with him in a constant interchange of affection, and who, both in public and private, had paid him the tribute of his heartiest homage and applause.[184]

The scrutiny to which the lives of celebrated men are subjected is one of the severest penalties they pay for fame. Their private weaknesses have often been exposed with wanton cruelty; but the delinquencies of Pope are public acts by which he himself has challenged inquiry. He endeavoured to pass off a sophisticated correspondence for genuine, and the interests of truth demand that the deception should be exposed. He laboured to throw his own misdoings upon innocent men, and justice requires that his victims should be absolved, and the discredit, augmented beyond measure by the perfidy and deceit, be laid where it is due. He was the bitter satirist of individuals out of an assumed indignation at everything base, and his claim to adopt this lofty strain, his sincerity in it, and his fairness, are all involved in his personal dealings. The office of an editor is neither that of an advocate nor of an accuser. He is a judge, whose only client is truth. I have endeavoured to investigate the facts with impartiality, and narrate them with fidelity, and if I have anywhere failed, it is from unconscious, not from wilful[Pg cxlii] error; but having once been satisfied of the guilt of Pope, I do not pretend to think that genius is an extenuation of rascality. He rightly refused others the benefit of the plea, and said in the Essay on Man, whoever is "wickedly wise is but the more a fool, the more a knave." The sketch which Lord Macaulay has given of his character, when describing his conduct on the appearance of Tickell's version of the first book of the Iliad, is not too severe for the treacheries and falsehoods which were the instruments of his malevolence, cowardice and vanity. "An odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be defeated. With this view, Addison had made a rival translation; Tickell had consented to father it, and the wits at Button's had consented to puff it. We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true; and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of which he had suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; he was taxed with it; and he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself, and abused his enemies, under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have committed from a love of fraud alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his object[Pg cxliii] might be, the indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead, when it was discovered that from no motive, except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke."[185] Many of the falsehoods and perfidies I have detailed have come to light since Macaulay wrote, and there are more behind which will appear in their proper place in Pope's life and works. There have been no lack of men whose moral conduct was in an almost inverse ratio with their intellectual gifts; but there never was an author of equal genius, who habitually practised such despicable deceptions for such paltry purposes;

His crooked policy was ineffectual, even when his worst devices were undetected. Few believed that he was vexed at the publication of his letters, or that they were careless effusions, or that the virtues he paraded in them were the just reflection of his mind. Both men and compositions will seem to be what they are, and the poet's protestations did not prevent the world from discovering that his epistles were laboured, that many of his sentiments were feigned, and that he eagerly promoted the publications he pretended to deplore.

Having finished a discussion which from its nature will be dull to many, and from its length will be wearisome to all, I turn to speak of the present edition of the Correspondence. The last edition published in the lifetime of Pope comprised, according to Mr. Croker's calculation, 354 letters. These, Mr. Croker states, were increased by Warburton to 384, by Warton to 502, by Bowles to 644, and by Roscoe to 708, or exactly double the number that were included in the last edition of the poet. The present edition will contain more new letters than were collected by Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe combined, and many of them are of[Pg cxliv] immeasurably greater importance in determining the character and conduct of Pope than any which have previously appeared. There are others among them which, under ordinary circumstances, would be too trivial to be printed; but particulars, which are separately insignificant, have assisted in dispelling some of the mystery or exposing some of the deceptions in which it was the poet's pleasure to involve his life, and as nobody can pronounce with certainty what facts may be of service to future inquirers, I have thought it better to add a few superfluous pages than to run the risk of rejecting materials which may prove useful hereafter. I have, in like manner, admitted letters which had a biographical value, although they were neither written by Pope nor to him. Second-hand statements cannot supply the place of authentic documents, and to have dissociated the subsidiary from the main correspondence would have frequently deprived both of the increased importance they derive from being read in connection.

In Pope's own, and every succeeding edition, the letters are divided into groups. The arrangement of the entire collection in one consecutive chronological series is, in his case, neither desirable nor possible. It is not desirable because a unity of subject often runs through his intercourse with particular persons, and the interposition of the topics upon which he touched with other friends, far from presenting a connected view of his thoughts and actions, would reduce the whole to a medley of disjointed fragments. It is not possible because many of his letters are undated, and, though we can frequently determine their place in each class, there are no means of settling their order when all the letters of doubtful date are thrown together. In numerous instances the year in which they were written can at most be discovered, and the attempt to fix their precedency within that period would be attended with as much uncertainty as if they were shuffled like a pack of cards.

The liberties which Pope took with his correspondence in preparing it for publication diminish the authority of that extensive portion of it which we owe to his printed or manuscript copies alone, and have rendered it essential to specify[Pg cxlv] the source from which, every letter is derived. Where the letter was sent to one person and was published by Pope as if it had been addressed to another, it is inserted in its proper place, and again in the group to which it was falsely assigned by the writer. Unless the correspondence was exhibited in its double form, a just idea could not easily be obtained of the shape and colour he imparted to it, or of the relations which he pretended to have maintained with his contemporaries. Where the direction was not changed, and we possess both the genuine and the corrected letter, the true version is given in the text, and any variations in his amended version which seemed worthy of notice are pointed out in the notes. Even here, from the nature and extent of the alterations, it has sometimes been necessary to preserve a letter in its twofold state.

