Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 32

Warburton carried the licentiousness of the pen in all these notes to the _Dunciad_ to a height which can only be paralleled in the gross logomachies of Schioppius, Gronovius, and Scaliger, and the rest of that snarling crew. But his wit exceeded even his grossness. He was accused of not sparing--

"Round-house wit and Wapping choler."

[Verses occasioned by Mr. W.'s late Edition of Pope.]

And one of his most furious a.s.sailants thus salutes him:--"Whether you are a wrangling Wapping attorney, a pedantic pretender to criticism, an impudent paradoxical priest, or an animal yet stranger, an heterogeneous medley of all three, as your farraginous style seems to confess."--An Epistle to the Author of a Libel ent.i.tled "A Letter to the Editor of Bolingbroke's Works," &c.--See NICHOLS, vol. v. p.

651.

I have ascertained that Mallet was the author of this furious epistle. He would not acknowledge what he dared not deny. Warburton treated Mallet, in this instance, as he often did his superiors--he never replied! The silence seems to have stung this irascible and evil spirit: he returned again to the charge, with another poisoned weapon. His rage produced "A _Familiar_ Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living," 1749. The style of this second letter has been characterised as "bad enough to disgrace even gaols and garrets." Its virulence could not well exceed its predecessor. The oddness of its t.i.tle has made this worthless thing often inquired after. It is merely personal. It is curious to observe Mallet, in this pamphlet, treat Pope as an object of pity, and call him "this poor man."

[David Mallet was the son of an innkeeper, who, by means of the party he wrote for, obtained lucrative appointments under Government, and died rich. He was unscrupulous in his career, and ready as a writer to do the most unworthy things. The death of Admiral Byng was hastened by the unscrupulous denunciations of Mallet, who was pensioned in consequence.] Orator Henley took some pains, on the first appearance of this catching t.i.tle, to a.s.sure his friends that it did not refer to _him_. The t.i.tle proved contagious; which shows the abuse of Warburton was very agreeable. Dr.

Z. Grey, under the t.i.tle of "A Country Curate," published "A Free and _Familiar_ Letter to the Great Refiner of Pope and Shakspeare," 1750; and in 1753, young Cibber tried also at "A _Familiar_ Epistle to Mr. William Warburton, from Mr.

Theophilus Cibber," prefixed to the "Life of Barton Booth."

Dr. Z. Grey's "freedom and _familiarity_" are designed to show Warburton that he has no wit; but unluckily, the doctor having none himself, his arguments against Warburton's are not decisive. "The _familiarity_" of Mallet is that of a scoundrel, and the _younger_ Cibber's that of an idiot: the genius of Warburton was secure. Mallet overcharged his gun with the fellest intentions, but found his piece, in bursting, annihilated himself. The popgun of the _little_ Theophilus could never have been heard!

[Warburton never lost a chance of giving a strong opinion against Mallet; and Dr. Johnson says, "When Mallet undertook to write the 'Life of Marlborough,' Warburton remarked that he might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher."]

But Warburton's rage was only a part of his _secret principle_; for can anything be more witty than his attack on poor COOPER, the author of "The Life of Socrates?" Having called his book "a late worthless and now forgotten thing, called 'The Life of Socrates,'" he adds, "where the head of the author has just made a shift to do the office of a _camera obscura_, and represent things in an inverted order, himself _above_, and Rollin, Voltaire, and every other author of reputation, _below_." When Cooper complained of this, and of some severer language, to Warburton, through a friend, Warburton replied that Cooper had attacked him, and that he had only taken his revenge "with a slight joke." Cooper was weak and vain enough to print a pamphlet, to prove that this was a serious accusation, and no joke; and if it was a joke, he shows it was not a correct one. In fact, Cooper could never comprehend how his head was like a _camera obscura_! Cooper was of the Shaftesburian school--philosophers who pride themselves on "the harmony" of their pa.s.sions, but are too often in discords at a slight disturbance. He equalled the virulence of Warburton, but could not attain to the wit. "I found," says Cooper, "previous to his pretended witticism about the _camera obscura_, such miserable sp.a.w.n of wretched malice, as nothing but the inflamed brain of a rank monk could conceive, or the oyster-selling maids near London Bridge could utter." One would not suppose all this came from the school of Plato, but rather from the tub of Diogenes. Something must be allowed for poor Cooper, whose "Life of Socrates" had been so positively a.s.serted to be "a late worthless and forgotten thing." It is curious enough to observe Cooper declaring, after this sally, that Warburton "has very unfortunately used the word _impudent_ (which epithet Warburton had applied to him), as it naturally reminds every reader that the pamphlet published about two years ago, addressed 'to the most impudent man living,' was universally acknowledged to be dedicated to our commentator." Warburton had always the _Dunciad_ in his head when a new quarrel was rising, which produced an odd blunder on the side of Edwards, and provoked that wit to be as dull as Cooper. Warburton said, in one of his notes on Edwards, who had ent.i.tled himself "a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn,"--"This gentleman, as he is pleased to call himself, is in reality a gentleman only of the _Dunciad_, or, to speak him better, in the plain language of our honest ancestors to such mushrooms, a _gentleman of the last edition_." Edwards misunderstood the allusion, and sore at the personal attack which followed, of his having "eluded the solicitude of his careful father," considered himself "degraded of his gentility," that it was "a reflection on his birth," and threatened to apply to "Mr. Warburton's Masters of the Bench, for degrading a 'barrister of their house.'" This afforded a new triumph to Warburton, in a new note, where he explains his meaning of these "mushrooms," whom he meant merely as literary ones; and a.s.sures "Fungoso and his friends, who are all gentlemen, that he meant no more than that Edwards had become a gentleman _of the last edition of the Dunciad_!" Edwards and his fungous friends had understood the phrase as applied to new-fangled gentry. One of these wits, in the collection of verses cited above, says to Warburton:--

