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 shewed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression. I It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, 166 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 167 nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship 3. 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 168 desire of knowing him, and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship which he had I 650 copies were offered for sale. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 425. 2 In the Preface to his Letters (1737) he writes:- However this collection may be received we cannot but lament the cause and the necessity of such a publication, and heartily wish no honest man may be reduced to the same.' Ib. vi. Introd. p. 41. For a 'like necessity' of publishing see ante, POPE, 53, 116 n. See also his letter to Caryll of May 12, 1735, Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 355. 3 Post, POPE, 273. Gray wrote of Pope to Horace Walpole in 1746: 'It is natural to wish the finest writer, one of them, we ever had should be an honest man.... It is not from what he told me about himself that I thought well of him, but from a humanity and goodness of heart, ay, and greatness of mind, that runs through his private correspondence, not less apparent than are a thousand little vanities and newly formed, that when Pope weaknesses mixed with these good qualities, for nobody ever took him for a philosopher.' Gray's Letters, i. 127. Cowper calls him 'a disgusting letter-writer, who seems to have thought that, unless a sentence was well-turned, and every period pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. Accordingly he is to me, except in very few instances, the most disagreeable maker of epistles that ever I met with.' Southey's Cowper, iv. 15. 'The tissue of petty imposture which forms the bulk of Pope's letters is not redeemed by any merits of expression.' PATTISON, Essays, ii. 361. Mr. Courthope shows how they gave pleasure to Gray and 'the nation.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 296. * Warburton, ix. 225; Ruffhead's Pope, p. 406. For Ralph Allen see post, POPE, 194, 218, 254; Boswell's Johnson, v. 80. told his purpose of vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the cost 1. 169 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 press3. The story was doubtless received with different 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. 170 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. 171 It had, however, in some I Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 188. The subscription was a guinea. Ib. ix. 136. The title of the book was Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope and Several of his Friends. There was an edition in folio, and a second edition in small octavo the same year. 3 He rather implies this than states it in so many words. Ib. vi. Preface, pp. 37-42. For his scheme in depositing a copy of the letters in Lord Oxford's library see ib. i. Introduction, p. 31. 4 Ante, POPE, 141. 5 'He was apprentice to Kneller, but, marrying his wife's niece without degree the recommendation of their consent, was dismissed by his master. On the reputation of that education, by his singing, excellent mimicry and facetious spirit he gained many patrons.' WALPOLE, Anec. of Painting, iv. 117. 'He was employed,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'as pimp and parasite and everything by Thrale and Murphy in their merry hours.' Hayward's Piozzi, 1861, ii. 156. It was like her thus to expose the failings of her husband and her friend. See also W. R. Chetwood's History of the Stage, 1749, p. 249; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), . Introd., p. 58, v. 285; and The Athenaeum, Sept. 8, 1860, p. 319. 5 6 novelty'. Our language has few letters, except those of statesmen. Howel indeed, about a century ago2, published his letters, which are commended by Morhoff3, 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. Phillip'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 172 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 in his productions than the rest ", except one long letter by Bolingbroke ", composed with all the skill and industry of a professed ''Pope's letters are the only true models which we, or perhaps any of our neighbours, have of familiar epistles. Warburton, Preface, p. 6. 2 [The first edition, afterwards greatly enlarged, was published in 1645.] 3... lectorem mirifice delectant, adeo quidem ut qui illas in latinum sermonem verteret egregie admodum de re literaria mereretur.' De Ratione Conscribendarum Epistolarum Libellus, ed. 1716, p. 67. The writer's name was Morhof. 