Johnson's Hints For The Life Of Pope

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Title:     Johnson's Hints For The Life Of Pope
Author: Isaac Disraeli [More Titles by Disraeli]

I shall preserve a literary curiosity, which perhaps is the only one of its kind. It is an original memorandum of Dr. Johnson's, of hints for the Life of Pope, written down, as they were suggested to his mind, in the course of his researches. The lines in Italics Johnson had scratched with red ink, probably after having made use of them. These notes should be compared with the Life itself. The youthful student will find some use, and the curious be gratified, in discovering the gradual labours of research and observation, and that art of seizing on those general conceptions which afterwards are developed by meditation and illustrated by genius. I once thought of accompanying these _hints_ by the amplified and finished passages derived from them; but this is an amusement which the reader can contrive for himself. I have extracted the most material notes.

This fragment is a companion-piece to the engraved fac-simile of a page of Pope's Homer, in this volume.

That fac-simile, a minutely perfect copy of the manuscript, was not given to show the autograph of Pope,--a practice which has since so generally prevailed,--but to exhibit to the eye of the student the fervour and the diligence required in every work of genius. This could only be done by showing the state of the manuscript itself, with all its erasures, and even its half-formed lines; nor could this effect be produced by giving only some of the corrections, which Johnson had already, in printed characters. My notion has been approved of, because it was comprehended by writers of genius: yet this fac-simile has been considered as nothing more than an autograph by those literary blockheads, who, without taste and imagination, intruding into the province of literature, find themselves as awkward as a once popular divine, in his "Christian Life," assures us certain sinners would in paradise,--like "pigs in a drawing-room."

POPE.

Nothing occasional. No haste. No rivals. No compulsion. Practised only one form of verse. Facility from use. Emulated former pieces. Cooper's-hill. Dryden's ode. Affected to disdain flattery. _Not happy in his selection of patrons_. _Cobham, Bolingbroke_.[260] _Cibber's abuse will be better to him than a dose of hartshorn_. Poems long delayed. Satire and praise late, alluding to something past. He had always some poetical plan in his head.[261] Echo to the sense. Would not constrain himself too much. Felicities of language. Watts.[262] Luxury of language. _Motives to study; want of health, want of money; helps to study; some small patrimony_. _Prudent and frugal_; pint of wine.

LETTERS.

Amiable disposition--but he gives his own character. _Elaborate. Think what to say--say what one thinks. Letter on sickness to Steele_. _On Solitude. Ostentatious benevolence. Professions of sincerity_. _Neglect of fame. Indifference about everything_. _Sometimes gay and airy, sometimes sober and grave_. _Too proud of living among the great_. Probably forward to make acquaintance. _No literary man ever talked so much of his fortune. Grotto. Importance. Post-office, letters open_. _Cant of despising the world_. _Affectation of despising poetry_. _His easiness about the critics._. _Something of foppery_. _His letters to the ladies--pretty_. _Abuse of Scripture--not all early_. Thoughts in his letters that are elsewhere.

ESSAY ON MAN.

_Ramsay missed the fall of man_. _Others the immortality of the soul. Address to our Saviour_. _Excluded by Berkeley_. _Bolingbroke's notions not understood_. Scale of Being _turn it in prose_. Part and not the whole always said. _Conversation with Bol_. R. 220.[263] _Bol. meant ill. Pope well_. _Crousaz. Resnel. Warburton_. _Good sense. Luxurious--felicities of language. Wall_. _Loved labour--always poetry in his head_. _Extreme sensibility. Ill-health, headaches_. _He never laughed_. _No conversation_. _No writings against Swift_. Parasitical epithets. Six lines of Iliad.[264] _He used to set down what occurred of thoughts--a line--a couplet._ The humorous lines end sinner. Prunello.[265] First line made for the sound, or v. versa. Foul lines in Jervas. _More notices of books early than late_.

DUNCIAD.

The line on Phillips borrowed from another poem. Pope did not increase the difficulties of writing. _Poetaepulorum_.

 

[Footnote 260:
He has added in the Life the name of _Burlington_.]

[Footnote 261:
In the Life, Johnson gives Swift's complaint that Pope was never at leisure for conversation, because _he had always some poetical scheme in his head_.]

[Footnote 262:
Johnson, in the Life, has given Watts' opinion of Pope's poetical diction.]

[Footnote 263:
Ruffhead's "Life of Pope."]

[Footnote 264:
In the Life Johnson says, "Expletives he very early rejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the six first lines of the "Iliad" might lose two syllables with very little diminution of the meaning; and sometimes, after all his art and labour, one verse seems to be made for the sake of another.]

[Footnote 265:
He has a few double rhymes, but always, I think, unsuccessfully, except one, in the Rape of the Lock.--"Life of Pope."

Mrs. Thrale, in a note on this passage, mentions the couplet Johnson meant, for she asked him: it is

The meeting points the fatal lock dissever
From the fair head--for ever and for ever.]

[The end]
Isaac D'Israeli's essay: Johnson's Hints For The Life Of Pope

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