Project Gutenberg's The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1, by Alexander Pope This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 New Edition Author: Alexander Pope Contributor: Whitwell Elwin Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32190] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF POPE *** Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. THE WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE. NEW EDITION. INCLUDING SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER NEW MATERIALS. COLLECTED IN PART BY THE LATE RT. HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER. WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES. BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN. VOL. I. POETRY.—VOL. I. WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1871. [The right of Translation is reserved.] LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF POETRY. Catalogue of Pope's collected Editions of his Works Pope's Memorial List of Relations and Friends Advertisement of Warburton To his Edition of Pope's Works Introduction The Author's Preface Recommendatory Poems Translations The First Book of Statius's Thebais Sappho To Phaon from Ovid The Fable of Dryope from Ovid Vertumnus and Pomona from Ovid January and May, from Chaucer The Wife of Bath, from Chaucer The Temple of Fame Pastorals Discourse of Pastoral Poetry 1. Spring, to Sir William Trumbull 2. Summer to Dr. Garth 3. Autumn to Mr. Wycherley 4. Winter, to the Memory of Mrs. Tempest Messiah, a Sacred Eclogue Windsor Forest [Pg vi] PAGE vii ix xi xv 1 17 37 41 87 104 108 113 155 185 231 257 265 276 285 292 301 319 [Pg vii] CATALOGUE Of Pope's Collected Editions of his Works. The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope. London: Printed by W. Bowyer for Bernard Lintot, between the Temple Gates, 1717. 4to and folio. This volume consists of all the acknowledged poems which Pope had hitherto published, with the addition of some new pieces. The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope. Volume ii. London: Printed by J. Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, at Homer's Head in Fleet Street, 1735. 4to and folio. The volume of 1735 contains, with a few exceptions, the poems which Pope had printed since 1717. The pages of each group of pieces—Epistles, Satires, Epitaphs, etc.—are numbered separately, and there are other irregularities in the numbers, arising from a change in the order of the Moral Essays after the sheets were struck off. Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his friends. London: Printed by J. Wright for J. Knapton in Ludgate Street, L. Gilliver in Fleet Street, J. Brindley in New Bond Street, and R. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1737. 4to and folio. This is Pope's first avowed edition of his letters. A half-title, "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope in Prose," precedes the title-page. The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose. Vol. ii. London: Printed for J. and P. Knapton, C. Bathurst, and R. Dodsley, 1741. 4to and folio. The half-title is more precise: "The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose. Vol. ii. Containing the rest of his Letters, with the Memoirs of Scriblerus, never before printed; and other Tracts written either singly, or in conjunction with his friends. Now first collected together." The letters are the Swift correspondence, and they are in a different type from the rest of the book. The numbers of the pages are very irregular, and show that the contents and arrangement of the volume had been greatly altered from some previous impression. The folio copies of the two volumes of poetry, and the two of prose, are merely the quarto text portioned out into longer pages, without a single leaf being reprinted. The trifling variations from the quartos were introduced when the matter was put into the folio size. The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq.; vol. i. with explanatory Notes and Additions never before printed. London: Printed for B. Lintot, 1736. Small 8vo. This is the first volume of an edition which extended to nine volumes, and which from the want of uniformity in the title- pages, the dates, and names of the publishers appears to consist of odd volumes. The copyright of Pope's works belonged to different proprietors, and they at last agreed to print their respective shares in small octavo, that the several parts united might form a complete set. Each proprietor commenced printing his particular section of the octavos when the previous sizes he had on hand were sold, and thus it happened that the second volume of the edition came out in 1735 before the first, which was published in 1736. The series was not finished till 1742, when the fourth book of the Dunciad was added to the Poems, and the Swift Correspondence to the Letters. Some of the volumes were reprinted, and the later editions occasionally differ slightly from their predecessors. The Poems and Letters of Pope are more complete in the octavos than in the quartos, but the octavos, on the other hand, omit all the prose works except the Letters, and the Memoirs of Scriblerus, and octavos and quartos combined are imperfect in comparison with the editions which have been published since Pope's death. A MEMORIAL LIST OF DEPARTED RELATIONS AND FRIENDS. WRITTEN BY POPE IN AN ELZEVIR VIRGIL, NOW IN THE LIBRARY OF THE EARL OF MANSFIELD.