Pope, And His Miscellaneous Quarrels

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Title:     Pope, And His Miscellaneous Quarrels
Author: Isaac Disraeli [More Titles by Disraeli]

POPE adopted a system of literary politics--collected with extraordinary care everything relative to his Quarrels--no politician ever studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions and intricate stratagems--some of his manœuvres--his systematic hostility not practised with impunity--his claim to his own works contested--CIBBER'S facetious description of POPE'S feelings, and WELSTED'S elegant satire on his genius--DENNIS'S account of POPE'S Introduction to him--his political prudence further discovered in the Collection of all the Pieces relative to the Dunciad, in which he employed SAVAGE--the THEOBALDIANS and the POPEIANS; an attack by a Theobaldian--The Dunciad ingeniously defended, for the grossness of its imagery, and its reproach of the poverty of the authors, supposed by POPE himself, with some curious specimens of literary personalities--the Literary Quarrel between AARON HILL and POPE distinguished for its romantic cast--a Narrative of the extraordinary transactions respecting the publication of POPE'S Letters; an example of Stratagem and Conspiracy, illustrative of his character.

POPE has proudly perpetuated the history of his Literary Quarrels; and he appears to have been among those authors, surely not forming the majority, who have delighted in, or have not been averse to provoke, hostility. He has registered the titles of every book, even to a single paper, or a copy of verses, in which their authors had committed treason against his poetical sovereignty.[192] His ambition seemed gratified in heaping these trophies to his genius, while his meaner passions could compile one of the most voluminous of the scandalous chronicles of literature. We are mortified on discovering so fine a genius in the text humbling itself through all the depravity of a commentary full of spleen, and not without the fictions of satire. The unhappy influence his Literary Quarrels had on this great poet's life remains to be traced. He adopted a system of literary politics abounding with stratagems, conspiracies, manœuvres, and factions.

Pope's literary quarrels were the wars of his poetical ambition, more perhaps than of the petulance and strong irritability of his character. They were some of the artifices he adopted from the peculiarity of his situation.

Thrown out of the active classes of society from a variety of causes sufficiently known,[193] concentrating his passions into a solitary one, his retired life was passed in the contemplation of his own literary greatness. Reviewing the past, and anticipating the future, he felt he was creating a new era in our literature, an event which does not always occur in a century: but eager to secure present celebrity, with the victory obtained in the open field, he combined the intrigues of the cabinet: thus, while he was exerting great means, he practised little artifices. No politician studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions, or with more intricate stratagems; and Pope was at once the lion and the fox of Machiavel. A book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place this great poet.

To keep his name alive before the public was one of his early plans. When he published his "Essay on Criticism," anonymously, the young and impatient poet was mortified with the inertion of public curiosity: he was almost in despair.[194] Twice, perhaps oftener, Pope attacked Pope;[195] and he frequently concealed himself under the names of others, for some particular design. Not to point out his dark familiar "Scriblerus," always at hand for all purposes, he made use of the names of several of his friends. When he employed SAVAGE in "a collection of all the pieces, in verse and prose, published on occasion of the Dunciad," he subscribed his name to an admirable dedication to Lord Middlesex, where he minutely relates the whole history of the Dunciad, "and the weekly clubs held to consult of hostilities against the author;" and, for an express introduction to that work, he used the name of Cleland, to which is added a note, expressing surprise that the world did not believe that Cleland was the writer![196] Wanting a pretext for the publication of his letters, he delighted CURLL by conveying to him some printed surreptitious copies, who soon discovered that it was but a fairy treasure which he could not grasp; and Pope, in his own defence, had soon ready the authentic edition.[197] Some lady observed that Pope "hardly drank tea without a stratagem!" The female genius easily detects its own peculiar faculty, when it is exercised with inferior delicacy.

