269 Of this fortune, which as it arose from publick approbation was very honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his Letters and in his Poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topick of his ridicule is poverty: the crimes with which he reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint 3, and their want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion, not very uncommon in the world, that to want money is to want every thing 5. 270 Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions seems to be that of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any practices of meanness or servility'; a boast which was never denied to be true, and to which very Dodsley gave me several instances.' Warton, Preface, p. 56. See also ante, POPE, 92, 243 n. 4; post, 286. I 2 Ante, POPE, 118. Post, THOMSON, 8 n. Addison, in The Spectator, No. 34, makes the clergyman point out to the Club that that paper 'would only serve to aggravate the pains of poverty if it chiefly exposed those who are already depressed, and in some measure turned into ridicule by the meanness of their conditions and circumstances.' 3 Ante, ROWE, 21. I wish'd the man a dinner and 5 In a note on The Dunciad, ii. 282, he writes:-'Our indulgent poet, whenever he has spoken of any dirty or low work, constantly puts us in mind of the Poverty of the offenders, as the only extenuation of such practices.' Ante, POPE, 23; post, 281. ، 7 He wrote of himself in the name of Cleland: - ' He has not been a follower of Fortune or Success; he has lived with the Great without flattery; been a friend to Men in power without pensions.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 47. 'Verse will seem prose, yet often on him look, And you will hardly need another book.'] Warton, iv. 407. For the Essayseeante, SHEFFIELD, 23. Prior, in Alma, ii. 305, says of Pope :'Happy the poet, blest the lays, Which Buckingham has deign'd to praise!' few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set genius to sale: he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem2. Savage, however, remarked that he began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for 'his Highness's dog 3.' His admiration of the Great seems to have increased in the 271 advance of life. He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreves, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been compleat, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so great an honour it is not now possible to know 6; there is no trace in literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of Congreve appears in the Letters among those of his other friends, but without any observable distinction or consequence. To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names 272 dignified with titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as * In the first edition, 'his genius.' 2 'I have never flattered any man,' he said, 'nor ever received anything of any man for my verses.' Spence's Anec. p. 141. See also ib. p. 308 for a statement that Alderman Barber tried in vain by a great bribe 'to have a stroke in his commendation inserted in some part of Pope's writings.' In this Pope was above Dryden. Ante, DRYDEN, 172. For Barber see Swift's Letters to Chetwode, p. 180. 3 'I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 449. See ante, POPE, 217. Post, POPE, 281. 5 Ante, CONGREVE, 30. 6 It is stated in Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 175, that, among the Homer MSS., 'at the back of a letter (part of the rough draft of the Iliad) Pope has written: -'End the notes with a dedication to Mr. Congreve, as a memorial of our friendship occasioned by his translation of this last part of Homer.' The dedication is printed at the end of the Iliad. In a note on Bk. xxiv. 1.934, quoting the following couplet: 'Why gav'st thou not to me thy dying hand? And why receiv'd not I thy last command?' he continues:-'I have taken these two lines from Mr. Congreve, whose translation of this part was one of his first essays in poetry.' 'Pope could not with propriety inscribe to a chief of either party a work which had been munificently patronised by both [ante, POPE, 74]. ... Congreve lived on terms of civility with men of all parties.' MACAULAY, Essays, iii. 270. ' In the first edition this sentence concludes :-'nor does the name of Congreve appear in the Letters.' On Congreve's death Pope wrote: -'You know the value I bore him, and a long twenty years' friendship.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 246. See also ib. vii. 434. 8 'JOHNSON. How foolish was it in Pope to give all his friendship to Lords, who thought they honoured him by being with him; and to choose such Lords as Burlington, and Cobham, and Bolingbroke! Bathurst was negative, a pleasing man; and I have heard no ill of Marchmont; and then always saying, "I do not that a good man would wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity: he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke 3. 273 Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his Letters, an opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness 5. There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness. It has been so long said as to be commonly believed that the true characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart open before him. But the truth is that such were value you for being a Lord"; which was a sure proof that he did.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 347. For Pope's praise of 'Bathurst yet unspoiled by wealth' see Moral Essays, iii. 226. For a humorous letter of Bathurst's to him see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 337. See also ib. viii. 322, 338 n., ix. 309; ante, POPE, 198. Bathurst is the 'auspicious youth' in a famous passage in Burke's speech On Conciliation with America. John. Misc. i. 173; Payne's Burke, i. 173. Ante, HAMMOND, 4; POPE, 202. 'And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath I Shall feel your ruling passion strong Such in those moments as in all the "O, save my country, Heav'n!" POPE, Moral Essays, i. 262. For what he really did do at his 'latest breath' see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iii. 72. Thomson praises his valour in Autumn, 1. 