FOOTNOTES:

"I am sorry," Pope commences, "you persist to take ill my not accepting your invitation, and to find, if I mistake not, your exception not unmixed with some suspicion." The letter of Wycherley is dated April 27, 1710, and if the contents of the letter of Pope, which is dated May 2, did not show that it was the answer, all doubt would be removed by the fact that it was headed "The Answer" by the poet, both in the octavo of 1735, and the quarto of 1737. This led to the conclusion that Wycherley, while professing to receive the strictures on his verses with kindness, had at the same timemanifested in his letter some displeasure which his friend thought proper to omit, and which connected their quarrel with the secret soreness of the author at the candour of the critic.[175]Pope did indeed suppress the beginning and the end of Wycherley's communication; but the passages he kept back betray the falsity of his own insinuation. "I answered," the letter begins, "yours of the 15th, which I think was the last I had from you, about three days after my receiving it; but having not yet received any answer to it from you, I doubt your old pain of the head-ache has prevented it, which gives me a great deal of concern for you, insomuch that I have had thoughts of making you a visit before my journey into Shropshire, which has been delayed by delays and disappointments to me out of the country." The end is as follows: "My most humble service pray to Sir William Trumbull, and your good father and mother, whilst I can assure you from hence all the world here are your servants and friends. I know not but I may see you very suddenly at Binfield after all my broken promises."[176]Instead, therefore, of Wycherley being annoyed at Pope's refusal to accept his invitation, it was Wycherley who was designing to visit Pope; and instead of his persisting to take ill any part of his friend's conduct, his language was throughout expressive of cordiality and kindness.

The first intimation of a rupture is in a letter of Pope to Cromwell, on August 21, 1710, in which he says, "Since Mr. Wycherley left London, I have not heard a word from him, though just before, and once since, I writ to him, and though I know myself guilty of no offence but of doing sincerely just what he bid me." On October 28, he reverts to the subject, and protests by everything that is holy that he is not acquainted with the cause of theestrangement. He goes on, however, to state that he did not suppose any man could have been so suspicious as not to credit his own experience of a friend, and avers that he had done nothing which deserved to be concealed—a defence which seems to indicate a consciousness that Wycherley had heard some disparaging report. It was subsequently asserted by Pope's enemies, and never contradicted by Pope, that the alienation was produced by a copy of satirical verses he had written on the man he affected to caress. His offensive reply of May 2, to the genial letter of April 27, might alone explain the resentment of Wycherley, if the ungracious answer in its printed shape could be received as authentic. But I have shown that the opening sentence, in which Pope regrets that his correspondent persisted in taking ill his not accepting an invitation, is altogether fictitious, and with the evidence before us in the critical epistle of November 29, 1707, that he replaced his complimentary effusions by unvarnished truths, we may suspect that the uncompromising tone of his final letter was softened in the original, and that the published version is merely another instance of his anxiety to conceal the deference he had shown to Wycherley before the celebrity of the old dramatist had been eclipsed by the fame of the youthful poet. The almost eastern style which Pope adopted towards him a year and a half after the close of their correspondence, may be seen in one of his genuine epistles to Cromwell, which was printed by Curll. "I am highly pleased," the poet writes, November 12, 1711, "with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's present temper, which seems so favourable to me. I shall ever have such a fund of affection for him, as to be agreeable to myself when I am so to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the surface of the earth, if you will pardon a poetical similitude, is clearer or gloomier, just as the sun is brighter or more overcast." Whatever may have caused the sun to be overcast, there could have been little ground of complaint against Wycherley, or Pope would not have fabricated the pretence that he had provoked his anger by declining an invitation.

On the appearance of Theobald's edition of the Posthumous Works of Wycherley, the poet poured out his indignationto Lord Oxford. "I foresaw," he said, October 6, 1729, "some dirty trick in connection with my friend Wycherley's papers which they were publishing, and nothing can at once do justice so well to him and to me, who was by him employed in them, as the divulging of some parts of his and my letters." At the moment that he was penning this denunciation against "dirty tricks in relation to Wycherley's papers," though no trick had been practised, he was busily engaged in aspersing his friend by garbling the papers he professed to divulge out of justice to his memory. His motives were not malignant. He was simply desirous to do credit to himself, but to effect this end he did not scruple to falsify their private correspondence, and under the plea of justifying a man who was in his grave, took advantage of his death to libel him in safety. When with our scanty means of testing the fidelity of the letters, we find that part of them were misplaced, distorted, and invented, the rest of the series must be received with distrust, and some which cannot be proved to be fabricated are among the most suspicious of the whole.

Where the originals of Pope's letters were in hostile hands, as was the case with his letters to Cromwell and to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he was compelled to be sparing in his operations. He omitted sentences and altered phrases, but could not venture upon wholesale perversions of the truth. Of the bulk of the letters he published we have neither the originals nor reliable copies; but when we chance to light upon the materials from which he worked, we find, as might be expected, that he was not more conscientious in his use of them than in his reckless falsification of his correspondence with Wycherley and Caryll. The volume of 1735 concludes with a letter from Arbuthnot, dated July 17, 1734, and in the quarto of 1737 we have the pretended reply of the poet. Among the Arbuthnot papers in the possession of Mr. Baillie, is the actual answer sent by Pope, and it turns out that the printed substitute is an elaborate composition that has hardly any resemblance to the genuine text. He must have revised the letter of Arbuthnot as well as remodelled his own. "I am almost displeased," heremarks in the real, not in the counterfeit reply, "at your expression 'scarcelyany of those suspicions or jealousies which affect the truest friendships;' for I know ofnot oneon my part." He accordingly erased from Arbuthnot's letter the expression he disapproved, and fathered upon him the unqualified assertion, "I think since our first acquaintance there has not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies that often affect the sincerest friendships." To what extent he may have carried this principle of altering the opinions of his correspondents to fit his personal views cannot be discovered. A single instance of the artifice in a man so unscrupulous destroys all confidence in the documents which rest on his unsupported authority, and there is often reason to suspect that he gives us not what others said, but what he thought it advantageous to himself that they should say.