But his systematic hostility did not proceed with equal impunity: in this perpetual war with dulness, he discovered that every one he called a dunce was not so; nor did he find the dunces themselves less inconvenient to him; for many successfully substituted, for their deficiencies in better qualities, the lie that lasts long enough to vex a man; and the insolence that does not fear him: they attacked him at all points, and not always in the spirit of legitimate warfare.[198] They filled up his asterisks, and accused him of treason. They asserted that the panegyrical verses prefixed to his works (an obsolete mode of recommendation, which Pope condescended to practise), were his own composition, and to which he had affixed the names of some dead or some unknown writers. They published lists of all whom Pope had attacked; placing at the head, "God Almighty; the King;" descending to the "lords and gentlemen."[199] A few suspected his skill in Greek; but every hound yelped in the halloo against his Homer.[200] Yet the more extraordinary circumstance was, their hardy disputes with Pope respecting his claim to his own works, and the difficulty he more than once found to establish his rights. Sometimes they divided public opinion by even indicating the real authors; and witnesses from White's and St. James's were ready to be produced. Among these literary coteries, several of Pope's productions, in their anonymous, and even in their MS. state, had been appropriated by several pseudo authors; and when Pope called for restitution, he seemed to be claiming nothing less than their lives. One of these gentlemen had enjoyed a very fair reputation for more than two years on the "Memoirs of a Parish-Clerk;" another, on "The Messiah!" and there were many other vague claims. All this was vexatious; but not so much as the ridiculous attitude in which Pope was sometimes placed by his enraged adversaries.[201] He must have found himself in a more perilous situation when he hired a brawny champion, or borrowed the generous courage of some military friend.[202] To all these troubles we may add, that Pope has called down on himself more lasting vengeance; and the good sense of Theobald, the furious but often acute remarks of Dennis; the good-humoured yet keen remonstrance of Cibber; the silver shaft, tipped with venom, sent from the injured but revengeful Lady Mary; and many a random shot, that often struck him, inflicted on him many a sleepless night.[203] The younger Richardson has recorded the personal sufferings of Pope when, one day, in taking up Cibber's letter, while his face was writhing with agony, he feebly declared that "these things were as good as hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of Pope, in his second letter:--"Everybody tells me that I have made you as uneasy as a rat in a hot kettle, for a twelvemonth together."[204]

Pope was pursued through life by the insatiable vengeance of Dennis. The young poet, who had got introduced to him, among his first literary acquaintances, could not fail, when the occasion presented itself, of ridiculing this uncouth son of Aristotle. The blow was given in the character of Appius, in the "Art of Criticism;" and it is known Appius was instantaneously recognised by the fierce shriek of the agonised critic himself. From that moment Dennis resolved to write down every work of Pope's. How dangerous to offend certain tempers, verging on madness![205] Dennis, too, called on every one to join him in the common cause; and once he retaliated on Pope in his own way. Accused by Pope of being the writer of an account of himself, in Jacob's "Lives of the Poets," Dennis procured a letter from Jacob, which he published, and in which it appears that Pope's own character in this collection, if not written by him, was by him very carefully corrected on the proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter. Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the golden shaft of Apollo could not pierce.

The political prudence of Pope was further discovered in the "Collection of all the Pieces relative to the Dunciad," on which he employed Savage: these exemplified the justness of the satire, or defended it from all attacks. The precursor of the Dunciad was a single chapter in "The Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in Poetry;" where the humorous satirist discovers an analogy between flying-fishes, parrots, tortoises, &c., and certain writers, whose names are designated by initial letters. In this unlucky alphabet of dunces, not one of them but was applied to some writer of the day; and the loud clamours these excited could not be appeased by the simplicity of our poet's declaration, that the letters were placed at random: and while his oil could not smooth so turbulent a sea, every one swore to the flying-fish or the tortoise, as he had described them. It was still more serious when the Dunciad appeared. Of that class of authors who depended for a wretched existence on their wages, several were completely ruined, for no purchasers were to be found for the works of some authors, after they had been inscribed in the chronicle of our provoking and inimitable satirist.[206]

It is in this collection by Savage I find the writer's admirable satire on the class of literary prostitutes. It is entitled "An Author to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney." It has been ably commended by Johnson in his "Life of Savage," and on his recommendation Thomas Davies inserted it in his "Collection of Fugitive Pieces;" but such is the careless curiosity of modern re-publishers, that often, in preserving a decayed body, they are apt to drop a limb: this was the case with Davies; for he has dropped the preface, far more exquisite than the work itself. A morsel of such poignant relish betrays the hand of the master who snatched the pen for a moment.

