Chapter VII: Part 7

[Footnote 3: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. ii. p. 165.]

[Footnote 4: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. iii. p. 72.]

[Footnote 5: Prior's Life of Malone, p. 385.]

[Footnote 6: Prior's Malone, p. 370.]

[Footnote 7: Hurd said of Warburton's Pope, that "it was the best edition that was ever given of any classic."]

[Footnote 8: Imit. Bk. i. Epist. vi. ver. 87.]

[Footnote 9: This last sentence was added by Warburton in the later editions of his Pope.]

[Footnote 10: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. IV. p. 429-437.]

[Footnote 11: Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, Vol. vi. p. 422.]

[Footnote 12: De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863. Vol. xv. p. 137. He usually maintained the opposite view, and sided altogether with the "they who could see nothing in Pope but 'dust a little gilt.'" "There is nothing," he says, "Pope would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most pathetic memorial from his personal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. Simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought, or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what people affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth."]

[Footnote 13: Macaulay's Essays, 1 Vol. ed. p. 719.]

[Footnote 14: Athenaeum, July 8, 1854, Sept. 1, Sept. 8, and Sept. 15, 1860.]

[Footnote 15: Mrs. Thomas to Cromwell, June 27, 1727.]

[Footnote 16: "Lives of the Poets," edited by Cunningham, Vol. III. p. 62.]

[Footnote 17: "The Curlliad," p. 22.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. I. p. xxxviii. Where no other work is mentioned, the references throughout this Introduction are to the present edition of Pope's Correspondence.]

[Footnote 19: Mr. Croker and myself have been indebted to the kindness of the present Marquess of Bath for the use of the Oxford papers preserved at Longleat. They are most important for the light they throw upon the character and proceedings of Pope.]

[Footnote 20: Lord Oxford to Pope, Oct. 9, 1729.]

[Footnote 21: Pope to Lord Oxford, Oct. 16, 1729.]

[Footnote 22: Pope to Swift, Nov. 28, 1729.]

[Footnote 23: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.]

[Footnote 24: Vol. I. p. xxxvii.]

[Footnote 25: The father was probably Lord Digby, and the letters were those addressed to the Hon. Robert Digby, who died in April, 1726.]

[Footnote 26: Vol. I. pp. xxxvii, xxxviii.]

[Footnote 27: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.]

[Footnote 28: Warton's "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 255.]

[Footnote 29: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 424.]

[Footnote 30: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 425.]

[Footnote 31: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 421, 423.]

[Footnote 32: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 441.]

[Footnote 33: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.]

[Footnote 34: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.]

[Footnote 35: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 425, 441.]

[Footnote 36: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.]

[Footnote 37: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.]

[Footnote 38: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 434.]

[Footnote 39: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.]

[Footnote 40: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 428.]

[Footnote 41: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 428, 433.]

[Footnote 42: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61. Mr. Roscoe says that no evidence for this statement appears. Johnson is himself the evidence. He went to London in 1737, when he was 28 years of age, to try his fortunes as an author, and became intimate with Savage, who was the ally of Pope, with Dodsley, who published the authentic edition of the poet's correspondence, and with numerous other persons from whom he was likely to have received reliable information upon a fact so recent. It is not to be supposed that Johnson imagined or invented a circumstance which there is nothing to discredit.]

[Footnote 43: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 433, 434.]

[Footnote 44: Though the work is printed in two thin volumes, it was always done up as one.]

[Footnote 45: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485. This article is from the same pen as the articles on Pope's correspondence in the "Athenaeum."]

[Footnote 46: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430. The statement occurs in a private note written at the time to Smythe, before the bookseller had any idea of appealing to the public, or suspected that the letters were printed by Pope himself.]

[Footnote 47: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.]

[Footnote 48: Vol. I. p. xxxvi.]

[Footnote 49: Vol. I. pp. xl. xli. All the statements to which I have referred occur in this preface of Pope to the quarto of 1737, and some of them in many other places besides.]