The greater part of the collection of 1735 was reproduced in the quarto of 1737; but as the texts are not always identical the earliest has been followed, except where there is manifestly an error of the press, or where the quarto supplies passages which are not in the volume of P. T. I had once intended to subjoin the whole of the various readings at the foot of the page. I abandoned the design upon finding that the vast majority of them were verbal, and apparently unimportant changes, which could only have interested the few curious inquirers who would always have recourse to the original editions. I have not the less carefully collated these original editions throughout, and have thus got rid of numerous mistakes which had become traditional in the subsequent reprints. The notes signed "Pope, 1735," were first published in the P. T. collection, with the exception of a few in the Wycherley group, which, though they are only known to us through the P. T. volume, had undoubtedly appeared in 1729. Many of the P. T. notes were transferred to the authorised impression of 1737, and they were nearly all in the copies which the poet delivered to Warburton for posthumous publication. The notes signed "Pope, 1737," were added in the quarto of that year; and those signed "Cooper, 1737," are from the octavos which bear the name of this bookseller on the title-page.[Pg cxlvi]

Language was current in Pope's day which would be considered grossly indelicate in ours, and though he abounds in refined and elevated strains, he was yet among the worst offenders of his time. "He and Swift," says Dr. Johnson, "had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention." His correspondence is not altogether free from the defect; but no editor can now efface the blots which Warburton, Warton, and Bowles felt bound to preserve. Roscoe set aside a few sentences, and showed by his inconsistency the uselessness of the process. He confined his expurgations to the part of Pope's works which were little read, and where the omissions in consequence would rarely be remarked; but did not venture to disturb a single syllable of the far more numerous and more objectionable passages which occur in the pieces that are in the hands of all the world. The stains which sully so much of our beautiful literature are unhappily indelible, and it could answer no useful end to adopt the capricious principle of Roscoe in removing the lesser blemishes which are seldom noticed, and leaving the worst and most conspicuous defilements undisturbed. More freedom may be used with the unpublished letters; but I have exercised the discretion very sparingly, and have not excluded every coarse word, phrase, or idea, when it was characteristic of the age, the man, and his writings, and when, though an offence against taste, it could not be injurious to morals.

I have mentioned at the several places where their contributions are inserted, the numerous persons to whose liberality Mr. Croker and myself have been obliged for materials and assistance. The services rendered by Mr. Dilke require to be noticed here. Until he published his articles in the Athenæum little had been added to our knowledge of Pope since Johnson produced his masterly Life. The truths which Mr. Dilke established, and the errors he dissipated, were not more important than the change he gave to the former superficial investigations. His rigid scrutiny became the standard for every subsequent inquirer. He loved his studies for their own sake, and never did a man of letters work less for personal ends. He at once[Pg cxlvii] placed at my disposal his Caryll correspondence, which he had carefully annotated, and the explanation of all its obscure allusions are due to him. He supplied me with a multitude of letters which were widely scattered through books and periodicals, and collated others with the originals in the British Museum and Bodleian Library. Large masses of the letters are undated, or dated falsely, and he was at the labour of fixing dates which sometimes appeared to defy conjecture. He lent me his rare editions, was unwearied in answering questions, in solving difficulties, in revising proofs, and in communicating, without reserve, his stores of information. He was then suffering from a long and painful illness, and he died when only the first volume of correspondence was printed, or I should have had his generous and invaluable aid to the end.

Mr. Bowles remarked in the course of the skirmish of pamphlets he provoked, that the editorship of Pope's works had been to no one a bed of roses. For the larger part of the discomforts his commentators may have endured, Pope himself was responsible. His mysteries, his double-dealings, his falsifications, and his quarrels have rendered half the acts of his life a fertile theme for debate. None of the angry controversialists who mingled fifty years ago in the fray had prepared properly for the contest, and the insolence and assumption, the virulence and the dogmatism, were commonly greatest with the persons whose acquaintance with the subject was the least. The intemperate, and usually ignorant warfare, left nearly all the vexed questions in confusion, and it is only in recent years that a new generation of dispassionate students have begun to replace the blunders of sciolism by facts. In the many battles yet to be fought over Pope there will be this advantage which will be certain to produce solid results, that the critic will be in possession of the materials for judgment, and will not have to write without knowledge of his cause.