This preface defends Pope from the two great objections justly raised at the time against the Dunciad: one is, the grossness and filthiness of its imagery; and the other, its reproachful allusions to the poverty of the authors.

The indelicacies of the Dunciad are thus wittily apologised for:--

"They are suitable to the subject; a subject composed, for the most part, of authors whose writings are the refuse of wit, and who in life are the very excrement of Nature. Mr. Pope has, too, used dung; but he disposes that dung in such a manner that it becomes rich manure, from which he raises a variety of fine flowers. He deals in rags; but like an artist, who commits them to a paper-mill, and brings them out useful sheets. The chemist extracts a fine cordial from the most nauseous of all dung; and Mr. Pope has drawn a sweet poetical spirit from the most offensive and unpoetical objects of the creation--unpoetical, though eternal writers of poetry."

The reflections on the poverty of its heroes are thus ingeniously defended:--"Poverty, not proceeding from folly, but which may be owing to virtue, sets a man in an amiable light; but when our wants are of our own seeking, and prove the motive of every ill action (for the poverty of bad authors has always a bad heart for its companion), is it not a vice, and properly the subject of satire?" The preface then proceeds to show how "all these said writers might have been good mechanics." He illustrates his principles with a most ungracious account of several of his contemporaries. I shall give a specimen of what I consider as the polished sarcasm and caustic humour of Pope, on some favourite subjects.

"Mr. Thomas Cooke.--His enemies confess him not without merit. To do the man justice, he might have made a tolerable figure as a Tailor. 'Twere too presumptuous to affirm he could have been a master in any profession; but, dull as I allow him, he would not have been despicable for a third or a fourth hand journeyman. Then had his wants have been avoided; for, he would at least have learnt to cut his coat according to his cloth.

"Why would not Mr. Theobald continue an attorney? Is not Word-catching more serviceable in splitting a cause, than explaining a fine poet?

"When Mrs. Haywood ceased to be a strolling-actress, why might not the lady (though once a theatrical queen) have subsisted by turning washerwoman? Has not the fall of greatness been a frequent distress in all ages? She might have caught a beautiful bubble, as it arose from the suds of her tub, blown it in air, seen it glitter, and then break! Even in this low condition, she had played with a bubble; and what more is the vanity of human greatness?

"Had it not been an honester and more decent livelihood for Mr. Norton (Daniel De Foe's son of love by a lady who vended oysters) to have dealt in a fish-market, than to be dealing out the dialects of Billingsgate in the Flying-post?

"Had it not been more laudable for Mr. Roome, the son of an undertaker, to have borne a link and a mourning-staff, in the long procession of a funeral--or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms, according to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the Jovial Crew, or Merry Beggars, into a wicked imitation of the Beggar's Opera?"

This satire seems too exquisite for the touch of Savage, and is quite in the spirit of the author of the Dunciad. There is, in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," a work to which Warburton contributed all his care, a passage which could only have been written by Warburton. The strength and coarseness of the imagery could never have been produced by the dull and feeble intellect of Ruffhead: it is the opinion, therefore, of Warburton himself, on the Dunciad. "The good purpose intended by this satire was, to the herd in general, of less efficacy than our author hoped; for scribblers have not the common sense of other vermin, who usually abstain from mischief, when they see any of their kind gibbeted or nailed up, as terrible examples."--Warburton employed the same strong image in one of his threats.

One of Pope's Literary Quarrels must be distinguished for its romantic cast.

