No More Learning

"Philips seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses,
and conversations: and Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley, in which he
had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself
told me one day, that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with
Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled
friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured
me, that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and
had given him ten guineas after they were published. The next day, while
I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to
let him know that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his;
that if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should be
not in such a dirty way; that I should rather tell him, himself, fairly
of his faults, and allow his good qualities; and, that it should be
something in the following manner: I then adjoined the first sketch of
what has since been called my satire on Addison. Mr. Addison used me
very civilly ever after[126]. "

The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were considered
by him as the most excellent of Pope's performances; and the writer was
advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to suffer it to
remain unemployed.

This year, 1715, being, by the subscription, enabled to live more by
choice, having persuaded his father to sell their estate at Binfield, he
purchased, I think, only for his life, that house at Twickenham, to
which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, and
removed thither with his father and mother.

Here he planted the vines and the quincunx which his verses mention;
and, being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a
garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it with fossile bodies,
and dignified it with the title of a grotto, a place of silence and
retreat, from which he endeavoured to persuade his friends and himself
that cares and passions could be excluded.

A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has
more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope's
excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men
try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an
inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a
passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative,
that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem frivolous
and childish; whether it be that men, conscious of great reputation,
think themselves above the reach of censure, and safe in the admission
of negligent indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius an
uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation with malicious
wonder; like him who, having followed with his eye an eagle into the
clouds, should lament that she ever descended to a perch.

While the volumes of his Homer were annually published, he collected his
former works, 1717, into one quarto volume, to which he prefixed a
preface, written with great sprightliness and elegance, which was
afterwards reprinted, with some passages subjoined that he at first
omitted; other marginal additions of the same kind he made in the later
editions of his poems. Waller remarks, that poets lose half their
praise, because the reader knows not what they have blotted. Pope's
voracity of fame taught him the art of obtaining the accumulated honour,
both of what he had published, and of what he had suppressed.

In this year his father died suddenly, in his seventy-fifth year, having
passed twenty-nine years in privacy. He is not known but by the
character which his son has given him. If the money with which he
retired was all gotten by himself, he had traded very successfully in,
times when sudden riches were rarely attainable.

The publication of the Iliad was at last completed in 1720. The
splendour and success of this work raised Pope many enemies, that
endeavoured to depreciate his abilities. Burnet, who was afterwards a
judge of no mean reputation, censured him in a piece called Homerides,
before it was published. Ducket, likewise, endeavoured to make him
ridiculous. Dennis was the perpetual persecutor of all his studies. But,
whoever his criticks were, their writings are lost; and the names which
are preserved are preserved in the Dunciad.

In this disastrous year, 1720, of national infatuation, when more riches
than Peru can boast were expected from the South-sea, when the contagion
of avarice tainted every mind, and even poets panted after wealth, Pope
was seized with the universal passion, and ventured some of his money.
The stock rose in its price; and for awhile he thought himself the lord
of thousands. But this dream of happiness did not last long; and he
seems to have waked soon enough to get clear with the loss only of what
he once thought himself to have won, and perhaps not wholly of that.

Next year he published some select poems of his friend Dr. Parnell, with
a very elegant dedication to the earl of Oxford; who, after all his
struggles and dangers, then lived in retirement, still under the frown
of a victorious faction, who could take no pleasure in hearing his
praise.

He gave the same year, 1721, an edition of Shakespeare. His name was now
of so much authority, that Tonson thought himself entitled, by annexing
it, to demand a subscription of six guineas for Shakespeare's plays, in
six quarto volumes; nor did his expectation much deceive him; for, of
seven hundred and fifty which he printed, he dispersed a great number at
the price proposed. The reputation of that edition, indeed, sunk
afterwards so low, that one hundred and forty copies were sold at
sixteen shillings each.

On this undertaking, to which Pope was induced by a reward of two
hundred and seventeen pounds twelve shillings, he seems never to have
reflected afterwards without vexation; for Theobald, a man of heavy
diligence, with very slender powers, first, in a book called Shakespeare
Restored, and then in a formal edition, detected his deficiencies with
all the insolence of victory; and as he was now high enough to be feared
and hated, Theobald had from others all the help that could be supplied,
by the desire of humbling a haughty character.

From this time Pope became an enemy to editors, collators, commentators,
and verbal criticks; and hoped to persuade the world, that he miscarried
in this undertaking, only by having a mind too great for such minute
employment.

Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many
things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise. He was
the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps the
text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions negligently,
he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface, he expanded, with
great skill and elegance, the character which had been given of
Shakespeare by Dryden; and he drew the publick attention upon his works,
which, though often mentioned, had been little read.

Soon after the appearance of the Iliad, resolving not to let the general
kindness cool, he published proposals for a translation of the Odyssey,
in five volumes, for five guineas. He was willing, however, now to have
associates in his labour, being either weary with toiling upon another's
thoughts, or having heard, as Ruffhead relates, that Fenton and Broome
had already begun the work, and liking better to have them confederates
than rivals.

In the patent, instead of saying that he had "translated" the Odyssey,
as he had said of the Iliad, he says, that he had "undertaken" a
translation; and in the proposals, the subscription is said to be not
solely for his own use, but for that of "two of his friends, who have
assisted him in this work. "

In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared before
the lords at the memorable trial of bishop Atterbury, with whom he had
lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspondence. Atterbury had
honestly recommended to him the study of the popish controversy, in hope
of his conversion; to which Pope answered in a manner that cannot much
recommend his principles, or his judgment[127]. In questions and
projects of learning they agreed better. He was called at the trial to
give an account of Atterbury's domestick life and private employment,
that it might appear how little time he had left for plots. Pope had but
few words to utter, and in those few he made several blunders.

His letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, and
gratitude; "perhaps," says he, "it is not only in this world that I may
have cause to remember the bishop of Rochester. " At their last interview
in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a bible[128].

Of the Odyssey, Pope translated only twelve books; the rest were the
work of Broome and Fenton: the notes were written wholly by Broome, who
was not over-liberally rewarded. The publick was carefully kept ignorant
of the several shares; and an account was subjoined at the conclusion,
which is now known not to be true. The first copy of Pope's books, with
those of Fenton, are to be seen in the Museum. The parts of Pope are
less interlined than the Iliad; and the latter books of the Iliad less
than the former. He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled
him to write the next with more facility. The books of Fenton have very
few alterations by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been
found; but Pope complained, as it is reported, that he had much trouble
in correcting them.

His contract with Lintot was the same as for the Iliad, except that only
one hundred pounds were to be paid him for each volume. The number of
subscribers was five hundred and seventy-four, and of copies eight
hundred and nineteen; so that his profit, when he had paid his
assistants, was still very considerable. The work was finished in 1725;
and from that time he resolved to make no more translations.

The sale did not answer Lintot's expectation; and he then pretended to
discover something of fraud in Pope, and commenced or threatened a suit
in Chancery.

On the English Odyssey a criticism was published by Spence, at that time
prelector of poetry at Oxford; a man whose learning was not very great,
and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was
commonly just; what he thought, he thought rightly; and his remarks were
recommended by his coolness and candour. In him Pope had the first
experience of a critick without malevolence, who thought it as much his
duty to display beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect,
and praised with alacrity.

With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the
acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him, from that time, in great
familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled memorials of
his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him to the great and
powerful; and he obtained very valuable preferments in the church.

Not long after, Pope was returning home, from a visit, in a friend's
coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; the
windows were closed, and being unable to force them open, he was in
danger of immediate death, when the postillion snatched him out by
breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of his fingers in
such a manner, that he lost their use.

Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He
had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much
grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered, by
a trick, that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a
man worthy of confidence.

He soon afterwards, 1727, joined with Swift, who was then in England, to
publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which, amongst other things,
he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule of Burnet's
importance in his own history, and a Debate upon Black and White Horses,
written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as
is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards master of the Rolls. Before these
Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently
written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint
of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and
sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how "the cabinets of
the sick and the closets of the dead have been broke open and
ransacked;" as if those violences were often committed for papers of
uncertain and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real
treasures; as if epigrams and essays were in danger, where gold and
diamonds are safe. A cat hunted for his musk is, according to Pope's
account, but the emblem of a wit winded by booksellers.

His complaint, however, received some attestation; for, the same year,
the letters written by him, to Mr. Cromwell, in his youth, were sold by
Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them.

In these Miscellanies was first published the Art of Sinking in Poetry,
which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in literary
quarrels, gave, in a short time, according to Pope's account, occasion
to the Dunciad.

In the following year, 1728, he began to put Atterbury's advice in
practice; and showed his satirical powers by publishing the Dunciad, one
of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured
to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked, and
some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves.

