111 This opposition he immediately imputed to Addison, and complained of it in terms sufficiently resentful to Craggs, their common friend. When Addison's opinion was asked he declared the versions to be both good, but Tickell's the best that had ever been written; and sometimes said that they were both good, but that Tickell had more of Homer 1. 112 Pope was now sufficiently irritated; his reputation and his interest were at hazard. He once intended to print together the four versions of Dryden, Maynwaring 2, Pope, and Tickell, that they might be readily compared, and fairly estimated 3. This design seems to have been defeated by the refusal of Tonson, who was the proprietor of the other three versions. 113 Pope intended at another time a rigorous criticism of Tickell's translation, and had marked a copy, which I have seen, in all places that appeared defective. But while he was thus meditating defence or revenge his adversary sunk before him without a blow; the voice of the publick was not long divided, and the preference was universally given to Pope's performance. 114 He was convinced, by adding one circumstance to another, that the other translation was the work of Addison himself; but if he knew it in Addison's lifetime it does not appear that he told it. He left his illustrious antagonist to be punished by what has to Pope, dated June 22, 1715. It was the versions of the first book they thought of printing. Pope's Works (E. & C.), ix. 541. • Warburton had this copy by him when editing Pope. Warburton, iv. 29. Hurd also had seen it. He quotes from it a passage where Tickell says:-'I had some thought of translating the whole Iliad, but was diverted by finding the work was fallen into a much abler hand.' goes on 'to bespeak the favour of the public to a translation of the Odysseis, wherein I have made some progress." Warburton's Works, 1811, i. 49. See ante, TICKELL, II. He 5 In the first edition,' the voice of the public was not long suspended.' In the 1783 edition 'were' must be a misprint, unless Johnson wrote ' voices.' been considered as the most painful of all reflections, the remembrance of a crime perpetrated in vain'. The other circumstances of their quarrel were thus related by 115 Pope 2: '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 3, 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 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 [subjoined] the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. Mr. Addison used me very civilly ever after.' 'Hurd says that Warburton, convinced by him of Addison's innocence, 'said, if he lived to see another edition of Pope's Works, he would strike out the offensive reflections on Addison's character.' Warburton's Works, i. 52. Had Johnson known the truth he would once more have been 'roused with a just indignation,' and would have charged Pope, as he charged Bolingbroke, with being 'a scoundrel and a coward'-a scoundrel because he slandered Addison; a coward because he did not venture to publish his slanders till after Addison's death. It is Pope's own character that is blackened; in his own words we still say with confidence: 'No whiter page than Addison's remains.' Blackstone shows that at the time See also Pope's Works (Elwin and Prol. Sat. 1. 193; post, POPE, 215. The verses on Addison were in all probability written, as Pope says, during Addison's lifetime.... But we may be sure that he never sent them to him.' Neither was he likely to show them even to friends. He was too cautious to attack a man so popular and so high in position. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 234. See also ib. v. 161. 116 117 The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were considered by him as the most excellent of Pope's performand the writer was advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to suffer it to remain unemployed 1. 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 mother2. 118 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 en I ' See Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 39, for Atterbury's letter dated Feb. 26, 1721-2. This is the first mention of the verses,' Pope said in a note to the edition of 1737. 'An imperfect copy was got out, very much to the author's surprise, who never would give any.' Ib. n. For The Rape of the Lock 'getting out' see ante, POPE, 53. They left Binfield early in 1716, and settled by the water-side at Chiswick. Ib. vi. 241, 371. [Here Pope's father died on Oct. 22, 1717. Thorne's Environs of London, i. 107. Pope did not remove to Twickenham before Jan. 1718-19, when he obtained from Thomas Vernon, Esq., an Aleppo merchant, the long lease of a portion of Twickenham Parka house with five acres of land. Pope's Works (E. & C.), v. 182, vi. 255 n. See also Cobbett's Memorials of Twickenham, 1872, p. 267.] In Imit. Hor., Sat. ii. 2. 135, the poet describes himself as not happier In forest planted by a father's hand Than in five acres now of rented land.' He adds (1. 161):— I wish to God this house had been your own: Pity to build without a son or wife; Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, Whether the name belong to Pope As a Papist Pope was 'disabled On Nov. 21, 1807, Miss Berry recorded in her Journal:-'We went into Pope's back garden, and saw the devastation going on upon his "quincunx" by its new possessor, Baroness Howe. The anger and ill-humour expressed against her for pulling down his abode and destroying his grounds are much greater than one would have imagined.' Quoted in N. & Q. 8 S. x. 86. See also ib. p. 21 for an account of the prints of the house. 3 Pope wrote on June 2, 1725:— 'The grotto is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of lookingglasses in angular forms ... There are connected to this grotto by a narrower passage, two porches with niches and seats-one towards the river, of smooth stones, full of light, and open; the other towards the arch of trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron-ore.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 383. 'If he was extravagant in anything,' Martha Blount told Spence, it was in his grotto, for that, from first to last, cost him above £1,000.' deavoured 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, 119 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 2. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem frivolous and childish 3; 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 120 collected his former works (1717) into one quarto volume, to which he prefixed a Preface, written with great spriteliness 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 Now forms my quincunx and now Imit. Hor., Sat. ii. 1. 123. He had bought two plots of ground separated by the high_road from London to Hampton Court. The passage connected them. 'I have been told,' Swift wrote to him, 'of your subterranean passage to your garden, whereby you turned a blunder into a beauty, which is a piece of Ars Poetica. Ib. vii. 54. 'Pope added the famous quibble"What we cannot overcome we must undergo." MRS. PIOZZI, Auto. ii. 154. See also Boswell's Johnson, iv. 9. 3He's seldom old that will not be a child.' 121 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 3. 122 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 5 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. 'Did readers know how many thoughts occur in a point of humour which a discreet author, in modesty, suppresses... they would be apt to think kindly of those writers who endeavour to make themselves diverting without being immoral. One may apply to these authors that passage in Waller "Poets lose half the praise they [Eng. Poets, xvi. 175].' 293. Cervantes had written long before: 'He desires that he may receive applause, not for what he writes, but what he has omitted to write.' Jervas's Don Quixote, iv. 99. 2 Prol. Sat., 11. 388-405; Imit. 3 Pope wrote on his death:- ment of a narrow fortune, where every false step is dangerous.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 377. See ante, POPE, 9. Pope, in a letter published by him as written to Congreve on April 7, 1715, but really written to Caryll, says:- Mr. Thomas Burnet hath played the precursor to the coming of Homer in a treatise called Homerides. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 415. Burnet was the son of the Bishop. Ante, GRANVILLE, 19; post, POPE, 153. He was Judge of the Common Pleas from 1741 to 1753. Foss speaks of his 'great reputation for learning and uprightness.' Biog. Jur. 1870, p. 144. For Swift's charge that in March, 1711-12, he was 'one of the gang of the Mohawks' see Swift's Works, iii. 4; also Hearne's Remains, i. 248. For the non-existence of this gang see Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iv. |