Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 38

The reasonings of Bolingbroke appear at times to have disturbed the religious faith of our poet, and he owed much to Warburton in having that faith confirmed. But Pope rejected, with his characteristic good sense, Warburton's tampering with him to abjure the Catholic religion. On the belief of a future state, Pope seems often to have meditated with great anxiety; and an anecdote is recorded of his latest hours, which shows how strongly that important belief affected him. A day or two before his death he was at times delirious, and about four o'clock in the morning he rose from bed and went to the library, where a friend who was watching him found him busily writing. He persuaded him to desist, and withdrew the paper he had written. The subject of the thoughts of the delirious poet was a new theory on the "Immortality of the Soul," in which he distinguished between those material objects which tended to strengthen his conviction, and those which weakened it. The paper which contained these disordered thoughts was shown to Warburton, and surely has been preserved.

[239] "A letter to the Lord Viscount B----ke, occasioned by his treatment of a deceased friend." Printed for A. Moore, without date. This pamphlet either came from Warburton himself, or from one of his intimates. The writer, too, calls Pope his friend.

[240] We find also the name of Mallet closely connected with another person of eminence, the Patriot-Poet, Leonidas Glover. I take this opportunity of correcting a surmise of Johnson's in his Life of Mallet, respecting Glover, and which also places Mallet's character in a true light.

A minute life of Mallet might exhibit a curious example of mediocrity of talent, with but suspicious virtues, brought forward by the accident of great connexions, placing a bustling intriguer much higher in the scale of society than "our philosophy ever dreamt of." Johnson says of Mallet, that "It was remarkable of him, that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend." From having been accidentally chosen as private tutor to the Duke of Montrose, he wound himself into the favour of the party at Leicester House; he wrote tragedies conjointly with Thomson, and was appointed, with Glover, to write the Life of the Duke of Marlborough. Yet he had already shown to the world his scanty talent for biography in his "Life of Lord Bacon," on which Warburton so acutely animadverted.

According to Johnson's account, the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough a.s.signed the task of writing the Life of the Duke to Glover and to Mallet, with a remuneration of a thousand pounds. She must, however, have mortified the poets by subjoining the sarcastic prohibition that "no verses should be inserted."

Johnson adds, "Glover, _I suppose, rejected with disdain the legacy_, and devolved the whole work upon Mallet."

The cause why Glover declined this work could not, indeed, be known to Johnson: it arose from a far more dignified motive than the petty disdain of the legacy, which our great literary biographer has surmised. It can now be told in his own words, which I derive from a very interesting extract communicated to me by my friend Mr. Duppa, from that portion of the MS.

Memoirs of Glover not yet published.

I shall first quote the remarkable codicil from the original will of her Grace, which Mr. Duppa took the pains to consult.

She a.s.signs her reasons for the choice of her historians, and discriminates between the two authors. After bequeathing the thousand pounds for them, she adds: "I believe Mr. Glover is a very honest man, who wishes, as I do, all the good that can happen, to preserve the liberties and laws of England. Mr.

Mallet was recommended to me by the late Duke of Montrose, whom I admired extremely for his great steadiness and behaviour in all things that related to the preservation of our laws and the public good."--Thus her Grace has expressed a personal knowledge and confidence in Glover, distinctly marked from her "recommended" acquaintance Mallet.

Glover refused the office of historian, not from "disdain of the legacy," nor for any deficient zeal for the hero whom he admired. He refused it with sorrowful disappointment; for, besides the fantastical restrictions of "not writing any verses;" and the cruel one of yoking such a patriot with the servile Mallet, there was one which placed the revision of the work in the hands of the Earl of Chesterfield: this was the _circ.u.mstance_ at which the dignified genius of Glover revolted. Chesterfield's mean political character had excited his indignation; and he has drawn a lively picture of this polished n.o.bleman's "eager prost.i.tution," in his printed Memoirs, recently published under the t.i.tle of "Memoirs of a celebrated Literary and Political Character," p. 24.

In the following pa.s.sage, this great-minded man, for such he was, "unburthens his heart in a melancholy digression from his plain narrative."

"Composing such a narrative (alluding to his own Memoirs) and endeavouring to establish such a temper of mind, I cannot at intervals refrain from regret that the _capricious restrictions_ in the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough's will, appointing me to write the life of her ill.u.s.trious husband, compelled me to reject the undertaking. There, conduct, valour, and success abroad; prudence, perseverance, learning, and science, at home; would have shed some portion of their graces on their historian's page: a mediocrity of talent would have felt an unwonted elevation in the bare attempt of transmitting so splendid a period to succeeding ages." Such was the dignified regret of Glover!