In the Treatise on the Bathos, the initial letters of the bad writers occasioned many heartburns; and, among others, Aaron Hill suspected he was marked out by the letters A. H. This gave rise to a large correspondence between Hill and Pope. Hill, who was a very amiable man, was infinitely too susceptible of criticism; and Pope, who seems to have had a personal regard for him, injured those nice feelings as little as possible. Hill had published a panegyrical poem on Peter the Great, under the title of "The Northern Star;" and the bookseller had conveyed to him a criticism of Pope's, of which Hill publicly acknowledged he mistook the meaning. When the Treatise of "The Bathos" appeared, Pope insisted he had again mistaken the initials A. H.--Hill gently attacked Pope in "a paper of very pretty verses," as Pope calls them. When the Dunciad appeared, Hill is said "to have published pieces, in his youth, bordering upon the bombast." This was as light a stroke as could be inflicted; and which Pope, with great good-humour, tells Hill, might be equally applied to himself; for he always acknowledged, that when a boy, he had written an Epic poem of that description; would often quote absurd verses from it, for the diversion of his friends; and actually inserted some of the most extravagant ones in the very Treatise on "The Bathos." Poor Hill, however, was of the most sickly delicacy, and produced "The Caveat," another gentle rebuke, where Pope is represented as "sneakingly to approve, and want the worth to cherish or befriend men of merit." In the course of this correspondence, Hill seems to have projected the utmost stretch of his innocent malice; for he told Pope, that he had almost finished "An Essay on Propriety and Impropriety in Design, Thought, and Expression, illustrated by examples in both kinds, from the writings of Mr. Pope;" but he offers, if this intended work should create the least pain to Mr. Pope, he was willing, with all his heart, to have it run thus:--"An Essay on Propriety and Impropriety, &c., illustrated by Examples of the first, from the writings of Mr. Pope, and of the rest, from those of the author."--To the romantic generosity of this extraordinary proposal, Pope replied, "I acknowledge your generous offer, to give examples of imperfections rather out of your own works than mine: I consent, with all my heart, to your confining them to mine, for two reasons: the one, that I fear your sensibility that way is greater than my own: the other is a better; namely, that I intend to correct the faults you find, if they are such as I expect from Mr. Hill's cool judgment."[207]

Where, in literary history, can be found the parallel of such an offer of self-immolation? This was a literary quarrel like that of lovers, where to hurt each other would have given pain to both parties. Such skill and desire to strike, with so much tenderness in inflicting a wound; so much compliment, with so much complaint; have perhaps never met together, as in the romantic hostility of this literary chivalry.

FOOTNOTES:

[192] Pope collected these numerous literary libels with extraordinary care. He had them bound in volumes of all sizes; and a range of twelves, octavos, quartos, and folios were marshalled in portentous order on his shelves. He wrote the names of the writers, with remarks on these Anonymiana. He prefixed to them this motto, from Job: "Behold, my desire is, that mine adversary had written a book: surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me." xxxi. 35. Ruffhead, who wrote Pope's Life under the eye of Warburton, who revised every sheet of the volume, and suffered this mere lawyer and singularly wretched critic to write on, with far inferior taste to his own--offered "the entire collection to any public library or museum, whose search is after curiosities, and may be desirous of enriching their common treasure with it: it will be freely at the service of that which asks first." Did no one accept the invitation? As this was written in 1769, it is evidently pointed towards the British Museum; but there I have not heard of it. This collection must have contained much of the Secret Memoirs of Grub-street: it was always a fountain whence those "waters of bitterness," the notes in the Dunciad, were readily supplied. It would be curious to discover by what stratagem Pope obtained all that secret intelligence about his Dunces, with which he has burthened posterity, for his own particular gratification. Arbuthnot, it is said, wrote some notes merely literary; but Savage, and still humbler agents, served him as his Espions de Police. He pensioned Savage to his last day, and never deserted him. In the account of "the phantom Moore," Scriblerus appeals to Savage to authenticate some story. One curious instance of the fruits of Savage's researches in this way he has himself preserved, in his memoirs of "An Author to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney." This portrait of "a perfect Town-Author" is not deficient in spirit: the hero was one Roome, a man only celebrated in the Dunciad for his "funereal frown." But it is uncertain whether this fellow had really so dismal a countenance; for the epithet was borrowed from his profession, being the son of an undertaker! Such is the nature of some satire! Dr. Warton is astonished, or mortified, for he knew not which, to see the pains and patience of Pope and his friends in compiling the Notes to the Dunciad, to trace out the lives and works of such paltry and forgotten scribblers. "It is like walking through the darkest alleys in the dirtiest part of St. Giles's." Very true! But may we not be allowed to detect the vanities of human nature at St. Giles's as well as St. James's? Authors, however obscure, are always an amusing race to authors. The greatest find their own passions in the least, though distorted, or cramped in too small a compass.