[Pg 1]

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

[Pg 2]

This preface first appeared in the Works of Pope, 4to, 1717. The poet submitted the manuscript to Atterbury, and the bishop thus replied in December, 1716: "I return the preface, which I have read twice with pleasure. The modesty and good sense there is in it, must please every one that reads it. And since there is, as I said, nothing that can offend, I see not why you should balance a moment about printing it, always provided that there is nothing said there which you have occasion to unsay hereafter, of which you yourself are the best, and the only judge. This is my sincere opinion, which I give, because you ask it, and which I would not give, though asked, but to a man I value as much as I do you, being sensible how improper it is, on many accounts, for me to interpose in things of this nature, which I never understood well, and now understand somewhat less than ever I did." The suspicion which Atterbury hinted to his friend, that some of the sentiments expressed in the preface might hereafter be quoted against him, probably referred to the vaunts in the concluding paragraphs. The poet paid no regard to the warning, and lived to violate nearly all his professions. Johnson says that the preface is "written with great sprightliness and elegance," but the praise of Warton is hyperbolical when he terms it "one of the best pieces of prose in our language." The style is often faulty, and never rises to any extraordinary pitch of excellence; the "knowledge of life," which Warton calls "profound," is such as a little experience would supply; and the "strong good sense" is interspersed with obvious thoughts and erroneous maxims. The language of Atterbury is sober, and even in writing to the author he was not betrayed by the partiality of friendship into the exaggerations of Warton.

[Pg 3]

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

I am inclined to think that both the writers of books, and the readers of them, are generally not a little unreasonable in their expectations. The first seem to fancy that the world must approve whatever they produce, and the latter to imagine that authors are obliged to please them at any rate. Methinks, as on the one hand, no single man is born with a right of controlling the opinions of all the rest; so on the other, the world has no title to demand, that the whole care and time of any particular person should be sacrificed to its entertainment. Therefore I cannot but believe that writers and readers are under equal obligations for as much fame, or pleasure, as each affords the other.

Every one acknowledges, it would be a wild notion to expect perfection in any work of man: and yet one would think the contrary was taken for granted, by the judgment commonly passed upon poems. A critic supposes he has done his part if he proves a writer to have failed in an expression, or erred in any particular point: and can it then be wondered at if the poets in general seem resolved not to own themselves in any error? For as long as one side will make no allowances, the other[Pg 4] will be brought to no acknowledgments.[1]

I am afraid this extreme zeal on both sides is ill-placed; poetry and criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there. Yet sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves better usage than a bad critic: for a writer's endeavour, for the most part, is to please his readers, and he fails merely through the misfortune of an ill judgment; but such a critic's is to put them out of humour; a design he could never go upon without both that and an ill temper.[2]

I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets. What we call a genius, is hard to be distinguished by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot at first discover it any other way than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. The only method he has is to make the experiment by writing, and appealing to the judgment of others. Now if he happens to write ill, which is certainly no sin in itself, he is immediately made an object of ridicule. I wish we had the humanity to reflect that even the worst authors might, in their endeavour to please us, deserve something at our hands. We have no cause to quarrel with them but for their obstinacy in persisting to write; and this too may admit of alleviating circumstances. Their particular friends may be either ignorant or insincere; and the rest of the world in general is too well-bred to shock them with a truth, which generally their booksellers are the first that[Pg 5] inform them of. This happens not till they have spent too much of their time to apply to any profession which might better fit their talents; and till such talents as they have are so far discredited as to be but of small service to them. For, what is the hardest case imaginable, the reputation of a man generally depends upon the first steps he makes in the world; and people will establish their opinion of us, from what we do at that season when we have least judgment to direct us.

On the other hand, a good poet no sooner communicates his works with the same desire of information, but it is imagined he is a vain young creature given up to the ambition of fame, when perhaps the poor man is all the while trembling with the fear of being ridiculous. If he is made to hope he may please the world, he falls under very unlucky circumstances: for, from the moment he prints, he must expect to hear no more truth than if he were a prince or a beauty. If he has not very good sense (and indeed there are twenty men of wit for one man of sense) his living thus in a course of flattery may put him in no small danger of becoming a coxcomb: if he has, he will consequently have so much diffidence as not to reap any great satisfaction from his praise: since, if it be given to his face, it can scarce be distinguished from flattery, and if in his absence, it is hard to be certain of it. Were he sure to be commended by the best and most knowing, he is as sure of being envied by the worst and most ignorant, which are the majority;[3] for it is with a fine genius as with a fine fashion, all those are displeased at it who are not able to follow it: and it is to be feared that esteem will seldom do any man so much good, as ill-will does him harm. Then there is a third class of people, who make the largest part of mankind,—those of ordinary or indifferent capacities—; and these, to a man, will hate or suspect him: a hundred honest gentlemen will dread[Pg 6] him as a wit, and a hundred innocent women as a satirist. In a word, whatever be his fate in poetry, it is ten to one but he must give up all the reasonable aims of life for it. There are indeed some advantages accruing from a genius to poetry, and they are all I can think of,—the agreeable power of self-amusement when a man is idle or alone; the privilege of being admitted into the best company; and the freedom of saying as many careless things as other people, without being so severely remarked upon.[4]

[5]I believe if any one, early in his life, should contemplate[Pg 7] the dangerous fate of authors, he would scarce be of their number on any consideration. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and the present spirit of the learned world is such, that to attempt to serve it any way one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to suffer for its sake. 'I could wish people would believe, what I am pretty certain they will not, that I have been much less concerned about fame than I durst declare till this occasion, when methinks I should find more credit than I could heretofore: since my writings have had their fate already, and it is too late to think of prepossessing the reader in their favour. I would plead it as some merit in me, that the world has never been prepared for these trifles by prefaces,[6] biassed by recommendations, dazzled with the names of great patrons,[7] wheedled with fine reasons and pretences, or troubled with excuses.'[8] I confess it was want of consideration that made me an author; I writ because it amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write; and I published because I was told I might please such as it was a credit to please. To what degree I have done this, I am really ignorant. I had too much fondness for my productions to judge of them at first, and too much judgment to be pleased with them at last. But I have reason to think they can have no reputation which will continue long, or which deserves to do so:[9] for they have[Pg 8] always fallen short not only of what I read of others, but even of my own ideas of poetry.