"This mushroom has made sauce for you.

He's meat; thou'rt poison--plain enough-- If he's a _mushroom_, thou'rt a _puff_!"

Warburton had the full command over the _Dunciad_, even when Pope was alive, for it was in consequence of Warburton's being refused a degree at Oxford, that the poet, though one had been offered to himself, produced the celebrated lines of "Apollo's Mayor and Aldermen," in the fourth _Dunciad_. Thus it is that the personal likes and dislikes of witty men come down to posterity, and are often mistaken as just satire, when, after all, they are nothing but LITERARY QUARRELS, seldom founded on truth, and very often complete falsehoods!

[187] Dr. Thomas Balguy was the son of a learned father, at whose rectory of Northallerton he was born; he was appointed Archdeacon of Salisbury in 1759, and afterwards Archdeacon of Winchester. He died at the prebendal house of the latter city in 1795, at the age of 74. His writings are few--chiefly on church government and authority, which brought him into antagonism with Dr. Priestley and others, who objected to the high view he took of its position. With Hurd and Warburton he was always intimate; his sermon on the consecration of the former was one of the sources of adverse attack; the latter notes his death as that of "an old and esteemed friend."--ED.

[188] Dr. Brown was patronised and "pitied" by Warburton for years. He used him, but spoke of him disparagingly, as "a helpless creature in the ways of the world." Nichols speaks of him as an "elegant, ingenious, and unhappy author." His father was a native of Scotland; his son was born at Rothbury, in Northumberland, educated at Cambridge, made minor canon at Carlisle, but resigned it in disgust, living in obscurity in that city several years, till the Rebellion of 1745, when he acted as a volunteer at the siege of the Castle, and behaved with great intrepidity. His publication of an "Essay on Satire," on the death of Pope, led to his acquaintance with Warburton, who helped him to the rectory of Horksley, near Colchester; but he quarrelled with his patron, as he afterwards quarrelled with others. He then settled down to the vicarage of St. Nicholas, Newcastle, but not for long, as an educational scheme of the Empress of Russia offered him inducements to leave England; but his health failed him before he could carry out his intentions, irritability succeeded, and his disappointments, real and imaginary, led him to commit suicide in the fifty-first year of his age. He seems to have been a continual trouble to Warburton, who often alludes to his unsettled habits--and schooled him occasionally after his own fashion. Thus he writes in 1777:--"Brown is here; I think rather faster than ordinary, but no wiser. You cannot imagine the tenderness they all have of his tender places, and with how unfeeling a hand I probe them."--ED.

[189] Towne is so far "unknown to fame" that his career is unrecorded by our biographers; he was content to work for, and under the guidance of Warburton, as a literary drudge.--ED.

[190] Warburton, indeed, was always looking about for fresh recruits: a circ.u.mstance which appears in the curious Memoirs of the late Dr. Heathcote, written by himself. Heathcote, when young, published anonymously a pamphlet in the Middletonian controversy. By the desire of Warburton, the bookseller transmitted his compliments to the anonymous author. "I was greatly surprised," says Heathcote, "but soon after perceived that Warburton's state of authorship being a state of war, _it was his custom to be particularly attentive to all young authors, in hopes of enlisting them into his service_.

