223 224 purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious Life of an infatuated Scholar'. They were dispersed; the design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an event very disastrous to polite letters ". If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches perhaps by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented, for the follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised that they are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned he raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never felt. For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it. 225 The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general resemblance to Don Quixote3, there will be found in it particular imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle*. 226 Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for his Travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though the rest had been suppressed. 227 Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected'. Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection from the Italians who wrote in Latin had been published at London, about the latter end of the last century, by Spence's Anec. pp. 10, 290; 3 Ante, BUTLER, 22. Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de M. Oufle, &c. By Laurent Bordelon. 1710. An English version appeared in 1711. 5 'It was from a part of these Memoirs of Scriblerus that Dr. Swift took his first hints for Gulliver? POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 10. Horace is introduced writing French verses. He at once falls into 7 Johnson, in 1734, had proposed a man who concealed his name, but whom his Preface shews to have been well qualified for his undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and (1740) published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his predecessor's preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness; he had planned a work which 228 he considered as subsequent to his Essay on Man, of which he has given this account to Dr. Swift 3. 'March 25, 1736. 'If ever I write any more Epistles in verse one of them shall be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest. The subject is large, and will divide into four Epistles, which naturally follow the Essay on Man, viz. 1. Of the Extent and Limits of Human Reason and Science. 2. A View of the useful and therefore attainable, and of the unuseful and therefore unattainable Arts. 3. Of the Nature, Ends, Application, and Use of different Capacities. 4. Of the Use of Learning, of the Science, of the World, and of Wit. It will conclude with a satire against the Misapplication of all these, exemplified by Pictures, Characters, and Examples*.' This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, 229 and finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added, at Warburton's request, another book to The Dunciad, of which the design is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use 5. 'It was printed in London in 12mo, 1684,' under the title of Anthologia. Warton, Preface, p. 47. 'By a MS. note in a copy presented by Crynes to the Bodleian we are informed that the editor was Thomas Power, of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was author of a translation of Paradise Lost, of which only the first book was published in 1691. JAMES BOSWELL, JUN., Johnson's Works, viii. 299. In Brit. Mus. Cata. his authorship of the translation is marked doubtful. 2 Under the title of Selecta Carmina Italorum qui Latine scripserunt. 3 Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 341. For a different plan of this work see Spence's Anec. p. 315; also p. 289. 5 I often told him,' writes Warburton (Pope's Works, 1757, Preface, p. 4), 'that he ought to raise and ennoble the poem by pointing his satire against the most pernicious of all, minute philosophers and free-thinkers.' 'What,' said Pope, 'was first designed for an Epistle on Education, as part of my essay-scheme, is now 230 When this book was printed (1742) the laurel had been for some time upon the head of Cibber'; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope could regard with much kindness or esteem, though in one of the Imitations of Horace he has liberally enough praised The Careless Husband. In The Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber 3, who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet's unkindness as more injurious, 'because,' says he, 'I never have offended him "." 231 It might have been expected that Pope should have been, in some degree, mollified by this submissive gentleness; but no such consequence appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned him afterwards contemptuously in one of his Satires, and again in his Epistle to Arbuthnot6; and in the fourth book of The Dunciad attacked him with acrimony', to which the provocation is not easily discoverable. Perhaps he imagined that, in ridiculing the Laureat, he satirised those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great. 232 The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had confidence enough in his own powers to believe that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and doubtless did not want instigators, who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He therefore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his Careless Husband, and his own Life, which both deserve immortality.' HORACE WALPOLE, Letters, v. 197. 'The Careless Husband of Cibber, and Suspicious Husband of Hoadly, are the only comedies of this age that bid fair for reaching posterity.' SMOLLETT, Hist. Eng. v. 380. Gray thought the comedies of Cibber excellent.' Mitford's Gray, v. 35. In the first edition in Bk. i. 230; Bk. iii. 128, 215-22, 244, 272. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 277-96. He knows I never provoked it [his malice].' Apology, p. 28. 5 Sat. ii. 1. 34. Prol. Sat. 1. 373. See also Epis. i. I. 6. 'Especially in the note on 1. 20. resolution from that time never to bear another blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength'. The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes 233 to a very distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the audience 2, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened that Cibber played Bayes in The Rehearsal3; and, as it had been usual to enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions, he said that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a mummy and a crocodile. This,' says he, 'was received with loud claps, which indicated contempt of the play! Pope, who was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the virulence of a 'Wit out of his senses 5'; to which he replied, 'that he would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man than to declare that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the same provocation"." He shews his opinion to be that Pope was one of the authors 234 of the play which he so zealously defended, and adds an idle story of Pope's behaviour at a tavern?. The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or 235 'Cibber, in 1742 and again in 1744, published A Letter to Mr. Pope. In the first, p. 8, he promises to imitate 'a famous boxer at the Bear Garden called Rugged and Tough, who would stand being drubbed for hours together, till, wearying out his antagonist by the repeated labour of laying him on, and by keeping his own wind, honest Rugged sometimes came off victorious.' See also Gent. Mag. 1742, PP. 392, 423; 1744, p. 56. Horace Walpole wrote on July 29, 1742:Cibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has a great deal of spirit, and from some circumstances will notably vex him.' Letters, i. 193. See also ante, DRYDEN, 98 n., and N. & Q. 5 S. xii. 110, 192. 2 Ante, GAY, 10. 3 Ante, DRYDEN, 94. 'The audience by the roar of their applause showed their proportionable contempt of the play." Letter to Mr. Pope, p. 18. 5 After the play was over he came behind the scenes, with his lips pale, and his voice trembling, to call me to account for the insult; and accordingly fell upon me with all the foul language that a wit out of his senses could be capable of.' Ib. "Mr. Pope, you are so particular a man that I must be ashamed to return your language as I ought to do.... As long as the play continues to be acted I will never fail to repeat the same words over and over again.' Ib. p. 19. 7 At a brothel. Ib. p. 47. According to Spence (Anec. p. 339) Pope's surgeon, Cheselden, said of him:'He had been gay, but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B. [Blount].' He became intimate with Martha and Teresa Blount about 1711 or 1712. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 141. 236 237 language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding, that from a contention like his with Cibber the world seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expence of the higher character'. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope would say of Cibber nobody enquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity might betray his pain and lessen his dignity. He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die, without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shewn as Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence only could have made him despicable: the blow which did not appear to be felt would have been struck in vain 2. 3 But Pope's irascibility 3 prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole English world that he was at war with Cibber; and to shew that he thought him no common adversary he prepared no common vengeance: he published a new edition of The Dunciad*, in which he degraded Theobald from his painful pre-eminence, and enthroned Cibber in his stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has therefore depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books 5, the cold pedantry and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald. in a note on The Dunciad, i. 147 : Some have objected that books of this sort suit not so well the library of our Bays, which they imagined consisted of novels, plays, and obscene books; but they are to consider that he furnished his shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more than the Dry bodies of Divinity, which, no doubt, were purchased by his father when he designed him for the gown.' For 'the gown' see ib. i. 200 n., and Cibber's Apology, ch. iii. p. 42. Walpole speaks of the peevish weakness of thrusting Cibber into The Dunciad in the room of Theobald.' Anecdotes of Painting, iii. 148. |