Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 33

FOOTNOTES:

[192] Pope collected these numerous literary libels with extraordinary care. He had them bound in volumes of all sizes; and a range of twelves, octavos, quartos, and folios were marshalled in portentous order on his shelves. He wrote the names of the writers, with remarks on these _Anonymiana_. He prefixed to them this motto, from Job: "Behold, my desire is, that mine adversary had written a book: surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me." x.x.xi. 35. Ruffhead, who wrote Pope's Life under the eye of Warburton, who revised every sheet of the volume, and suffered this mere lawyer and singularly wretched critic to write on, with far inferior taste to his own--offered "the entire collection to any public library or museum, whose search is after _curiosities_, and may be desirous of enriching their common treasure with it: it will be freely at the service of that which asks first." Did no one accept the invitation? As this was written in 1769, it is evidently pointed towards the British Museum; but there I have not heard of it. This collection must have contained much of the Secret Memoirs of Grub-street: it was always a fountain whence those "waters of bitterness," the notes in the _Dunciad_, were readily supplied. It would be curious to discover by what stratagem Pope obtained all that secret intelligence about his Dunces, with which he has burthened posterity, for his own particular gratification. Arbuthnot, it is said, wrote some notes merely literary; but Savage, and still humbler agents, served him as his _Espions de Police_.

He pensioned Savage to his last day, and never deserted him.

In the account of "the phantom Moore," Scriblerus appeals to Savage to authenticate some story. One curious instance of the fruits of Savage's researches in this way he has himself preserved, in his memoirs of "An Author to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney." This portrait of "a perfect Town-Author" is not deficient in spirit: the hero was one Roome, a man only celebrated in the _Dunciad_ for his "funereal frown." But it is uncertain whether this fellow had really so dismal a countenance; for the epithet was borrowed from his profession, being the son of an undertaker! Such is the nature of some satire! Dr. Warton is astonished, or mortified, for he knew not which, to see the pains and patience of Pope and his friends in compiling the Notes to the _Dunciad_, to trace out the lives and works of such paltry and forgotten scribblers.

"It is like walking through the darkest alleys in the dirtiest part of St. Giles's." Very true! But may we not be allowed to detect the vanities of human nature at St. Giles's as well as St. James's? Authors, however obscure, are always an amusing race to authors. The greatest find their own pa.s.sions in the least, though distorted, or cramped in too small a compa.s.s.

It is doubtless from Pope's great anxiety for his own literary celebrity that we have been furnished with so complete a knowledge of the grotesque groups in the _Dunciad_. "Give me a shilling," said Swift, facetiously, "and I will insure you that posterity shall never know one single enemy, excepting those whose memory you have preserved." A very useful hint for a man of genius to leave his wretched a.s.sailants to dissolve away in their own weakness. But Pope, having written a _Dunciad_, by accompanying it with a commentary, took the only method to interest posterity. He felt that Boileau's satires on bad authors are liked only in the degree the objects alluded to are known. But he loved too much the subject for its own sake. He abused the powers genius had conferred on him, as other imperial sovereigns have done. It is said that he kept the whole kingdom in awe of him. In "the frenzy and prodigality of vanity," he exclaimed--

"--------Yes, I am proud to see Men, not afraid of G.o.d, afraid of me!"

Tacitus Gordon said of him, that Pope seemed to persuade the nation that all genius and ability were confined to him and his friends.

[193] Pope, in his energetic Letter to Lord HERVEY, that "masterpiece of invective," says Warton, which Tyers tells us he kept long back from publishing, at the desire of Queen Caroline, who was fearful her counsellor would become insignificant in the public esteem, and at last in her own, such was the power his genius exercised;--has pointed out one of these causes. It describes himself as "a private person under penal laws, and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience; yet it is by these alone I have hitherto lived _excluded from all posts of profit or trust_. I can interfere with the views of no man."

[194] The first publisher of the "Essay on Criticism" must have been a Mr. Lewis, a Catholic bookseller in Covent-garden; for, from a descendant of this Lewis, I heard that Pope, after publication, came every day, persecuting with anxious inquiries the cold impenetrable bookseller, who, as the poem lay uncalled for, saw nothing but vexatious importunities in a troublesome youth. One day, Pope, after nearly a month's publication, entered, and in despair tied up a number of the poems, which he addressed to several who had a reputation in town, as judges of poetry. The scheme succeeded, and the poem, having reached its proper circle, soon got into request.