At the head of the _dunces_ he placed poor Theobald, whom he accused of
ingratitude; but whose real crime was supposed to be that of having
revised Shakespeare more happily than himself. This satire had the
effect which he intended, by blasting the characters which it touched.
Ralph[129], who, unnecessarily interposing in the quarrel, got a place
in a subsequent edition, complained that, for a time, he was in danger
of starving, as the booksellers had no longer any confidence in his
capacity.

The prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow; the plan, if not
wholly new, was little understood by common readers. Many of the
allusions required illustration; the names were often expressed only by
the initial and final letters, and, if they had been printed at length,
were such as few had known or recollected. The subject itself had
nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one
or another scribbler was a dunce? If, therefore, it had been possible
for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment,
the Dunciad might have made its way very slowly in the world.

This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance to
himself, and, therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing
the world already acquainted with all his pleasures and his pains, is,
perhaps, the first to publish injuries or misfortunes, which had never
been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them
will only laugh; for no man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

The history of the Dunciad is very minutely related by Pope himself, in
a dedication which he wrote to lord Middlesex in the name of Savage.

"I will relate the war of the _dunces_, (for so it has been commonly
called,) which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730. "

"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified
in the preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such little pieces of
theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the treatise
of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It happened that, in one
chapter of this piece, the several species of bad poets were ranged in
classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet;
(the greatest part of them at random;) but such was the number of poets
eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to
himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that, for half a year or more,
the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being
hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and
scurrilities they could possibly devise; a liberty no way to be wondered
at in those people, and in those papers, that, for many years, during
the uncontrouled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great
characters of the age, and this with impunity, their own persons and
names being utterly secret and obscure.

"This gave Mr. Pope the thought that he had now some opportunity of
doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of
mankind; since to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show
what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes
that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to
recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in
employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to
proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the
Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood of
slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their
names as was necessary to this design.

"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented to
the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by the right
honourable sir Robert Walpole; and, some days after, the whole
impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen, and persons of
the first distinction.

"It is, certainly, a true observation, that no people are so impatient
of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was
wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was first
vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties, advices,
threats of law and battery, nay, cries of treason, were all employed to
hinder the coming out of the Dunciad; on the other side, the booksellers
and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it. What could a few poor
authors do against so great a majority as the publick? There was no
stopping a torrent with a finger; so out it came.

"Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The _dunces_ (for by this
name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of hostilities
against the author; one wrote a letter to a great minister, assuring him
Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the government had; and another bought
his image in clay, to execute him in effigy; with which sad sort of
satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted.

"Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontispiece,
the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in its stead an ass laden with
authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass,
the new edition in octavo returned, for distinction, to the owl again.
Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against booksellers, and
advertisements against advertisements; some recommending the edition of
the owl, and others the edition of the ass; by which names they came to
be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the
Dunciad. "

Pope appears, by this narrative, to have contemplated his victory over
the _dunces_ with great exultation; and such was his delight in the
tumult which he had raised, that for awhile his natural sensibility was
suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without emotion,
considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain which he
rejoiced in having given.

It cannot, however, be concealed that, by his own confession, he was the
aggressor; for nobody believes that the letters in the Bathos were
placed at random; and it may be discovered that, when he thinks himself
concealed, he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in
those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that
his book was presented to the king and queen by the right honourable sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud
that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first
distinction.

The edition of which he speaks was, I believe, that which, by telling in
the text the names, and in the notes the characters, of those whom he
had satirized, was made intelligible and diverting. The criticks had now
declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to
like it without fear; those who were strangers to petty literature, and,
therefore, unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and
persons brought within their view; and delighted in the visible effect
of those shafts of malice, which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot
into the air.

Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity
which had, for a time, been appeased by mutual civilities; and published
remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the Rape of the Lock.
Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their resentment in the
newspapers by epigrams or invectives.

Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burriet with "pious passion,"
pretended that his moral character was injured, and, for some time,
declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope
appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship;" and
by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of meaning
imputed to the first expression.

Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the prize, expostulated
with Pope in a manner so much superiour to all mean solicitation, that
Pope was reduced to sneak and shuffle sometimes to deny, and sometimes
to apologize; he first endeavours to wound, and is then afraid to own
that he meant a blow.

The Dunciad, in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift: of the
notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot; and an apologetical letter
was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to have been written by
Pope.