[1] NATUS MAJI 21, 1688, HORA POST MERID. 6-3/4. Quo desiderio veteres revocamus amores Atque olim amissas flemus amicitias. Catullus. [Pg viii] [Pg ix] Anno 1700, Maji primo, obit, semper venerandus, poetarum princeps, Joannes Dryden, æt. 70.[2] Anno 1708, mens. Aprili, obiit Gulielmus Walsh, criticus sagax, amicus et vir bonus, æt. 49. Anno 1710, Jan. 24, Avita mea piissimæ mem., Eliz. Turner, migravit in cœlum, annum agens 74. Anno 1710, mens. Aprili, Tho. Betterton, Roscius sui temporis, exit omnium cum plausu bonorum, æt. 74. Anno 1712, mens. Januario, decessit vir facetissimus, juventutis meæ deliciæ, Antonius Englefleld, æt. 75. Anno 1718, obit Tho. Parnell, poetica laude, et moribus suavissimis insignis. Anno 1715, mens. Martio, decessit Gul. Wycherley, poeta morum scientia clarus, ille meos primus qui habebat amores, æt. 75. Anno 1716, mens. Decemb. obit Gulielmus Trumbull, olim Regi Gul. a secretis, annum agens 75. Amicus meus humanissimus a juvenilibus annis. Pater meus, Alex. Pope, omnibus bonis moribus præditus obit, an. 1717. Simon Harcourt, filius, obit, mens. Junio 1720, Lutet. Parisior. Quem sequitur Pater, olim M. Britann. Cancellar., mense Julio 1727. Jacobus Craggs R.M.B. a secretis, natura generosus et ingenuus, amicus animosus, charissim. memor., e vita exc. Feb. 1720/1. Robertus Oxoniæ Comes, mihi perfamiliaris et jucundus, fortiter obit, 1724. Jo. Sheffield, Buckinghamiæ Dux, mihi lenis et amicissimus, fato functus est Feb. 1720/1 æt. 73. Nutrix mea fidelissima M. Beech, obiit 5 Novem. 1725, æt. 77. Robertus Digby, ex Patre antiquis præditus moribus, e vita migravit, Apr. 1726. Edwardus Blunt, vir amicissimus obit, Aug. 1726. Anno 1728/9, Jan. 20, æt. 57, mortuus est Gulielmus Congreve, poeta, eximius, vir comis, urbanus, et mihi perquam familiaris. Elijah Fenton, vir probus, et poeta haud mediocris, decessit men. Julio 1730, æt. 48. Francisc. Atterbury, Roffens Episcopus, vir omni scientia clarus, animosus, ex Anglia exilio pulsus, an. 1723. Obiit Parisiis, mense Febr. 1732, æt. 70. Joan. Gay, probitate morum et simplicitate insignis, socius peramabilis, sub oculis meis mortuus est, Dec. 4, 1723, æt. 44. Mater mea charissima, pientissima et optima, Editha Pope, obiit septima die Junii 1733, annum implens nonagesimum tertium. G. Garth, MD. homo candidus et poeta urbanus, obiit 1719. Joan. Arbuthnot, MD. vir doctiss., probitate ac pietate insignis, obiit Febr. 27, 1734/5, æt. 68. Carolus Mordaunt. Com. Peterbor., vir insigniss. bellica virtute, ac morum comitate, obiit Ulyssipont. anno ætatis 78, 1735, mense Octobris. FOOTNOTES: The Virgil was probably bought by William Murray at some sale of Pope's books, for on the fly-leaf is written "E. Libris A. Popei, Pr. 5s." Pope who had only once set eyes on Dryden, and had no acquaintance with him, marks his admiration by including him in this memorial of relations and friends. ADVERTISEMENT OF WARBURTON TO HIS EDITION OF POPE'S WORKS, 1751. Mr. Pope, in his last illness, amused himself, amidst the care of his higher concerns, in preparing a corrected and complete edition of his writings;[1] and, with his usual delicacy, was even solicitous to prevent any share of the offence they might occasion, from falling on the friend whom he had engaged to give them to the public.[2] In discharge of this [Pg x] [1] [2] [Pg xi] trust, the public has here a complete edition of his works, executed in such a manner, as, I am persuaded, would have been to his satisfaction. The editor hath not, for the sake of profit, suffered the author's name to be made cheap by a subscription;[3] nor his works to be defrauded of their due honours by a vulgar or inelegant impression; nor his memory to be disgraced by any pieces unworthy of his talents or virtue. On the contrary, he hath, at a very great expense, ornamented this edition with all the advantages which the best artists in paper, printing, and sculpture could bestow upon it.[4] If the public hath waited longer than the deference due to its generous impatience for the author's writings should have suffered, it was owing to a reason which the editor need not be ashamed to tell. It was his regard to the family interests of his deceased friend. Mr. Pope, at his death, had left large impressions of several parts of his works, unsold, the property of which was adjudged to belong to his executors; and the editor was willing they should have time to dispose of them to the best advantage, before the publication of this edition (which hath been long prepared) should put a stop to the sale. But it may be proper to be a little more particular concerning the superiority of this edition above all the preceding, so far as Mr. Pope himself was concerned. What the editor hath done, the reader must collect for himself. The first volume, and the original poems in the second, are here first printed from a copy corrected throughout by the author himself, even to the very preface,[5] which, with several additional notes in his own hand, he delivered to the editor a little before his death. The juvenile translations, in the other part of the second volume, it was never his intention to bring into this edition of his works, on account of the levity of some, the freedom of others, and the little importance of all. But these being the property of other men, the editor had it not in his power