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not', 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 3 but his subsequent 3 1 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 5. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is 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.

with the inscription which makes me
proudest.' This 'inscription' ap-
peared in the edition of March, 1729,
and is inserted in the poem. It begins
with 1. 19 of Bk, i :—

'O Thou! whatever title please thine
[liver!'

ear,

Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gul-
For Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope while
he was writing The Dunciad see
Swift's Works, xiv. 198.

See Pope's letter to Warburton
of Nov. 27, 1742, Pope's Works
(Elwin and Courthope), ix. 225.

2 William Cleland was a Commissioner of Taxes. The letter is dated Dec. 22, 1728. 'He was,' wrote Pope, 'a person of universal learning and an enlarged conversation.' Warburton added:-'And yet, for all this, the public will not allow him to be the author of this letter.' Warburton, v. Introd. p. 12; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 48. See also ib. vii. 214. The letter, written as it was by Pope (see ib. iv. 48 n., vii. 444 n.; Warburton, viii. 139 n.), is as impudent as it is apologetical. He makes Cleland describe him as 'a person whose friendship I esteem

as one of the chief honours of my life,' and as 'the honest, open, beneficent man.' Warburton, v. Introd. pp. 4,5

Fenton wrote to Broome on June 24, 1729:-'The war is carried on against Pope furiously in pictures and libels. . . . He told me that for the future he intended to write nothing but epistles in Horace's manner.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 154.

Post, POPE, 369. It was published in Dec. 1731, price one shilling. Gent. Mag. 1731, p. 545. See Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 161, 168. The title was An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington. By Mr. Pope. The third edition has an additional title-Of False Taste.

5 Moral Essays, iv. 99. 6 Ante, SAVAGE, 238. 'Thus gracious Chandos is belov'd at sight.'

POPE, Moral Essays, i. 54. For The Dean and the Duke see Swift's Works, xiv. 340. [See also J. R. Robinson's The Princely Chandos, pp. 163, 177.]

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied'; 158 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 3.

Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which 159 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 vexations by lying all night upon the bridge". 'There is nothing,' says Juvenal, ' that a man

In a note on Prol. Sat. 1. 375, where the sum mentioned is £500.

2 In a letter entitled from Cleland to Gay, but written by Pope; first 'published in the newspapers in 1731.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 444.

3 Pope wrote to Lord Oxford on Jan. 22, 1731-2:-'The comfort is that his Crace from the first assured me of his opinion of my innocence, and confirmed it in the strongest, as well as most humane terms, by letter to me.' Ib. viii. 293. The letter,' writes Mr. Elwin in a note, 'has not been preserved, but from the account of Johnson, who had evidently seen it, we know that Pope gave a wrong epitome of its contents.' See also ib. iii. 162-6, x. 44-6; Spence's Anec. p. 145.

The last Duke of Chandos,' writes Dr. Warton, 'told me his ancestor was not perfectly satisfied with Pope's asseverations.' Warton, Preface, p. 31.

4

* Johnson refers to a letter purporting to be written to the Earl of Burlington, dated March 7, 1731, in which Pope says:-'I own that critics of this sort can intimidate me, nay half incline me to write no more: That would be making the Town a compliment which, I think, it deserves.' Warburton, viii. 144.

Pope wrote to Caryll on March 29, 1732, that the report about 'an imaginary reflection on a worthy peer' might give him 'such a pique to the world's malice as never to publish anything.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 331.

5 In the proof-sheet the sentence had run, an idiot who used to enforce his demands by threatening to beat his head against the wall.' 'The bridge' was London Bridge. Johnson mentions in a letter 'the booksellers on the bridge.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 257.

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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 intreated 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-three3; 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 1.

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'Nihil est quod credere de se Non possit, quum laudatur dis aequa potestas.' Satires, iv. 70. Ante, GAY, 15, 24, 26; post, POPE, 428. Pope wrote to Swift on Dec. 5, 1732:-'It is not now indeed a time to think of myself, when one of the nearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken all on a sudden by the unexpected death of poor Mr. Gay.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 291.

3 'DEATHS. June 8, 1733. Mrs. Editha Pope, Mother of Alexander Pope, Esq., the celebrated Poet, aged 93. Gent. Mag. 1733, p. 326.

According to Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 437, she died on June 7. [For her burial on June 11 see Reg. of Burials in Cobbett's Mem. of Twickenham, p. 67.] The register of her baptism is dated June 18, 1642, so that she was not quite ninety-one. N.&Q. 2 S. i. 41.