After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged himself
awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions prove that he was
not idle. He published, 1731, a poem on Taste, in which he very
particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the
gardens, and the entertainments, of Timon, a man of great wealth and
little taste. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the earl of
Burlington, to whom the poem was addressed, was privately said, to mean
the duke of Chandos; a man, perhaps, too much delighted with pomp and
show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had, consequently,
the voice of the publick in his favour.

A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the ingratitude and
treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage
of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the
opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation.

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied; but from the
reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he
tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in
an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to
shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that
disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an
exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great
magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his
professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his
buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in
Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between
them, it had been less easily excused.

Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his poem
had found, "owns that such criticks can intimidate him, nay, almost
persuade him to write no more, which is a compliment this age
deserves. " The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous; for the
world can easily go on without him, and, in a short time, will cease to
miss him. I have heard of an idiot, who used to revenge his vexatious by
lying all night upon the bridge. "There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that
a man will not believe in his own favour. " Pope had been flattered till
he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When
he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and
implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went
away and laughed.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early,
and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his
literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old; an age at which the
mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow
less flexible; and when, therefore, the departure of an old friend is
very acutely felt.

In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she
had lasted to the age of ninety-three; but she did not die unlamented.
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary; his parents had the happiness of living till he was at the
summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his fortune, and
without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or
tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and
whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among
its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a
son.

One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve some inquiry,
was a publication of letters between him and many of his friends, which
falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame,
were by him printed and sold. This volume containing some letters from
noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the house of lords
for a breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the
resentment of his friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing
himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence.
"He has," said Curll, "a knack at versifying, but in prose I think
myself a match for him. " When the orders of the house were examined,
none of them appeared to have been infringed; Curll went away
triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.

Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergy-man's gown, but
with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to sale a number of printed
volumes, which he found to be Pope's Epistolary Correspondence; that he
asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and
thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage.

That Curll gave a true account of the transaction it is reasonable to
believe, because no falsehood was ever detected[130] and when, some
years afterwards, I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he
declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how
Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time
sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made
known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal
with a nameless agent.

Such care had been taken to make them publick, that they were sent at
once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a
prey; and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of
the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; and Curll did what
was expected. That to make them publick was the only purpose, may be
reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private
messengers showed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of
the impression.

It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not
knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this
country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion;
that, when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously
published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.

Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with
praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his
purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There were some letters
which a very good or a very wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they
had been already exposed, it was impracticable now to retract them.

From the perusal of those letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire
of knowing him; and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship
which he had newly formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of
vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the
cost.

This, however, Pope did not accept; but, in time, solicited a
subscription for a quarto volume, which appeared, 1737, I believe, with
sufficient profit. In the preface he tells, that his letters were
reposited in a friend's library, said to be the earl of Oxford's, and
that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story was
doubtless received with differe at degrees of credit. It may be
suspected that the preface to the Miscellanies was written to prepare
the publick for such an incident; and to strengthen this opinion, James
Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine negotiations, but
whose veracity was very doubtful, declared that he was the messenger who
carried, by Pope's direction, the books to Curll.

When they were thus published and avowed, as they had relation to recent
facts, and persons either then living or not yet forgotten, they may be
supposed to have found readers; but as the facts were minute, and the
characters, being either private or literary, were little known, or
little regarded, they awakened no popular kindness or resentment; the
book never became much the subject of conversation; some read it as
contemporary history, and some, perhaps, as a model of epistolary
language; but those who read it did not talk of it. Not much, therefore,
was added by it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced
either publick praise or publick censure.

It had, however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our
language had few letters, except those of statesmen. Howel, indeed,
about a century ago, published his letters, which are commended by
Morhoff, and which alone, of his hundred volumes, continue his memory.
Loveday's letters were printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling
are hardly known. Mrs. Phillips's (Orinda's) are equally neglected. And
those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any
living mistress or friend. Pope's epistolary excellence had an open
field; he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary
wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison; but it must
be remembered, that he had the power of favouring himself; he might have
originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or
have afterwards selected those which he had most happily conceived, or
most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear
something more studied and artificial[131] in his productions than the
rest except one long letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill
and industry of a professed author. It is, indeed, not easy to
distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously formed a
style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to
write always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man
who remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who lets
thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind.