If any one should imagine I am not in earnest, I desire him to reflect, that the ancients, to say the least of them, had as much genius as we; and that to take more pains, and employ more time, cannot fail to produce more complete pieces. They constantly applied themselves not only to that art, but to that single branch of an art, to which their talent was most powerfully bent; and it was the business of their lives to correct and finish their works for posterity.[10] If we can pretend to have used the same industry, let us expect the same immortality: though, if we took the same care, we should still lie under a further misfortune: they writ in languages that became universal and everlasting, while ours are extremely limited both in extent and in duration. A mighty foundation for our pride! when the utmost we can hope,[11] is but to be read in one island, and to be thrown aside at the end of one age.[Pg 9]

All that is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the ancients;[12] and it will be found true, that in every age, the highest character for sense and learning has been obtained by those who have been most indebted to them. For, to say truth, whatever is very good sense, must have been common sense in all times; and what we call learning, is but the knowledge of the sense of our predecessors. Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own, because they resemble the ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our fathers: and, indeed, it is very unreasonable that people should expect us to be scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.[13]

I fairly confess that I have served myself all I could by reading; that I made use of the judgment of authors dead and living; that I omitted no means in my power to be informed of my errors, both by my friends and enemies:[14] but the true reason these pieces are not more correct, is owing to the consideration how short a time they, and I, have to live.[15][Pg 10] One may be ashamed to consume half one's days in bringing sense and rhyme together: and what critic can be so unreasonable, as not to leave a man time enough for any more serious employment, or more agreeable amusement?

The only plea I shall use for the favour of the public, is, that I have as great a respect for it as most authors have for themselves; and that I have sacrificed much of my own self-love for its sake, in preventing not only many mean things from seeing the light, but many which I thought tolerable. 'I would not be like those authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole poem, and vice versâ a whole poem for the sake of some particular lines.'[16] I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the power of rejecting his own thoughts; and it must be this, if any thing, that can give me a chance to be one. For what I have published I can only hope to be pardoned; but for what I have burned I deserve to be praised. On this account the world is under some obligation to me, and owes me the justice in return to look upon no verses as mine that are not inserted in this collection.[17] And perhaps nothing could make it worth my while to own what are really so, but to avoid the imputation of so many dull and immoral things, as partly by malice, and partly by ignorance, have been ascribed to me. I must further acquit myself of the presumption of having lent my name to recommend any Miscellanies,[18][Pg 11] or works of other men;[19] a thing I never thought becoming a person who has hardly credit enough to answer for his own.

In this office of collecting my pieces, I am altogether uncertain whether to look upon myself as a man building a monument,[20] or burying the dead. If time shall make it the former, may these poems, as long as they last, remain as a testimony, that their author never made his talents subservient to the mean and unworthy ends of party or self-interest; the gratification of public prejudices or private passions; the flattery of the undeserving, or the insult of the unfortunate.[Pg 12] If I have written well, let it be considered that it is what no man can do without good sense, a quality that not only renders one capable of being a good writer, but a good man. And if I have made any acquisition in the opinion of any one under the notion of the former, let it be continued to me under no other title than that of the latter.[21]

But if this publication be only a more solemn funeral of my remains, I desire it may be known that I die in charity, and in my senses, without any murmurs against the justice of this age, or any mad appeals to posterity. I declare I shall think the world in the right, and quietly submit to every truth which time shall discover to the prejudice of these writings; not so much as wishing so irrational a thing as that every body should be deceived merely for my credit. However, I desire it may then be considered, that there are very few things in this collection which were not written under the age of five-and-twenty, so that my youth may be made, as it never fails to be in executions, a case of compassion; that I was never so concerned about my works as to vindicate them in print, believing if any thing was good it would defend itself, and what was bad could never be defended; that I used no artifice to raise or continue a reputation, depreciated no dead author I was obliged to, bribed no living one with unjust praise, insulted no adversary with ill language,[22] or, when I could not attack a rival's works, encouraged reports against his morals. To[Pg 13] conclude, if this volume perish, let it serve as a warning to the critics not to take too much pains for the future to destroy such things as will die of themselves; and a memento mori to some of my vain contemporaries the poets, to teach them that when real merit is wanting, it avails nothing to have been encouraged by the great, commended by the eminent, and favoured by the public in general.[23]

Nov. 10, 1716.

[Pg 15]

PREFACE TO POPE'S WORKS.