In comparison with this perversion of facts, the attempt of Pope to improve his letters, regarded as literary productions, would be of trifling moment, if it did not present another example of the audacious falsehoods he imposed upon the world. Speaking in the preface to the quarto of 1737 of the correspondence he reprinted from what he calls the surreptitious editions, he says "for the chasms in it, we had not the means to supply them, the author having destroyed too many letters to preserve a series." He intends us to infer that the selection was not his own, though the passage is virtually an admission that the collection of P. T. was the collection deposited with Lord Oxford, or there could not have been such an identity between them as that none of the gaps in the P. T. volume could be filled up from the bound book in the Oxford library. "Nor," he continues, "would he go about to amend them, except by the omission of some passages improper, or at least impertinent to be divulged to the public, or of such entire letters as were either not his, or not approved of by him." He would have us believe that they had been dragged before the world in their first crude state, without a single subsequent touch from his pen, though he had previously amended them with studious care—had culled the best passages, blended extracts from two or three letters into one, and constantly corrected composition which had been originally laboured. Some of hisambitious epistles, like his letter to Arbuthnot of July 26, 1734, were no doubt mere essays, which were only written when they were committed to the press. In the quarto of 1741, he repeated the device he had employed in the quarto of 1737. He pretended in both cases that the correspondence he printed himself had been printed by others without his knowledge, and in defiance of his wish. He next adopted and republished the letters he affected to repudiate, and having already revised them to the uttermost, asserted that he could not be induced to revise them at all. So completely had truth with him been swallowed up in vanity. "Had he," he tells us in the preface to the quarto of 1737, "sat down with a design to draw his own picture, he could not have done it so truly, for whoever sits for it, whether to himself or another, will inevitably find his features more composed than his appear in these letters; but if an author's hand, like a painter's, be more distinguishable in a slight sketch than a finished picture, this very carelessness will make them the better known from such counterfeits as have been, and may be, imputed to him." He did everything he professed to have left undone. The careless sketch was a studied portrait got up for exhibition, and the minutest details had been disposed with a view to flatter the likeness and increase the effect.

In the conduct of Pope to Bolingbroke there are points of resemblance to his conduct in the case of the correspondence, which render the evidence a material supplement to the present inquiry. Bolingbroke allowed him to get put into type the political letters on "The Spirit of Patriotism," on "The Idea of a Patriot King," and on "The State of Parties," under the promise that the pamphlet should be confined to five or six persons, who were named by the author. Pope fulfilled his pledge by causing a separate edition of 1500 copies to be struck off, and enjoined the printer to lay by the sheets "with great secresy till further orders."[177]In the dangerous manœuvre of printing covertly the original volume ofthe Swift correspondence which he sent to the Dean, he may, perhaps, have remained concealed from the inferior agents, and have conducted the details of the business through the medium of Worsdale. In the instance of the pamphlet he was not afraid to put himself into the power of the printer, who, says Bolingbroke, "kept his word with him better than he kept his with his friend."[178]The poet not only committed a breach of trust in preparing a work for sale which he received upon the condition that it should remain strictly private, but he had the boldness to tamper with the substance of the work, and in the impression, which was ultimately designed for the public, "he took upon him to divide the subject, and to alter and omit passages according to the suggestions of his own fancy."[179]From Warburton we learn that Pope "frequently told his acquaintance that Lord Bolingbroke would at his death leave his writings to his disposal,"[180]and the changes he introduced by anticipation into the single instalment within his power show the manner in which he designed to discharge his functions, and strengthen the suspicion that he may have falsified the letters of his correspondents as well as his own. Johnson, in censuring Lyttelton for publishing the posthumous edition of Thomson's poem on "Liberty," in an abridged form, condemns a practice "which, as it has a manifest tendency to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the charactersof authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration or kindness of the friend."[181]The freedom used by Pope was especially reprehensible from the concealment he practised. The copy of the pamphlet which he sent to Bolingbroke, and the other privileged persons, did not exhibit the modified text, and though the occurrence took place several years before the death of the poet he never, in all that time, whispered one word upon the subject to the author of the tracts, from which it is clear that he neither intended him to learn what he had done, nor expected him to approve the changes he had made. It was not till he was in his grave that his deception was divulged by the application of the printer to Bolingbroke for instructions how to dispose of the impression. Warburton argued that Pope must have wished his friend to have a knowledge of the clandestine edition and clandestine alterations, or he would have ordered the work to be destroyed during his final illness,[182]as if, in the lingering hope that life would be protracted a little longer, it had not happened times out of number that men had deferred burning tale-telling papers till their minds were diverted from the duty by the lassitude of sickness, and as if such procrastination was not in the highest degree probable when the poet had been first at the pains of revising the work, and next at the cost of an edition of 1500 copies.[183]He may even have believed that his secret, under any circumstances, was safe with the printer. A theory which has been verified by endless examples is a more credible alternative than to assume that Pope had designed to leave behind him evidences of a dishonesty which he had not dared to disclose during years of familiar intercourse, and which, notwithstanding that Bolingbroke was perpetually at his side, he did not venture to reveal in his dying hours when he might have palliated his motives, and obtained pardon for his fault. But if we admit the supposition of Warburton, and allow that he had ultimately arrived at the resolution of suffering the courseof events to betray the misdoings he had not the courage to confess, there will still remain the facts, which Warburton never questioned, that he pretended to Bolingbroke that some half dozen copies had alone been printed, when he had printed a distinct edition of 1500; that he handed an impression to the author which was taken faithfully from the manuscript, while the impression he hid from him was garbled and adulterated; and that, having concealed the double treachery for years, he left the world without an allusion to the wrongful act he had committed. Johnson justly considered that the resentment of Bolingbroke at this violation of faith was with reason "more acrimonious in proportion as the violator had been more trusted or loved," for the professions which win confidence increase the baseness of betraying it; but with equal justice Johnson condemned the "thirst for vengeance" which excited Bolingbroke "to blast the memory" of the man who had lived with him in a constant interchange of affection, and who, both in public and private, had paid him the tribute of his heartiest homage and applause.[184]

The scrutiny to which the lives of celebrated men are subjected is one of the severest penalties they pay for fame. Their private weaknesses have often been exposed with wanton cruelty; but the delinquencies of Pope are public acts by which he himself has challenged inquiry. He endeavoured to pass off a sophisticated correspondence for genuine, and the interests of truth demand that the deception should be exposed. He laboured to throw his own misdoings upon innocent men, and justice requires that his victims should be absolved, and the discredit, augmented beyond measure by the perfidy and deceit, be laid where it is due. He was the bitter satirist of individuals out of an assumed indignation at everything base, and his claim to adopt this lofty strain, his sincerity in it, and his fairness, are all involved in his personal dealings. The office of an editor is neither that of an advocate nor of an accuser. He is a judge, whose only client is truth. I have endeavoured to investigate the facts with impartiality, and narrate them with fidelity, and if I have anywhere failed, it is from unconscious, not from wilfulerror; but having once been satisfied of the guilt of Pope, I do not pretend to think that genius is an extenuation of rascality. He rightly refused others the benefit of the plea, and said in the Essay on Man, whoever is "wickedly wise is but the more a fool, the more a knave." The sketch which Lord Macaulay has given of his character, when describing his conduct on the appearance of Tickell's version of the first book of the Iliad, is not too severe for the treacheries and falsehoods which were the instruments of his malevolence, cowardice and vanity. "An odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The work on which he had staked his reputation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be defeated. With this view, Addison had made a rival translation; Tickell had consented to father it, and the wits at Button's had consented to puff it. We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be true; and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of which he had suspected Addison and Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from the consequences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; he was taxed with it; and he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself, and abused his enemies, under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have committed from a love of fraud alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his objectmight be, the indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead, when it was discovered that from no motive, except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke."[185]Many of the falsehoods and perfidies I have detailed have come to light since Macaulay wrote, and there are more behind which will appear in their proper place in Pope's life and works. There have been no lack of men whose moral conduct was in an almost inverse ratio with their intellectual gifts; but there never was an author of equal genius, who habitually practised such despicable deceptions for such paltry purposes;

"Who for this end would earn a lasting name,Join moral infamy to mental fame,Would tear aside the friendly veil of nightTo stand degraded in a blaze of light."

