Like Cato give his little senate laws, 66 This piece of concentrated abuse Pope says he sent to Addison in a letter, animadverting freely on his sins towards himself. He used me very civilly ever after," says the poet. But unfortunately Pope's word does not carry the weight necessary to win faith for such a story; and there is no evidence to support it. It was only after Addison was dead and incapable of response that this character of him glided into print. Its power and intensity are extraordinary; and probably, of its kind, nothing in literature is more perfect. Atterbury is said to have considered it the best thing Pope had ever done. "Since you now, therefore, know where your real strength lies, I hope you will not suffer that talent to lie unemployed," the Bishop writes, with a political appreciation of the bitter gift; and the advice was fatally well followed. Dennis and Curll had called forth specimens of gross abuse and nastiness alone his enemies were henceforth to be treated with sharper and daintier weapons. The verses on Addison were published in 1722, and already two other unfortunates gasped impaled in his company. "Bufo," Lord Halifax, and "Sporus," Lord Hervey, Lady Mary, the Duchess of Marlborough, and a host of lesser victims, afterwards followed. To Pope and to his friends this kind of personal crucifixion, which is now banished, if it exists at all, to the lowest class of scribblers, or to the utterances of the parish .muse, seems to have been considered a perfectly legitimate literary exercise. Swift employed the same expedient freely, and Gay built his little fortune and his troubles at once on the same disreputable foundation. There is a comedy called Three Hours after Marriage,' in which Gay is said to have been aided by Pope and Arbuthnot. Fossile the husband was intended to ridicule Dr. Woodward; Sir Tremendous, the greatest critic of the day, was Dennis, &c. &c." The popular mind has scarcely yet lost the stinging impression of these social treacheries, and still retains a lingering distrust of the writer who has it in his power to hold up his neighbour to the laughter of the world. But fortunately the fashion is over, and poets do not now promote their own reputation by ruthless slaughter of the good fame of others. The successful Iliad' led to a translation of the Odyssey,' in which Pope was assisted by two of his friends," Elijah Fenton and Broome, whose labours, however, were acknowledged in a very niggardly way. They translated twelve books between them, but were credited in the preface with only five. For this piece of work Pope received £2885-after paying £700 to his assistants: but we are not informed whether he laid it out to equal advantage with his first gains. None of these works, however, serious as they were, occupied so much of his life or filled his thoughts as much as did the Dunciad,' a work which has now little more than an archæological interest. The idea of a grand epic, mock-heroic, of the same character as that which had already brought him such fame, embodying the reign of Dulness and her chief leaders and champions, had long pleased Pope's imagination. And it was an idea which naturally charmed his friends, living as they did in a kind of Ishmaelitish warfare with everybody who opposed or threatened them. With such a gladiator as Swift by his side, the natural instinct which makes any creature possessed of a sting use it with prompt and unhesitat ing readiness, was not likely to be softened in the irritable little poet. The men he satirised are dead and gone their names, as he himself prophesied, but as flies in amber, shut up in the meshes of his verses. "The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there." What is Tibbalds to us far down in the nineteenth century, or Phillips, or Dennis, or Cibber? To Pope they were his enemies, and therefore important; but not even the charms of his verse can make them interesting. While Pope was busy about this thankless and unworthy labour, Swift was with him at Twickenham; and here is the picture he gives —a glimpse unusually distinct- of the odd little workshop, where poems were made and reputations killed: "Pope has the talent well to speak, But not to reach the car; His loudest voice is low and weak, The Dean too deaf to hear. Awhile they on each other look, Then different studies choose; The Dean sits plodding on a book, Pope walks and courts the muse. Now backs of letters, though designed For those who more will need 'em, Are filled with hints, and interlined, Himself can hardly read 'em. 66 Yet to the Dean this share allot, He claims it by a canon, Thus, Pope, in vain you boast your wit, You had not writ a line." was as much too much for Pope as it is to the wasp who pursues us when the windows are open, and the domestic table exposed in the déshabille of summer. Whoever touched him, looked at him, interposed between him and the sun, suffered on the spot, without warning or time to escape. And some of his finest efforts are unquestionably contained in these attacks; their conciseness, and close, desperate, well-aimed blows, are