Warburton was more than civil, when necessary, on these occasions, and would procure such adventurers some slight patronage."--NICHOLS'S "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 536.

[191] We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when, even after the fatal edition of Warburton's Shakspeare, he should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to a.s.sert that "this fine edition must ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the author breathing throughout!"

Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have read the "Canons of Criticism?" Yet is it to be supposed that he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of his friend should _not_ have read them? The Warburtonians appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits in their controversies, which was to repeat arguments which had been confuted over and over again; to insinuate that they had not been so! But this was not too much to risk by him who, in his dedication of "Horace's Epistle to Augustus," with a Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that "Warburton, in his _enlarged view of things_, had not only revived the two models of Aristotle and Longinus, but had rather struck out _a new original plan of criticism_, which should unite the virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two greatest of our own poets--Shakspeare and Pope. Still (he adds, addressing Warburton) _you went farther_, by joining to those powers a perfect insight into human nature; and so enn.o.bling the exercise of literary by the justest moral censure, _you have now, at length, advanced criticism to its full glory_."

A perpetual intercourse of mutual adulation animated the sovereign and his viceroy, and, by mutual support, each obtained the same reward: two mitres crowned the greater and the minor critic. This intercourse was humorously detected by the lively author of "Confusion Worse Confounded."--"When the late Duke of R.," says he, "kept wild beasts, it was a common diversion to make two of his bears drunk (not metaphorically with flattery, but literally with strong ale), and then daub them over with honey. It was excellent sport to see how lovingly (like a couple of critics) they would lick and claw one another." It is almost amazing to observe how Hurd, who naturally was of the most frigid temperament, and the most subdued feelings, warmed, heated, and blazed in the progressive stages "of that pageantry of praise spread over the Rev. Mr. Warburton, when the latter was advancing fast towards a bishop.r.i.c.k," to use the words of Dr. Parr, a sagacious observer of man. However, notwithstanding the despotic mandates of our Pichrocole and his dapper minister, there were who did not fear to meet the greater bear of the two so facetiously described above. And the author of "Confusion Worse Confounded" tells a familiar story, which will enliven the history of our great critic. "One of the bears mentioned above happened to get loose, and was running along the street in which a tinker was gravely walking. The people all cried, 'Tinker! tinker! beware of the bear!' Upon this Magnano faced about with great composure; and raising his staff, knocked down Bruin, then setting his arms a-kimbo, walked off very sedately; only saying, 'Let the bear beware of the tinker,' which is now become a proverb in those parts."--"Confusion Worse Confounded," p. 75.

POPE,

AND HIS MISCELLANEOUS QUARRELS.

POPE adopted a system of literary politics--collected with extraordinary care everything relative to his Quarrels--no politician ever studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions and intricate stratagems--some of his manuvres--his systematic hostility not practised with impunity--his claim to his own works contested--CIBBER'S facetious description of POPE'S feelings, and WELSTED'S elegant satire on his genius--DENNIS'S account of POPE'S Introduction to him--his political prudence further discovered in the Collection of all the Pieces relative to the _Dunciad_, in which he employed SAVAGE--the THEOBALDIANS and the POPEIANS; an attack by a Theobaldian--The _Dunciad_ ingeniously defended, for the grossness of its imagery, and its reproach of the poverty of the authors, supposed by POPE himself, with some curious specimens of literary personalities--the Literary Quarrel between AARON HILL and POPE distinguished for its romantic cast--a Narrative of the extraordinary transactions respecting the publication of POPE'S Letters; an example of Stratagem and Conspiracy, ill.u.s.trative of his character.

POPE has proudly perpetuated the history of his Literary Quarrels; and he appears to have been among those authors, surely not forming the majority, who have delighted in, or have not been averse to provoke, hostility. He has registered the t.i.tles of every book, even to a single paper, or a copy of verses, in which their authors had committed treason against his poetical sovereignty.[192] His ambition seemed gratified in heaping these trophies to his genius, while his meaner pa.s.sions could compile one of the most voluminous of the scandalous chronicles of literature. We are mortified on discovering so fine a genius in the text humbling itself through all the depravity of a commentary full of spleen, and not without the fictions of satire. The unhappy influence his _Literary Quarrels_ had on this great poet's life remains to be traced. He adopted a system of literary politics abounding with stratagems, conspiracies, manuvres, and factions.