His crooked policy was ineffectual, even when his worst devices were undetected. Few believed that he was vexed at the publication of his letters, or that they were careless effusions, or that the virtues he paraded in them were the just reflection of his mind. Both men and compositions will seem to be what they are, and the poet's protestations did not prevent the world from discovering that his epistles were laboured, that many of his sentiments were feigned, and that he eagerly promoted the publications he pretended to deplore.

Having finished a discussion which from its nature will be dull to many, and from its length will be wearisome to all, I turn to speak of the present edition of the Correspondence. The last edition published in the lifetime of Pope comprised, according to Mr. Croker's calculation, 354 letters. These, Mr. Croker states, were increased by Warburton to 384, by Warton to 502, by Bowles to 644, and by Roscoe to 708, or exactly double the number that were included in the last edition of the poet. The present edition will contain more new letters than were collected by Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe combined, and many of them are ofimmeasurably greater importance in determining the character and conduct of Pope than any which have previously appeared. There are others among them which, under ordinary circumstances, would be too trivial to be printed; but particulars, which are separately insignificant, have assisted in dispelling some of the mystery or exposing some of the deceptions in which it was the poet's pleasure to involve his life, and as nobody can pronounce with certainty what facts may be of service to future inquirers, I have thought it better to add a few superfluous pages than to run the risk of rejecting materials which may prove useful hereafter. I have, in like manner, admitted letters which had a biographical value, although they were neither written by Pope nor to him. Second-hand statements cannot supply the place of authentic documents, and to have dissociated the subsidiary from the main correspondence would have frequently deprived both of the increased importance they derive from being read in connection.

In Pope's own, and every succeeding edition, the letters are divided into groups. The arrangement of the entire collection in one consecutive chronological series is, in his case, neither desirable nor possible. It is not desirable because a unity of subject often runs through his intercourse with particular persons, and the interposition of the topics upon which he touched with other friends, far from presenting a connected view of his thoughts and actions, would reduce the whole to a medley of disjointed fragments. It is not possible because many of his letters are undated, and, though we can frequently determine their place in each class, there are no means of settling their order when all the letters of doubtful date are thrown together. In numerous instances the year in which they were written can at most be discovered, and the attempt to fix their precedency within that period would be attended with as much uncertainty as if they were shuffled like a pack of cards.

The liberties which Pope took with his correspondence in preparing it for publication diminish the authority of that extensive portion of it which we owe to his printed or manuscript copies alone, and have rendered it essential to specifythe source from which, every letter is derived. Where the letter was sent to one person and was published by Pope as if it had been addressed to another, it is inserted in its proper place, and again in the group to which it was falsely assigned by the writer. Unless the correspondence was exhibited in its double form, a just idea could not easily be obtained of the shape and colour he imparted to it, or of the relations which he pretended to have maintained with his contemporaries. Where the direction was not changed, and we possess both the genuine and the corrected letter, the true version is given in the text, and any variations in his amended version which seemed worthy of notice are pointed out in the notes. Even here, from the nature and extent of the alterations, it has sometimes been necessary to preserve a letter in its twofold state.

The greater part of the collection of 1735 was reproduced in the quarto of 1737; but as the texts are not always identical the earliest has been followed, except where there is manifestly an error of the press, or where the quarto supplies passages which are not in the volume of P. T. I had once intended to subjoin the whole of the various readings at the foot of the page. I abandoned the design upon finding that the vast majority of them were verbal, and apparently unimportant changes, which could only have interested the few curious inquirers who would always have recourse to the original editions. I have not the less carefully collated these original editions throughout, and have thus got rid of numerous mistakes which had become traditional in the subsequent reprints. The notes signed "Pope, 1735," were first published in the P. T. collection, with the exception of a few in the Wycherley group, which, though they are only known to us through the P. T. volume, had undoubtedly appeared in 1729. Many of the P. T. notes were transferred to the authorised impression of 1737, and they were nearly all in the copies which the poet delivered to Warburton for posthumous publication. The notes signed "Pope, 1737," were added in the quarto of that year; and those signed "Cooper, 1737," are from the octavos which bear the name of this bookseller on the title-page.

Language was current in Pope's day which would be considered grossly indelicate in ours, and though he abounds in refined and elevated strains, he was yet among the worst offenders of his time. "He and Swift," says Dr. Johnson, "had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention." His correspondence is not altogether free from the defect; but no editor can now efface the blots which Warburton, Warton, and Bowles felt bound to preserve. Roscoe set aside a few sentences, and showed by his inconsistency the uselessness of the process. He confined his expurgations to the part of Pope's works which were little read, and where the omissions in consequence would rarely be remarked; but did not venture to disturb a single syllable of the far more numerous and more objectionable passages which occur in the pieces that are in the hands of all the world. The stains which sully so much of our beautiful literature are unhappily indelible, and it could answer no useful end to adopt the capricious principle of Roscoe in removing the lesser blemishes which are seldom noticed, and leaving the worst and most conspicuous defilements undisturbed. More freedom may be used with the unpublished letters; but I have exercised the discretion very sparingly, and have not excluded every coarse word, phrase, or idea, when it was characteristic of the age, the man, and his writings, and when, though an offence against taste, it could not be injurious to morals.

I have mentioned at the several places where their contributions are inserted, the numerous persons to whose liberality Mr. Croker and myself have been obliged for materials and assistance. The services rendered by Mr. Dilke require to be noticed here. Until he published his articles in the Athenæum little had been added to our knowledge of Pope since Johnson produced his masterly Life. The truths which Mr. Dilke established, and the errors he dissipated, were not more important than the change he gave to the former superficial investigations. His rigid scrutiny became the standard for every subsequent inquirer. He loved his studies for their own sake, and never did a man of letters work less for personal ends. He at onceplaced at my disposal his Caryll correspondence, which he had carefully annotated, and the explanation of all its obscure allusions are due to him. He supplied me with a multitude of letters which were widely scattered through books and periodicals, and collated others with the originals in the British Museum and Bodleian Library. Large masses of the letters are undated, or dated falsely, and he was at the labour of fixing dates which sometimes appeared to defy conjecture. He lent me his rare editions, was unwearied in answering questions, in solving difficulties, in revising proofs, and in communicating, without reserve, his stores of information. He was then suffering from a long and painful illness, and he died when only the first volume of correspondence was printed, or I should have had his generous and invaluable aid to the end.

