'Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu Nam scire haud potuit futura, sed nec 446 Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have ever had such an illustrious imitator 1. APPENDIX K (PAGE 175) One Miss Hamilton recorded in 1783-Ye Dss [Dowager Duchess of Portland, daughter of the second Earl of Oxford] and Mrs. Delany told me some anecdotes of Pope, his reading his satire of Atossa . . . his getting £3,000 from ye Dss of Marlborough to suppress Atossa, and published it after her death.' Mrs. Delany's Auto. Second Series, iii. 182. Mr. Courthope has sifted the evidence of the accusation of ingratitude, first by the help of documents long published, and next by Pope's letters to the Duchess, first printed in the Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. viii. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 76-93, 103, v. 348-51, 408-22. The character of Atossa, he shows, 'had been prepared for publication in the edition printed under Pope's supervision, on the eve of his death, and before the death of the Duchess.' Ib. iii. 77 (she outlived him by five months). This edition was suppressed by Warburton. Ib. v. 346. The character was first published in 1746, in a folio sheet 'with the following note:- "These verses are part of a poem entitled Characters of Women. It is generally said the D-ss gave Mr. Pope £1,000 to suppress them: he took the money, yet the world sees the verses; but this is not the first instance where Mr. P.'s practical virtue has fallen very short of those pompous professions of it he makes in his writings. Ib. iii. 78. The enemy who published this sheet was almost certainly Bolingbroke. Ib. p. 79; POPE, 250. The character was first included as part of the Epistle in Warburton's edition of 1751. Ib. p. 76. It was written in 1732, when the Duchess was supporting 'Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall, vi. 243, quotes the following inscription:-'O ye who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it buried in the dust!' He adds in a note:-'A critique of high renown (the late Dr. Johnson), who has severely scrutinised the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime inscription at the words, "repair to Maru," since the reader must already be at Maru before he could peruse the inscription.' Walpole; by 1735 she was in league with the leaders of the opposition. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthorpe), v. 349. In that year Pope suppressed an attack on the Duke. Ib. iii. 87. By 1741 she was corresponding with Pope. She pressed him to accept a present; he at first refused, but on Jan. 18, 1743, yielded. Ib. v. 350, 418. Long before this he had quarrelled with the Duchess of Buckingham. Unwilling to let the character be lost most likely he altered it so as to fit her. Ib. iii. 91. With the relations existing between him and the Duchess of Marlborough, it is utterly incredible that Pope would have ventured to publish, as he was about to do, the character in her lifetime, had there either been any specific bargain on his part to suppress it, or had he even believed that she any longer supposed it to be meant for a satire on herself. He must have intended to let it be known on its appearance that its original was the Duchess of Buckingham, who had recently died. His own death prevented the explanation.' Ib. v. 350. See also Spence's Anec. p. 364; Warton, iii. 211; Walpole's Letters, Preface, p. 144; Marchmont Papers, ii. 265, 268. APPENDIX L (PAGE 177) In the proof-sheet, 'retained and professed religious zeal.' This was corrected into, 'retained and diffused a noble ardour,' &c. In a later proof 'diffused' must have been changed into 'discovered.' Cowper, after reading the first eight volumes of the Lives, wrote:'I know not but one might search these eight volumes with a candle, as the prophet says [Zephaniah, i. 12], to find a man, and not find one, unless, perhaps, Arbuthnot were he.' Southey's Cowper, v. 14. 'Dr. Arbuthnot was not only Lord Chesterfield's physician, but his friend. He more than once declared himself in his presence a patron of Christianity.' Chesterfield's Misc. Works, i. 76. Chesterfield said of him :-'Without any of the craft he had all the skill of his profession, which he exerted with the most care and pleasure upon those unfortunate patients who could not give him a fee. To great and various erudition he joined an infinite fund of wit and humour, to which his friends Pope and Swift were more obliged than they have acknowledged themselves to be.' Chesterfield's Letters, ed. Mahon, ii. 446. 