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'He occasionally indulged her in transcribing his works for the press; the numerous corrections made in his hand show that her spelling gave him more trouble than the inaccuracy of \ his printers.' The following extract from one of her letters shows how she spelt:-'He will not faile to cole here on Friday morning, and take ceare to cearrie itt to Mr. Thomas Doncaster [Dancaster].' Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 528. See ante, POPE, 95 n. Swift described Pope as one 'Whose filial piety excels

Whatever Grecian story tells.' Libel on Dr. Delany, Works, xiv. 390.

Hearne recorded on May 29, 1734 (Remains, iii. 141):-' Mr. Alexander Pope, who is looked upon as one of the most cursed, ill-natured, proud fellows in the world, was however very kind and dutiful to his mother.'

One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve 162 some enquiry', 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 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 3. 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".

To this inquiry Mr. Elwin gave 122 pages (pp. 26-147) in the Introduction to Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope). 'He has exhibited a patience and sagacity which place him in the highest rank of literary inquirers. He has unravelled with a merciless hand the web of artifice and petty intrigue which Pope wove round each of his publications of his letters.... But after all, what does the story of the letters amount to?... The gratification of the little fellow's small vanity, that he might see his letters in print in his lifetime, and yet that it might not be known that he had published them himself!' .

PATTISON, Essays, ii. 382. See also Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 294, for extenuating circumstance put forward by Mr. Courthope. The slander on Addison has left a stain too deep for cleansing. Ante, POPE, 29 n., 114.

2

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Ante, POPE, 29, 142; post, 273. For 'Curll's chaste press' see The Dunciad, i. 40. Curll,' wrote Arbuthnot, who is one of the new terrors of death, has been writing letters to everybody for memoirs of Gay's life.' Swift's Works, xviii. 65. (Lord Brougham borrowed this saying, applying it to Lord Campbell and his Lives of the Chancellors.)

'Nov. 30, 1725. This day Mr. Curl, the bookseller, was found guilty in the King's Bench Court of two in

dictments for printing obscene pamphlets.' Hearne's Remains, ii. 242. For his standing in the pillory, in 1728, and for his being 'carried off as it were in triumph by the mob,' who, by reason of the printed papers he had had dispersed among them, believed he was punished 'for vindicating the memory of Queen Anne,' see State Trials, xvii. 160, quoted in Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 324.

John Nichols wrote of him:'Whatever were his demerits, they were amply atoned for by his indefatigable industry in preserving our national remains. Atterbury Corres. Preface, p. 4.

3

Among Curll's notes to Pope's Letters are the following:-'Mr. Pope is the son of a trader, and so is Mr. Curll-par nobile.' 'Mr. Pope is no more a gentleman than Mr. Curll, nor more eminent as a poet than he as a bookseller.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 419, 432.

Motte, the bookseller, wrote to Swift: The Letters were taken notice of in the House of Lords; and Curl was ruffled for them in a manner, as to a man of less impudence than his own, would have been very uneasy.' Swift's Works, xviii. 322.

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Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman'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 2. 164 That Curll gave a true account of the transaction, it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood was ever detected 3 ; 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.

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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

Mr. Pope's Private Letters were procured and published by Edmund Curll. Curll had advertised the publication of letters written by Pope to Lords Halifax and Burlington (among others), ' with the respective answers.' Pope's Works (Elwinand Courthope), vi. 428. In May, 1735, Lord İlay brought this advertisement before the House, as 'contrary to the standing order of Jan. 31, 1721, declaring it to be a breach of privilege to print Lords' works, &c.' He added that in one of the letters Lord Burlington was abused. An order was made for 'the impression of the book' to be seized, and for Curll to attend the House. Curll had received the book in sheets from Pope's secret agent. It contained no letter by a peer. The letter complained of, which Lord Ilay, Pope's neighbour, had really read, was not printed in the copies seized, all of which had been prepared for seizure by Pope. They were therefore returned to Pope, and the matter dropped. lb. pp. 428, 433, 435, v. 286. See also Swift's Works, xviii. 294, 299; N. & Q. 2 S. x. 201, 485, 505.

'Had on a clergyman's gown,

and his neck was surrounded with a large lawn barrister's band.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 442.

2

Curll, in defending the publication of the correspondence between Pope and Cromwell (ante, POPE, 29, 142), says: 'These letters were a free gift; so that there was not any occasion to ask the consent of either of those parties. Mr. Curll purchased them as justly as Mr. Lintot did the copy of Mr. Pope's Homer. Ib. p. 419. Whatever the law was in those days, at the present time the writer of a letter can get an injunction against publication.

3The documents show that the lying and trickery rested with P. T. [Pope], while the bookseller was straightforward in his proceedings.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), i. Introd. p. 54.

'Mr. Levet this day showed me [July 18, 1763] Dr. Johnson's Library, which was contained in two garrets over his chambers [No. 1, Inner Temple Lane], where Lintot, son of the celebrated bookseller of that name, had formerly his warehouse.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 435.

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