Mr. Bowles remarked in the course of the skirmish of pamphlets he provoked, that the editorship of Pope's works had been to no one a bed of roses. For the larger part of the discomforts his commentators may have endured, Pope himself was responsible. His mysteries, his double-dealings, his falsifications, and his quarrels have rendered half the acts of his life a fertile theme for debate. None of the angry controversialists who mingled fifty years ago in the fray had prepared properly for the contest, and the insolence and assumption, the virulence and the dogmatism, were commonly greatest with the persons whose acquaintance with the subject was the least. The intemperate, and usually ignorant warfare, left nearly all the vexed questions in confusion, and it is only in recent years that a new generation of dispassionate students have begun to replace the blunders of sciolism by facts. In the many battles yet to be fought over Pope there will be this advantage which will be certain to produce solid results, that the critic will be in possession of the materials for judgment, and will not have to write without knowledge of his cause.

FOOTNOTES:[1]Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, Vol. iii. p. 368.[2]Marchmont Papers, Vol. ii. p. 335.[3]Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. ii. p. 165.[4]Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. iii. p. 72.[5]Prior's Life of Malone, p. 385.[6]Prior's Malone, p. 370.[7]Hurd said of Warburton's Pope, that "it was the best edition that was ever given of any classic."[8]Imit. Bk. i. Epist. vi. ver. 87.[9]This last sentence was added by Warburton in the later editions of his Pope.[10]Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. IV. p. 429-437.[11]Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, Vol. vi. p. 422.[12]De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863. Vol. xv. p. 137. He usually maintained the opposite view, and sided altogether with the "they who could see nothing in Pope but 'dust a little gilt.'" "There is nothing," he says, "Pope would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most pathetic memorial from his personal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. Simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought, or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what people affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth."[13]Macaulay's Essays, 1 Vol. ed. p. 719.[14]Athenæum, July 8, 1854, Sept. 1, Sept. 8, and Sept. 15, 1860.[15]Mrs. Thomas to Cromwell, June 27, 1727.[16]"Lives of the Poets," edited by Cunningham, Vol. III. p. 62.[17]"The Curlliad," p. 22.[18]Vol. I. p. xxxviii. Where no other work is mentioned, the references throughout this Introduction are to the present edition of Pope's Correspondence.[19]Mr. Croker and myself have been indebted to the kindness of the present Marquess of Bath for the use of the Oxford papers preserved at Longleat. They are most important for the light they throw upon the character and proceedings of Pope.[20]Lord Oxford to Pope, Oct. 9, 1729.[21]Pope to Lord Oxford, Oct. 16, 1729.[22]Pope to Swift, Nov. 28, 1729.[23]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.[24]Vol. I. p. xxxvii.[25]The father was probably Lord Digby, and the letters were those addressed to the Hon. Robert Digby, who died in April, 1726.[26]Vol. I. pp. xxxvii, xxxviii.[27]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.[28]Warton's "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 255.[29]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 424.[30]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 425.[31]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 421, 423.[32]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 441.[33]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.[34]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.[35]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 425, 441.[36]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.[37]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.[38]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 434.[39]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.[40]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 428.[41]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 428, 433.[42]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61. Mr. Roscoe says that no evidence for this statement appears. Johnson is himself the evidence. He went to London in 1737, when he was 28 years of age, to try his fortunes as an author, and became intimate with Savage, who was the ally of Pope, with Dodsley, who published the authentic edition of the poet's correspondence, and with numerous other persons from whom he was likely to have received reliable information upon a fact so recent. It is not to be supposed that Johnson imagined or invented a circumstance which there is nothing to discredit.[43]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 433, 434.[44]Though the work is printed in two thin volumes, it was always done up as one.[45]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485. This article is from the same pen as the articles on Pope's correspondence in the "Athenæum."[46]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430. The statement occurs in a private note written at the time to Smythe, before the bookseller had any idea of appealing to the public, or suspected that the letters were printed by Pope himself.[47]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.[48]Vol. I. p. xxxvi.[49]Vol. I. pp. xl. xli. All the statements to which I have referred occur in this preface of Pope to the quarto of 1737, and some of them in many other places besides.[50]Vol. I. p. xxxvii. Appendix, p. 419.[51]Vol. I. p. xxxv.[52]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.[53]Vol. I. p. xxxviii. The anonymous friend was put in the place of Lord Oxford. Half the notes relate to the Wycherley manuscripts in the Harley library, and could only have proceeded from the author of that fiction. Pope's official editor, Warburton, signed all the notes with Pope's name.[54]Vol. I. p. xxxv.[55]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.[56]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.[57]This circumstance at once attracted the attention of Swift. "I detest the House of Lords," he wrote to Lady Betty Germain, from Dublin, June 8, 1735, "for their indulgence to such a profligate, prostitute villain as Curll; but am at a loss how he could procure any letters written to Mr. Pope, although by the vanity or indiscretion of correspondents the rogue might have picked up some that went from him. Those letters have not yet been sent hither; therefore I can form no judgment on them." Swift's detestation of the House of Lords for not punishing a man who was proved to be innocent of the offence with which he was charged, is an instance of the kind of justice to be expected from violent partisans.[58]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.[59]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.[60]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 429, 445.[61]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.[62]P. T. said 380, but the 3 was probably a misprint for 4.[63]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.[64]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.[65]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.[66]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 438. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. II. p. 261.[67]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 435.[68]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.[69]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. II. p. vi.[70]vol. I. Appendix, p. 446.[71]vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.[72]vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.[73]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.[74]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 435.[75]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.[76]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.[77]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii. Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.[78]The "Athenæum" of Sept. 8, 1860.[79]When Pope put forth his preface to the quarto he could not have intended to disguise that he was the writer of the "Narrative," or he would have been at greater pains to vary his language. If the general resemblance had been less marked, an invention common to both productions would reveal their common origin. In the "Narrative" we are informed that the complete collection of Pope's had been copied into a couple of books before Theobald published his edition of Wycherley's posthumous works, and that it was from these manuscript books that the Wycherley correspondence was transcribed for press. This assertion was untrue. Theobald's volume came out in 1728, while Pope's collection, as appears from his announcements to Lord Oxford, was still in the process of formation in September, 1729, and he was only "causing it to be fairly written" in October, after his own Wycherley volume had passed through the press. The false account is repeated in the preface to the quarto, where we are told that the posthumous works of Wycherley were printed the year after the copy of Pope's collection of letters had been deposited in the library of Lord Oxford, which throws back the deposit of the letters from the close of 1729 to 1727. Since the poet revived and authenticated an anonymous fiction respecting his personal acts, he may reasonably be supposed to have been the author of it. The object of the imposition was to uphold the tale he had advanced in his Wycherley volume. He had ceased to state openly that the publication was the act of Lord Oxford; but he wished to have it believed that the letters were in the keeping of his noble friend at the time, and to leave the impression that the notion of printing them had not originated with himself.[80]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.[81]Vol. I. p. xxxix.[82]Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339.[83]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.[84]"Athenæum," Sept. 8, 1860.[85]Maloniana, p. 385.[86]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.[87]Vol. I. p. 417.[88]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 430, 431, 443.[89]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.[90]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 443.[91]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.[92]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 444, 445.[93]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.[94]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.[95]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.[96]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.[97]From a letter which Lord Oxford addressed to Swift on June 19, 1735, he would appear to have known no more than the rest of the public. "Master Pope," he writes, "is under persecution from Curll, who has by some means (wicked ones most certainly) got hold of some of Pope's private letters, which he has printed, and threatens more."[98]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.[99]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III, p. x.[100]Pope to Buckley, July 13, [1735].[101]Art. Atterbury in "A General Biographical Dictionary translated from Bayle, interspersed with several thousand lives never before published. By Rev. J. P. Bernard, Rev. T. Birch, Mr. John Lockman, and other hands." Vol II. p. 447.[102]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.[103]Pope to Fortescue, March 26, 1736, and April, 1736.[104]Pope to Allen, June 5 and Nov. 6, 1736.[105]Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.[106]Pope to Fortescue, April, 1736.[107]Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.[108]Chancery Bill, Dodsleyv.Watson.[109]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.[110]Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 465.[111]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.[112]Pope to Allen, June 5, 1736.[113]Pope probably kept back from the quarto the unpublished letters he inserted in the octavo that their novelty might assist the sale of the edition which was intended to come out last. He would not use the new letters without his unfailing pretext that they "were in such hands as to be in imminent danger of being printed."