'Jervas, the painter (POPE, 69), piqued himself on total infidelity. Dr. Arbuthnot said to him, "Come, Jervas, this is all an air and affectation; nobody is a sounder believer than you." "I!" said Jervas; "I believe nothing." "Yes, but you do," replied the Doctor; "nay, you not only believe, but practise; you are so scrupulous an observer of the Commandments that you never make the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or,"' &c. WALPOLE, Letters, vii. 473. 'Dr. Arbuthnot was well skilled in the science of music. An anthem of his composition, "As pants the hart," is to be found in the books of the Chapel Royal.' HAWKINS, Hist. of Music, v. 270 n. His piety, 'venerable' though it made him, was imperfect. See ante, PRIOR, 49 n. 4, for his going 'to have a bowl of punch at Bessy Cox's," described by Johnson as 'a despicable drab of the lowest species.' He aided Gay in writing Three Hours after Marriage, a brutal and obscene attack on a man of science. Ante, GAY, 10. In The Tatler, ed. 1789, iv. 384 n., it is said 'that he liked an ill-natured jest the best of any good-natured man in the kingdom.' He was a gross feeder. 'He is gone,' wrote Bolingbroke, 'to take care of a brother glutton who is dying, and whose recovery, if by chance he does recover, will kill his physician by the confidence it will give him.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 438 n. 'He is a man,' said Swift, 'who can do everything but walk.' Ib. ix. 78. On his death Barber wrote:-'I am told he was a great epicure and denied himself nothing.' Swift's Works, xviii. 273. See also ib. xvii. 6. For his low opinion of man see ib. xvi. 192. Swift, however, thought so highly of him that ten years earlier he had written to Pope:-'Oh, if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels [Gulliver].' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 54. See also Swift's praise of his 'moral and Christian virtues' in a letter to him in Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 205. For a carefully written Life of him see his Life and Works by George A. Aitken, Clarendon Press, 1892. APPENDIX M (PAGE 190) 'She was the daughter of Lister Blount, Esq., of Mapledurham. She was born on June 15, 1690.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 244. See also ib. vi. 30 n. Pope wrote to her sister Teresa in 1714:-' Even from my infancy I have been in love with one after the other of you, week by week.' Ib. ix. p. 248. There were passages in his letters to these sisters too indecent to publish. Ib. viii. 31 n., ix. 254, 267. See ante, FENTON, 19 n. Writing to Gay on Oct. 1, 1730, he described her as 'a friend— a woman friend-with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 441. In the Epistle inscribed to a Lady (POPE, 207), he writes of her : 'This Phoebus promis'd (I forget the year) The generous god, who wit and gold refines, Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall know it, Moral Essays, ii. 283. Gay describes the sisters in Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece: 'I see two lovely sisters, hand in hand, The fair-hair'd Martha, and Teresa brown.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 173. 'Mr. Swinburne, the traveller,' writes Warton, 'who was her relation, informs me that she died in 1762, at her house in Berkeley Square, Piccadilly. He tells me she was a little, neat, fair, prim, old woman, easy and gay in her manner and conversation, but seemed not to possess any extraordinary talents. Teresa had uncommon wit and abilities.' Warton, Preface, p. 50 n. Malone recorded on the authority of Horace Walpole that 'she was red-faced, fat and by no means pretty. He remembered her walking after Pope's death, with her petticoats tucked up like a sempstress. She was the decided mistress of Pope, yet visited by respectable people.' Prior's Malone, p. 437. 'When she visited Pope in his last illness, and her company seemed to give him fresh spirits, the antiquated prude could not be prevailed on to pass the night at Twickenham, because of her reputation.' WARTON, Essay on Pope, ii. 466. For Pope's defence against the charge that they had lived in a manner that gave scandal to many' see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 287. Mr. Courthope believes in their innocence. Ib. V. 141-7, 207, 339. Four portraits of her hung on the walls of Pope's house. N. & Q. 6 S. v. 364. For the bill of the expenses of her funeral on July 17, 1763, see ib. p. 425. APPENDIX N (PAGE 238) POPE, 93 m., 285 n. In the Preface to the Iliad, ed. 1760, p. 53, Pope writes:-'Next Virgil and Milton the Archbishop of Cambray's Telemachus may give the translator the truest idea of the spirit and turn of our author.' With a humility sublime in its impudence Pope wrote to Broome :Far from any thought of improving either Homer's thought or expression I try to be as exactly like him as I can.