Pope's literary quarrels were the wars of his poetical ambition, more perhaps than of the petulance and strong irritability of his character. They were some of the artifices he adopted from the peculiarity of his situation.

Thrown out of the active cla.s.ses of society from a variety of causes sufficiently known,[193] concentrating his pa.s.sions into a solitary one, his retired life was pa.s.sed in the contemplation of his own literary greatness. Reviewing the past, and antic.i.p.ating the future, he felt he was creating a new era in our literature, an event which does not always occur in a century: but eager to secure present celebrity, with the victory obtained in the open field, he combined the intrigues of the cabinet: thus, while he was exerting great means, he practised little artifices. No politician studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions, or with more intricate stratagems; and Pope was at once the lion and the fox of Machiavel. A book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place this great poet.

To keep his name alive before the public was one of his early plans.

When he published his "Essay on Criticism," anonymously, the young and impatient poet was mortified with the inertion of public curiosity: he was almost in despair.[194] Twice, perhaps oftener, Pope attacked Pope;[195] and he frequently concealed himself under the names of others, for some particular design. Not to point out his dark familiar "Scriblerus," always at hand for all purposes, he made use of the names of several of his friends. When he employed SAVAGE in "a collection of all the pieces, in verse and prose, published on occasion of the _Dunciad_," he subscribed his name to an admirable dedication to Lord Middles.e.x, where he minutely relates the whole history of the _Dunciad_, "and the weekly clubs held to consult of hostilities against the author;" and, for an express introduction to that work, he used the name of Cleland, to which is added a note, expressing surprise that the world did not believe that Cleland was the writer![196] Wanting a pretext for the publication of his letters, he delighted CURLL by conveying to him some printed surrept.i.tious copies, who soon discovered that it was but a fairy treasure which he could not grasp; and Pope, in his own defence, had soon ready the authentic edition.[197] Some lady observed that Pope "hardly drank tea without a stratagem!" The female genius easily detects its own peculiar faculty, when it is exercised with inferior delicacy.

But his systematic hostility did not proceed with equal impunity: in this perpetual war with dulness, he discovered that every one he called a dunce was not so; nor did he find the dunces themselves less inconvenient to him; for many successfully subst.i.tuted, for their deficiencies in better qualities, the lie that lasts long enough to vex a man; and the insolence that does not fear him: they attacked him at all points, and not always in the spirit of legitimate warfare.[198] They filled up his asterisks, and accused him of treason. They a.s.serted that the panegyrical verses prefixed to his works (an obsolete mode of recommendation, which Pope condescended to practise), were his own composition, and to which he had affixed the names of some dead or some unknown writers.

They published lists of all whom Pope had attacked; placing at the head, "G.o.d Almighty; the King;" descending to the "lords and gentlemen."[199] A few suspected his skill in Greek; but every hound yelped in the halloo against his Homer.[200] Yet the more extraordinary circ.u.mstance was, their hardy disputes with Pope respecting his claim to his own works, and the difficulty he more than once found to establish his rights. Sometimes they divided public opinion by even indicating the real authors; and witnesses from White's and St. James's were ready to be produced. Among these literary coteries, several of Pope's productions, in their anonymous, and even in their MS. state, had been appropriated by several pseudo authors; and when Pope called for rest.i.tution, he seemed to be claiming nothing less than their lives. One of these gentlemen had enjoyed a very fair reputation for more than two years on the "Memoirs of a Parish-Clerk;" another, on "The Messiah!" and there were many other vague claims. All this was vexatious; but not so much as the ridiculous att.i.tude in which Pope was sometimes placed by his enraged adversaries.[201] He must have found himself in a more perilous situation when he hired a brawny champion, or borrowed the generous courage of some military friend.[202] To all these troubles we may add, that Pope has called down on himself more lasting vengeance; and the good sense of Theobald, the furious but often acute remarks of Dennis; the good-humoured yet keen remonstrance of Cibber; the silver shaft, tipped with venom, sent from the injured but revengeful Lady Mary; and many a random shot, that often struck him, inflicted on him many a sleepless night.[203] The younger Richardson has recorded the personal sufferings of Pope when, one day, in taking up Cibber's letter, while his face was writhing with agony, he feebly declared that "these things were as good as hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of Pope, in his second letter:--"Everybody tells me that I have made you as uneasy as a rat in a hot kettle, for a twelvemonth together."[204]

Pope was pursued through life by the insatiable vengeance of Dennis.