VOL. II. 4to, 1735.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

All I had to say of my writings is contained in my preface to the first of these volumes, printed for J. Tonson, and B. Lintot in quarto and folio in the year 1717; and all I have to say of myself will be found in my last Epistle.[1] I have nothing to add, but that this volume, and the above-mentioned contain whatsoever I have written, and[2] designed for the press, except my translation of the Iliad (with my preface and notes), of twelve books of the Odyssey, with the postscript (not the notes), the preface to Shakespeare, and a few Spectators[3] and Guardians. Whatever besides I have written, or joined in writing with Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, or Mr. Gay (the only persons with whom I ever wrote in conjunction) are to be found in the four volumes of Miscellanies by us published.[4][Pg 16] I think them too inconsiderable to be separated and reprinted here; nevertheless, that none of my faults may be imputed to another, I must own that of the prose part, the Thoughts on Various Subjects at the end of the second volume, were wholly mine; and of the verses, the Happy Life of a Country Parson, the Alley in imitation of Spenser, the characters of Macer, Artimesia, and Phryne, the Verses to Mrs. M[artha] B[lount] on her Birth-day, and a few epigrams.[5] It will be but justice to me to believe that nothing more is mine, notwithstanding all that has been published in my name, or added to my[6] miscellanies since 1717,[7] by any bookseller whatsoever.

A. Pope.

Jan. 1, 1734-[5].

[Pg 19]

RECOMMENDATORY POEMS.[1]

JOHN SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.[2]

ON MR. POPE AND HIS POEMS.

ANNE, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA.[3]

TO MR. POPE.

MR. WYCHERLEY.

TO MR. POPE, ON HIS PASTORALS.[4]

FR. KNAPP.[9]

TO MR. POPE, ON HIS WINDSOR FOREST.[10]

Killala, in the county of Mayo, in Ireland, June 7, 1715.

ELIJAH FENTON.

TO MR. POPE.

IN IMITATION OF A GREEK EPIGRAM ON HOMER.[13]

DR. THOMAS PARNELL.

TO MR. POPE.

THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT.[15]

TO MR. POPE,

ON THE PUBLISHING HIS WORKS.

WILLIAM BROOME.

TO MR. POPE.[21]

LORD LYTTELTON.[25]

TO MR. POPE.[26]

From Rome, 1730.

[Pg 37]

TRANSLATIONS.

[Pg 39]

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following Translations were selected from many others done by the author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of exercises, while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr. Dryden's Fables came out about that time,[1] which occasioned the translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in Miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the quarto edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which are added at the end, were done as early; some of them at fourteen or fifteen years old; but having also got into Miscellanies, we have put them here together to complete this juvenile volume.[2]

[Pg 41]

THE

FIRST BOOK OF STATIUS:

HIS

THEBAIS.

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR 1703.

[Pg 43]The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece, which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better upon review than he expected from those years, he was easily prevailed on to give it some correction, the rather because no part of this author (at least that he knows of) has been tolerably turned into our language.[1]—Pope.

It was in his childhood only that Pope could make choice of so injudicious a writer as Statius to translate. It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian,—authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of a just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle, and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. Statius had undoubtedly invention, ability, and spirit; but his images are gigantic and outrageous, and his sentiments tortured and hyperbolical. One cannot forbear reflecting on the short duration of a true taste in poetry among the Romans. From the time of Lucretius to that of Statius was no more than about one hundred and forty-seven years; and if I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,—namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phædrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations.

It is plain that Pope was not blind to the faults of Statius, many of which he points out with judgment and truth, in a letter to Mr. Cromwell, written in 1708[9]. After this censure of Statius's manner, it is but justice to add, that in the Thebais there are many strokes of a strong imagination; and, indeed, the picture of Amphiaraus, swallowed up suddenly by a chasm that opened in the ground, is truly sublime.—Warton.[Pg 44]

Statius was a favourite writer with the poets of the middle ages. His bloated magnificence of description, gigantic images, and pompous diction suited their taste, and were somewhat of a piece with the romances they so much admired. They neglected the gentler and genuine graces of Virgil, which they could not relish. His pictures were too correctly and chastely drawn to take their fancies; and truth of design, elegance of expression, and the arts of composition, were not their object.—T. Warton.

In this translation there are some excellent passages, particularly those pointed out by Dr. Warton—"O father Phœbus," v. 829, and the exquisite lines descriptive of evening, "'Twas now the time," &c., 474; but some of the most striking images are omitted, some added, and some misunderstood. Let us however confess, that the versification is truly wonderful, considering the age of the author. It would be endless to point out more particularly occasional errors and inaccuracies, in a composition which can be considered no otherwise than as an extraordinary specimen of versification, before the writer's judgment and taste were matured.—Bowles.

