them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." I followed his advice; waited on Lord Halifax some time after; said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed; read them to him exactly as they were at first: and his Lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay, now [Mr. Pope] they are perfectly right: nothing can be better.' It is seldom that the great or the wise suspect that they are 101 despised or cheated. Halifax, thinking this a lucky opportunity of securing immortality, made some advances of favour and some overtures of advantage to Pope, which he seems to have received with sullen coldness. All our knowledge of this transaction is derived from a single letter (Dec. 1, 1714)', in which Pope says, 'I am obliged to you, both for the favours you have done me, and those you intend me. I distrust neither your will nor your memory, when it is to do good; and if I ever become troublesome or solicitous, it must not be out of expectation, but out of gratitude. Your Lordship may [either] cause me to live agreeably in the town, or contentedly in the country, which is really all the difference I set between an easy fortune and a small one. It is indeed a high strain of generosity in you to think of making me easy all my life, only because I have been so happy as to divert you some few hours; but, if I may have leave to add it is because you think me no enemy to my native country, there will appear a better reason; for I must of consequence be very much (as I sincerely am) yours, &c.' These voluntary offers, and this faint acceptance, ended with- 102 out effect. The patron was not accustomed to such frigid gratitude, and the poet fed his own pride with the dignity of independence. They probably were suspicious of each other. Pope would not dedicate till he saw at what rate his praise was valued he would be 'troublesome out of gratitude, not expectation.' Halifax thought himself entitled to confidence; and would give nothing, unless he knew what he should receive. Their commerce had its beginning in hope of praise on one side, and of money on the other, and ended because Pope was less eager of The original letter is in the British Museum. It began:-'While you are doing justice to all the world, I beg you will not forget Homer, if you can spare an hour to attend his I leave him with you in that hope, and return home full of acknow cause. ledgments for the Favours your Ldship has done me, and for those you are pleased to intend me. I distrust,' &c. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 203. See also ib. v. 155, and Spence's Anec. p. 305. 103 money than Halifax of praise. It is not likely that Halifax had any personal benevolence to Pope; it is evident that Pope looked on Halifax with scorn and hatred '. The reputation of this great work failed of gaining him a patron; but it deprived him of a friend". Addison and he were now at the head of poetry and criticism; and both in such a state of elevation, that, like the two rivals in the Roman state, one could no longer bear an equal, nor the other a superior. Of the gradual abatement of kindness between friends, the beginning is often scarcely discernible by themselves, and the process is continued by petty provocations, and incivilities sometimes peevishly returned, and sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would escape all attention but that of pride, and drop from any memory but that of resentment. That the quarrel of those two wits should be minutely deduced, is not to be expected from a writer In the Farewell to London, written soon after Halifax's death (he died on May 19, 1715), Pope wrote:'The love of arts lies cold and dead In Halifax's urn; And not one Muse of all he fed In the Preface to the Iliad, published in June, 1715, he wrote of Halifax :- It is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing to his generosity or his example.' Warton, iv. 408. 'Halifax subscribed for ten sets of the Iliad, at six guineas a set.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 4 n. Pope, in 1735, describing Halifax And flatter'd every day, and some Till grown more frugal in his riper He paid some bards with port, and Prol. Sat. 1. 239. In Epil. Sat. (1738) ii. 77, in a note on the line 'Thus Somers once, and Halifax were mine,' he says:- Halifax, a Peer no less distinguished by his love of letters than his abilities in Parliament. He was disgraced in 1710 on the change of Q. Anne's ministry.' See ante, HALIFAX, II, for the acrimonious contempt' with which Pope spoke of him. 2 Part of the following account is based on a note by Warburton in his Pope, iv. 27, and part on Spence's Anec. pp. 47, 146-9. The whole rests ultimately on Pope's slanders and forgeries. 'Addison,' writes Mr. Elwin, has never been convicted of an untruthful word or a dishonourable act; Pope's career was a labyrinth of deceit. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. 327. Addison, in The Spectator, No. 23, written before Pope's malignancy had shown itself, seems to describe him: 'There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.' Lady M. Wortley Montagu reported that Addison said to her of Pope:-'Leave him as soon as you can; he will certainly play you some devilish trick else.' Spence's Anec. p. 237. See ante, ADDISON, 86. to whom, as Homer says, 'nothing but rumour has reached, and who has no personal knowledge'.' Pope doubtless approached Addison, when the reputation of 104 their wit first brought them together, with the respect due to a man whose abilities were acknowledged, and who, having attained that eminence to which he was himself aspiring, had in his hands the distribution of literary fame. He paid court with sufficient diligence by his Prologue to Cato, by his abuse of Dennis 3, and, with praise yet more direct, by his poem on the Dialogues on Medals, of which the immediate publication was then intended. In all this there was no hypocrisy; for he confessed that he found in Addison something more pleasing than in any other man 5. It may be supposed that as Pope saw himself favoured by the 105 world, and more frequently compared his own powers with those of others, his confidence increased, and his submission lessened; and that Addison felt no delight from the advances of a young wit, who might soon contend with him for the highest place. Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has among his friends those who officiously, or insidiously, quicken his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment. Of such adherents Addison doubtless had many, and Pope was now too high to be without them. From the emission and reception of the Proposals for the Iliad, 106. the kindness of Addison seems to have abated. Jervas the I · ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν, οὐδέ τι 'Mackintosh said "that he had given an account of this quarrel in his History of Holland House, and he thought that he had thrown some light upon it." Life of Mackintosh, ii. 470. 