[195] He was the author of "The Key to the Lock," written to show that "The Rape of the Lock" was a political poem, designed to ridicule the Barrier Treaty; [so called from the arrangement made at the Peace of Utrecht between the ministers of Great Britain and the States General, as to the towns on the frontiers of the Dutch, which were to be permanently strengthened as barrier fortresses. Pope, in the mask of Esdras Barnivelt, apothecary, thus makes out his poem to be a political satire. "Having said that by the _lock_ is meant the _Barrier Treaty_--first then I shall discover, that Belinda represents Great Britain, or (which is the same thing) her late Majesty. This is plainly seen in the description of her,

"On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore."

Alluding to the ancient name of Albion, from her white cliffs, and to the cross which is the ensign of England. The baron who cuts off the lock, or Barrier Treaty, is the Earl of Oxford.

Clarissa, who lent the scissors, my Lady Masham. Thalestris, who provokes Belinda to resent the loss of the lock or treaty, the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough; and Sir Plume, who is moved by Thalestris to re-demand it of Great Britain, Prince Eugene, "who came hither for that purpose." He concludes 32 pages of similar argument by saying, "I doubt not if the persons most concerned would but order Mr. Bernard Lintott, the printer and publisher of this dangerous piece, to be taken into custody and examined, many further discoveries might be made both of this poet's and his abettors secret designs, which are doubtless of the utmost importance to Government." Such is a specimen of Pope's chicanery.] Its innocent extravagance could only have been designed to increase attention to a work, which hardly required any such artifice. [In the preface to this production, "the uncommon sale of this book" is stated as one reason for the publication; "above six thousand of them have been already vended."] In the same spirit he composed the "Guardian," in which Phillips's Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the "Guardian," and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have discovered all the _supercheries_ of this kind. After writing the finest works of genius, he was busily employed in attracting the public attention to them. In the ant.i.thesis of his character, he was so great and so little! But he knew mankind! and present fame was the great business of his life.

[196] Cleland was the son of Colonel Cleland, an old friend of Pope; he and his son had served in the East Indian army; but the latter returned to London, and became a sort of literary jackal to Pope, and a hack author for the booksellers. He wrote several moral and useful works; but as they did not pay well, he wrote an immoral one, for which he obtained a better price, and a pension of 100_l._ a-year, on condition that he never wrote in that manner again. This was obtained for him by Lord Granville, after Cleland had been cited before the Privy Council, and pleaded poverty as the reason for such authorship.--ED.

[197] The narrative of this dark transaction, which seems to have been imperfectly known to Johnson, being too copious for a note, will be found at the close of this article.

[198] A list of all the pamphlets which resulted from the _Dunciad_ would occupy a large s.p.a.ce. Many of them were as grossly personal as the celebrated poem. The poet was frequently ridiculed under the names of "Pope Alexander" (from his dictatorial style), and "Sawney." In "an heroic poem occasioned by the _Dunciad_," published in 1728, the poet's snug retreat at Twickenham is thus alluded to:--

"Sawney! a mimic sage of huge renown, To Twick'nam bow'rs retir'd, enjoys his wealth, His malice and his muse: in grottoes cool, And cover'd arbours, dreams his hours away."

A fragment of Pope's celebrated grotto still remains; the house is destroyed. Pope spent all his spare cash over his Twickenham villa. "I never save anything," he said once to Spence; and the latter has left a detailed account of what he meant to do in the further decoration of his garden if he had lived. As he gained a sum of money, he regularly spent it in this way.--ED.

[199] Pope is, perhaps, the finest _character-painter_ of all satirists. Atterbury, after reading the portrait of Atticus, advised him to proceed in a way which his genius had pointed out; but Arbuthnot, with his dying breath, conjured him "to reform, and not to chastise;" that is, not to spare the vice, but the person. It is said, Pope answered, that, to correct the world with due effect, they become inseparable; and that, deciding by his own experience, he was justified in his opinion. Perhaps, at first, he himself wavered; but he strikes bolder as he gathers strength. The two first editions of the _Dunciad_, now before me, could hardly be intelligible: they exhibit lines after lines gaping with an hiatus, or obscured with initial letters: in subsequent editions, the names stole into their places. We are told, that the personalities in his satires quickened the sale: the portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atossa, were purchased by everybody; but when he once declared, respecting the _characters_ of one of his best satires, that no real persons were intended, it checked public curiosity, which was felt in the sale of that edition. Personality in his satires, no doubt, accorded with the temper and the talent of Pope; and the malice of mankind afforded him all the conviction necessary to indulge it. Yet Young could depend solely on abstract characters and pure wit; and I believe that his "Love of Fame" was a series of admirable satires, which did not obtain less popularity than Pope's. Cartwright, one of the poetical sons of Ben Jonson, describes, by a beautiful and original image, the office of the satirist, though he praises Jonson for exercising a virtue he did not always practise; as Swift celebrates Pope with the same truth, when he sings:--

"Yet malice never was his aim; He lash'd the vice, but spared the name."