4 Loveday's Letters, by Robert Loveday, 1659. There was a second edition in 1662, and a fifth impression in 1673. Brit. Mus. Cata. 5 In George Herbert's Works, 1859, vol. i. pp. 374-92, fourteen of his letters are given, and in Walton's Life of Herbert, one or two more. 6 The Last Remains of Sir John Suckling, being a Full Collection of all his Poems and Letters, 1659. 7 Ante, ROSCOMMON, 36. 8 Ante, WALSH, 10. 9 Pope had the impudence to write to Allen:-'As to my character as a man, it would [after publication of the Letters] be but just where it is; unless I could be so vain, for it would 10 Post, POPE, 276. Mr. Elwin quotes his forged letter to Blount, dated Feb. 11, 1706, where he writes: 'I have been just taking a solitary walk by moonshine in St. James's Park,... giving my thoughts a loose into the contemplation of those sensations of satisfaction which probably we may taste in the more exalted company of separate spirits, when we range the starry walks above.' On Feb. 9 a thaw had set in after a long frost; the snow was very deep. This passage comes from a letter really written to Caryll on Sept. 20, 1713. Ib. i. Introd. p. 123, vi. 194. For an instance of his dressing up letters received, see ib. vii. 479. "[The only letter by Bolingbroke in the two volumes of Letters published by Pope in 1737 is one to Swift (Works, 1736–7, vi. 148151). It well deserves Johnson's criticism.] 173 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 that he was writing to Pope'; but Arbuthnot like one who lets thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind 3. 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 5, 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. 174 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 Swift wrote to him in 1730:- Swift wrote to the Countess of For Johnson's praise of Arbuthnot see post, POPE, 212. 4 Post, POPE, 363. In the edition in 12mo, in 1735, the four books were called Ethic Epistles the First Book, and not Essay on Man; and the four Epistles to Lord Burlington, &c., were called Ethic Epistles, the Second Book. p. 32. Warton, Preface, 'I have,' said Pope, 'drawn in the plan for my Ethic Epistles much narrower than it was at first.' Spence's Anec. p. 136. For his plan, as set forth on " a leaf he annexed to about a dozen copies of the poem printed in 1734,' see ib. 5 The commentator was Warburton, in his Pope, ix. 36. 'Your Travels,' wrote Pope, 'I hear much of; my own, I promise you, shall never more be in a strange land, but a diligent, I hope useful, investigation of my own Territories.' Warburton in a note says Pope refers to Gulliver's Travels (not published till 1726, ante, SWIFT, App. H) and to The Essay on Man. 'This,' says Warton (Pope, ix. 46), 'is the first notice he gives Swift of his great work, and is so obscure a hint that Swift certainly could not guess at the subject written 1725. Mr. Elwin doubts the interpretation, as Pope did not commence his ethical scheme till four years later.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 263 n. See also ib. vii. 50. 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 175 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 3. With these precautions, in 1733 was published the first part of 176 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 The first edition has Laelius for St. John. 2 Post, MALLET, 10. 'It was at first given, as he told me (writes Warburton), to Dr. Young, to Dr. Desaguliers, to Lord Bolingbroke, to Lord Paget, and, in short, to everybody but to him who was capable of writing it.' Warburton, iv. 36. For Desaguliers and Paget see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 262 n. Pope wrote to Caryll on March 8, 1732-3:- The town is now very full of a new poem entitled An Essay on Man, attributed, I think with reason, to a divine.' Ib. vi. 339. On March 20 he wrote that some of the divines 'had solemnly denied it.' 340. Ib. P. 3 For Mallet's blunder in scoffing at it before Pope see post, MALLET, 4 The first Epistle appeared anonymously in Feb.1733; the second about April; the third later in the year; and the fourth in January, 1734-all in folio, quarto, and octavo. 'The right to print each for one year was bought by Gilliver for £50 an Epistle.' The price of each was one shilling. 'To divert suspicion the poet put forth in January, 1733, with his name, his Epistle on the Use of Riches, and a week or two afterwards one of his Imitations of Horace. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ii. 260, 274. The title of the first book was An Essay on Man, Address'd to a Friend, Part i; of the second, An Essay on Man. In Epistles to a Friend, Epistle ii. The third and fourth have the same title as the second. They are all anonymous and undated. |