Before these letters appeared, he published the first part of what he
persuaded himself to think a system of ethicks, under the title of an
Essay on Man; which, if his letter to Swift, of Sept. 14, 1725, be
rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his
consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with
great solicitude. He had now many open, and, doubtless, many secret
enemies. The _dunces_ were yet smarting with the war; and the
superiority which he publickly arrogated, disposed the world to wish his
humiliation.

All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own name, and
that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, were in the first
editions carefully suppressed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was
ascribed to one or another, as favour determined, or conjecture
wandered; it was given, says Warburton, to every man, except him only
who could write it. Those who like only when they like the author, and
who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it; and those admired it
who are willing to scatter praise at random, which, while it is
unappropriated, excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were
trusted with the secret, went about lavishing honours on the new-born
poet, and hinting that Pope was never so much in danger from any former
rival.

To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose
opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy
or malevolence, he sent his essay as a present before publication, that
they might defeat their own enmity by praises, which they could not
afterwards decently retract.

With these precautions, in 1733, was published the first part of the
Essay on Man. There had been, for some time, a report that Pope was busy
upon a system of morality; but this design was not discovered in the new
poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were
unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; some thought it a very
imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was
unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and
some censured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect;
the sale increased, and editions were multiplied[132]

The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable
corrections. At first, the poet and his friend,

Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze _of walks without a plan_.

For which he wrote afterwards,

A mighty maze, _but not without a plan_:

for, if there were no plan, it were in vain to describe or to trace the
maze.

The other alteration was of these lines:

And spite of pride, _and in thy reason's spite_,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;

but having afterwards discovered, or been shown, that the "truth" which
subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted,

And spite of pride, _in erring reason's spite_.

To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.

The second and third epistles were published; and Pope was, I believe,
more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the
fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of
the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to have
ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having
adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the
consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his own.
That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly
drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed
from prose to verse, has been reported, but can hardly be true. The
essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied
could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and
embellishments, must all be Pope's.

These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity,
dogmatism, or falsehood; but they were not immediately examined;
philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay
abounded in splendid amplifications, and sparkling sentences, which were
read and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and, for a time, flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety.

Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards, by Resnel, into verse. Both translations
fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in
prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's
version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.
Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme; and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and, perhaps, was grown too desirous of
detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure.

His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look
with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes
of virtue and happiness purely rational; and, therefore, it was not long
before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated,
for the most part, in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable,
that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions
not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and
vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful
extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his
imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a
memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original
combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the
reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be
always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His
abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal
or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his
adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of
some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman
emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements
of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.

His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;
he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and
impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice
of inferiour wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A
letter[133] as produced, when he had, perhaps, himself forgotten it, in
which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of
leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison
out of modesty. " And when Theobald published Shakespeare, in opposition
to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and
Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to the
exaltation of his rival.

The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of
offence, and, therefore, it may be supposed that his union with Pope was
censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to think differently,
at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily allowed. Such
opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, without nice examination.
Who is there that has not found reason for changing his mind about
questions of greater importance?

Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to
rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the
imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from
month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man, in the
literary journal of that time, called the Republick of Letters.

Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad
that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full
meaning, could, by any mode of interpretation, be made to mean well. How
much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender, the following letter
evidently shows:

"April 11, 1732.

"Sir,--I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your
letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write
this; but I cannot help thanking you in particular for your
third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that
I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and
deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much
honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems;
for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done,
and could not. It is, indeed, the same system as mine, but
illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body
is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it
better than I did before, and so will every man else. I know I
meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own
meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do
myself; but you express me better than I could express myself.
Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish
these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with
your leave) to procure a translation of part at least, or of all
of them, into French; but I shall not proceed a step without
your consent and opinion, &c. "

By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope
testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the
principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not
intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to make
him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found him now
engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth.

It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He
once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, and
was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what he heard;
and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an
explanation, declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.

Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a
little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from which they parted
with mutual aversion.

From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator,
and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to
Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's inn; and
to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and, by
consequence, a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of
his works; a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four thousand
pounds.

Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its
propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of Prior's
Solomon, was employed by him to translate it into Latin verse, and was,
for that purpose, some time at Twickenham; but he left his work,
whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson's invitation,
undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend
to find a scholar who should turn his essay into Latin prose; but no
such performance has ever appeared.