to follow the author's intention. The third volume (all but the Essay on Man, which together with the Essay on Criticism, the author, a little before his death, had corrected and published in quarto, as a specimen of his projected edition,) was printed by him in his last illness, but never published, in the manner it is now given. The disposition of the Epistle on the Characters of Men is quite altered; that on the Characters of Women much enlarged; and the Epistles on Riches and Taste corrected and improved. To these advantages of the third volume must be added a great number of fine verses, taken from the author's manuscript copies of these poems, communicated by him for this purpose to the editor. These, the author, when he first published the poems to which they belong, thought proper, for various reasons, to omit. Some, from the manuscript copy of the Essay on Man, which tended to discredit fate, and to recommend the moral government of God, had, by the editor's advice, been restored to their places in the last edition of that poem.[6] The rest, together with others of the like sort, from his manuscript copy of the other Ethic Epistles, are here inserted at the bottom of the page, under the title of Variations. The fourth volume contains the Satires, with their Prologue,—the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; and Epilogue,—the two poems intitled mdccxxxviii. The Prologue and Epilogue are here given with the like advantages as the Ethic Epistles in the foregoing volume, that is to say, with the Variations, or additional verses from the author's manuscripts. The Epilogue to the Satires is likewise inriched with many and large notes, now first printed from the author's own manuscript. The fifth volume contains a correcter and completer edition of the Dunciad than hath been hitherto published, of which, at present, I have only this further to add, that it was at my request he laid the plan of a fourth book. I often told him, it was pity so fine a poem should remain disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insignificant of all dunces,— bad rhymers and malevolent cavillers; that he ought to raise and ennoble it by pointing his satire against the most pernicious of all,—minute philosophers and free-thinkers. I imagined, too, it was for the interests of religion to have it known, that so great a genius had a due abhorrence of these pests of virtue and society. He came readily into my opinion; but, at the same time, told me it would create him many enemies. He was not mistaken, for though the terror of his pen kept them for some time in respect, yet on his death they rose with unrestrained fury in numerous coffee-house tales, and Grub Street libels. The plan of this admirable satire was artfully contrived to show, that the follies and defects of a fashionable education naturally led to, and necessarily ended in, freethinking, with design to point out the only remedy adequate to so destructive an evil. It was to advance the same ends of virtue and religion, that the editor prevailed on him to alter everything in his moral writings that might be suspected of having the least glance towards fate or naturalism, and to add what was proper to convince the world that he was warmly on the side of moral government and a revealed will. And it would be great injustice to his memory not to declare that he embraced these occasions with the most unfeigned pleasure. The sixth volume consists of Mr. Pope's miscellaneous pieces in verse and prose. Amongst the verse several fine poems make now their first appearance in his works. And of the prose, all that is good, and nothing but what is exquisitely so, will be found in this edition. The seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes consist entirely of his letters, the more valuable, as they are the only true models which we, or perhaps any of our neighbours, have of familiar epistles.[7] This collection is now made more complete by the addition of several new pieces. Yet, excepting a short explanatory letter to Col. M[oyser], and the letters to Mr. A[llen] and Mr. W[arburton] (the latter of which are given to show the editor's inducements, and the engagements he was under, to intend the care of this edition) excepting these, I say, the rest are all here published from the author's own printed, though not published copies delivered to the editor.[8] On the whole, the advantages of this edition, above the preceding, are these,—that it is the first complete collection [Pg xii] [Pg xiii] which has ever been made of his original writings; that all his principal poems, of early or later date, are here given to the public with his last corrections and improvements; that a great number of his verses are here first printed from the manuscript copies of his principal poems of later date; that many new notes of the author are here added to his poems; and lastly, that several pieces, both in prose and verse make now their first appearance before the public. The author's life deserves a just volume, and the editor intends to give it. For to have been one of the first poets in the world is but his second praise. He was in a higher class. He was one of the "noblest works of God." He was an "honest man,"[9]—a man who alone possessed more real virtue than, in very corrupt times, needing a satirist like him, will sometimes fall to the share of multitudes. In this