whether stealth or violence, was so much resented, that the commerce of the two families, before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr. Caryl, a gentleman who, being secretary to King James's Queen, had followed his Mistress into France, and who being the author of Sir Solomon Single, a comedy, and some translations, was entitled to the notice of a wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a reconciliation by a ludicrous poem, which might bring both the parties to a better temper'. In compliance with Caryl's request, though his name was for a long time marked only by the first and last letter, C-1', a poem of two cantos was written (1711), as is said, in a fortnight3, and sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to shew it; and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it.

54 The event is said to have been such as was desired; the pacification and diversion of all to whom it related, except Sir George Brown, who complained with some bitterness that, in the character of Sir Plume, he was made to talk nonsense 5. Whether

Warburton, i. 167. 'It was not Mr. Secretary [John] Caryll, but his nephew, the Sussex squire, for years the correspondent of Pope, who solicited him. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 120. 'The uncle followed James II into exile, became his Secretary of State, and was created a peer. The nephew, as next in succession, was styled Honourable by the Jacobites.' Ib. vi. 136. He is the 'Hon. J. C.' of the correspondence published by Pope. Warton's Pope, vii. 223. A few months after his death Pope slandered him. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 299. The uncle published Sir Solomon Single in 1671. See also post, POPE, 395 n. Macaulay falls therefore into Johnson's mistake, when, speaking of the uncle, he says:-'Half a line in The Rape of the Lock [i. 3] has made his name immortal.' Hist. of Eng. ii. 331.

It was marked C- or C-1 in all the impressions in Pope's lifetime. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 145.

3

The first sketch of this poem was written in less than a fortnight's time.' [POPE, Works, ed. 1736, vol. i.

p. 141]; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 115. The things,' said Pope, that I have written fastest have always pleased the most. I wrote the Essay on Criticism fast. ... The Rape of the Lock was written fast.' Spence's Anec. p. 142.

Pope, in dedicating the second edition to Mrs. Fermor, wrote:An imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had the good-nature, for my sake, to consent to the publication of one more correct.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 143. Mr. Elwin describes Pope's proceeding as 'a miserable farce.' Ib. P. 121. For the verses on Addison 'getting out' see post, POPE, 116 n.; and for Pope's letters 'getting out' see post, POPE, 166.

5 The Rape of the Lock, iv. 121-30. 'He was the only one of the party who took the thing seriously. He was angry that the poet should make him talk nothing but nonsense.' Warburton, i. 199. See also Spence's Anec. p. 194. Pope wrote to Caryll: -'Sir Plume blusters, I hear.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 162. See also ib. p. 173.

all this be true, I have some doubt; for at Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English Convent, mentioned Pope's work with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family'.

2

At its first appearance it was termed by Addison merum sal.' 55 Pope, however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, having luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians3, imparted the scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him that his work, as it stood, was 'a delicious little thing,' and gave him no encouragement to retouch it.

This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's 56 jealousy 5; for as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there had been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly persuade the author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which he considered as an unnecessary hazard 6.

Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the 57 future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation. The soft

'Johnson recorded at Paris on Oct. 16, 1775 :-'Austin Nuns, Grate, Mrs. Fermor, Abbess. She knew Pope, and thought him disagreeable.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 392. She told Mrs. Piozzi in 1784 that Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited.' Piozzi's Journey, i. 20. See post, POPE, 260 n.

'The keen eye of scandal detected one or two passages with a double meaning, which passed the bounds of decency.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 94.

2

Ante, MILTON, 222; DRYDEN,

207 n.

For the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits' see the Dedication, Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii.

Mr.

his friend receive it coldly; and even
to advise him against any alteration,
for that the poem in its original state
was a delicious little thing, and as
he expressed it, merum sal.
Pope was shocked for his friend, and
then first began to open his eyes to
his character.' Warburton, iv. 28.
For merum sal, see Lucretius, iv.
1162.

5 Dr. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, i. 155, adopts as 'certain' all the slanders of Pope exposed by Mr. Elwin. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 122.

Tacitus (Annal. i. 11), speaking of the advice of Augustus to his successor not to extend the boundaries of the empire, adds, 'incertum metu an per invidiam.' 'Why,' asks Gibbon,

must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish motive?' Decline and Fall, Introd. p. xxxv.

Macaulay supports Johnson's views. Essays, 1874, iv. 238.

58

59

60

61

luxuriance of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it.

His attempt was justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers more truly poetical than he had shewn before; with elegance of description and justness of precepts, he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention'.

He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He indeed could never afterwards produce any thing of such unexampled excellence. Those performances, which strike with wonder, are combinations of skilful genius with happy casualty; and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should happen twice to the same

man.

Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis published some remarks upon it, with very little force, and with no effect3; for the opinion of the publick was already settled, and it was no longer at the mercy of criticism.

About this time he published The Temple of Fame, which, as he tells Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years before; that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of life for so much learning and so much observation as that work exhibits*.

Anec. p. 142. See also Warburton, i. 169, and post, ROPE, 336.