According to the information which Pope gave to Spence, he commenced an epic poem at thirteen, and wrote four books of about a thousand verses each.[2] As his taste and judgment improved, he discovered the crudeness of his early flights, and for a while he almost relinquished his attempts at original composition, "My first taking to imitating," he said, "was not out of vanity, but humility. I saw how defective my own things were; and I endeavoured to mend my manner by copying good strokes from others."[3] "In my rambles through the poets," he said again, "when I met with a passage or story that pleased me more than ordinary, I used to endeavour to imitate it, or translate it into English; and this gave rise to my imitations published so long after."[4] In speaking of Pope's youthful efforts, Spence uses the word "imitation" as synonymous with "translation." "Some of his first exercises," he says, "were imitations of the stories that pleased him most in Ovid, or any other poet that he was reading. I have one of these original exercises now by me in his own hand. It is the story of Acis and Galatea, from Ovid; and was translated when he was but fourteen years old."[5] Pope appears to have sometimes employed the term imitation with the same latitude, and probably meant by it that he endeavoured to imitate, in the English turn of expression, the distinctive beauties of the original Latin or Greek. "In the scattered lessons I used to set myself," he said, "I translated above a quarter of the Metamorphoses, and that part of Statius which was afterwards printed with[Pg 45] the corrections of Walsh."[6] The notion, in which Bowles and others acquiesced, that the published translations are a true index of Pope's skill at fourteen, will not bear investigation. Of the Metamorphoses he brought out only two little fragments, which appeared many years later, when they had undergone a thorough revision. The rest of the manuscript would not have been sacrificed if the version had been fit for the public eye without the toil of recasting it. Spence, who possessed the Acis and Galatea, did not think it worth printing as a specimen of Pope's boyish abilities, even when the curiosity respecting his works was at its height. The suppression of all his early pieces, which had not been submitted to a subsequent renovation, is a plain proof of their inferiority. The first translation which he gave to the world was the "Episode of Sarpedon, from the twelfth and sixteenth books of Homer's Iliads." This, and his Pastorals, appeared together, in May, 1709, in Tonson's Sixth Miscellany, and Pope was then twenty-one.

The fragment from Homer included the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus. "It has," said the poet, "been rendered in English by Sir John Denham, after whom the translator had not the vanity to attempt it for any other reason, than that the episode must have been very imperfect without so noble a part of it." Denham at that period had a much more brilliant reputation than he afterwards retained, and though Pope adopted the language of humility, he must have felt an inward pride in the consciousness that he had distanced so famous a name. His great superiority did not admit of a question, and he must have been well aware that it was his interest to invite a comparison. The specimen was shown in manuscript to Trumbull, who, in his admiration, urged Pope to give a complete translation of the Iliad. The exhortations of Trumbull did not bear fruit till 1713. "I cannot," Pope wrote to him in the November of that year, "deny myself the pleasure of acquainting you how great a proof I have given of my deference to your opinion and judgment, which has at last moved me to undertake the translation of Homer. I can honestly say Sir William Trumbull was not only the first that put this into my thoughts, but the principal encourager I had in it, and though now almost all the distinguished names of quality or learning in the nation have subscribed to it, there is not one of which I am so proud as of yours." When the first volume of the translation appeared in 1715, Pope paid his acknowledgments in the Preface to the eminent men who had specially patronised the work. Not only does he make no mention of Trumbull, but he professes to have yielded to the counsel of a greater authority, and says, "Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to undertake[Pg 46] the task." Either the statement in the Preface, or the statement in the letter must be inaccurate, though both Addison and Trumbull may have recommended the scheme.

The "Episode of Sarpedon" is now incorporated in the complete translation to which it led the way. It was not till three years after he had published the fragment from Homer that Pope brought out his translations from the Latin, of which the most ambitious is his version of the first book of the Thebais. He told Spence that in his boyhood "he liked extremely a translation of a part of Statius by some very bad hand." This work bore the title of "An Essay upon Statius, or the five first books of P. P. Statius his Thebais. Done into English verse by T[homas] S[tephens], London, 1648." The verse into which Stephens did his author was for the most part rugged and prosaic, but a few passages are happily turned, and his successor did not disdain to borrow some lines and phrases from him. The principal advantage, however, to Pope of Stephens's attempt was that it enabled him to interpret the original; for his classical education had been defective, and it is clear from his own account, that he could not, without assistance, have construed the Thebais correctly. At eight years of age he was taught his accidence by a priest.[7] He afterwards went to a couple of small schools, where "he lost what he had gained" from his first instructor.[8] "When I came," he said, "from the last of them, all the acquisition I had made was to be able to construe a little of Tully's Offices."[9] For a few months he had another priest for his tutor, and was then left, between twelve and thirteen, to his own resources.[10] The foundation was slight, and he proceeded to raise upon it a hasty superstructure. "I did not," he said, "follow the grammar, but rather hunted in the authors for a syntax of my own; and then began translating any parts that pleased me, particularly in the best Greek and Latin poets. I got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the language."[11] He, on another occasion, told Spence that he thought himself the better in some respects for not having had a regular education, since it caused him to read for the sense, whereas schoolboys were taught to read for words.[12] The process was fatal to scholarship. Ignorant, in a great degree, of the rules and idioms of the Latin tongue, it was impossible he should translate with ease or accuracy. But his peculiar training doubtless favoured the early development of his poetic powers. He devoted his boyish years, when the mind was most pliable, to the cultivation of his art, and this incessant practice of versification from childhood was the cause of his precocious excellence.[Pg 47]

Pope's admiration for Statius continued throughout his later boyhood, and he preferred him to "all the Latin poets, by much, next to Virgil."[13] He soon began to turn the Thebais into English, and he affirms that his version of the first book was made in 1703. In a note to his letter to Cromwell of Jan. 22, 1709, he placed it earlier still, and declares that it was "done when the author was but fourteen years old." These statements convey an erroneous impression. It appears from the correspondence with Cromwell that more than one-third of the translation was not in existence by January, 1709, when Pope was in his twenty-first year. The piece was not published till 1712, when it came out in Lintot's Miscellany, and the poet at that period was twenty-four. The portions which were not recently translated, were newly corrected, and the whole represents the powers of the man who completed the task, and not of the boy who commenced it.