1070. He married the only daughter of Thrale's predecessor in the brewery now known as Barclay and Perkins. Boswell's Johnson, i. 490. Gray (post, GRAY, 11) in A Long Story, 1. 31, describing her, refers to Cobham: 'The other amazon kind heav'n Had arm'd with spirit, wit and 2 Ante, GAY, 12; POPE, 156. 'Never were protection and great wealth more generously and more judiciously diffused than by this great person, who had every quality of a genius and artist except envy.' HORACE WALPOLE, Anec. of Painting, iv. 229. Lord Burlington has, to a certain degree, lessened himself by knowing the minute and mechanical parts of architecture too well.' CHESTERFIELD, Letters to his Son, ii. 240. 3 Pope wrote to Swift of Bolingbroke in 1736:-'Nothing can depress his genius. Whatever befals him, he will still be the greatest man in the world, either in his own time, or with posterity.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 342. Swift wrote of him to Pope in 1738: - 'That superior universal genius you describe has made me both proud and happy.... He began in the Queen's time to be my patron, and then descended to be my friend.' Ib. p. 364. See also ante, POPE, 245 n. 5. * For his forgeries see ante, POPE, 162. 5 Ante, POPE, 34. 167. As keys do open chests, C'est dans de telles lettres, qui ne sont pas d'abord destinées à être publiques, qu'on voit les véritables sentiments des hommes.' VOLTAIRE, Œuvres, iii. 39. See Johnson's mockery of 'this simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and certainly what we hide from ourselves we do not shew to our friends. There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of conversation the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they are considered; in the tumult of business interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character. Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity, for by whom 274 can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is as by him whose kindness he desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less constraint 2: the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a letter is addressed to a single mind of which the prejudices and partialities are known, and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppose them. To charge those favourable representations, which men give of 275 their own minds 3, with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would shew more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly great truth, sounded by the knowing to the ignorant, and so echoed by the ignorant to the knowing,' in John. Letters, ii. 52. In the Preface to his Letters (1737) Pope said that they showed 'what were his real sentiments, as they flowed warm from the heart, and fresh from the occasion, without the least thought that ever the world should be a witness to them.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. Introd. p. 40. In the letter published by him as written to Addison on Dec. 14, 1713, he says:-'I am conscious I write with more unreservedness than ever man wrote, or perhaps talked to another. I trust your good-nature with the whole range of my follies.' Ib. vi. 405. This letter he forged. It had been really written to Caryll on Aug. 14, 1713. Ib. p. 190. The Bishop of St. Asaph said, it appeared from Horace's writings that he was a cheerful contented man. JOHNSON. We have no reason to believe that, my Lord. Are we to think Pope was happy, because he says so in his writings? We see in his writings what he wished the state of his mind to appear. Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, talks with contempt of it in his writings, and affects to despise every thing that he did not despise.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 251. 3 In the first edition :-' which every man gives of himself.' believes himself. Almost every man's thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing to be given 2. While such ideas are formed they are felt, and self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy. 276 If the Letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions they seem to be premeditated and artificial 3. It is one thing to write because there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, and another to solicit the imagination because ceremony or vanity requires something to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with 'affectation and ambition": to know whether he disentangled himself from these perverters of epistolary integrity his book and his life must be set in comparison. 277 One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation, and in this he certainly was not sincere; for his high value of himself was sufficiently observed, and of what could he be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he says, when 'he has just nothing else to do'; yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation because he had always some poetical scheme in I Pope wrote to Aaron Hill on Feb. 5, 1730-1:-' Of my life and manners I do not yet repent one jot.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), x. 19. * 'BOSWELL. I have often blamed myself, Sir, for not feeling for others as sensibly as many say they do. JOHNSON. Sir, don't be duped by them any more. You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling. Boswell's Johnson, ii. 95. 3 Ante, POPE, 167, 172. Pope wrote to Swift on Nov. 28, 1729:'It is many years ago since I wrote as a Wit.' On this Warburton remarks:-'He used to value himself on this particular.' Warburton, ix. 111. 'Mr. Pope laboured his letters as much as the Essay on Man, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' HORACE WALPOLE, Letters, vi. 422. * Johnson quotes Pope's Preface (1737) :-' If in these letters... there appear too much of a juvenile ambition of wit, or affectation of gaiety, he [the author] may reasonably hope it will be considered to whom, and at what age, he was guilty of it, as well as how soon it was over.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. Introd. p. 38. 'There is no proof,' writes Mr. Elwin, 'that we have any of Pope's genuine correspondence till we come to that with Cromwell, of which the published part commenced when he was close upon twenty.' Ib. vi. 15. 5 'I writ because it amused me.... I have reason to think my productions can have no reputation which will continue long, or which deserves to do so.' Preface to Works, 1717, ib. i. 7. |