3 In 1717 Dennis published Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of Homer, with Two Letters concerning Windsor Forest and The Temple of Fame; and in 1728, Remarks on Mr. Pope's Rape of the Lock, written in letters, the first dated May 1, 1714. This last book he had, he said, kept back in terrorem, with so good a result that for a time the poet counterfeited a sincere repentance. Now, however, he was 'like a mad Indian that runs amuck.' Preface, p. 4. See ante, ADDISON, 65 n. 5; post, POPE, 152.

Pope wrote to Steele on Nov. 16,

On this poem Dennis afterwards published some remarks, of 62 which the most reasonable is, that some of the lines represent motion as exhibited by sculpture'.

Of the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, I do not know the 63 date 2. His first inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's Nut-brown Maid3. How much he has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary to mention, when perhaps it may be said with justice, that he has excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot bestow. The gloom of a convent strikes the imagination with far greater force than the solitude of a grove.

This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his latter 64 years, though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it.

In the next year (1713) he published Windsor Forest; of 65 which part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his Pastorals, and the latter part was added afterwards: where the addition begins, we are not told3. The lines relating to the Peace confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord

1712: 'I was really so diffident of it as to let it lie by me these two years, just as you now see it.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 395. He published it in 1715, when he was twenty-six, having carefully revised it. Ib. i. 199. Lintot gave £32 5s. for the copyright. Ib. i. 186. See post, POPE, 317.

Neither painting nor sculpture can show local motion.' Remarks on Pope's Homer, p. 56. The lines criticized are 83-92. Dante makes sculpture exhibit motion in the Purgatorio:

Lì precedeva al benedetto vaso Trescando alzato, l'umile Salmista.

Intorno a lui parea calcato e pieno

Di cavalieri, e l' aquile nell' oro Sopr' esso in vista al vento si movièno.'

Canto x, 11. 64-5, 79-81. It was published in 1717. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 218. Post, POPE, 342.

3

Ante, PRIOR, 18. Prior, in Alma, ii. 289, addressing Abelard, says:— 'But well I weet thy cruel wrong

4

Adorns a nobler poet's song.'

Post, POPE, 315. Swift wrote on March 9, 1712-13:-' Mr. Pope has published a fine poem called Windsor Forest.' Swift's Works, iii. 124. This is the earliest mention of Pope by Swift.

5 In a note on 1. 11 in the edition of 1736 Pope says:-'The first part was written in 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals; the latter part was not added till 1710.' In a note on 1. 288 he says:-'All the lines that follow were not added till 1710.' Mr. Elwin points out that in the first note Warburton changed 1710 to 1713, but left the second uncorrected. He adds that 'there is no evidence to confirm the statement that the larger portion was produced as early as 1704.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. 324; Warburton, i. 49, 63.

The Peace of Utrecht was ratified in April, 1713. The negotiations

Lansdowne, who was then high in reputation and influence among the Tories; and it is said that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a politician 2. Reports like this are often spread with boldness very disproportionate to their evidence. Why should Addison receive any particular disturbance from the last lines of Windsor Forest? If contrariety of opinion could poison a politician, he would not live a day; and, as a poet, he must have felt Pope's force of genius much more from many other parts of his works. 66 The pain that Addison might feel it is not likely that he would confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, that Pope now thought himself his favourite; for having been consulted in the revisal of Cato3, he introduced it by a Prologue*; and, when Dennis published his Remarks, undertook not indeed to vindicate but to revenge his friend, by A Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis 5.

67

There is reason to believe that Addison gave no encouragement to this disingenuous hostility; for, says Pope, in a letter to him, 'indeed your opinion, that 'tis entirely to be neglected, would be my own in my own case; but I felt more warmth here than I did when I first saw his book against myself (though indeed in two minutes it made me heartily merry).' Addison was not a man on whom such cant of sensibility could make much impression.

had begun at Utrecht on Jan. 1, 1711-12. Ante, PRIOR, 28. Pope's letters to Caryll of Nov. 29 and Dec. 21, 1712, show that the addition had been made by that time. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 168, 175.

I Ante, GRANVILLE, 17. 'Lord Lansdowne insisted on my publishing my Windsor Forest, and the motto (non iniussa cano [VIRGIL, Ecl. vi. 9]) shows it.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 202.

2 'A person of no small rank has informed me that Mr. Addison was inexpressibly chagrined... both as a politician and as a poet. As a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe, and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own Campaign, that Gazette in rhyme

[ante, ADDISON, 130], contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry as the conclusion before us.' WARTON, Essay on Pope, i. 29.

Addison, in The Freeholder, No. 41, said that it was 'surprising how so bad a treaty came to be made at the end of a glorious and successful war.' For the Peace, see ante, SWIFT,

45; There is only Pope's authority

for the statement, and that is worthless. Ante, ADDISON, 54, 113, 137; post, POPE, 104.

4 Ante, ADDISON, 58.

5

6

Ante, ADDISON, 64.

Johnson quotes Pope's forged letter to Addison, dated July 20, 1713, made out of one to Caryll, dated Nov. 19, 1712. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 164, 398.