The translation of the first book of the Thebais must be more highly estimated as a specimen of versification than as an adequate representation of the original. The harmony and phraseology of particular passages are delicious, and verse and language throughout are polished in a high degree. There is one pervading exception to Pope's metrical skill. He has recourse incessantly to an unnatural order of words, and especially he produces his rhymes by placing the verb after the noun it ought to precede. Of this license Dryden says, "We were whipped at Westminster if we used it twice together. I should judge him to have little command of English whom the necessity of a rhyme should force upon this rock, though sometimes it cannot easily be avoided." Pope availed himself of the false construction with a freedom which seriously deforms and enfeebles much of his poetry. He fell into the error before he had discrimination to perceive the blemish, and when his judgment was more mature habit had reconciled him to the distortion.

Warton has not exaggerated the defects of Statius, but he has underrated his merits. The descriptions in the Thebais are vivid, and abound in picturesque circumstances, and natural traits of character. Pope's translation is more vague. His narrative is less perspicuous, less dramatic, less spirited, and less life-like than the original. "There are numberless particulars blameworthy in our author," Pope wrote to Cromwell, "which I have tried to soften in the version."[14] He was not successful in this attempt. Where he departs from his text he seldom tempers an extravagance, and has more often rejected a beauty, or smoothed it down into insipidity. His juvenile taste was for polished generalities, and he shunned circumstantial nature. He had still less relish for primitive simplicity, and he thought that some of the incidents in the Thebais were too humble to be endured.[Pg 48]

"When Statius," he says, "comes to the scene of his poem, and the prize in dispute between the brothers, he gives us a very mean opinion of it,—pugna est de paupere regno—very different from the conduct of his master, Virgil, who at the entrance of his poem informs the reader of the greatness of his subject."[15] Pope was led astray by the equivocal meaning of a word. There is no connection between the greatness of a kingdom, and the greatness of a theme for poetic purposes. The poverty of Scotland did not detract from the tragic grandeur of Macbeth. When the fugitive princes in the Thebais quarrel in the vestibule, where they have taken shelter from the storm, and fight with their fists, Pope confused the narrative by omitting the whole account as inconsistent with epic dignity, and sacrificed the characteristics of the original to assimilate the manners to modern usages. If his criticisms had been well founded he should yet have kept to his text. "The sense of an author," says Dryden, "is, generally speaking, to be sacred and inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be luxuriant, it is his character to be so; and, if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid. It will be replied that he receives advantage by this lopping of his superfluous branches; but I rejoin that a translator has no such right. When a painter copies from the life, I suppose he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments, under pretence that his picture will look better; perhaps the face which he has drawn would be more exact if the eyes or nose were altered; but it is his business to make it resemble the original." Pope has rendered a few passages with equal beauty and truth, but on the whole the antique colouring, the dramatic traits, and picturesque details are very imperfectly preserved.

[Pg 49]

ARGUMENT

Œdipus, King of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and married his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned the realm to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Being neglected by them, he makes his prayer to the Fury Tisiphone, to sow debate betwixt the brothers. They agree at last to reign singly, each a year by turns, and the first lot is obtained by Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the gods, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans, and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, king of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect, and Mercury is sent on a message to the shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices in the meantime departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos, where he meets with Tydeus, who had fled from Calydon, having killed his brother. Adrastus entertains them, having received an oracle from Apollo that his daughters should be married to a boar and a lion, which he understands to be meant of these strangers, by whom the hides of those beasts were worn, and who arrived at the time when he kept an annual feast in honour of that god. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phœbus and Psamathe, and the story of Chorœbus. He inquires, and is made acquainted with their descent and quality. The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.

[Pg 51]

THE FIRST BOOK

OF

STATIUS'S THEBAIS.

[Pg 87]

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

OVID.

[Pg 89]Great is the change in passing from Statius to Ovid; from force to facility of style; from thoughts and images which are too much studied and unnatural to such as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Ovid seems to have had the merit of inventing this beautiful species of writing epistles under feigned names. It is a high improvement on the Greek elegy, to which its dramatic form renders it much superior. The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced, just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments, and the most sudden, and violent turns of passion to be displayed. Ovid may perhaps be blamed for a sameness of subjects in these epistles of his heroines; and his epistles are likewise too long, which circumstance has forced him into a repetition and languor in the sentiments. On the whole the epistle before us is translated by Pope with faithfulness and with elegance, and much excels any Dryden translated in the volume he published, several of which were done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease,"—that is, Sir C. Scrope, Caryll, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. Lord Somers translated Dido to Æneas, and Ariadne to Theseus. Though I regret the hours our poet spent in translating Ovid and Statius, yet it has given us an opportunity of admiring his good sense and judgment, in not suffering his taste and style, in his succeeding works, to be infected with the faults of these two writers.—Warton.