perfect in their way. And paid one visit of five months to his friend; The serious works produced in the latter part of Pope's life were his epistles, and specially the Essay on Man,' which BolingThe society at Twickenham during all broke is supposed to have inspired. It was this period, notwithstanding "the single published anonymously, with some of the pint" for supper, must have been as brilauthor's usual wiles, his friends being em-liant as wit and fame could make it. Swift ployed to go about whispering that now at last Pope had a real rival. He himself, in his preface, hypocritically (but always with characteristic self-conceit) professes that he imitates no man," and "would be thought to vie with no man in these epistles; particularly with the noted author of two lately published." This trick put out the instinct of the public; and many other artifices of the same kind, elaborate appeals to critics here and there what they thought of it, kept up for a time the illusion. The poet, however, had one prick of an amusing kind. He inquired of Mallet, who had become one of his retinue, what new things there were in literature? Nothing, he was answered, worth notice; only a thing called an Essay on Man,' poor in poetry and in philosophy. The furious little poet, unprepared, started up in arms. "I wrote it," he said, in sudden rage; and the reader is glad he had that one requital of his own perpetual sting. Other epistles, addressed to various persons, preceded and followed the Essay; the Imitations of Horace,' with all their provoking stabs, and the Epistle to Arbuthnot, in which lay, sharp and keen, the posthumous murder of Addison. All of them were sharpened by darts of offence to everybody who had ever crossed his path, and to some who had not. The assault on the Duchess of Marlborough, in the character of Atossa, (to withdraw which he is proved to have accepted a thousand pounds: he took "This letter (like all mine) will be a rhapsothe money and printed the character!), and dy," he says, affectedly, when writing to Swift; that on the Duke of Chandos, persons who "it is many years ago since I wrote as a wit. had never harmed him, must have been done. . . I write to you more negligently—that is, in the mere wantonness of mischief. His hand more openly - and what all but such as love one was against every man, except, indeed, the another would call writing worse. I smile to few who praised and supported him, to whom think how Curll would be bit, were our epistles he was, after his kind, a warm friend. To to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they Warburton, who defended the Essay from would fall short of every ingenious reader's expectations! . . . Some letters of mine (to Wyimputations of scepticism, he was the means cherley) the booksellers have got and printed. of bringing high advance in fortune; and... I don't much approve of it, though there to all appearance he was charitable, and is nothing in it for me to be ashamed of, because ready to give even above his means; but it I will not be ashamed of anything I do not do is evident that the temptation of the sting myself, or of anything that is not immoral, but 66 merely dull; as, for instance, if they printed | nant grandeur of injured virtue. “Whereas this letter I am now writing, which they easily several booksellers have printed surreptimay, if the underlings at the post-office please tious and incorrect editions of letters as to take a copy of it." "Be mine, some of which are not so, and others From all this it is easy to perceive that, interpolated, ... I think myself under a long accustomed as Pope ought to have necessity to publish such of the said letters been by this time to his fame, it still sat on as are genuine, with the addition of some. him like a ploughboy's Sunday clothes. He others of a nature less insignificant," he wanted to be sure that everybody knew it proclaims, in princely guise, in the Lonwas he, and saw his finery, and pleased him- don Gazette.' The trial had succeeded more self with the idea of a universal curiosity, perfectly than he could have hoped. the very importance of which was a tribute ing desirous of printing his letters, and not to his greatness. At a later period, when knowing how to do without imputation of Gay, whom he loved, was dead, and Swift vanity what has been done in this country dying, and Bolingbroke in France, he took very rarely, Pope," says Dr. Johnson, the most curious means of securing for him-contrived an appearance of compulsion, self the notoriety he loved. Let us hope that that when he could complain that his letters it was the wariness of waning life, and the were surreptitiously published he might deloneliness that had fallen upon him, which cently and defensively publish them himmoved the poet to so strange a diversion self." from his solitude. It is thus it came about. The artifice succeeded, but it does not In the year 1733, Pope being then a man seem to have deceived any one. The world of about forty-five, precisely at the age in general, always so much better aware when men in general are