Books: Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope

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On the English "Odyssey" a criticism was published by Spence, at
that time Prelector of Poetry at Oxford, a man whose learning was
not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His
criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought
rightly, and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and
candour. In him Pope had the first experience of a critic without
malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display beauties as
expose faults, who censured with respect, and praised with alacrity.
With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the
acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him from that time in
great familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled
memorials of his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him
to the great and powerful, and he obtained very valuable preferments
in the Church. Not long after Pope was returning home from a visit
in a friend's coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into
the water; the window's were closed, and, being unable to force them
open, he was in danger of immediate death, when the postillion
snatched him out by breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut
two of his fingers in such a manner that he lost their use.

Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation.
He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with
so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope
discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the Court, and never
considered him as a man worthy of confidence. He soon afterwards
(1727) joined with Swift, who was then in England, to publish three
volumes of "Miscellanies," in which, amongst other things, he
inserted the "Memoirs of a Parish Clerk," in ridicule of Burnet's
importance in his own history, and a "Debate upon Black and White
Horses," written in all the formalities of a legal process by the
assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards Master of the
Rolls. Before these "Miscellanies" is a preface signed by Swift and
Pope, but apparently written by Pope, in which he makes a ridiculous
and romantic complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by
the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers. He tells in
tragic strains how "the cabinets of the sick and the closets of the
dead have been broken open and ransacked," as if those violences
were often committed for papers of uncertain and accidental value
which are rarely provoked by real treasures--as if epigrams and
essays were in danger where gold and diamonds are safe. A cat
hunted for his musk is, according to Pope's account, but the emblem
of a wit winded by booksellers. His complaint, however, received
some attestation, for the same year the letters written by him to
Mr. Cromwell in his youth were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who
printed them.

In these "Miscellanies" was first published the "Art of Sinking in
Poetry," which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in
literary quarrels, gave in a short time, according to Pope's
account, occasion to the "Dunciad."

In the following year (1728) he began to put Atterbury's advice in
practice, and showed his satirical powers by publishing the
"Dunciad," one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in
which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by whom
he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought unable to
defend themselves. At the head of the "Dunces" he placed poor
Theobald, whom he accused of ingratitude, but whose real crime was
supposed to be that of having revised Shakespeare more happily than
himself. This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting
the characters which it touched. Ralph, who, unnecessarily
interposing in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition,
complained that for a time he was in danger of starving, as the
booksellers had no longer any confidence in his capacity. The
prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow: the plan, if not
wholly new, was little understood by common readers. Many of the
allusions required illustration; the names were often expressed only
by the initial and final letters, and if they had been printed at
length were such as few had known or recollected. The subject
itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to
know that one or another scribbler was a dunce? If, therefore, it
had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain
and their resentment, the "Dunciad" might have made its way very
slowly in the world. This, however, was not to be expected: every
man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion,
to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with all his
pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or
misfortunes, which had never been known unless related by himself,
and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man
sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.

The history of the "Dunciad" is very minutely related by Pope
himself in a dedication which he wrote to Lord Middlesex in the name
of Savage.

"I will relate the war of the 'Dunces' (for so it has been commonly
called), which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730

"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons
specified in the preface to their 'Miscellanies,' to publish such
little pieces of theirs as had occasionally got abroad, there was
added to them the 'Treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in
Poetry.' It happened that in one chapter of this piece the several
species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed
almost all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at
random); but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that
some one or other took every letter to himself. All fell into so
violent a fury, that, for half a year or more, the common newspapers
(in most of which they had some property, as being hired writers)
were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they
could possibly devise, a liberty no way to be wondered at in those
people, and in those papers, that, for many years during the
uncontrolled license of the Press, had aspersed almost all the great
characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and
names being utterly secret and obscure. This gave Mr. Pope the
thought that he had now some opportunity of doing good by detecting
and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind, since, to
invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show what
contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes
that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to
recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account
in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want
courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that
gave birth to the 'Dunciad,' and he thought it a happiness that, by
the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a
peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design.

"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented
to the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by
the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, and some days after the
whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen and
persons of the first distinction.

It is certainly a true observation that no people are so impatient
of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was
wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was
first vended a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties,
advices, threats of law and battery--nay, cries of treason--were all
employed to hinder the coming out of the 'Dunciad.' On the other
side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to procure
it. What could a few poor authors do against so great a majority as
the public? There was no stopping a torrent with a finger, so out
it came.

"Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The 'Dunces' (for by
this name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of
hostilities against the author. One wrote a letter to a great
minister, assuring him Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the
Government had, and another bought his image in clay to execute him
in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a
little comforted. Some false editions of the book, having an owl in
their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in his
stead an ass laden with authors. Then another surreptitious one
being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned
for distinction to the owl again. Hence arose a great contest of
booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements against
advertisements, some recommending the edition of the owl, and others
the edition of the ass, by which names they came to be
distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the
'Dunciad.'"

Pope appears by this narrative to have contemplated his victory over
the "Dunces" with great exultation; and such was his delight in the
tumult which he had raised, that for a while his natural sensibility
was suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without
emotion, considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain
which he rejoiced in having given. It cannot, however, be concealed
that, by his own confession, he was the aggressor, for nobody
believes that the letters in the "Bathos" were placed at random; and
at may be discovered that, when he thinks himself concealed, he
indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those
distinctions which he affected to despise. He is proud that his
book was presented to the king and queen by the Right Honourable Sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is
proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of
the first distinction. The edition of which he speaks was, I
believe, that which, by telling in the text the names, and in the
notes the characters, of those whom he had satirised, was made
intelligible and diverting. The critics had now declared their
approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it
without fear. Those who were strangers to petty literature, and
therefore unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and
persons brought within their view, and delighted in the visible
effects of those shafts of malice which they had hitherto
contemplated as shot into the air.

Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity
which had for a time been appeased by mutual civilities, and
published remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the "Rape
of the Lock." Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their
resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. Ducket,
indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with "pious passion,"
pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time
declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope
appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship,"
and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the
meaning imputed to the first expression. Aaron Hill, who was
represented as diving for the prize, expostulated with Pope in a
manner so much superior to all mean solicitation, that Pope was
reduced to sneak and shuffle, sometimes to deny, and sometimes to
apologies; he first endeavours to wound, and is then afraid to own
that he meant a blow.

The "Dunciad," in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift.
Of the notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot, and an
apologetical letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to
have been written by Pope.

After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged
himself a while in tranquillity, but his subsequent productions
prove that he was not idle. He published (1731) a poem on "Taste,"
in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the
furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of
great wealth and little taste. By Timon he was universally
supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is
addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos, a man
perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind
and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the public in
his favour. A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the
ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been
indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand
pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the
kindness of his invitation. The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope
publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack on a
character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of
escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by
which no man was satisfied, and he was at last reduced to shelter
his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that
disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote
an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great
magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing
his professions. He said that to have ridiculed his taste, or his
buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man, but that
in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged
between them, it had been less easily excused.

Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his
poem had found, "owns that such critics can intimidate him, nay
almost persuade him, to write no more, which is a compliment this
age deserves." The man who threatens the world is always
ridiculous, for the world can easily go on without him, and in a
short time will cease to miss him. I have heard of an idiot, who
used to revenge his vexatious by lying all night upon the bridge.
"There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that a man will not believe in
his own favour." Pope had been flattered till he thought himself
one of the moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of
laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and implored;
and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and
laughed.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known
early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any
other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old,
an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit new confidence,
and the will to grow less flexible, and when, therefore, the
departure of an old friend is very acutely felt. In the next year
(1733) he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she had
lasted to the age of ninety-three. But she did not die unlamented.
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary. His parents had the happiness of living till he was at
the summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his
fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of
his respect or tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was
obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle.
Life has, among its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better
to give than such a son.

One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve some
inquiry, was a publication of "Letters" between him and many of his
friends, which, falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious
bookseller, of no good fame, were by him printed and sold. This
volume containing some letters from noblemen, Pope incited a
prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of
privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his
friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no
great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. "He has,"
said Curll, "a knack at versifying, but in prose I think myself a
match for him." When the orders of the House were examined, none of
them appeared to have been infringed. Curll went away triumphant,
and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.

Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman's gown,
but with a lawyer's band, brought and offered for sale a number of
printed volumes, which he found to be Pope's epistolary
correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but gave
the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use his
purchase to his own advantage. That Curll gave a true account of
the transaction it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood
was ever detected; and when, some years afterwards, I mentioned it
to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he declared his opinion to be, that
Pope knew better than anybody else how Curll obtained the copies,
because another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for
which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his
resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a
nameless agent. Such care had been taken to make them public, that
they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely
to seize them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might he expected to
give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did
nothing, and Curll did what was expected. That to make them public
was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers
offered to sale by the private messengers showed that the hope of
gain could not have been the motive of the impression. It seems
that Pope, being desirous of printing his "Letters," and not knowing
how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country
been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion, that,
when he could complain that his "Letters" were surreptitiously
published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.

Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation
with the praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the
purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There
were some letters which a very good or a wise man would wish
suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was
impracticable now to retract them. From the perusal of those
letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire of knowing him; and
with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship which he had newly
formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of vindicating his own
property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the cost. This,
however, Pope did not accept; but in time solicited a subscription
for a quarto volume, which appeared (1737), I believe, with
sufficient profit. In the preface he tells that his letters were
reposited in a friend's library, said to be the Earl of Oxford's,
and that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story
was doubtless received with different degrees of credit. It may be
suspected that the preface to the "Miscellanies" was written to
prepare the public for such an incident; and, to strengthen this
opinion, James Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine
negotiations, but whose voracity was very doubtful, declared that he
was the messenger who carried, by Pope's direction, the books to
Curll. When they were thus published and avowed, as they had
relation to recent facts, and persons either then living or not yet
forgotten, they may be supposed to have found readers; but, as the
facts were minute, and the characters being either private or
literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awaked no
popular kindness or resentment. The book never became much the
subject of conversation. Some read it as a contemporary history,
and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those who
read it did not talk of it. Not much therefore was added by it to
fame or envy, nor do I remember that it produced either public
praise or public censure. It had, however, in some degree, the
recommendation of novelty. Our language had few letters, except
those of statesmen. Howel, indeed, about a century ago, published
his "Letters," which are commended by Morhoff, and which alone, of
his hundred volumes, continue his memory. Loveday's "Letters" were
printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known.
Mrs. Phillips's (Orinda's) are equally neglected. And those of
Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living
mistress or friend. Pope's epistolary excellence had an open field;
he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other
contemporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the
comparison; but it must be remembered that he had the power of
favouring himself. He might have originally had publication in his
mind, and have written with care, or have afterwards selected those
which he had most happily conceived or most diligently laboured; and
I know not whether there does not appear something more studied and
artificial in his productions than the rest, except one long letter
by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill and industry of a
professed author. It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation
from habit; he that has once studiously formed a style, rarely
writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to write
always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man
that remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who
lets thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind. Before
these "Letters" appeared he published the first part of what he
persuaded himself to think a system of Ethics, under the title of an
"Essay on Man," which, if his letter to Swift (of September 14,
1723), be rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years
under his consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the
success with great solicitude. He had now many open, and doubtless
many secret, enemies. The "Dunces" were yet smarting from the war,
and the superiority which he publicly arrogated disposed the world
to wish his humiliation. All this he knew, and against all this he
provided. His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is
inscribed, were in the first editions carefully suppressed; and the
poem being of a new kind was ascribed to one or another as favour
determined or conjecture wandered. It was given, says Warburton, to
every man except him only who could write it. Those who like only
when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name,
condemned it, and those admired it who are willing to scatter praise
at random, which, while it is unappropriated, excites no envy.
Those friends of Pope that were trusted with the secret went about
lavishing honours on the new-born poet, and hinting that Pope was
never so much in danger from any former rival. To those authors
whom he had personally offended, and to those whose opinion the
world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy or
malevolence, he sent his Essay as a present before publication, that
they might defeat their own enemity by praises which they could not
afterwards decently retract. With these precautions, in 1733, was
published the first part of the "Essay on Man." There had been for
some time a report that Pope was busy upon a "System of Morality,"
but this design was not discovered in the new poem, which had a form
and a title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception
was not uniform. Some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not
without good lines. While the author was unknown, some, as will
always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured him
as an intruder, but all thought him above neglect. The sale
increased, and editions were multiplied. The subsequent editions of
the first epistle exhibited two memorable corrections. At first,
the poet and his friend

"Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze OF WALKS WITHOUT A PLAN;"

for which he wrote afterwards,

"A mighty maze, BUT NOT WITHOUT A PLAN;"

for if there was no plan it was in vain to describe or to trace the
maze.

The other alteration was of these lines:-

"And spike of pride, AND IN THY REASON'S SPITE,
One truths is clear, whatever is, is right:

but having afterwards discovered, or been shown, that the "truth"
which subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted

"And spite of pride IN ERRING REASON'S SPITE."

To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.

The second and third epistles were published, and Pope was, I
believe, more and more suspected of writing them. At last, in 1734,
he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet. In
the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged that the doctrine of
the "Essay on Man" was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to
have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as
having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive
the consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his
own. That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme
regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only
transformed from prose to verse, has been reported, but hardly can
be true. The essay plainly appears the fabric of a poet; what
Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles, the order,
illustration, and embellishments, must all be Pope's. These
principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity, dogmatism,
or falsehood, but they were not immediately examined. Philosophy
and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay abounded
in splendid amplifications and sparkling sentences, which were read
and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose. Its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety. Its
reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse. Both
translations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had
the version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards
reprinted Resnel's version, with particular remarks upon every
paragraph.

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