It is doubtless from Pope's great anxiety for his own literary celebrity that we have been furnished with so complete a knowledge of the grotesque groups in the Dunciad. "Give me a shilling," said Swift, facetiously, "and I will insure you that posterity shall never know one single enemy, excepting those whose memory you have preserved." A very useful hint for a man of genius to leave his wretched assailants to dissolve away in their own weakness. But Pope, having written a Dunciad, by accompanying it with a commentary, took the only method to interest posterity. He felt that Boileau's satires on bad authors are liked only in the degree the objects alluded to are known. But he loved too much the subject for its own sake. He abused the powers genius had conferred on him, as other imperial sovereigns have done. It is said that he kept the whole kingdom in awe of him. In "the frenzy and prodigality of vanity," he exclaimed--

"--------Yes, I am proud to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me!"

Tacitus Gordon said of him, that Pope seemed to persuade the nation that all genius and ability were confined to him and his friends.

[193] Pope, in his energetic Letter to Lord HERVEY, that "masterpiece of invective," says Warton, which Tyers tells us he kept long back from publishing, at the desire of Queen Caroline, who was fearful her counsellor would become insignificant in the public esteem, and at last in her own, such was the power his genius exercised;--has pointed out one of these causes. It describes himself as "a private person under penal laws, and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience; yet it is by these alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all posts of profit or trust. I can interfere with the views of no man."

[194] The first publisher of the "Essay on Criticism" must have been a Mr. Lewis, a Catholic bookseller in Covent-garden; for, from a descendant of this Lewis, I heard that Pope, after publication, came every day, persecuting with anxious inquiries the cold impenetrable bookseller, who, as the poem lay uncalled for, saw nothing but vexatious importunities in a troublesome youth. One day, Pope, after nearly a month's publication, entered, and in despair tied up a number of the poems, which he addressed to several who had a reputation in town, as judges of poetry. The scheme succeeded, and the poem, having reached its proper circle, soon got into request.

[195] He was the author of "The Key to the Lock," written to show that "The Rape of the Lock" was a political poem, designed to ridicule the Barrier Treaty; [so called from the arrangement made at the Peace of Utrecht between the ministers of Great Britain and the States General, as to the towns on the frontiers of the Dutch, which were to be permanently strengthened as barrier fortresses. Pope, in the mask of Esdras Barnivelt, apothecary, thus makes out his poem to be a political satire. "Having said that by the lock is meant the Barrier Treaty--first then I shall discover, that Belinda represents Great Britain, or (which is the same thing) her late Majesty. This is plainly seen in the description of her,

"On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore."

Alluding to the ancient name of Albion, from her white cliffs, and to the cross which is the ensign of England. The baron who cuts off the lock, or Barrier Treaty, is the Earl of Oxford. Clarissa, who lent the scissors, my Lady Masham. Thalestris, who provokes Belinda to resent the loss of the lock or treaty, the Duchess of Marlborough; and Sir Plume, who is moved by Thalestris to re-demand it of Great Britain, Prince Eugene, "who came hither for that purpose." He concludes 32 pages of similar argument by saying, "I doubt not if the persons most concerned would but order Mr. Bernard Lintott, the printer and publisher of this dangerous piece, to be taken into custody and examined, many further discoveries might be made both of this poet's and his abettors secret designs, which are doubtless of the utmost importance to Government." Such is a specimen of Pope's chicanery.] Its innocent extravagance could only have been designed to increase attention to a work, which hardly required any such artifice. [In the preface to this production, "the uncommon sale of this book" is stated as one reason for the publication; "above six thousand of them have been already vended."] In the same spirit he composed the "Guardian," in which Phillips's Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the "Guardian," and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have discovered all the supercheries of this kind. After writing the finest works of genius, he was busily employed in attracting the public attention to them. In the antithesis of his character, he was so great and so little! But he knew mankind! and present fame was the great business of his life.