Cartwright's lines are:--

"--------'tis thy skill To strike the vice, and spare the person still; As he who, when he saw the serpent wreath'd About his sleeping son, and as he breathed, Drink in his soul, did so the shot contrive, To kill the beast, but keep the child alive."

[200] Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, published a letter in Mist's Journal, insisting that Pope had _mistaken the whole character of Thersites_, from ignorance of the language. I regret I have not drawn some notes from that essay. The subject might be made curious by a good Greek scholar, if Pope has really erred in the degree Cooke a.s.serts. Theobald, who seems to have been a more cla.s.sical scholar than has been allowed, besides some versions from the Greek tragic bards, commenced a translation of the _Odyssey_ as soon as Pope's _Iliad_ appeared.

[201] In one of these situations, Pope issued a very grave, but very ludicrous, advertis.e.m.e.nt. They had the impudence to publish an account of Pope having been flagellated by two gentlemen in Ham Walks, during his evening promenade. This was avenging Dennis for what he had undergone from the narrative of his madness. In "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. i. p. 96, this tingling narrative appears to have been the ingenious forgery of Lady Mary! On this occasion, Pope thought it necessary to publish the following advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Daily Post_, June 14, 1728:--

"Whereas, there has been a scandalous paper cried aloud about the streets, under the t.i.tle of 'A Pop upon Pope,' insinuating that I was whipped in Ham Walks on Thursday last:--This is to give notice, that I did not stir out of my house at Twickenham on that day; and the same is a malicious and ill-founded report.--A. P."

[Spence, on the authority of Pope's half-sister, says: "When some of the people that he had put into the _Dunciad_ were so enraged against him, and threatened him so highly, he loved to walk alone to Richmond, only he would take a large faithful dog with him, and pistols in his pocket. He used to say to us when we talked to him about it, that 'with pistols the least man in England was above a match for the largest.'"]

It seems that Phillips hung up a birchen-rod at b.u.t.ton's.

Pope, in one of his letters, congratulates himself that he never attempted to use it. [His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett, testifies to Pope's courage; she says, "My brother never knew what fear was."]

[202] According to the scandalous chronicle of the day, Pope, shortly after the publication of the _Dunciad_, had a tall Irishman to attend him. Colonel Duckett threatened to cane him, for a licentious stroke aimed at him, which Pope recanted. Thomas Bentley, nephew to the doctor, for the treatment his uncle had received, sent Pope a challenge. The modern, like the ancient Horace, was of a nature liable to panic at such critical moments. Pope consulted some military friends, who declared that his _person_ ought to protect him from any such redundance of valour as was thus formally required; however, one of them accepted the challenge for him, and gave Bentley the option either of fighting or apologising; who, on this occasion, proved, what is usual, that the easiest of the two was the quickest done.

[203] I shall preserve one specimen, so cla.s.sically elegant, that Pope himself might have composed it. It is from the pen of that Leonard Welsted whose "Aganippe" Pope has so shamefully characterised--

"Flow, Welsted, flow, like thine inspirer, beer!"

Can the reader credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who considered poetry only as a pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nt? He has, however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his muse, some pa.s.sages wrought up with equal felicity and power.

There are several original poetical views of nature scattered in his works, which have been collected by Mr. Nichols, that would admit of a comparison with some of established fame.

Welsted imagined that the spirit of English poetry was on its decline in the age of Pope, and allegorises the state of our poetry in a most ingenious comparison. The picture is exquisitely wrought, like an ancient gem: one might imagine Anacreon was turned critic:--

"A flask I rear'd whose sluice began to fail, And told, from Phaerus, this facetious tale:-- Sabina, very old and very dry, Chanced, on a time, an EMPTY FLASK to spy: The flask but lately had been thrown aside, With the rich grape of Tuscan vineyards dyed; But lately, gushing from the slender spout, Its life, in purple streams, had issued out.

_The costly flavour still to sense remain'd_, And still its sides the violet colour stain'd: A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile; Pleased, she imbibes the generous fumes awhile, Then, downwards turn'd, the vessel gently props, And drains with patient care the lucid drops: O balmy spirit of Etruria's vine!

O fragrant flask, she said, too lately mine!

_If such delights, THOUGH EMPTY, thou canst yield_, What wondrous raptures hadst thou given if filled!"