[114]These particulars are derived from the Chancery BillDodsleyv.Watson, and from the documents preserved by Pope's solicitor, Mr. Cole, and now in the possession of his successors in the business, Messrs. Janssen and Co. I owe the extracts from Cole's papers to Mr. Dilke, who was indebted for them to the present members of the firm.[115]Vol. I. p. xliii.[116]The words were introduced by the poet's friend and counsel Murray when he revised, or, in legal phrase, settled the bill. The rough draft submitted to him is among the papers of Mr. Cole, and the parallel passage only states that the letters written and received by Mr. Pope "having fallen into the hands of several booksellers, they thought fit to print a surreptitious edition," which did not preclude the supposition that one or more of the editions might be genuine. Whenever Pope, throughout the business, could use equivocal language he always selected it.[117]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii.[118]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423, 447.[119]Vol. I. p. 1. He is speaking of Curll's reprint, which has no letters that were not in the original P. T. volume.[120]Pope to Swift, May 17, 1739.[121]Covent Garden Journal, No. 23, March 21, 1752.[122]Warton's Pope, Vol. I. p. lv.[123]The second edition of the octavo has a few more notes than the first edition. To distinguish it I have quoted it by the title of Cooper 1737, from the name of the publisher. I had not seen the first edition of the octavo till after Vol. I. of the Correspondence was printed, and I have erroneously stated of one or two letters that they originally appeared in the Cooper edition of 1737 which had not any new letters.[124]De Quincey, Works, Vol. xv. p. 132.[125]Works, Vol. vii. p. 66.[126]Carruthers, Life of Pope, p. 442.[127]Warburton's Pope, Ed. 1753, Vol. IX. p. 111.[128]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.[129]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.[130]It is among the papers of his friend Lord Bathurst. The letter is undated, and was published without any date by Curll. When Pope reproduced it in the quarto of 1737, he dated it August, 1723; and in the quarto of 1741 he changed the date to January, 1723, which must be incorrect, since Bolingbroke was then abroad, and did not return to England till June. Swift's reply is dated September 20, and as it was between this period and June that the joint letter must have been written, August is either the true date, or a close approximation to it.[131]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.[132]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.[133]It is stated in a note to the Dublin edition of the collection of 1741 that the original of Bolingbroke's appendix had been discovered among Swift's papers since the publication of the letter by Curll.[134]Lord Orrery to Pope, Oct. 4, 1738.[135]Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740. This letter was first published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for August, 1849. It is printed, together with the other letters on the subject, among the Pope and Swift correspondence in this edition.[136]The earliest of the three letters bears in the body of the work, the heading "Mr. Gay to Dr. Swift;" but in the Table of Contents it is entitled "From Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope," and the language in portions of the letter itself shows that it was the production of both.[137]"I never," said the poet to Caryll, November 19, 1712, "kept any copies of such stuff as I write," which would be decisive of his custom at that early date, if much reliance could be placed on his word. In 1716 he commenced correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and afterwards published several of the letters among his "Letters to Ladies." He was then at enmity with her, and as she retained the originals, he must either have borrowed them prior to the quarrel for the purpose of copying them, or else must have copied them before they were sent. There is no direct evidence to show at what time he commenced the practice of transcribing letters; but at the close of 1726 he began to compile the collection of 1735, and thenceforward he was sure to let nothing escape which could contribute to his design.[138]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.[139]Dr. Hawkesworth published a letter from Swift to Pope, introducing his cousin, Mr. D. Swift, and three more were published by Mr. D. Swift himself. He does not say by what means he obtained them, but they form part of a collection of some seventy stray letters addressed by Swift to thirty or forty different persons, who had certainly not returned them.[140]Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.[141]Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.[142]Nichols's "Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century," Vol. V. p. 379.[143]Birch MSS. Brit. Mus., quoted in Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339. When Mr. Gerrard was about to return to Ireland from Bath, Pope wrote to him, May 17, 1740, to say that he had found another conveyance for the letter he had intended to send by him to Swift. Mr. Gerrard may nevertheless have carried over the printed correspondence, which would not have been openly entrusted to him by Pope, who professed to know nothing about it. The poet may have thought upon reflection that it would look less suspicious if his avowed letter and the anonymous parcel were not transmitted by the same bearer.[144]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.[145]Pope to Mr. Nugent, March 26, 1740, and Mr. Nugent to Mrs. Whiteway, April 2, 1740.[146]Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740.[147]Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 469. The letter to Allen was not published till twenty-five years after Pope's death.[148]Millarv.Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2397.[149]"Athenæum" for Sept. 15, 1860.[150]"Whereas there is an impression of certain letters between Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope openly printed in Dublin without Mr. Pope's consent, and there is reason to think the same hath been, or will be done clandestinely in London, notice is hereby given that they will be speedily published with several additional letters, &c., composing altogether a second volume of his works in prose."—"London Daily Post" for March 24, 1741, quoted in the "Athenæum" for September 15, 1860. The advertisement displays the same cautious phraseology as was employed in the prefatory notice to the quarto, and speaks of the Dublin volume as only printed, not published. One motive which probably induced Faulkner to delay it was, that the work would have been incomplete without the additional letters.[151]Page 89 in the quarto bears, in the cancelled division, the signature M., and the later page 89 has the signature N. The cause of the difference is plain. It is the ordinary habit to begin the body of a work on sheet B, and reserve the signature A, for the preliminary matter. This is the method adopted with the three previous quarto volumes of Pope's works, and was followed in the original quarto impression of the correspondence; but after the poet had cancelled the beginning of the volume, the sheet commonly marked B was in the second state of the quarto marked A, which occasioned the usual sheet N to become M. The discrepancy is an additional proof that the opening sheets had been cancelled and reprinted.[152]There were probably minor cancels which did not disturb the general arrangement, as at page 124, where there is a note which purports to be copied from the Dublin edition. The final sheet of all was evidently printed after Faulkner's volume was in type.[153]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.[154]Curll, who delivered his answer upon oath, was no doubt aware that the work was not first published in Dublin. He therefore used the evasive word "printed," and left it to his opponents to detect the fallacy. The methods, however, by which Pope had obtained his priority would not permit him to plead it, nor was he likely, by mooting the question, to risk the revelation of his plot.[155]Atkyns's Reports, Vol. II. p. 342.[156]The other counsel were Sir Dudley Ryder, then Attorney-General, and Mr. Noel. They all paid Pope the tribute of refusing their fees.[157]Tonsonv.Collins, Blackstone's Reports, Vol. I. p. 311.[158]Millarv.Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2396. "I know," Lord Mansfield observed, "that Mr. Pope had no paper upon which the letters were written," which means that he had received this assurance from Pope, and supposed it to be true. In one particular the memory of Lord Mansfield deceived him. Blackstone on the authority of the preface to the quarto of 1741, stated, while arguing the case of Tonsonv.Collins, that the letters "were published with the connivance at least, if not under the direction of Swift," to which Lord Mansfield replied, "Certainly not. Dr. Swift disclaimed it, and was extremely angry." But this is opposed to the united evidence of Mrs. Whiteway, Faulkner, and Pope, who all concur in testifying that Swift consented to the publication.[159]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.[160]Pope to Caryll, Feb. 3, 1729. Pope to Swift, March 23, 1737.[161]To Lord Orrery, March, 1737. "His humanity, his charity, his condescension, his candour are equal to his wit, and require as good and true a taste to be equally valued. When all this must die, I would gladly have been the recorder of so great a part of it as shines in his letters to me, and of which my own are but as so many acknowledgements."[162]Pope to Nugent, August 14, 1740.[163]The statement is recorded by Dr. Birch in his Journal, May 14, 1751. He received the information from Dr. Heberden, who was then attending Lord Bolingbroke in his last illness.[164]"All's Well that Ends Well." Act II. Scene 2.[165]In September, 1725, Arbuthnot had an illness which was expected to prove mortal. Pope, in announcing his recovery to Swift on October 15, added, "He goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than even health can make a man." He meant that Arbuthnot was able to go about again, which was still one of the commonest significations of the phrase. Arbuthnot did not leave England, and from his letter to Swift on October 17, it is clear that he had never entertained the design.[166]Roscoe dated the letter 1726. Without recapitulating the circumstances, which are fatal to the conjecture, it is enough to say that on September 10, 1726, Pope was unable to hold a pen, owing to the injury he had received a day or two before when he was upset in Bolingbroke's carriage. It was several weeks before he recovered the use of his hand. In the case of Digby there is the additional difficulty that as the nurse did not die till after September, 1725, so he himself was dead before September, 1726.[167]I did not discover the letters of Wycherley at Longleat till after his correspondence with Pope had been printed off.[168]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.[169]Oxford MSS.[170]Oxford MSS.[171]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.[172]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 9.[173]Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an account of some religious fanatics.[174]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.[175]The general impression produced by the correspondence was expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can place no reliance on his passing words.[176]Oxford MSS.[177]This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much asperity in a preliminary advertisement, of which the original, corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.[178]Advertisement to the edition of 1749.[179]Advertisement to the edition of 1749. In the same year Warburton put forth a short pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted, in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of the principal charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and "only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years before, when the subject was fresh, and Bolingbroke was living.—Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 526. Appendix, p. 573.[180]"A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 573.[181]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 232.[182]"A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 572.[183]Warburton says that the expense had been considerable.—Ruffhead, 571.[184]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 92.[185]Macaulay's Essays. I Vol. edit. p. 718.