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 69. Dr. Young wrote of Pope's Iliad :- What a fall is it from Homer's numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles and tinkling sounds! But in his fall he is still great Less than archangel "Nor appears [appear'd] Young's Works, ed. 1770, iv. 281. In Fielding's Amelia, Bk. viii. ch. 5, when a hack author says to Booth :-'Pray, Sir, don't you think Mr. Pope's Homer the best translation in the world?' Booth replies :-'Indeed, Sir, I think, though it is certainly a noble paraphrase, and of itself a fine poem, yet in some places it is no translation at all.' Gibbon, speaking of reading it in his childhood, says :-'Nor was I then capable of discerning that Pope's translation is a portrait endowed with every merit, excepting that of likeness to the original.' Memoirs, p. 38. 'Mere English readers,' wrote Cowper, 'know no more of Homer in reality than if he had never been translated.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 106. T 2 ""Ornament for ever!" cries Pope! "Simplicity for ever!" cries Homer.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 234. 'I have been charged by some,' said Wordsworth, 'with disparaging Pope and Dryden. This is not so. I have committed much of both to memory. As far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope.' Memoirs, 1851, ii. 470. Rogers said of Pope's Homer:-'With all my love of Pope, I never could like it. I delight in Cowper's Homer; I have read it again and again.' Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 28. The editor adds:-Thomas Campbell once told me how greatly he admired Cowper's Homer.' Cowper's Miltonic rhythm was quite out of tune with Homer.' E. FITZGERALD, More Letters, p. 111. 'On the whole Pope's translation of the Iliad is more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid.' M. ARNOLD, On Translating Homer, 1896, p. 15. All the felicities of Pope's higher style are concentrated in this translation . . . though a sufficiently free translation, it is a translation after all.' CONINGTON, Misc. Writings, i. 43. Fenton wrote to Broome, who in his Epistle to Fenton (Eng. Poets, xliv. 170) had spoken of 'the Homeric lyre':-'I did not like Homeric; it has a burlesque sound.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 130. APPENDIX O (PAGE 176) [According to Curll, who in 1736 brought out a pirated edition, Pope received sixty guineas for the Sober Advice. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 436 n., 437 n. Against Pope's outrageous conduct in attributing the obscene notes to Dr. Bentley, Richard Bentley, the great critic's son, remonstrated, it would seem, rather feebly (ib. vi. 355); but Thomas Bentley, the nephew, attacked Pope in a pamphlet, which however does not bear his name, entitled A Letter to Mr. Pope occasioned by Sober Advice from Horace, &c., London, 4to, 1735. In a copy in the possession of Mr. C. E. Doble, which by his kindness I have examined, 'T. Bentley' has been written on the title-page in a contemporary hand. At the end the following announcement is made:-'N.B. Shortly will be published more notes to the Sermon of Sober Advice in the manner of Mr. Pope's Friend and Admirer. By Mr. Alexander.' I cannot discover that these further notes were ever published, nor is it probable that the announcement was intended to be taken seriously. Pope retaliated by pillorying Thomas Bentley in the edition of The Dunciad of the following year. In the first edition, 1728, Dunc. ii. 205 had run :— ** his mouth with classic flatt'ry opes.' In 1729 'Welsted' took the place of the asterisks. In the quarto of 1735' Welsted' is changed to 'B—y'; but the great critic himself is probably meant. Finally in 1736 Bentley is printed in full, and the following note is added:-'Not spoken of the famous Dr. Richard Bentley, but of one Tho. Bentley, a small critic who aped his uncle in a little Horace.' The note treats Thomas Bentley as the author of A Letter to Mr. Pope. See Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 145, 331.] |