history of his life,[10] will be contained a large account of his writings, a critique on the nature, force, and extent of his genius, exemplified from these writings; and a vindication of his moral character, exemplified by his more distinguished virtues,—his filial piety, his disinterested friendships, his reverence for the constitution of his country, his love and admiration of virtue, and (what was the necessary effect) his hatred and contempt of vice, his extensive charity to the indigent, his warm benevolence to mankind, his supreme veneration of the Deity, and above all his sincere belief of Revelation. Nor shall his faults be concealed. It is not for the interests of his virtues that they should. Nor indeed could they be concealed, if we were so disposed, for they shine through his virtues, no man being more a dupe to the specious appearances of virtue in others.[11] In a word, I mean not to be his panegyrist but his historian. And may I, when envy and calumny have taken the same advantage of my absence (for, while I live, I will freely trust it to my life to confute them) may I find a friend as careful of my honest fame as I have been of his! Together with his works, he hath bequeathed me his dunces. So that as the property is transferred, I could wish they would now let his memory alone. The veil which death draws over the good is so sacred, that to tear it, and with sacrilegious hands, to throw dirt upon the shrine, gives scandal even to barbarians. And though Rome permitted her slaves to calumniate her best citizens on the day of triumph, yet the same petulancy at their funeral would have been rewarded with execration and a gibbet.[12] The public may be malicious; but is rarely vindictive or ungenerous. It would abhor all insults, on a writer dead, though it had borne with the ribaldry, or even set the ribalds on work, when he was alive. And in this there is no great harm, for he must have a strange impotency of mind indeed whom such miserable scribblers can disturb or ruffle. Of all that gross Beotian phalanx who have written scurrilously against the editor, he knows not so much as one whom a writer of reputation would not wish to have his enemy, or whom a man of honour would not be ashamed to own for his friend.[13] He is indeed but slightly conversant in their works, and knows little of the particulars of their defamation. To his authorship they are heartily welcome. But if any of them have been so far abandoned by truth as to attack his moral character in any respect whatsoever, to all and every one of these and their abettors, he gives the lie in form, and in the words of honest Father Valerian, mentiris impudentissime. FOOTNOTES: "I own the late encroachments upon my constitution made me willing to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest for the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by the Father of all mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light," &c.—Let. cxx. to Mr. W.—Warburton. "I also give and bequeath to the said Mr. Warburton, the property of all such of my works already printed as he hath written or shall write commentaries or notes upon, and which I have not otherwise disposed of or alienated; and as he shall publish without future alterations."—His Last Will and Testament.—Warburton. A subscription would have been simply a petition from Warburton to the public, soliciting them to increase the value of the legacy bequeathed him by Pope. The engravings were execrable; the type and paper good, but not extraordinary. The outlay upon the edition, for which Warburton takes credit as for a munificent act, was a common-place commercial transaction, with the certainty of a large return. The corrections are few and trivial. The account which Warburton gives of the novelties in his edition is from first to last exaggerated. The only restored lines which improve the orthodoxy of the Essay on Man relate to a future state. Either Warburton had never heard of Madame de Sévigné's letters, or what is more likely, he was unable to taste their charm. Their delicate graces, and native liveliness, would have been lost upon the man who thought that Pope's artificial epistles were "true models of familiar" letters. The assertion that the copies had not been published is unaccountable. Every line of them had been published twice over by Pope in his lifetime, and all but two or three pages, had been published again and again. A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod, An honest man's the noblest work of God.—Warburton. It will be printed in the same form with this, and every future edition of his works, so as to make a part of them.