[1]Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, Vol. iii. p. 368.

[2]Marchmont Papers, Vol. ii. p. 335.

[3]Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. ii. p. 165.

[4]Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. iii. p. 72.

[5]Prior's Life of Malone, p. 385.

[6]Prior's Malone, p. 370.

[7]Hurd said of Warburton's Pope, that "it was the best edition that was ever given of any classic."

[8]Imit. Bk. i. Epist. vi. ver. 87.

[9]This last sentence was added by Warburton in the later editions of his Pope.

[10]Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. IV. p. 429-437.

[11]Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, Vol. vi. p. 422.

[12]De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863. Vol. xv. p. 137. He usually maintained the opposite view, and sided altogether with the "they who could see nothing in Pope but 'dust a little gilt.'" "There is nothing," he says, "Pope would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most pathetic memorial from his personal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. Simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought, or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what people affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth."

[13]Macaulay's Essays, 1 Vol. ed. p. 719.

[14]Athenæum, July 8, 1854, Sept. 1, Sept. 8, and Sept. 15, 1860.

[15]Mrs. Thomas to Cromwell, June 27, 1727.

[16]"Lives of the Poets," edited by Cunningham, Vol. III. p. 62.

[17]"The Curlliad," p. 22.

[18]Vol. I. p. xxxviii. Where no other work is mentioned, the references throughout this Introduction are to the present edition of Pope's Correspondence.

[19]Mr. Croker and myself have been indebted to the kindness of the present Marquess of Bath for the use of the Oxford papers preserved at Longleat. They are most important for the light they throw upon the character and proceedings of Pope.

[20]Lord Oxford to Pope, Oct. 9, 1729.

[21]Pope to Lord Oxford, Oct. 16, 1729.

[22]Pope to Swift, Nov. 28, 1729.

[23]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.

[24]Vol. I. p. xxxvii.

[25]The father was probably Lord Digby, and the letters were those addressed to the Hon. Robert Digby, who died in April, 1726.

[26]Vol. I. pp. xxxvii, xxxviii.

[27]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.

[28]Warton's "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 255.

[29]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 424.

[30]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 425.

[31]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 421, 423.

[32]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 441.

[33]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.

[34]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.

[35]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 425, 441.

[36]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.

[37]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.

[38]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 434.

[39]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.

[40]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 428.

[41]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 428, 433.

[42]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61. Mr. Roscoe says that no evidence for this statement appears. Johnson is himself the evidence. He went to London in 1737, when he was 28 years of age, to try his fortunes as an author, and became intimate with Savage, who was the ally of Pope, with Dodsley, who published the authentic edition of the poet's correspondence, and with numerous other persons from whom he was likely to have received reliable information upon a fact so recent. It is not to be supposed that Johnson imagined or invented a circumstance which there is nothing to discredit.

[43]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 433, 434.

[44]Though the work is printed in two thin volumes, it was always done up as one.

[45]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485. This article is from the same pen as the articles on Pope's correspondence in the "Athenæum."

[46]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430. The statement occurs in a private note written at the time to Smythe, before the bookseller had any idea of appealing to the public, or suspected that the letters were printed by Pope himself.

[47]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.

[48]Vol. I. p. xxxvi.

[49]Vol. I. pp. xl. xli. All the statements to which I have referred occur in this preface of Pope to the quarto of 1737, and some of them in many other places besides.

[50]Vol. I. p. xxxvii. Appendix, p. 419.

[51]Vol. I. p. xxxv.

[52]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.

[53]Vol. I. p. xxxviii. The anonymous friend was put in the place of Lord Oxford. Half the notes relate to the Wycherley manuscripts in the Harley library, and could only have proceeded from the author of that fiction. Pope's official editor, Warburton, signed all the notes with Pope's name.