[196] Cleland was the son of Colonel Cleland, an old friend of Pope; he and his son had served in the East Indian army; but the latter returned to London, and became a sort of literary jackal to Pope, and a hack author for the booksellers. He wrote several moral and useful works; but as they did not pay well, he wrote an immoral one, for which he obtained a better price, and a pension of 100l. a-year, on condition that he never wrote in that manner again. This was obtained for him by Lord Granville, after Cleland had been cited before the Privy Council, and pleaded poverty as the reason for such authorship.--ED.

[197] The narrative of this dark transaction, which seems to have been imperfectly known to Johnson, being too copious for a note, will be found at the close of this article.

[198] A list of all the pamphlets which resulted from the Dunciad would occupy a large space. Many of them were as grossly personal as the celebrated poem. The poet was frequently ridiculed under the names of "Pope Alexander" (from his dictatorial style), and "Sawney." In "an heroic poem occasioned by the Dunciad," published in 1728, the poet's snug retreat at Twickenham is thus alluded to:--

"Sawney! a mimic sage of huge renown,
To Twick'nam bow'rs retir'd, enjoys his wealth,
His malice and his muse: in grottoes cool,
And cover'd arbours, dreams his hours away."

A fragment of Pope's celebrated grotto still remains; the house is destroyed. Pope spent all his spare cash over his Twickenham villa. "I never save anything," he said once to Spence; and the latter has left a detailed account of what he meant to do in the further decoration of his garden if he had lived. As he gained a sum of money, he regularly spent it in this way.--ED.

[199] Pope is, perhaps, the finest character-painter of all satirists. Atterbury, after reading the portrait of Atticus, advised him to proceed in a way which his genius had pointed out; but Arbuthnot, with his dying breath, conjured him "to reform, and not to chastise;" that is, not to spare the vice, but the person. It is said, Pope answered, that, to correct the world with due effect, they become inseparable; and that, deciding by his own experience, he was justified in his opinion. Perhaps, at first, he himself wavered; but he strikes bolder as he gathers strength. The two first editions of the Dunciad, now before me, could hardly be intelligible: they exhibit lines after lines gaping with an hiatus, or obscured with initial letters: in subsequent editions, the names stole into their places. We are told, that the personalities in his satires quickened the sale: the portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atossa, were purchased by everybody; but when he once declared, respecting the characters of one of his best satires, that no real persons were intended, it checked public curiosity, which was felt in the sale of that edition. Personality in his satires, no doubt, accorded with the temper and the talent of Pope; and the malice of mankind afforded him all the conviction necessary to indulge it. Yet Young could depend solely on abstract characters and pure wit; and I believe that his "Love of Fame" was a series of admirable satires, which did not obtain less popularity than Pope's. Cartwright, one of the poetical sons of Ben Jonson, describes, by a beautiful and original image, the office of the satirist, though he praises Jonson for exercising a virtue he did not always practise; as Swift celebrates Pope with the same truth, when he sings:--

"Yet malice never was his aim;
He lash'd the vice, but spared the name."

Cartwright's lines are:--

"--------'tis thy skill
To strike the vice, and spare the person still;
As he who, when he saw the serpent wreath'd
About his sleeping son, and as he breathed,
Drink in his soul, did so the shot contrive,
To kill the beast, but keep the child alive."

[200] Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, published a letter in Mist's Journal, insisting that Pope had mistaken the whole character of Thersites, from ignorance of the language. I regret I have not drawn some notes from that essay. The subject might be made curious by a good Greek scholar, if Pope has really erred in the degree Cooke asserts. Theobald, who seems to have been a more classical scholar than has been allowed, besides some versions from the Greek tragic bards, commenced a translation of the Odyssey as soon as Pope's Iliad appeared.