[Footnote 50: Vol. I. p. xxxvii. Appendix, p. 419.]

[Footnote 51: Vol. I. p. xxxv.]

[Footnote 52: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.]

[Footnote 53: Vol. I. p. xxxviii. The anonymous friend was put in the place of Lord Oxford. Half the notes relate to the Wycherley manuscripts in the Harley library, and could only have proceeded from the author of that fiction. Pope's official editor, Warburton, signed all the notes with Pope's name.]

[Footnote 54: Vol. I. p. xxxv.]

[Footnote 55: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.]

[Footnote 56: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.]

[Footnote 57: This circumstance at once attracted the attention of Swift. "I detest the House of Lords," he wrote to Lady Betty Germain, from Dublin, June 8, 1735, "for their indulgence to such a profligate, prostitute villain as Curll; but am at a loss how he could procure any letters written to Mr. Pope, although by the vanity or indiscretion of correspondents the rogue might have picked up some that went from him. Those letters have not yet been sent hither; therefore I can form no judgment on them." Swift's detestation of the House of Lords for not punishing a man who was proved to be innocent of the offence with which he was charged, is an instance of the kind of justice to be expected from violent partisans.]

[Footnote 58: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.]

[Footnote 59: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.]

[Footnote 60: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 429, 445.]

[Footnote 61: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.]

[Footnote 62: P. T. said 380, but the 3 was probably a misprint for 4.]

[Footnote 63: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.]

[Footnote 64: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.]

[Footnote 65: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.]

[Footnote 66: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 438. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. II. p. 261.]

[Footnote 67: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 435.]

[Footnote 68: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.]

[Footnote 69: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. II. p. vi.]

[Footnote 70: vol. I. Appendix, p. 446.]

[Footnote 71: vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.]

[Footnote 72: vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.]

[Footnote 73: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.]

[Footnote 74: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 435.]

[Footnote 75: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.]

[Footnote 76: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.]

[Footnote 77: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii. Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.]

[Footnote 78: The "Athenaeum" of Sept. 8, 1860.]

[Footnote 79: When Pope put forth his preface to the quarto he could not have intended to disguise that he was the writer of the "Narrative," or he would have been at greater pains to vary his language. If the general resemblance had been less marked, an invention common to both productions would reveal their common origin. In the "Narrative" we are informed that the complete collection of Pope's had been copied into a couple of books before Theobald published his edition of Wycherley's posthumous works, and that it was from these manuscript books that the Wycherley correspondence was transcribed for press. This assertion was untrue. Theobald's volume came out in 1728, while Pope's collection, as appears from his announcements to Lord Oxford, was still in the process of formation in September, 1729, and he was only "causing it to be fairly written" in October, after his own Wycherley volume had passed through the press. The false account is repeated in the preface to the quarto, where we are told that the posthumous works of Wycherley were printed the year after the copy of Pope's collection of letters had been deposited in the library of Lord Oxford, which throws back the deposit of the letters from the close of 1729 to 1727. Since the poet revived and authenticated an anonymous fiction respecting his personal acts, he may reasonably be supposed to have been the author of it. The object of the imposition was to uphold the tale he had advanced in his Wycherley volume. He had ceased to state openly that the publication was the act of Lord Oxford; but he wished to have it believed that the letters were in the keeping of his noble friend at the time, and to leave the impression that the notion of printing them had not originated with himself.]

[Footnote 80: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.]

[Footnote 81: Vol. I. p. xxxix.]

[Footnote 82: Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339.]

[Footnote 83: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.]

[Footnote 84: "Athenaeum," Sept. 8, 1860.]

[Footnote 85: Maloniana, p. 385.]

[Footnote 86: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.]

[Footnote 87: Vol. I. p. 417.]

[Footnote 88: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 430, 431, 443.]

[Footnote 89: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.]

[Footnote 90: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 443.]

[Footnote 91: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.]

[Footnote 92: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 444, 445.]