Warton says, "The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced at such a period of time as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments." How beautifully is this displayed in Pope's Epistle to Abelard, a poem that has another most interesting circumstance, which Ovid appears, as well as our Drayton, to have neglected,—I mean the introduction of appropriate and descriptive imagery, which relieves and recreates the fancy by the pictures, and by the landscapes which accompany the characters. Ovid, in this Epistle, seems not insensible to the effect of the introduction of such scenes; and the Leucadian rock, the antra nemusque, the aquatic lotus, the sacred pellucid fountain, and particularly the genius of the place, the Naiad, addressing the despairing Sappho (which circumstance Pope has beautifully imitated and improved in Eloisa), are in the genuine spirit of poetical taste. Dr. Warton observes that this translation is superior to any of Dryden's. If, indeed, we compare Pope's translations[Pg 90] with those of any other writer, their superiority must be strikingly apparent. There is a finish in them, a correctness, a natural flow, and a tone of originality, added to a wonderful propriety and beauty of expression and language. If he ever fails, it is where he generalises too much. This is particularly objectionable, where in the original there is any marked, distinct, and beautiful picture. So, ver. 253, Pope only says,

whereas in Ovid, Cupid appears before us in the very act of guiding the vessel, seated as the pilot, and with his tender hand (tenerâ manu) contracting, or letting flow the sail. I need not point out another beauty in the original,—the repetition of the word Ipse.—Bowles.

Richardson has appended this note to the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon in his copy of the quarto of 1717: "Corrected by the first copy, written out elegantly (as all his MSS.) to show friends, with their remarks in the margin; the present reading for the most part the effect of them." The remarks in the margin are mere exclamations, such as "pulchre," "bene," "optime," "recte," "bella paraphrasis," "longe præstas Scrope meo judicio," "minus placet," &c. They are doubtless from the pen of Cromwell, since it appeals from Pope's letter to him on June 10, 1709, that he had jotted down the same phrases on the margin of the translation of Statius. Bowles having quoted the observation of Warton, "that he had seen compositions of youths of sixteen years old far beyond the Pastorals in point of genius and imagination," adds, "I fear not to assert that he never could have seen any compositions of boys of that age so perfect in versification, so copious, yet so nice in expression, so correct, so spirited, and so finished," as the translation of the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon. The remark was made by Bowles in the belief that the version was the production of the poet's fourteenth year. Pope himself records on his manuscript that it was "written first 1707." He was then nineteen, and when the Epistle was published in 1712, in Tonson's Ovid, he was twenty-four.

"Ovid," says Dryden, "often writ too pointedly for his subject, and made his persons speak more eloquently than the violence of their passions would admit." Passion is sometimes highly eloquent; feeling strongly it expresses itself forcibly, and Dryden meant that the characters in Ovid, by their numerous strokes of studied brilliancy, seemed to be carried away less by their emotions than by the ambition to shine. These glittering artifices were formerly called wit, and Dryden complains that Ovid "is frequently witty out of season," but they are not wit in our present sense of the word. Occasionally they are the far-fetched or affected prettinesses which are properly[Pg 91] called conceits; and more commonly they consist in terse antithesis, and a sparkle of words produced by the balanced repetition of a phrase. They are often as appropriate as they are showy, and if they are among the blemishes they are conspicuous among the beauties of Ovid. His writings are marked by opposite qualities. He is sometimes too artificial in his expression of the passions, and sometimes he is natural, glowing, and pathetic. He abounds in pointed sentences, and is not less distinguished for the easy, spontaneous flow of his language. He is at once prolix and concise, indulging in a single vein of thought till the monotony becomes tedious, and yet enunciating his ideas with sententious brevity. The condensation of the Latin in many places cannot be preserved in the diffuser idioms of our English tongue, but, if we overlook a few weak couplets, Pope has translated the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon with rare felicity, and notwithstanding the inevitable loss of some happy turns of expression, he has managed to retain both the passion and the poetry. Effusions of sentiment were better adapted to his genius than the heroic narrative of the Thebais; and his limpid measure, which neither resembled the numerous and robuster verse of Statius, nor was suited to an epic theme, accorded with the sweetness and uniformity of Ovid's verse, and with the outpourings of grief and tenderness which are the staple of these epistolary strains. There is no ground for the regret of Warton that Pope should have spent a little time in translating portions of Ovid and Statius. It would be as reasonable to lament that he stooped to the preliminary discipline which made him a poet. He has related that he did not take to translation till he found himself unequal to original composition, and, like all who excel in any department, he learnt, by copying his predecessors, to rival them.

[Pg 93]

SAPPHO TO PHAON.[1]