The young poet, who had got introduced to him, among his first literary acquaintances, could not fail, when the occasion presented itself, of ridiculing this uncouth son of Aristotle. The blow was given in the character of Appius, in the "Art of Criticism;" and it is known Appius was instantaneously recognised by the fierce shriek of the agonised critic himself. From that moment Dennis resolved to write down every work of Pope's. How dangerous to offend certain tempers, verging on madness![205] Dennis, too, called on every one to join him in the common cause; and once he retaliated on Pope in his own way.

Accused by Pope of being the writer of an account of himself, in Jacob's "Lives of the Poets," Dennis procured a letter from Jacob, which he published, and in which it appears that Pope's own character in this collection, if not written by him, was by him very carefully corrected on the proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous att.i.tude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter.

Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a critic, sh.e.l.led up against the arrows of wit. This monster of criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the golden shaft of Apollo could not pierce.

The political prudence of Pope was further discovered in the "Collection of all the Pieces relative to the _Dunciad_," on which he employed Savage: these exemplified the justness of the satire, or defended it from all attacks. The precursor of the _Dunciad_ was a single chapter in "The Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in Poetry;" where the humorous satirist discovers an a.n.a.logy between flying-fishes, parrots, tortoises, &c., and certain writers, whose names are designated by initial letters. In this unlucky alphabet of dunces, not one of them but was applied to some writer of the day; and the loud clamours these excited could not be appeased by the simplicity of our poet's declaration, that the letters were placed at random: and while his oil could not smooth so turbulent a sea, every one swore to the flying-fish or the tortoise, as he had described them. It was still more serious when the _Dunciad_ appeared. Of that cla.s.s of authors who depended for a wretched existence on their wages, several were completely ruined, for no purchasers were to be found for the works of some authors, after they had been inscribed in the chronicle of our provoking and inimitable satirist.[206]

It is in this collection by Savage I find the writer's admirable satire on the cla.s.s of literary prost.i.tutes. It is ent.i.tled "An Author to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney." It has been ably commended by Johnson in his "Life of Savage," and on his recommendation Thomas Davies inserted it in his "Collection of Fugitive Pieces;" but such is the careless curiosity of modern re-publishers, that often, in preserving a decayed body, they are apt to drop a limb: this was the case with Davies; for he has dropped the preface, far more exquisite than the work itself. A morsel of such poignant relish betrays the hand of the master who s.n.a.t.c.hed the pen for a moment.

This preface defends Pope from the two great objections justly raised at the time against the _Dunciad_: one is, the grossness and filthiness of its imagery; and the other, its reproachful allusions to the poverty of the authors.

The _indelicacies_ of the _Dunciad_ are thus wittily apologised for:--

"They are suitable to the subject; a subject composed, for the most part, of authors whose writings are the refuse of wit, and who in life are the very excrement of Nature. Mr. Pope has, too, used dung; but he disposes that dung in such a manner that it becomes rich manure, from which he raises a variety of fine flowers. He deals in rags; but like an artist, who commits them to a paper-mill, and brings them out useful sheets. The chemist extracts a fine cordial from the most nauseous of all dung; and Mr. Pope has drawn a sweet poetical spirit from the most offensive and unpoetical objects of the creation--unpoetical, though eternal writers of poetry."

The reflections on the _poverty_ of its heroes are thus ingeniously defended:--"Poverty, not proceeding from folly, but which may be owing to virtue, sets a man in an amiable light; but when our wants are of our own seeking, and prove the motive of every ill action (for the poverty of bad authors has always a bad heart for its companion), is it not a vice, and properly the subject of satire?" The preface then proceeds to show how "all these _said writers_ might have been _good mechanics_." He ill.u.s.trates his principles with a most ungracious account of several of his contemporaries. I shall give a specimen of what I consider as the polished sarcasm and caustic humour of Pope, on some favourite subjects.

"Mr. Thomas _Cooke_.--His enemies confess him not without merit. To do the man justice, he might have made a tolerable figure as a _Tailor_.

'Twere too presumptuous to affirm he could have been a _master_ in any profession; but, dull as I allow him, he would not have been despicable for a third or a fourth hand journeyman. Then had his wants have been avoided; for, he would at least have learnt to _cut his coat according to his cloth_.