[Footnote 93: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.]

[Footnote 94: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.]

[Footnote 95: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 96: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.]

[Footnote 97: From a letter which Lord Oxford addressed to Swift on June 19, 1735, he would appear to have known no more than the rest of the public. "Master Pope," he writes, "is under persecution from Curll, who has by some means (wicked ones most certainly) got hold of some of Pope's private letters, which he has printed, and threatens more."]

[Footnote 98: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.]

[Footnote 99: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III, p. x.]

[Footnote 100: Pope to Buckley, July 13, [1735].]

[Footnote 101: Art. Atterbury in "A General Biographical Dictionary translated from Bayle, interspersed with several thousand lives never before published. By Rev. J. P. Bernard, Rev. T. Birch, Mr. John Lockman, and other hands." Vol II. p. 447.]

[Footnote 102: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.]

[Footnote 103: Pope to Fortescue, March 26, 1736, and April, 1736.]

[Footnote 104: Pope to Allen, June 5 and Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 105: Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 106: Pope to Fortescue, April, 1736.]

[Footnote 107: Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 108: Chancery Bill, Dodsley _v._ Watson.]

[Footnote 109: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.]

[Footnote 110: Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 465.]

[Footnote 111: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 112: Pope to Allen, June 5, 1736.]

[Footnote 113: Pope probably kept back from the quarto the unpublished letters he inserted in the octavo that their novelty might assist the sale of the edition which was intended to come out last. He would not use the new letters without his unfailing pretext that they "were in such hands as to be in imminent danger of being printed."]

[Footnote 114: These particulars are derived from the Chancery Bill _Dodsley_ v. _Watson_, and from the documents preserved by Pope's solicitor, Mr. Cole, and now in the possession of his successors in the business, Messrs. Janssen and Co. I owe the extracts from Cole's papers to Mr. Dilke, who was indebted for them to the present members of the firm.]

[Footnote 115: Vol. I. p. xliii.]

[Footnote 116: The words were introduced by the poet's friend and counsel Murray when he revised, or, in legal phrase, settled the bill. The rough draft submitted to him is among the papers of Mr. Cole, and the parallel passage only states that the letters written and received by Mr. Pope "having fallen into the hands of several booksellers, they thought fit to print a surreptitious edition," which did not preclude the supposition that one or more of the editions might be genuine. Whenever Pope, throughout the business, could use equivocal language he always selected it.]

[Footnote 117: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii.]

[Footnote 118: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 119: Vol. I. p. 1. He is speaking of Curll's reprint, which has no letters that were not in the original P. T. volume.]

[Footnote 120: Pope to Swift, May 17, 1739.]

[Footnote 121: Covent Garden Journal, No. 23, March 21, 1752.]

[Footnote 122: Warton's Pope, Vol. I. p. lv.]

[Footnote 123: The second edition of the octavo has a few more notes than the first edition. To distinguish it I have quoted it by the title of Cooper 1737, from the name of the publisher. I had not seen the first edition of the octavo till after Vol. I. of the Correspondence was printed, and I have erroneously stated of one or two letters that they originally appeared in the Cooper edition of 1737 which had not any new letters.]

[Footnote 124: De Quincey, Works, Vol. xv. p. 132.]

[Footnote 125: Works, Vol. vii. p. 66.]

[Footnote 126: Carruthers, Life of Pope, p. 442.]

[Footnote 127: Warburton's Pope, Ed. 1753, Vol. IX. p. 111.]

[Footnote 128: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 129: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 130: It is among the papers of his friend Lord Bathurst. The letter is undated, and was published without any date by Curll. When Pope reproduced it in the quarto of 1737, he dated it August, 1723; and in the quarto of 1741 he changed the date to January, 1723, which must be incorrect, since Bolingbroke was then abroad, and did not return to England till June. Swift's reply is dated September 20, and as it was between this period and June that the joint letter must have been written, August is either the true date, or a close approximation to it.]