most scrupulous than the juggler supposes of the way in which about the privacy of their personal life, a his tricks are elaborated, saw the hand bemysterious communication was made to hind the scenes that moved all, and knew Curll the bookseller, touching a large col- for what motive the House of Lords was lection of the poet's letters from his youth moved to question, and the newspapers to the year 1727. Curll communicated with rang with counter-advertisements. But the Pope himself on the subject, informing him poet, blowing his own trumpet till his cheeks that he meant to publish them; and Pope's ached, did not perceive that everybody saw reply was made by advertisements in the him, and saw through his inventions. The renewspapers, proclaiming to all the world velation which he affected to be forced from that he had nothing to do with Curll, that him, and which he pretended was honest he knew of no such collection of letters, and and complete, was in reality as careful a that he should not trouble himself about the work of art as any he had produced. The matter. Finally, after much mysterious letters were squeezed and pared and fitted communication between the publisher and into shape like the feet of Cinderella's sishis unknown correspondents, the book, al- ters. Names were transposed, sentiments ready printed by these darkling conspira- transferred-the apologies, professions, and tors, was given to the public. It was ad- offers of friendship made to one man were vertised with the names of the persons to handed over to another- the verses adwhom and from whom the letters came: dressed to one woman made to do service. Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence for for a second — a hundred tricks played with thirty years; being a collection of letters, the correspondence which remorseless time, regularly digested, written to him by the and the eyes of critics, and the British MuRight Hon. the late Earl of Halifax, Earl seum, have pitilessly discovered. of Burlington, Secretary Craggs, Sir Wil-" 'surreptitious edition" was as carefully liam Trumbull, &c. &c. &c. Curll's ad-corrected" and manipulated as the genuvertisement was a direct infringement of a ine one. Never was there a more elaborate rule of the House of Lords, which prohib- offering laid on the altars of vanity, and selited the publication of any peer's letters without his consent, and as such was brought under the notice of the House; upon which the books were seized, the printer and publisher summoned to the bar, and notoriety in its fullest and sweetest extent obtained on all hands, Pope himself meanwhile fulminating in the newspapers against the surreptitious publication, and offering rewards to the apocryphal persons who had betrayed him. His next move was made with the indig The dom has as curious an incident occurred in literary history. "Pope's private correspondence thus promulgated filled the nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship." He had thus the gratification of, as it were, posthumous praise and personal glorification while still in the prime of life, and with possible laurels- still before him to win. Pope's prime, however, was not like that gathers round him. "It was very observeable," during this last illness, that Mrs. Blount's coming in gave a new turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him. She was a little lively old woman by that time, in the eyes of the younger generation; but that did not affect her charm to her friend. Gleams of a spiritual atmosphere about him appear faintly in those waning days, he saw strange colours in the rooms, and an arm stretching out from the wall, it is said, at one time, and asked eagerly, "What's that?" Then, with a smile of pleasure, added, "It was a vision!" Bolingbroke wept, crying out with theatrical sentiment, "Oh, great God, what is man?" but the dying poet made no bewailing over his own state. "I am dying of a hundred good symptoms," he said, with a certain soft humour when they mocked him, as injudicious friends will do, with assurances that he was better. Thus he died, so quietly that no one could tell the moment, în his own house, with kindness and almost love from the touch of death-growing, as he crossed the threshold into the darkness, at last into the semblance of a man. of a man of ordinary health and size. He had been forced, or had forced himself, into premature bloom, and premature decay had followed. He who had been a precocious man and philosopher at sixteen, was at forty-six, old, querulous, and decaying. "The changes of the weather affect me much," he writes. "The mornings are my life; in the evenings I am not dead, indeed, but sleep, and am stupid enough. I love reading still better than conversation, but my eyes fail, and at the hours when most people indulge in company I am tired, and find the labour of the past day sufficient to weigh me down; so I hide myself in bed, as a bird in his nest, much about the same time." His health failed gradually, and infirmities crept upon him. Up to almost the last year of his life he was still employed, with