_Paloemon to Coelia at Bath, or the Triumvirate._

"The empty flask" only retaining "the costly flavour," was the verse of Pope.

[204] Pope was made to appear as ridiculous as possible, and often nicknamed "Poet Pug," from the frontispiece to an attack in reply to his own, termed "Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility examined." It represents Pope as a misshapen monkey leaning on a pile of books, in the att.i.tude adopted by Jervas in his portrait of the poet.--ED.

[205] Dennis tells the whole story. "At his first coming to town he was importunate with Mr. Cromwell to introduce him to me. The recommendation engaged me to be about thrice in company with him; after which I went to the country, till I found myself most insolently attacked in his very superficial 'Essay on Criticism,' by which he endeavoured to destroy the reputation of a man who had published pieces of criticism, and to set up his own. I was moved with indignation to that degree, that I immediately writ remarks on that essay. I also writ upon part of his translation of 'Homer,' his 'Windsor Forest,' and his infamous 'Temple of Fame.'" In the same pamphlet he says:--"Pope writ his 'Windsor Forest' in envy of Sir John Denham's 'Cooper's Hill;' his infamous 'Temple of Fame' in envy of Chaucer's poem upon the same subject; his 'Ode on St.

Cecilia's Day,' in envy of Dryden's 'Feast of Alexander.'" In reproaching Pope with his peculiar rhythm, that monotonous excellence, which soon became mechanical, he has an odd attempt at a pun:--"Boileau's Pegasus has all his paces; the Pegasus of Pope, like a _Kentish post-horse_, is always upon the _Canterbury_."--"Remarks upon several Pa.s.sages in the Preliminaries to the _Dunciad_," 1729.

[206] Two parties arose in the literary republic, the _Theobaldians_ and the _Popeians_. The "Grub-street Journal," a kind of literary gazette of some campaigns of the time, records the skirmishes with tolerable neutrality, though with a strong leaning in favour of the prevailing genius.

The _Popeians_ did not always do honour to their great leader; and the _Theobaldians_ proved themselves, at times, worthy of being engaged, had fate so ordered it, in the army of their renowned enemy. When Young published his "Two Epistles to Pope, on the Authors of the Age," there appeared "One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope, in Answer to two of Dr. Young's." On this, a Popeian defends his master from some extravagant accusations in "The Grub-street Memoirs." He insists, as his first principle, that all accusations against a man's character without an attestor are presumed to be slanders and lies, and in this case every gentleman, though "Knight of the Bathos,"

is merely a liar and scoundrel.

"You a.s.sure us he is not only a bad poet, but a stealer from bad poets: if so, you have just cause to complain of invasion of property. You a.s.sure us he is not even a versifier, but steals the _sound_ of his verses; now, to _steal a sound_ is as ingenious as to _paint an echo_. You cannot bear _gentlemen_ should be treated as vermin and reptiles; now, to be impartial, you were compared to _flying-fishes_, _didappers_, _tortoises_, and _parrots_, &c., not vermin, but curious and beautiful creatures"--alluding to the abuse, in this "Epistle," on such authors as Atterbury, Arbuthnot, Swift, the Duke of Buckingham, &c. The Popeian concludes:--

"After all, _your poem_, to comfort you, is more innocent than the _Dunciad_; for in the one there's no man abused but is very well pleased to be abused in such company; whereas in the other there's no man so much as named, but is extremely affronted to be ranked with such people as style each other the _dullest of men_."

The publication of the _Dunciad_, however, drove the _Theobaldians_ out of the field. Guerillas, such as the "One Epistle," sometimes appeared, but their heroes struck and skulked away. A _Theobaldian_, in an epigram, compared the _Dunciad_ of Pope to the offspring of the celebrated Pope Joan. The neatness of his wit is hardly blunted by a pun. He who talks of Pope's "stealing a sound," seems to have practised that invisible art himself, for the verse is musical as Pope's.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE DUNCIAD.

"With rueful eyes thou view'st thy wretched race, The child of guilt, and destined to disgrace.

Thus when famed Joan usurp'd the Pontiff's chair, With terror she beheld her new-born heir: Ill-starr'd, ill-favour'd into birth it came; In vice begotten, and brought forth with shame!

In vain it breathes, a lewd abandon'd hope!

And calls in vain, the unhallow'd father--Pope!"

The answers to this epigram by the Popeians are too gross. The "One Epistle" is attributed to James Moore Smyth, in alliance with Welsted and other unfortunate heroes.

[207] The six Letters are preserved in Ruffhead's Appendix, No. 1.