[201] In one of these situations, Pope issued a very grave, but very ludicrous, advertisement. They had the impudence to publish an account of Pope having been flagellated by two gentlemen in Ham Walks, during his evening promenade. This was avenging Dennis for what he had undergone from the narrative of his madness. In "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. i. p. 96, this tingling narrative appears to have been the ingenious forgery of Lady Mary! On this occasion, Pope thought it necessary to publish the following advertisement in the Daily Post, June 14, 1728:--

"Whereas, there has been a scandalous paper cried aloud about the streets, under the title of 'A Pop upon Pope,' insinuating that I was whipped in Ham Walks on Thursday last:--This is to give notice, that I did not stir out of my house at Twickenham on that day; and the same is a malicious and ill-founded report.--A. P."

[Spence, on the authority of Pope's half-sister, says: "When some of the people that he had put into the Dunciad were so enraged against him, and threatened him so highly, he loved to walk alone to Richmond, only he would take a large faithful dog with him, and pistols in his pocket. He used to say to us when we talked to him about it, that 'with pistols the least man in England was above a match for the largest.'"]

It seems that Phillips hung up a birchen-rod at Button's. Pope, in one of his letters, congratulates himself that he never attempted to use it. [His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett, testifies to Pope's courage; she says, "My brother never knew what fear was."]

[202] According to the scandalous chronicle of the day, Pope, shortly after the publication of the Dunciad, had a tall Irishman to attend him. Colonel Duckett threatened to cane him, for a licentious stroke aimed at him, which Pope recanted. Thomas Bentley, nephew to the doctor, for the treatment his uncle had received, sent Pope a challenge. The modern, like the ancient Horace, was of a nature liable to panic at such critical moments. Pope consulted some military friends, who declared that his person ought to protect him from any such redundance of valour as was thus formally required; however, one of them accepted the challenge for him, and gave Bentley the option either of fighting or apologising; who, on this occasion, proved, what is usual, that the easiest of the two was the quickest done.

[203] I shall preserve one specimen, so classically elegant, that Pope himself might have composed it. It is from the pen of that Leonard Welsted whose "Aganippe" Pope has so shamefully characterised--

"Flow, Welsted, flow, like thine inspirer, beer!"

Can the reader credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who considered poetry only as a passing amusement? He has, however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his muse, some passages wrought up with equal felicity and power. There are several original poetical views of nature scattered in his works, which have been collected by Mr. Nichols, that would admit of a comparison with some of established fame.

Welsted imagined that the spirit of English poetry was on its decline in the age of Pope, and allegorises the state of our poetry in a most ingenious comparison. The picture is exquisitely wrought, like an ancient gem: one might imagine Anacreon was turned critic:--

"A flask I rear'd whose sluice began to fail,
And told, from Phærus, this facetious tale:--
Sabina, very old and very dry,
Chanced, on a time, an EMPTY FLASK to spy:
The flask but lately had been thrown aside,
With the rich grape of Tuscan vineyards dyed;
But lately, gushing from the slender spout,
Its life, in purple streams, had issued out.
The costly flavour still to sense remain'd,
And still its sides the violet colour stain'd:
A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile;
Pleased, she imbibes the generous fumes awhile,
Then, downwards turn'd, the vessel gently props,
And drains with patient care the lucid drops:
O balmy spirit of Etruria's vine!
O fragrant flask, she said, too lately mine!
If such delights, THOUGH EMPTY, thou canst yield,
What wondrous raptures hadst thou given if filled!"
Paloemon to Coelia at Bath, or the Triumvirate.

"The empty flask" only retaining "the costly flavour," was the verse of Pope.

[204] Pope was made to appear as ridiculous as possible, and often nicknamed "Poet Pug," from the frontispiece to an attack in reply to his own, termed "Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility examined." It represents Pope as a misshapen monkey leaning on a pile of books, in the attitude adopted by Jervas in his portrait of the poet.--ED.