the aid of Warburton, in slaughtering with cruel tortures every new butterfly that fluttered across his path, every fly that had ever ventured to buzz at Pope. Revenge went to the length of the tiniest insect; and not the most elaborate system of notes can wake any inter-around him; almost snatching a kind of life est in the bosom of the living reader as to the dead triflers of the Dunciad.' But though thus remorseless and vindictive to his deathbed, the poet clung to his friends who had made much of him, and had not ventured to interfere with his fame. He made efforts to visit, them though his poor little frame was dropping to peices. Yes, I would see you as long as I can see you," he writes to Bolingbroke, "and then shut my eyes upon the world as a thing worth seeing no longer. If your charity would take up a small bird that is half-dead of the frost, and set it chirping for half an hour, I will jump into my cage and put myself into your hands to-morrow at any hour you send." Up till very nearly the last, he still managed to glide along the river-side in his boat as far as Battersea, where Bolingbroke was, and was carried up in his chair to dine with his friend. The reader will see more trace of a human nature in those last glimpses of the dying poet than have been visible through all his previous life. The husk peels off with the long friction of time; with some the process is shorter, with some longer. Pope had so small a soul, so tiny a central point of humanity, that the very last covering of all has almost fallen away before the spirit shows. But it does become visible at the end. As he sits in the sun on his terrace talking feebly with his friends, smiling faintly at himself, the poor old bird halfdead in the frost, casting faint looks of faithful friendship at Martha Blount, who, they say, was indifferent, and at Bolingbroke, whose heart was touched, a certain interest 66 There is, as has been often said, an unseen tragedy in almost every life. Here there is no tragedy to speak of except the technical one, that the story ends, as all stories must, in death. But the reason is, that Pope had no life, no personal existence, no thread of individual fate : he worked, he studied, he produced poems greater than his nature; he hated, reviled, and beguiled his fellow-creatures; he magnified and deified himself, and that genius, which, divine thing as it is, can yet exist amidst so much garbage; and he liked with sufficient faithfulness a few people in the world, who were very good, very obliging, flattering, and satisfactory to him. But he neither lived in his own person, nor threw himself heart and soul into any other life; nothing tragic, nothing serious, no real interest to any human soul, is in him. A certain curiosity about the habits and natural history of the strange little phenomenon, a critic's interest in his poetry, a historian's attention to the curious phase of national life across which his little shadow passed—such is all that can be given to Pope. In literature he stands unique in England. His age, with its sharp emulation of wits, its graces and gracelessness, its frightful licence of speech and insensibility to all social codes of honor, is reflected in his pages as in the pitiless clearness of a mirror. Some of his satires rise to the very sublime of character-painting. In all other ways he has been sur passed-in this he stands supreme; and ter of his art. He was the culmination and thousands, we might say millions, in both perfect blossom of his school. It had to hemispheres, quote daily those matchless fall when he was gone, nothing greater bebitter lines without knowing whom they ing possible, and to leave the way open to quote. As a poet he wrought out his vein. a party less polished and less correct and Nobody could venture to come after, except more spontaneous in genius, and less elain humble paths of imitation, so great a mas-borate in art. From The Sunday Magazine. MY TREASURES. TO-NIGHT I am tired and sorrowful, I cannot sing to the children, Or laugh with them as they play; And the music which oft has soothed me Has lost its charms to-day. So I open the drawer of my treasures, Nought that the world calls precious- A bunch of withered heather, A lock of sacred silver, And a curl of soft fair hair, And each of them whispers a story, And some are written in days of grief, Yet now as I kneel in the firelight, And mark those once sad stains, And the early spring, the sweet, sweet spring, When love was as free as heaven's air, Alas, alas! those fair bright hopes Are killed by worldly cold; And we are left with aching hearts, But are not those brave and earnest hopes, So I think 'mong the joys of the far-off land, When we find that our vanished dreams are true, Thus I leave my burden behind me, And my eyes with tears grow dim ; For the children are waiting the good-night kiss I can thank my God that the bitter is past, What matters it, dear ones, after all, A joy that grows deeper and fuller, And my heart beats high with gladness, Though thorny our path may be, And though we have many a day to toil J. C. A. |