[54]Vol. I. p. xxxv.

[55]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.

[56]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.

[57]This circumstance at once attracted the attention of Swift. "I detest the House of Lords," he wrote to Lady Betty Germain, from Dublin, June 8, 1735, "for their indulgence to such a profligate, prostitute villain as Curll; but am at a loss how he could procure any letters written to Mr. Pope, although by the vanity or indiscretion of correspondents the rogue might have picked up some that went from him. Those letters have not yet been sent hither; therefore I can form no judgment on them." Swift's detestation of the House of Lords for not punishing a man who was proved to be innocent of the offence with which he was charged, is an instance of the kind of justice to be expected from violent partisans.

[58]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 445.

[59]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.

[60]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 429, 445.

[61]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.

[62]P. T. said 380, but the 3 was probably a misprint for 4.

[63]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 429.

[64]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.

[65]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.

[66]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 438. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. II. p. 261.

[67]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 435.

[68]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.

[69]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. II. p. vi.

[70]vol. I. Appendix, p. 446.

[71]vol. I. Appendix, p. 430.

[72]vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.

[73]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.

[74]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 435.

[75]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.

[76]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61.

[77]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii. Vol. I. Appendix, p. 439.

[78]The "Athenæum" of Sept. 8, 1860.

[79]When Pope put forth his preface to the quarto he could not have intended to disguise that he was the writer of the "Narrative," or he would have been at greater pains to vary his language. If the general resemblance had been less marked, an invention common to both productions would reveal their common origin. In the "Narrative" we are informed that the complete collection of Pope's had been copied into a couple of books before Theobald published his edition of Wycherley's posthumous works, and that it was from these manuscript books that the Wycherley correspondence was transcribed for press. This assertion was untrue. Theobald's volume came out in 1728, while Pope's collection, as appears from his announcements to Lord Oxford, was still in the process of formation in September, 1729, and he was only "causing it to be fairly written" in October, after his own Wycherley volume had passed through the press. The false account is repeated in the preface to the quarto, where we are told that the posthumous works of Wycherley were printed the year after the copy of Pope's collection of letters had been deposited in the library of Lord Oxford, which throws back the deposit of the letters from the close of 1729 to 1727. Since the poet revived and authenticated an anonymous fiction respecting his personal acts, he may reasonably be supposed to have been the author of it. The object of the imposition was to uphold the tale he had advanced in his Wycherley volume. He had ceased to state openly that the publication was the act of Lord Oxford; but he wished to have it believed that the letters were in the keeping of his noble friend at the time, and to leave the impression that the notion of printing them had not originated with himself.

[80]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 420.

[81]Vol. I. p. xxxix.

[82]Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339.

[83]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.

[84]"Athenæum," Sept. 8, 1860.

[85]Maloniana, p. 385.

[86]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.

[87]Vol. I. p. 417.

[88]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 430, 431, 443.

[89]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.

[90]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 431, 443.

[91]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.

[92]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 444, 445.

[93]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.

[94]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.

[95]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.

[96]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.

[97]From a letter which Lord Oxford addressed to Swift on June 19, 1735, he would appear to have known no more than the rest of the public. "Master Pope," he writes, "is under persecution from Curll, who has by some means (wicked ones most certainly) got hold of some of Pope's private letters, which he has printed, and threatens more."

[98]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.

[99]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III, p. x.

[100]Pope to Buckley, July 13, [1735].

[101]Art. Atterbury in "A General Biographical Dictionary translated from Bayle, interspersed with several thousand lives never before published. By Rev. J. P. Bernard, Rev. T. Birch, Mr. John Lockman, and other hands." Vol II. p. 447.

[102]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.

[103]Pope to Fortescue, March 26, 1736, and April, 1736.

[104]Pope to Allen, June 5 and Nov. 6, 1736.

[105]Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.

[106]Pope to Fortescue, April, 1736.

[107]Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.

[108]Chancery Bill, Dodsleyv.Watson.

[109]Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.

[110]Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 465.

[111]Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.

[112]Pope to Allen, June 5, 1736.

[113]Pope probably kept back from the quarto the unpublished letters he inserted in the octavo that their novelty might assist the sale of the edition which was intended to come out last. He would not use the new letters without his unfailing pretext that they "were in such hands as to be in imminent danger of being printed."

[114]These particulars are derived from the Chancery BillDodsleyv.Watson, and from the documents preserved by Pope's solicitor, Mr. Cole, and now in the possession of his successors in the business, Messrs. Janssen and Co. I owe the extracts from Cole's papers to Mr. Dilke, who was indebted for them to the present members of the firm.

[115]Vol. I. p. xliii.

[116]The words were introduced by the poet's friend and counsel Murray when he revised, or, in legal phrase, settled the bill. The rough draft submitted to him is among the papers of Mr. Cole, and the parallel passage only states that the letters written and received by Mr. Pope "having fallen into the hands of several booksellers, they thought fit to print a surreptitious edition," which did not preclude the supposition that one or more of the editions might be genuine. Whenever Pope, throughout the business, could use equivocal language he always selected it.

[117]"Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p. xii.

[118]Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423, 447.

[119]Vol. I. p. 1. He is speaking of Curll's reprint, which has no letters that were not in the original P. T. volume.

[120]Pope to Swift, May 17, 1739.

[121]Covent Garden Journal, No. 23, March 21, 1752.

[122]Warton's Pope, Vol. I. p. lv.

[123]The second edition of the octavo has a few more notes than the first edition. To distinguish it I have quoted it by the title of Cooper 1737, from the name of the publisher. I had not seen the first edition of the octavo till after Vol. I. of the Correspondence was printed, and I have erroneously stated of one or two letters that they originally appeared in the Cooper edition of 1737 which had not any new letters.

[124]De Quincey, Works, Vol. xv. p. 132.

[125]Works, Vol. vii. p. 66.

[126]Carruthers, Life of Pope, p. 442.

[127]Warburton's Pope, Ed. 1753, Vol. IX. p. 111.

[128]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.

[129]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.

[130]It is among the papers of his friend Lord Bathurst. The letter is undated, and was published without any date by Curll. When Pope reproduced it in the quarto of 1737, he dated it August, 1723; and in the quarto of 1741 he changed the date to January, 1723, which must be incorrect, since Bolingbroke was then abroad, and did not return to England till June. Swift's reply is dated September 20, and as it was between this period and June that the joint letter must have been written, August is either the true date, or a close approximation to it.

[131]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.

[132]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.

[133]It is stated in a note to the Dublin edition of the collection of 1741 that the original of Bolingbroke's appendix had been discovered among Swift's papers since the publication of the letter by Curll.

[134]Lord Orrery to Pope, Oct. 4, 1738.

[135]Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740. This letter was first published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for August, 1849. It is printed, together with the other letters on the subject, among the Pope and Swift correspondence in this edition.