2 Ante, ADDISON, 58; POPE, 66. 3 Ante, ADDISON, 64. To Mr. Addison, occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals. In 1735 Pope stated that this poem 'was written in 1715, but not published till 1720.' Addison died in 1719. It was published in 1721, and in that year probably was written. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 201. For Gibbon's criticism of it see his Misc. Works, v. 558. 5 Ante, ADDISON, 108; Spence's Anec. p. 195. • 'Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 47. Pope writes in the Preface to the Iliad (1715):-'Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to undertake the task, who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity.' Warton, iv. 405. See also Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 401 n. Addison, in The Freeholder, No. 40 (May 7, 1716), shows no abatement of kindness. 'The illiterate among our countrymen,' he writes, 'may learn to judge from Dryden's Virgil of the most perfect epic performance; and those parts of Homer which have already been published 107 painter once pleased himself (Aug. 20, 1714)1 with imagining that he had re-established their friendship; and wrote to Pope that Addison once suspected him of too close a confederacy with Swift, but was now satisfied with his conduct. To this Pope answered, a week after 2, that his engagements to Swift were such as his services in regard to the subscription demanded, and that the Tories never put him under the necessity of asking leave to be grateful. But,' says he, as Mr. Addison must be the judge in what regards himself, and seems to have no very just one in regard to me, so I must own to you I expect nothing but civility from him.' In the same letter he mentions Philips, as having been busy to kindle animosity between them 3; but, in a letter to Addison, he expresses some consciousness of behaviour, inattentively deficient in respect *. Of Swift's industry in promoting the subscription there remains the testimony of Kennet, no friend to either him or Pope. 'Nov. 2, 1713, Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from every body but me, who, I confess, could not but despise him. When I came to the ante-chamber to wait, before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as master of requests.-Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best Poet in England was Mr. Pope (a papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for by Mr. Pope, give us reason to think that the Iliad will appear in English with as little disadvantage to that immortal poem.' 'The whole of Pope's letters to Addison,' writes Mr. Elwin, 'are an absolute fiction. Four out of the five are from the Caryll correspondence. ... The deception is aggravated by the erroneous aspect it imparts to the celebrated quarrel. In the letters which preceded the commencing rupture, Pope appears as the zealous champion and bosom associate of the man he afterwards maligned, and we are left to suppose that the vaunted generosity on one side had been met by envy and hostility on the other.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. Preface, p. 126. See also ib. iii. 233. For Jervas's letter, no doubt also a forgery, see ib. viii. 7. For the discovery of the Caryll correspondence 'about the middle of the nineteenth century in a half- 3 Philips is attacked also in a letter to Caryll dated June 8, 1714, for the genuineness of which there is only Pope's authority. Ib. vi. 209. This letter (no doubt fabricated) is dated Oct. 10, 1714. Pope wrote: 'I will not value myself upon having ever guarded all the degrees of respect for you.' Ib. vi. 409. 5 For Pope's attack on Kennet, see ante, KING, 13 n. 1; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 389, iv. 195, 353; Pattison's Pope's Satires, p. 151. 6 In Swift's Works, xvi. 74, where this 'Extract from the MS. Diary of Bishop Kennet in the library of the late Marquis of Lansdowne' is given at greater length, the last eight words of this sentence are left out. See also ante, SWIFT, 51 n. 4. which he must have them all subscribe; "for," says he, "the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him." About this time it is likely that Steele, who was, with all his 108 political fury, good-natured and officious, procured an interview between these angry rivals, which ended in aggravated malevolence. On this occasion, if the reports be true, Pope made his complaint with frankness and spirit, as a man undeservedly neglected or opposed; and Addison affected a contemptuous unconcern, and, in a calm even voice, reproached Pope with his vanity, and, telling him of the improvements which his early works had received from his own remarks and those of Steele, said that he, being now engaged in publick business, had no longer any care for his poetical reputation; nor had any other desire, with regard to Pope, than that his should not, by too much arrogance, alienate the publick. To this Pope is said to have replied with great keenness and 109 severity, upbraiding Addison with perpetual dependance, and with the abuse of those qualifications which he had obtained at the publick cost, and charging him with mean endeavours to obstruct the progress of rising merit. The contest rose so high that they parted at last without any interchange of civility. The first volume of Homer was (1715) in time published; and 110 a rival version of the first Iliad, for rivals the time of their appearance inevitably made them, was immediately printed, with the name of Tickell. It was soon perceived that among the followers of Addison Tickell had the preference, and the criticks and poets divided into factions. 'I,' says Pope, 'have the town, that is, the mob, on my side; but it is not uncommon for the smaller party to supply by industry what it wants in numbers.I appeal to the people as my rightful judges, and, while they are not inclined to condemn me, shall not fear the high-flyers at Button's 3." I Not the slightest trust, says Mr. Courthope, can be placed in this narrative, coming as it does from Ayre's Life of Pope (i. 99-101). 'The behaviour of the parties is utterly inconsistent with all that we know of their characters.' Pope's Works (E. & C.), v. 159. Ruffhead takes his account from Ayre. Ruffhead's Pope, p. 186. 2 Ante, TICKELL, 8. 3 Johnson quotes, though not accurately, a letter to Craggs dated July 15, 1715. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 171. This letter is, no doubt, a forgery. The same passage, with variations in the inaccuracy, Johnson quotes ante, TICKELL, 9. Scott wrote to Crabbe on June 1, 1812: 'Our old friend Horace knew what he was saying when he chose to |