—Warburton. The Life which Warburton promised with such solemn pomp was never written and he was content [Pg xiv] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] to assist Ruffhead in his feeble compilation. Warburton intimates that Pope's only faults grew out of his credulous belief in "the specious appearance of virtue," which was a sarcasm directed against those friends of Pope who were the enemies of Warburton. The demand of Warburton was not for a truce on the day of Pope's funeral, which took place seven years before. He insisted that because Pope was dead no one should ever again question his title to be called "good." Neither Pope nor Warburton was accustomed to spare dead men, and the claim for exemption was specially inconsistent in the preface to works which were full of bitter attacks upon both living and dead. Warburton was to go on circulating Pope's venom, and any victim who retaliated was to be pronounced "sacrilegious," "a scandal even to barbarians," and worthy to be "rewarded with execration and a gibbet." Warburton was a fortunate author. Though he published a host of paradoxical notions, his opponents, if we are to trust his repeated assertions, were always fools and knaves. INTRODUCTION. In his will, dated December 12, 1743, not quite six months before he died, Pope bequeathed his printed works to Warburton, on condition that he published them without "future alterations." Warburton states that the object of the proviso was to relieve him from the obloquy he might incur by reproducing offensive strokes of satire. A few slight alterations which had not the sanction of any prior edition were nevertheless introduced by Warburton into some of the poems, and he announced on the title-page and in the preface, that they were taken from a corrected copy delivered to him by Pope. Mr. Croker mistrusted the genuineness of the "alterations," and he intended to reject the text of Warburton, and adopt in the main the text of the last octavo edition which had appeared during the lifetime of the poet. The honour of Warburton is not above suspicion, but Mr. Croker was misled by erroneous inferences when he accused him of tampering with the text, and falsely pleading the authority of "a copy corrected by the author himself." Fantastic in his conceptions, violent in his animosities, hasty and imperious in the expression of his opinions, Warburton sometimes repented his rashness, and cancelled numerous leaves in his Shakespeare and Pope after the volumes were printed off. Mr. Kilvert, who edited his Literary Remains, found among his papers a cancelled leaf of the Pope, containing the commencement of the Prologue to the Satires. On the first page Warburton had inserted among the "Variations" a couplet which he said was copied from the manuscript of Pope: And now vile poets rise before the light, And walk, like Margaret's ghost, at dead of night. The allusion was to the ballad of William and Margaret, written by Mallet. He was the ally of Pope and Bolingbroke, and when Pope was dead he was employed by Bolingbroke to blast the memory of their former friend.[1] The mention of Margaret's ghost gave Warburton the opportunity of appending a bitter note upon Mallet, whom he accused of "arraigning his dead patron for a cheat," and the leaf was cancelled to get rid of both note and variation. Mr. Croker believed that Warburton "forged" the variation to gratify his spleen against Mallet, whom he detested, and that before the volume was published "either his own conscience, or some prudent friend, suggested that such manifest fraud would not be tolerated." The conjecture was unfounded. Pope presented several of his manuscripts to the son of Jonathan Richardson, the portrait-painter, for his trouble in collating them with the printed text. Richardson's interlined copy of the first quarto volume of Pope's poetry passed into the hands of Malone, and was ultimately bought by Mr. Croker. The manuscripts which Richardson possessed in the handwriting of Pope were purchased by Dr. Chauncey, and are still the property of his descendants. Among them is the Prologue to the Satires, and it contains the couplet Mr. Croker believed to have been forged. In every instance where the manuscripts exist the variations printed by Warburton are found to be authentic. The inference of Mr. Croker from the variations must be reversed. They do not invalidate, but attest, the fidelity of Warburton, and the "alterations" in the text of the poems must pass unchallenged unless there is some direct proof of their inaccuracy. The arguments, on the contrary, are altogether in their favour. Four printed pages of the first Moral Essay, with the corrections in manuscript, were discovered by Mr. Kilvert among Warburton's papers. "Some of the words," says Mr. Croker, "are so neatly written as to leave a strong impression on my eye of their being Pope's; other portions of the manuscript are more like Warburton's looser hand." The faint doubt expressed by Mr. Croker would hardly have arisen if his suspicion had not been previously awakened, for the corrections are all indubitably in the handwriting of the poet. Nor was the manuscript in this instance the guide of Warburton. He followed a copy of the Moral Essays printed by Pope in his last illness, though never published. "Warburton has the propriety of it as you know," wrote Bolingbroke to Lord Marchmont, one of the executors; "alter it he cannot by the terms of the will."[2] This of itself is an answer to Mr. Croker. The executors had access to Pope's latest printed version of the Moral Essays, which was Warburton's avowed authority, and he could not alter a single word without certain detection, and the consequent forfeiture of his legacy. He was alive to the risk. A portion of Pope's revised edition of his poetical works was passing through the press at the time of his death, and Warburton directed the printer to give the sheets, when the [11] [12] [13] [Pg xvii] [Pg xviii] [Pg xix] executors inquired for them, to their colleague the celebrated Murray, who was afterwards Lord Mansfield, adding, "Pray preserve all the press copy to the least scrap."