[136]The earliest of the three letters bears in the body of the work, the heading "Mr. Gay to Dr. Swift;" but in the Table of Contents it is entitled "From Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope," and the language in portions of the letter itself shows that it was the production of both.

[137]"I never," said the poet to Caryll, November 19, 1712, "kept any copies of such stuff as I write," which would be decisive of his custom at that early date, if much reliance could be placed on his word. In 1716 he commenced correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and afterwards published several of the letters among his "Letters to Ladies." He was then at enmity with her, and as she retained the originals, he must either have borrowed them prior to the quarrel for the purpose of copying them, or else must have copied them before they were sent. There is no direct evidence to show at what time he commenced the practice of transcribing letters; but at the close of 1726 he began to compile the collection of 1735, and thenceforward he was sure to let nothing escape which could contribute to his design.

[138]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.

[139]Dr. Hawkesworth published a letter from Swift to Pope, introducing his cousin, Mr. D. Swift, and three more were published by Mr. D. Swift himself. He does not say by what means he obtained them, but they form part of a collection of some seventy stray letters addressed by Swift to thirty or forty different persons, who had certainly not returned them.

[140]Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.

[141]Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.

[142]Nichols's "Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century," Vol. V. p. 379.

[143]Birch MSS. Brit. Mus., quoted in Warton's Pope, Vol. II. p. 339. When Mr. Gerrard was about to return to Ireland from Bath, Pope wrote to him, May 17, 1740, to say that he had found another conveyance for the letter he had intended to send by him to Swift. Mr. Gerrard may nevertheless have carried over the printed correspondence, which would not have been openly entrusted to him by Pope, who professed to know nothing about it. The poet may have thought upon reflection that it would look less suspicious if his avowed letter and the anonymous parcel were not transmitted by the same bearer.

[144]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.

[145]Pope to Mr. Nugent, March 26, 1740, and Mr. Nugent to Mrs. Whiteway, April 2, 1740.

[146]Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740.

[147]Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 469. The letter to Allen was not published till twenty-five years after Pope's death.

[148]Millarv.Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2397.

[149]"Athenæum" for Sept. 15, 1860.

[150]"Whereas there is an impression of certain letters between Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope openly printed in Dublin without Mr. Pope's consent, and there is reason to think the same hath been, or will be done clandestinely in London, notice is hereby given that they will be speedily published with several additional letters, &c., composing altogether a second volume of his works in prose."—"London Daily Post" for March 24, 1741, quoted in the "Athenæum" for September 15, 1860. The advertisement displays the same cautious phraseology as was employed in the prefatory notice to the quarto, and speaks of the Dublin volume as only printed, not published. One motive which probably induced Faulkner to delay it was, that the work would have been incomplete without the additional letters.

[151]Page 89 in the quarto bears, in the cancelled division, the signature M., and the later page 89 has the signature N. The cause of the difference is plain. It is the ordinary habit to begin the body of a work on sheet B, and reserve the signature A, for the preliminary matter. This is the method adopted with the three previous quarto volumes of Pope's works, and was followed in the original quarto impression of the correspondence; but after the poet had cancelled the beginning of the volume, the sheet commonly marked B was in the second state of the quarto marked A, which occasioned the usual sheet N to become M. The discrepancy is an additional proof that the opening sheets had been cancelled and reprinted.

[152]There were probably minor cancels which did not disturb the general arrangement, as at page 124, where there is a note which purports to be copied from the Dublin edition. The final sheet of all was evidently printed after Faulkner's volume was in type.

[153]Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.

[154]Curll, who delivered his answer upon oath, was no doubt aware that the work was not first published in Dublin. He therefore used the evasive word "printed," and left it to his opponents to detect the fallacy. The methods, however, by which Pope had obtained his priority would not permit him to plead it, nor was he likely, by mooting the question, to risk the revelation of his plot.

[155]Atkyns's Reports, Vol. II. p. 342.

[156]The other counsel were Sir Dudley Ryder, then Attorney-General, and Mr. Noel. They all paid Pope the tribute of refusing their fees.

[157]Tonsonv.Collins, Blackstone's Reports, Vol. I. p. 311.

[158]Millarv.Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2396. "I know," Lord Mansfield observed, "that Mr. Pope had no paper upon which the letters were written," which means that he had received this assurance from Pope, and supposed it to be true. In one particular the memory of Lord Mansfield deceived him. Blackstone on the authority of the preface to the quarto of 1741, stated, while arguing the case of Tonsonv.Collins, that the letters "were published with the connivance at least, if not under the direction of Swift," to which Lord Mansfield replied, "Certainly not. Dr. Swift disclaimed it, and was extremely angry." But this is opposed to the united evidence of Mrs. Whiteway, Faulkner, and Pope, who all concur in testifying that Swift consented to the publication.

[159]Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.

[160]Pope to Caryll, Feb. 3, 1729. Pope to Swift, March 23, 1737.

[161]To Lord Orrery, March, 1737. "His humanity, his charity, his condescension, his candour are equal to his wit, and require as good and true a taste to be equally valued. When all this must die, I would gladly have been the recorder of so great a part of it as shines in his letters to me, and of which my own are but as so many acknowledgements."

[162]Pope to Nugent, August 14, 1740.

[163]The statement is recorded by Dr. Birch in his Journal, May 14, 1751. He received the information from Dr. Heberden, who was then attending Lord Bolingbroke in his last illness.

[164]"All's Well that Ends Well." Act II. Scene 2.

[165]In September, 1725, Arbuthnot had an illness which was expected to prove mortal. Pope, in announcing his recovery to Swift on October 15, added, "He goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than even health can make a man." He meant that Arbuthnot was able to go about again, which was still one of the commonest significations of the phrase. Arbuthnot did not leave England, and from his letter to Swift on October 17, it is clear that he had never entertained the design.

[166]Roscoe dated the letter 1726. Without recapitulating the circumstances, which are fatal to the conjecture, it is enough to say that on September 10, 1726, Pope was unable to hold a pen, owing to the injury he had received a day or two before when he was upset in Bolingbroke's carriage. It was several weeks before he recovered the use of his hand. In the case of Digby there is the additional difficulty that as the nurse did not die till after September, 1725, so he himself was dead before September, 1726.

[167]I did not discover the letters of Wycherley at Longleat till after his correspondence with Pope had been printed off.

[168]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.

[169]Oxford MSS.

[170]Oxford MSS.

[171]"Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.

[172]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 9.

[173]Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an account of some religious fanatics.

[174]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.

[175]The general impression produced by the correspondence was expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can place no reliance on his passing words.

[176]Oxford MSS.

[177]This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much asperity in a preliminary advertisement, of which the original, corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.

[178]Advertisement to the edition of 1749.

[179]Advertisement to the edition of 1749. In the same year Warburton put forth a short pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted, in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of the principal charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and "only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years before, when the subject was fresh, and Bolingbroke was living.—Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 526. Appendix, p. 573.

[180]"A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 573.

[181]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 232.

[182]"A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p. 572.

[183]Warburton says that the expense had been considerable.—Ruffhead, 571.

[184]"Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 92.

[185]Macaulay's Essays. I Vol. edit. p. 718.

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