"Why would not Mr. _Theobald_ continue an attorney? Is not _Word-catching_ more serviceable in splitting a cause, than explaining a fine poet?

"When Mrs. _Haywood_ ceased to be a strolling-actress, why might not the lady (though once a theatrical queen) have subsisted by turning _washerwoman_? Has not the fall of greatness been a frequent distress in all ages? She might have caught a beautiful bubble, as it arose from the suds of her tub, blown it in air, seen it glitter, and then break! Even in this low condition, she had played with a bubble; and what more is the vanity of human greatness?

"Had it not been an honester and more decent livelihood for Mr.

_Norton_ (Daniel De Foe's son of love by a lady who vended oysters) to have dealt in a _fish-market_, than to be dealing out the dialects of Billingsgate in the Flying-post?

"Had it not been more laudable for Mr. _Roome_, the son of an _undertaker_, to have borne a link and a mourning-staff, in the long procession of a funeral--or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms, according to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the _Jovial Crew, or Merry Beggars_, into a _wicked_ imitation of the _Beggar's Opera_?"

This satire seems too exquisite for the touch of Savage, and is quite in the spirit of the author of the _Dunciad_. There is, in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," a work to which Warburton contributed all his care, a pa.s.sage which could only have been written by Warburton. The strength and coa.r.s.eness of the imagery could never have been produced by the dull and feeble intellect of Ruffhead: it is the opinion, therefore, of Warburton himself, on the _Dunciad_. "The _good purpose_ intended by this satire was, to the _herd_ in general, of less efficacy than our author hoped; for _scribblers_ have not the common sense of _other vermin_, who usually abstain from mischief, when they see any of their kind _gibbeted_ or _nailed up_, as terrible examples."--Warburton employed the same strong image in one of his threats.

One of Pope's Literary Quarrels must be distinguished for its romantic cast.

In the Treatise on the _Bathos_, the initial letters of the bad writers occasioned many heartburns; and, among others, Aaron Hill suspected he was marked out by the letters A. H. This gave rise to a large correspondence between Hill and Pope. Hill, who was a very amiable man, was infinitely too susceptible of criticism; and Pope, who seems to have had a personal regard for him, injured those nice feelings as little as possible. Hill had published a panegyrical poem on Peter the Great, under the t.i.tle of "The Northern Star;" and the bookseller had conveyed to him a criticism of Pope's, of which Hill publicly acknowledged he mistook the meaning. When the Treatise of "The Bathos" appeared, Pope insisted he had again mistaken the initials A. H.--Hill gently attacked Pope in "a paper of very pretty verses," as Pope calls them. When the _Dunciad_ appeared, Hill is said "to have published pieces, in his youth, bordering upon the bombast." This was as light a stroke as could be inflicted; and which Pope, with great good-humour, tells Hill, might be equally applied to himself; for he always acknowledged, that when a boy, he had written an Epic poem of that description; would often quote absurd verses from it, for the diversion of his friends; and actually inserted some of the most extravagant ones in the very Treatise on "The Bathos." Poor Hill, however, was of the most sickly delicacy, and produced "The Caveat," another gentle rebuke, where Pope is represented as "sneakingly to approve, and want the worth to cherish or befriend men of merit." In the course of this correspondence, Hill seems to have projected the utmost stretch of his innocent malice; for he told Pope, that he had almost finished "An Essay on Propriety and Impropriety in Design, Thought, and Expression, ill.u.s.trated by examples in both kinds, from the writings of Mr.

Pope;" but he offers, if this intended work should create the least pain to Mr. Pope, he was willing, with all his heart, to have it run thus:--"An Essay on Propriety and Impropriety, &c., ill.u.s.trated by Examples of the first, from the writings of Mr. Pope, and of the rest, from those of the author."--To the romantic generosity of this extraordinary proposal, Pope replied, "I acknowledge your generous offer, to give _examples of imperfections_ rather out of _your own works_ than mine: I consent, with all my heart, to your confining them to _mine_, for two reasons: the one, that I fear your sensibility that way is greater than my own: the other is a better; namely, that I intend to correct the faults you find, if they are such as I expect from Mr. Hill's cool judgment."[207]

Where, in literary history, can be found the parallel of such an offer of self-immolation? This was a literary quarrel like that of lovers, where to hurt each other would have given pain to both parties. Such skill and desire to strike, with so much tenderness in inflicting a wound; so much compliment, with so much complaint; have perhaps never met together, as in the romantic hostility of this literary chivalry.