Pope lived at this time "among the great," with that reception and
respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired
by any private misconduct or factious partiality. Though Bolingbroke was
his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; but treated him with so much
consideration as, at his request, to solicit and obtain from the French
minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he considered himself as
obliged to reward, by this exertion of his interest, for the benefit
which he had received from his attendance in a long illness.

It was said, that, when the court was at Richmond, queen Caroline had
declared her intention to visit him. This may have been only a careless
effusion, thought on no more: the report of such notice, however, was
soon in many mouths; and, if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's
account, Pope, pretending to decline what was not yet offered, left his
house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than lest he
should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which
would not be conferred. He was, therefore, angry at Swift, who
represents him as "refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that
what had never been offered had never been refused.

Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in the
Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the
different duties or conditions of life; one of which is the epistle to
lord Bathurst, 1733, on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared
great labour to have been bestowed[134].

Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known
characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say
how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the man of
Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous
enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have
diffused all those blessings from "five hundred a year. " Wonders are
willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man
of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the
wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes;
this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the
utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he
had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place:
and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man, being made more
credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable
virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is
recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to
be possible.

This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his
religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by
mentioning, with some indignation, the inscription on the monument.

When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of
direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no
very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which
Bathurst is introduced as speaking.

He afterwards, 1734, inscribed to lord Cobham his Characters of Men,
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and
exemplify his favourite theory of the "ruling passion," by which he
means an original direction of desire to some particular object; an
innate affection, which gives all action a determinate and invariable
tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or
more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate
propension.

Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may
reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men
change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one
time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed,
who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit: for
excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular
species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early
conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and
emulation.

It must be, at least, allowed, that this "ruling passion," antecedent to
reason and observation, must have an object independent on human
contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No
man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of
money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be
born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically
regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and
any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness
of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have
enabled to comprehend it.

This doctrine is, in itself, pernicious, as well as false; its tendency
is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or
overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is
prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall
excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful
dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his "ruling
passion[135]. "

Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples
by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions,
appetites, and habits.

To the Characters of Men, he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to
have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has
taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured
with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great success,
was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,
because the publick was informed, by an advertisement, that it contained
"no character drawn from the life;" an assertion which Pope probably did
not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his
readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them, in a note, that
the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was "vice too high"
to be yet exposed.

The time, however, soon came, in which it was safe to display the
dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was
inserted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.

He published, from time to time, between 1730 and 1740, imitations of
different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was
suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own,
he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the
dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and, perhaps, had
been long in his hands.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarized, by
adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of
Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his
satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of
our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the second, by
Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient. It
is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design,
which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the
parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement; for
he has carried it farther than any former poet.

He published, likewise, a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's
satires, which was recommended to him by the duke of Shrewsbury and the
earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems
to have known their imbecility, and, therefore, suppressed them while he
was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he
thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to
himself.

The epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived, in its first
design, from Boileau's Address _à son Esprit_, was published in January,
1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It
is to be regretted, that either honour or pleasure should have been
missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his
life, and venerable for his piety.

Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession,
versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to
animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a
scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who, in the crowd of life,
retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates
himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces
his own claims to kindness and respect.

Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before
printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,
of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first,

Who would not smile if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

Then,

Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

At last it is,

Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

He was at this time at open war with lord Hervey, who had distinguished
himself as a steady adherent to the ministry; and, being offended with a
contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets[136], had summoned Pulteney
to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack, perhaps, cannot now
be easily known: he had written an invective against Pope, whom he
calls, "Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure;" and hints that his
father was a _hatter_[137]. To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and
prose; the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never
sent, is printed among his letters; but to a cool reader of the present
time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity.

His last satires, of the general kind, were two dialogues, named, from
the year in which they were published, Seventeen Hundred and
Thirty-eight. In these poems many are praised, and many are reproached.
Pope was then entangled in the opposition; a follower of the prince of
Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and
censured the conduct of the ministers. His political partiality was too
plainly shown: he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his
earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent
conflicts of faction.

In the first dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath,
he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit
of his ancestors, and called him in his verses "low-born Allen. " Men are
seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of
defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which
was afterwards softened[138] into "humble Allen. "

In the second dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among
others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of
repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who
scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the
resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.

About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the
lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley, his publisher.
Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped; but
Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was,
however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended
rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.

Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor
drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of
reformation is imputed, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing
over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of
opinion, that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of
power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and
formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his
resentment; till, at last, he began to think he should be more safe, if
he were less busy.

The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the
first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot,
who used to meet in the time of queen Anne, and denominated themselves
the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning
by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the
design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an
event very disastrous to polite letters.

If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the
production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope, the want
of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer
ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the
satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of
absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never
felt.

For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never
obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read
has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by
remembering it.

The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general
resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular
imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle.

Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for
his travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though
the rest had been suppressed.

Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have
been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the
modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau
endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.
Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for
the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection
from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London,
about the latter end of the last century, by a man[139] who concealed
his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well qualified for his
undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and,
1740, published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his
predecessor's preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere
text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the
editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness;
he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on
Man, of which he has given this account to Dr Swift:

"March 25, 1736.

"If ever I write any more epistles in verse, one of them shall
be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but
I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work
ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest.
The subject is large, and will divide into four epistles, which
naturally follow the Essay on Man; viz. 1. Of the extent and
limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful,
and, therefore, attainable, and of the unuseful, and, therefore,
unattainable, arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, application, and
use, of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the
science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire
against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by
pictures, characters, and examples. "

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and
finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage
to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added,
at Warburton's request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design
is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either
pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.

When this book was printed, 1742, the laurel had been, for some time,
upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope
could regard with much kindness or esteem, though, in one of the
imitations of Horace, he has liberally enough praised the Careless
Husband. In the Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had
mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet's
unkindness as more injurious, "because," says he, "I never have offended
him. "

It might have been expected, that Pope should have been, in some degree,
mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence
appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned
him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his
epistle to Arbuthnot: and, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, attacked
him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.
Perhaps he imagined, that, in ridiculing the laureate, he satirized
those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious
petulance, with which he affected to insult the great.

The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had
confidence enough in his own powers to believe, that he could disturb
the quiet of his adversary, and, doubtless, did not want instigators,
who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by
looking on the contest. He, therefore, gave the town a pamphlet, in
which he declares his resolution, from that time, never to bear another
blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by
perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very
distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off
the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the
audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened
that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to
enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions,
he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in
a mummy and a crocodile. "This," says he, "was received with loud claps,
which indicated contempt of the play. " Pope, who was behind the scenes,
meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the
virulence of a "wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he
would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than
to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the
same provocation. "

He shows his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play
which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope's
behaviour at a tavern. The pamphlet was written with little power of
thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would
have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with
human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his
understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world
seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher
character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope
would say of Cibber, nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity
might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.

He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die,
without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as
Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber
had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him,
he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence
only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be
felt would have been struck in vain.

But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole
English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he
thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he
published a new edition of the Dunciad[140], in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope
was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore,
depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry,
and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which
raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he
had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in
time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally
in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable
impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.
Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by
transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its
efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to
say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own
magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.

Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another
pamphlet[141], which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have
heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter,
on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope,
who said, "these things are my diversion. " They sat by him while he
perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be
preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.

From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital
powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any
original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his
remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in
which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears
to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree.

He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for
his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction,
established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the
fabulous age: the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been
exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily
be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted
with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the
nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead; by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model
the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time
or country in which he places them.

He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he
expresses it, "going down the hill. " He had, for at least five years,
been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians
were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr.
Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the
common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation.
Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the
water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not
subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss
him.

While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one
day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw
his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord
Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand,
crossed his legs and sat still; but lord Marchmont, who was younger and
less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked,
"What, is he not dead yet[142]? " She is said to have neglected him, with
shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little
which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance
began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their
conversation, therefore, was endearing, for when they met, there was an
immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her
unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or
human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and
impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet
consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered
his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that
might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was
too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.

In May, 1744, his death was approaching[143]; on the 6th, he was all day
delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient
humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing
things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the
presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall.
He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.

Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and
being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his
deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or
absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his
understanding, answered, "It has so. " And added, "I never in my life
knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or
more general friendship for mankind. " At another time he said, "I have
known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship
than"--His grief then suppressed his voice.

Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by
his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father
and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I
do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you
for putting me in mind of it. "

In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he
said, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship,
and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue. "

He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly,
that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He
was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument
has been erected to him by his commentator, the bishop of Gloucester.