[205] Dennis tells the whole story. "At his first coming to town he was importunate with Mr. Cromwell to introduce him to me. The recommendation engaged me to be about thrice in company with him; after which I went to the country, till I found myself most insolently attacked in his very superficial 'Essay on Criticism,' by which he endeavoured to destroy the reputation of a man who had published pieces of criticism, and to set up his own. I was moved with indignation to that degree, that I immediately writ remarks on that essay. I also writ upon part of his translation of 'Homer,' his 'Windsor Forest,' and his infamous 'Temple of Fame.'" In the same pamphlet he says:--"Pope writ his 'Windsor Forest' in envy of Sir John Denham's 'Cooper's Hill;' his infamous 'Temple of Fame' in envy of Chaucer's poem upon the same subject; his 'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day,' in envy of Dryden's 'Feast of Alexander.'" In reproaching Pope with his peculiar rhythm, that monotonous excellence, which soon became mechanical, he has an odd attempt at a pun:--"Boileau's Pegasus has all his paces; the Pegasus of Pope, like a Kentish post-horse, is always upon the Canterbury."--"Remarks upon several Passages in the Preliminaries to the Dunciad," 1729.

[206] Two parties arose in the literary republic, the Theobaldians and the Popeians. The "Grub-street Journal," a kind of literary gazette of some campaigns of the time, records the skirmishes with tolerable neutrality, though with a strong leaning in favour of the prevailing genius.

The Popeians did not always do honour to their great leader; and the Theobaldians proved themselves, at times, worthy of being engaged, had fate so ordered it, in the army of their renowned enemy. When Young published his "Two Epistles to Pope, on the Authors of the Age," there appeared "One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope, in Answer to two of Dr. Young's." On this, a Popeian defends his master from some extravagant accusations in "The Grub-street Memoirs." He insists, as his first principle, that all accusations against a man's character without an attestor are presumed to be slanders and lies, and in this case every gentleman, though "Knight of the Bathos," is merely a liar and scoundrel.

"You assure us he is not only a bad poet, but a stealer from bad poets: if so, you have just cause to complain of invasion of property. You assure us he is not even a versifier, but steals the sound of his verses; now, to steal a sound is as ingenious as to paint an echo. You cannot bear gentlemen should be treated as vermin and reptiles; now, to be impartial, you were compared to flying-fishes, didappers, tortoises, and parrots, &c., not vermin, but curious and beautiful creatures"--alluding to the abuse, in this "Epistle," on such authors as Atterbury, Arbuthnot, Swift, the Duke of Buckingham, &c. The Popeian concludes:--

"After all, your poem, to comfort you, is more innocent than the Dunciad; for in the one there's no man abused but is very well pleased to be abused in such company; whereas in the other there's no man so much as named, but is extremely affronted to be ranked with such people as style each other the dullest of men."

The publication of the Dunciad, however, drove the Theobaldians out of the field. Guerillas, such as the "One Epistle," sometimes appeared, but their heroes struck and skulked away. A Theobaldian, in an epigram, compared the Dunciad of Pope to the offspring of the celebrated Pope Joan. The neatness of his wit is hardly blunted by a pun. He who talks of Pope's "stealing a sound," seems to have practised that invisible art himself, for the verse is musical as Pope's.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE DUNCIAD.

"With rueful eyes thou view'st thy wretched race,
The child of guilt, and destined to disgrace.
Thus when famed Joan usurp'd the Pontiff's chair,
With terror she beheld her new-born heir:
Ill-starr'd, ill-favour'd into birth it came;
In vice begotten, and brought forth with shame!
In vain it breathes, a lewd abandon'd hope!
And calls in vain, the unhallow'd father--Pope!"

The answers to this epigram by the Popeians are too gross. The
"One Epistle" is attributed to James Moore Smyth, in alliance
with Welsted and other unfortunate heroes.

[207] The six Letters are preserved in Ruffhead's Appendix, No. 1.

[The end]
Isaac Disraeli's essay: Pope, And His Miscellaneous Quarrels

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