[Footnote 131: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 132: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 133: It is stated in a note to the Dublin edition of the collection of 1741 that the original of Bolingbroke's appendix had been discovered among Swift's papers since the publication of the letter by Curll.]

[Footnote 134: Lord Orrery to Pope, Oct. 4, 1738.]

[Footnote 135: Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740. This letter was first published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for August, 1849. It is printed, together with the other letters on the subject, among the Pope and Swift correspondence in this edition.]

[Footnote 136: The earliest of the three letters bears in the body of the work, the heading "Mr. Gay to Dr. Swift;" but in the Table of Contents it is entitled "From Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope," and the language in portions of the letter itself shows that it was the production of both.]

[Footnote 137: "I never," said the poet to Caryll, November 19, 1712, "kept any copies of such stuff as I write," which would be decisive of his custom at that early date, if much reliance could be placed on his word. In 1716 he commenced correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and afterwards published several of the letters among his "Letters to Ladies." He was then at enmity with her, and as she retained the originals, he must either have borrowed them prior to the quarrel for the purpose of copying them, or else must have copied them before they were sent. There is no direct evidence to show at what time he commenced the practice of transcribing letters; but at the close of 1726 he began to compile the collection of 1735, and thenceforward he was sure to let nothing escape which could contribute to his design.]

[Footnote 138: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 139: Dr. Hawkesworth published a letter from Swift to Pope, introducing his cousin, Mr. D. Swift, and three more were published by Mr. D. Swift himself. He does not say by what means he obtained them, but they form part of a collection of some seventy stray letters addressed by Swift to thirty or forty different persons, who had certainly not returned them.]

[Footnote 140: Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.]

[Footnote 141: Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.]

[Footnote 142: Nichols's "Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century," Vol. V. p. 379.]

[Footnote 143: Birch MSS. Brit. Mus., quoted in Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339. When Mr. Gerrard was about to return to Ireland from Bath, Pope wrote to him, May 17, 1740, to say that he had found another conveyance for the letter he had intended to send by him to Swift. Mr. Gerrard may nevertheless have carried over the printed correspondence, which would not have been openly entrusted to him by Pope, who professed to know nothing about it. The poet may have thought upon reflection that it would look less suspicious if his avowed letter and the anonymous parcel were not transmitted by the same bearer.]

[Footnote 144: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 145: Pope to Mr. Nugent, March 26, 1740, and Mr. Nugent to Mrs. Whiteway, April 2, 1740.]

[Footnote 146: Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740.]

[Footnote 147: Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 469. The letter to Allen was not published till twenty-five years after Pope's death.]

[Footnote 148: Millar _v._ Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2397.]

[Footnote 149: "Athenaeum" for Sept. 15, 1860.]

[Footnote 150: "Whereas there is an impression of certain letters between Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope openly printed in Dublin without Mr. Pope's consent, and there is reason to think the same hath been, or will be done clandestinely in London, notice is hereby given that they will be speedily published with several additional letters, &c., composing altogether a second volume of his works in prose."--"London Daily Post" for March 24, 1741, quoted in the "Athenaeum" for September 15, 1860. The advertisement displays the same cautious phraseology as was employed in the prefatory notice to the quarto, and speaks of the Dublin volume as only printed, not published. One motive which probably induced Faulkner to delay it was, that the work would have been incomplete without the additional letters.]

[Footnote 151: Page 89 in the quarto bears, in the cancelled division, the signature M., and the later page 89 has the signature N. The cause of the difference is plain. It is the ordinary habit to begin the body of a work on sheet B, and reserve the signature A, for the preliminary matter. This is the method adopted with the three previous quarto volumes of Pope's works, and was followed in the original quarto impression of the correspondence; but after the poet had cancelled the beginning of the volume, the sheet commonly marked B was in the second state of the quarto marked A, which occasioned the usual sheet N to become M. The discrepancy is an additional proof that the opening sheets had been cancelled and reprinted.]