Doubtless, he disdained, too, his colleague; but Mallet reaped the whole legacy, and still more, a pension: pretending to be always occupied on the Life of Marlborough, and every day talking of the great discoveries he had made, he contrived to make this nonent.i.ty serve his own purposes. Once hinting to Garrick, that, in spite of chronology, by some secret device of antic.i.p.ation, he had reserved a niche in this great work for the Roscius of his own times, the grat.i.tude of Garrick was instant. He recollected that Mallet was a tragedy-writer; and it also appeared that our dramatic bardling had one ready. As for the pretended Life of Marlborough, not a line appears ever to have been written!

Such was the end of the ardent solicitude and caprice of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, exemplified in the last solemn act of life, where she betrayed the same warmth of pa.s.sion, and the same arrogant caprice she had always indulged, at the cost of her judgment, in what Pope emphatically terms "the trade of the world." She was

"The wisest fool much time has ever made."

Even in this darling project of her last ambition, to immortalise her name, she had inc.u.mbered it with such arrogant injunctions, mixed up such contrary elements, that they were certain to undo their own purpose. Such was the barren harvest she gathered through a life of pa.s.sion, regulated by no principle of conduct. One of the most finished portraits of Pope is the Atossa, in his "Epistle on Woman." How admirably he shows what the present instant proves, that she was one who, always possessing the _means_, was sure to lose the _ends_.

LINTOT'S ACCOUNT-BOOK.

An odd sort of a literary curiosity has fallen in my way. It throws some light on the history of the heroes of the _Dunciad_; but such _minutiae literariae_ are only for my bibliographical readers.

It is a book of accounts, which belonged to the renowned BERNARD LINTOT, the bookseller, whose character has been so humorously preserved by Pope, in a dialogue which the poet has given as having pa.s.sed between them in Windsor Forest. The book is ent.i.tled "_Copies, when Purchased_." The power of genius is exemplified in the ledger of the bookseller as much as in any other book; and while I here discover, that the moneys received even by such men of genius as Gay, Farquhar, Cibber, and Dr. King, amount to small sums, and such authors as Dennis, Theobald, Ozell, and Toland, scarcely amount to anything, that of Pope much exceeds 4000_l._

I am not in all cases confident of the nature of these "Copies purchased;" those works which were originally published by Lintot may be considered as purchased at the sums specified: some few might have been subsequent to their first edition. The guinea, at that time, pa.s.sing for twenty-one shillings and sixpence, has occasioned the fractions.

I transcribe Pope's account. Here it appears that he sold "The Key to the Lock" and "Parnell's Poems." The poem ent.i.tled, "To the Author of a Poem called _Successio_," appears to have been written by Pope, and has escaped the researches of his editors. The smaller poems were contributed to a volume of Poetical Miscellanies, published by Lintot.[241]

MR. POPE.

s. d.

_19 Feb. 1711-12._ Statius, First Book } 16 2 6 Vertumnus and Pomona }

_21 March, 1711-12._ First Edition Rape 7 0 0

_9 April, 1712._ To a Lady presenting Voiture } Upon Silence } 3 16 6 To the Author of a Poem called _Successio_ }

_23 Feb. 1712-13._ Windsor Forest 32 5 0

_23 July, 1713._ Ode on St. Cecilia's day 15 0 0

_20th Feb. 1713-14._ Additions to the Rape 15 0 0

_1 Feb. 1714-15._ Temple of Fame 32 5 0

_30 April, 1715._ Key to the Lock 10 15 0

_17 July, 1716._ Essay on Criticism[242] 15 0 0

_13 Dec. 1721._ Parnell's Poems 15 0 0

_23 March, 1713._ Homer, vol. i. 215 0 0 650 books on royal paper 176 0 0

_9 Feb. 1715-16._ Homer, vol. ii. 215 0 0

_7 May, 1716._ 650 royal paper 150 0 0 This article is repeated to the sixth volume of of Homer. To which is to be added another sum of 840_l._, paid for an a.s.signment of all the copies. The whole of this part of the account amounting to 3203 4 0

Copy-moneys for the Odyssey, vols. i. ii. iii., and 750 of each vol. royal paper, 4to. 615 6 0

Ditto for the vols. iv. v. and 750 do. 425 18 7-1/2 ---------------- 4244 8 7-1/2 ================

MR. GAY.

s. d.

_12 May, 1713._ Wife of Bath 25 0 0

_11 Nov. 1714._ Letter to a Lady 5 7 6

_14 Feb. 1714._ The What d'ye call it? 16 2 6

_22 Dec. 1715._ Trivia 43 0 0 Epistle to the Earl of Burlington 10 15 0

_4 May, 1717._ Battle of the Frogs 16 2 6

_8 Jan. 1717._ Three Hours after Marriage 43 2 6 The Mohocks, a Farce, 2_l._ 10_s._ (Sold the Mohocks to him again.[243]) Revival of the Wife of Bath 75 0 0 ------------ 234 10 0

MR. DENNIS.

s. d.

_Feb. 24, 1703-4._ Liberty a.s.serted, one half share[245] 7 3 0

_10 Nov. 1708._ Appius and Virginia 21 10 0