[Footnote 152: There were probably minor cancels which did not disturb the general arrangement, as at page 124, where there is a note which purports to be copied from the Dublin edition. The final sheet of all was evidently printed after Faulkner's volume was in type.]

[Footnote 153: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 154: Curll, who delivered his answer upon oath, was no doubt aware that the work was not first published in Dublin. He therefore used the evasive word "printed," and left it to his opponents to detect the fallacy. The methods, however, by which Pope had obtained his priority would not permit him to plead it, nor was he likely, by mooting the question, to risk the revelation of his plot.]

[Footnote 155: Atkyns's Reports, Vol. II. p. 342.]

[Footnote 156: The other counsel were Sir Dudley Ryder, then Attorney-General, and Mr. Noel. They all paid Pope the tribute of refusing their fees.]

[Footnote 157: Tonson _v._ Collins, Blackstone's Reports, Vol. I. p. 311.]

[Footnote 158: Millar _v._ Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2396. "I know," Lord Mansfield observed, "that Mr. Pope had no paper upon which the letters were written," which means that he had received this assurance from Pope, and supposed it to be true. In one particular the memory of Lord Mansfield deceived him. Blackstone on the authority of the preface to the quarto of 1741, stated, while arguing the case of Tonson _v._ Collins, that the letters "were published with the connivance at least, if not under the direction of Swift," to which Lord Mansfield replied, "Certainly not. Dr. Swift disclaimed it, and was extremely angry." But this is opposed to the united evidence of Mrs. Whiteway, Faulkner, and Pope, who all concur in testifying that Swift consented to the publication.]

[Footnote 159: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 160: Pope to Caryll, Feb. 3, 1729. Pope to Swift, March 23, 1737.]

[Footnote 161: To Lord Orrery, March, 1737. "His humanity, his charity, his condescension, his candour are equal to his wit, and require as good and true a taste to be equally valued. When all this must die, I would gladly have been the recorder of so great a part of it as shines in his letters to me, and of which my own are but as so many acknowledgements."]

[Footnote 162: Pope to Nugent, August 14, 1740.]

[Footnote 163: The statement is recorded by Dr. Birch in his Journal, May 14, 1751. He received the information from Dr. Heberden, who was then attending Lord Bolingbroke in his last illness.]

[Footnote 164: "All's Well that Ends Well." Act II. Scene 2.]

[Footnote 165: In September, 1725, Arbuthnot had an illness which was expected to prove mortal. Pope, in announcing his recovery to Swift on October 15, added, "He goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than even health can make a man." He meant that Arbuthnot was able to go about again, which was still one of the commonest significations of the phrase. Arbuthnot did not leave England, and from his letter to Swift on October 17, it is clear that he had never entertained the design.]

[Footnote 166: Roscoe dated the letter 1726. Without recapitulating the circumstances, which are fatal to the conjecture, it is enough to say that on September 10, 1726, Pope was unable to hold a pen, owing to the injury he had received a day or two before when he was upset in Bolingbroke's carriage. It was several weeks before he recovered the use of his hand. In the case of Digby there is the additional difficulty that as the nurse did not die till after September, 1725, so he himself was dead before September, 1726.]

[Footnote 167: I did not discover the letters of Wycherley at Longleat till after his correspondence with Pope had been printed off.]

[Footnote 168: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.]

[Footnote 169: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 170: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 171: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.]

[Footnote 172: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 9.]

[Footnote 173: Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an account of some religious fanatics.]

[Footnote 174: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.]

[Footnote 175: The general impression produced by the correspondence was expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can place no reliance on his passing words.]

[Footnote 176: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 177: This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much asperity in a preliminary advertisement, of which the original, corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 178: Advertisement to the edition of 1749.]

[Footnote 179: Advertisement to the edition of 1749. In the same year Warburton put forth a short pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted, in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of the principal charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and "only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years before, when the subject was fresh, and Bolingbroke was living.--Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 526. Appendix, p. 573.]

[Footnote 180: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 573.]

[Footnote 181: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 232.]

[Footnote 182: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 572.]

[Footnote 183: Warburton says that the expense had been considerable.--Ruffhead, 571.]

[Footnote 184: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 92.]

[Footnote 185: Macaulay's Essays. I Vol. edit. p. 718.]

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The clearness, the closeness, and the elegance of style with
which this preface is written, render it one of the best
pieces of prose in our language. It abounds in strong good
sense, and profound knowledge of life. It is written with
such simplicity that scarcely a single metaphor is to be
found in it.--WARTON.

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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] 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 versa_ 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] 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. 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 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._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In all editions till that of Warburton it was thus: "For as long as one side despises a well meant endeavour, the other will not be satisfied with a moderate approbation." The first sentence of the next paragraph is expanded in the manuscript: "Indeed they both proceed in such a manner as if they really believed that poetry was immediate inspiration. It were to be wished they would reflect that this extraordinary zeal and fury is ill placed, poetry and criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world. I do not say this to imitate those people who make a merit of undervaluing the arts and qualifications without which they had never been taken notice of. I think poetry as useful as any other art, because it is as entertaining, and therefore as well deserving of mankind."]

[Footnote 2: Until the edition of Warburton the reading was slightly different: "Yet sure upon the whole a bad author deserves better usage than a bad critic; a man may be the former merely through the misfortune of an ill judgment, but he cannot be the latter without both that and an ill temper."]

[Footnote 3: The instance of Pope himself is a refutation of his theory that the world was almost exclusively composed of flatterers and detractors, and chiefly of the last. Where he could count the deniers of his genius by tens he could number his admirers by thousands.]

[Footnote 4: What is here said of the privileges of the poetic character will not, I believe, bear the test of truth and experience. Surely a poet is not particularly allowed "the freedom of saying careless things," and his moral character and manners are to be estimated, as well as his talents, before he is entitled to a certain station in society.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 5: In the MS. it followed thus: "For my part, I confess, had I seen things in this view at first, the public had never been troubled either with my writings, or with this apology for them. I am sensible how difficult it is to speak of one's self with decency: but when a man must speak of himself, the best way is to speak truth of himself, or, he may depend upon it, others will do it for him. I will therefore make this preface a general confession of all my thoughts of my own poetry, resolving with the same freedom to expose myself, as it is in the power of any other to expose them. In the first place, I thank God and nature that I was born with a love to poetry; for nothing more conduces to fill up all the intervals of our time, or, if rightly used, to make the whole course of life entertaining: _Cantantes licet usque (minus via laedet)._ It is a vast happiness to possess the pleasures of the head, the only pleasures in which a man is sufficient to himself, and the only part of him which, to his satisfaction, he can employ all day long. The muses are _amicae omnium horarum_; and, like our gay acquaintance, the best company in the world as long as one expects no real service from them. I confess there was a time when I was in love with myself, and my first productions were the children of self-love upon innocence. I had made an epic poem, and panegyrics on all the princes in Europe, and thought myself the greatest genius that ever was. I cannot but regret those delightful visions of my childhood, which, like the fine colours we see when our eyes are shut, are vanished for ever. Many trials and sad experience have so undeceived me by degrees, that I am utterly at a loss at what rate to value myself. As for fame, I shall be glad of any I can get, and not repine at any I miss; and as for vanity, I have enough to keep me from hanging myself, or even from wishing those hanged who would take it away. It was this that made me write. The sense of my faults made me correct: besides that it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write."--WARBURTON.

Spence relates that Pope said to Mr. Saville: "If I was to begin the world again, and knew just what I do now, I would never write a verse." In the passage from his manuscript preface, he intimates that he would have amused himself by writing poetry, but would have forborne to publish what he wrote. Either he was not honest in the opinion, or he was self-deceived. He valued his fame above all things, and left no means untried to protect and promote it.]

[Footnote 6: As was the practice of his master Dryden, who is severely lashed for this in the Tale of a Tub.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 7: Pope was not justified in his boast. He dropped the practice of fulsome dedications, but he made the most of his distinguished friends in the body of his pieces, and though no "names of great patrons" are given in this preface, he could not abstain from announcing in the final sentence how much they had countenanced him. This, moreover, was to proclaim the "recommendations" he repudiated, and in every issue of his works the preface, which contained the inconsistency, was followed in addition by a series of Recommendatory Poems.]

[Footnote 8: The passage in inverted commas was first added in 1736.]

[Footnote 9: One of Pope's favourite topics is contempt for his own poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was certainly not sincere, for his value of himself was sufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he says, when "he has just nothing else to do;" yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation, because he "had always some poetical scheme in his head." It was punctually required that his writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and Lord Oxford's domestic related that in the dreadful winter of 1740, she was called from her bed by him four times in one night to supply him with paper lest he should lose a thought.--DR. JOHNSON.]

[Footnote 10: For the next sentence the manuscript has this passage: "But I fear it is far otherwise with modern poets. We must bring our wit to the press, as gardeners do their flowers to the market, which if they cannot vend in the morning are sure to die before night. Were we animated by the same noble ambition, and ready to prosecute it with equal ardour, our languages are not only confined to a narrow extent of country, but are in a perpetual flux, not so much as fixed by an acknowledged grammar, while theirs were such as time and fate conspired to make universal and everlasting."]

[Footnote 11: In place of the remainder of the sentence he had written in the manuscript, "is but to live twenty years longer than Quarles, or Withers, or Dennis." The doctrine of Pope was unworthy the countryman of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. The first three had not been "thrown aside at the end of one age," and no one who was capable of comprehending the last could seriously believe that his reputation would be ephemeral. The hypothesis, that the writers in a dead tongue can alone secure a worthy audience, is altogether chimerical. The literature of living languages has the ascendancy, and Shakespeare is more read, and better appreciated, than AEschylus and Sophocles.]

[Footnote 12: I have frequently heard Dr. Young speak with great disapprobation of the doctrine contained in this passage, with a view to which he wrote his discourse on Original Composition.--WARTON.

The assertion of Pope is in the face of the facts. All the greatest names in modern literature have a marked originality, and those authors who have imitated the ancients, except in subordinate circumstances, have usually produced tame and lifeless compositions, which were speedily forgotten.]

[Footnote 13: The sophistry is transparent. A man may be a scholar without being a plagiarist or an imitator.]

[Footnote 14: Here followed in the first edition, "and that I expect not to be excused in any negligence on account of youth, want of leisure, or any other idle allegations." This was inconsistent with his request, at the conclusion of his preface, that those who condemned his poems would remember his youth when he composed them. After the omitted sentence he had added in the manuscript, "I have ever been fearful of making an ill present to the world, for which I have as much respect as most poets have for themselves. What I thought incorrect I suppressed; and what I thought most finished I never published but with fear and trembling."]

[Footnote 15: From hence to the end of the paragraph the manuscript continues thus: "A man that can expect but sixty years may be ashamed to employ thirty in measuring syllables, and bringing sense and rhyme together. We spend our youth in the pursuit of riches or fame in hopes to enjoy them when we are old, and when we are old we find it is too late to enjoy anything. I have got over the mistake pretty early. I therefore hope the wits will pardon me if I leave myself time enough to save my soul, and some wise men will be of my opinion even if I should think a part of it better spent in the enjoyment of life than in pleasing the critics."]

[Footnote 16: This sentence was in the manuscript, but Pope omitted it in the edition of 1717, and restored it in 1736.]

[Footnote 17: In the manuscript he added, "which indeed was my chief view in making it, for in the present liberty of the press, a man is forced to appear as bad as he is, not to be thought worse." The assertion is qualified in the text, but he could not entirely abandon the affectation of pretending that he collected his works to escape the disgrace of the pieces which were falsely attributed to him, and not to obtain credit from his own performances.]