[3] The terms of the will bound the editor to be faithful to his trust, under a penalty of 4,000l., the estimated value of the bequest,[4] and he saw the necessity of having the voucher of the poet's handwriting for the minutest departure from the previous text in such of the proofs as had not received Pope's final imprimatur. A more ample guarantee could not be desired for the authenticity of the particulars in which Warburton's text differs from the printed copies superintended by Pope. All the displaced readings, which are not utterly insignificant, are preserved in the notes to the present edition, as well as numerous unpublished variations, which are taken from the manuscripts of Pope, or the transcripts of Richardson. The text of Pope's poems is more easily settled than elucidated. No other poet so near to our own time presents equal difficulties. His satires abound in uncertain allusions, and controverted topics which require a large amount of illustration and discussion. His philosophy was not understood by himself, and it is a study to disentangle his confused arguments, and interpret his doubtful language. He often expressed his opinions with wilful ambiguity, took refuge in equivocations, or had recourse to falsehoods, and we are constantly forced upon perplexing investigations to recover the truth he endeavoured to conceal. Fortunately his best poems and choicest passages are least incumbered with puzzling questions, and his obscurities have not much interfered with his popularity because the mass of readers are content to enjoy the beauties and leave the enigmas unsolved. The number and eminence of the commentators on Pope, the diversity of their attainments, and the extent of their annotations appear to promise all the help which knowledge, acuteness, and taste could supply. The result is far below what might reasonably have been anticipated. Warburton, Pope's first editor, had a vigorous understanding, and possessed the enormous advantage that he carried on the work in concert with the poet, and could ask the explanation of every difficulty. A diseased ambition rendered his talents and opportunities useless. Without originality he aspired to be original, and imagined that to fabricate hollow paradoxes, and torture language into undesigned meanings was the surest evidence of a fertile, penetrating genius. He employed his sagacity less to discover than to distort the ideas of his author, and seems to have thought that the more he deviated from the obvious sense the greater would be his fame for inventive power. He has left no worse specimen of his perverse propensity than the spurious fancies, and idle refinements he fathered upon Pope. They are among his baldest paradoxes, are conveyed in his heaviest style, and are supported by his feeblest sophistry. His lifeless and verbose conceits soon provoke by their falsity, and fatigue by their ponderousness. Lord Marchmont said laughingly to Pope that "he must be the vainest man alive, and must want to show posterity what a quantity of dulness he could carry down on his back without sinking under the load."[5] The exuberant self-sufficiency of Warburton deluded him into the belief that the text derived its principal lustre from the commentary. He selected for the frontispiece to his edition a monument on which were hung medallions of himself and the poet, and Blakey, the draughtsman, told Burke that "it was by Warburton's particular desire that he made him the principal figure, and Pope only secondary, and that the light, contrary to the rules of art, goes upwards from Warburton to Pope." A gentleman remarked, when Burke related the anecdote, that they were drawn looking in opposite directions.[6] The sarcasm summed up the opinion which has always prevailed. The clumsy inventions of Warburton had not the semblance of plausibility, and scarce anybody except his shadow, and fulsome echo, Bishop Hurd, ever doubted that the text and commentary looked different ways.[7] Proud of his dreary paradoxes, Warburton scorned the humble office of furnishing useful information. Pope had said, in his Imitations of Horace, that because three ladies liked a luckless play, a spendthrift had taken the whole house upon the poet's night,[8] which drew from Warburton the following note:—"The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry, even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been in Mr. Pope's purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings. Which defect in these notes, the periodical scribblers, however, have been stupid and shameless enough to object to them."[9] Warburton's reserve was praiseworthy when his motive was respect for private feelings. His general neglect to clear up the allusions in Pope's poems did not admit of this apology, and in default of a better defence he called his critics "stupid and shameless." His habit when reasons failed him was to supply their place with abuse. The edition of Warburton was published in 1751, and no attempt was made to supersede it till Gilbert Wakefield commenced a new edition in 1794. He was "labouring," he says, "for a subsistence," and the cost of the work, which was printed at his own expense, obliged him to bring out a volume at a time. Before the first volume was quite through the press he learned that Joseph Warton was engaged on a similar undertaking. Warton had the support of the London booksellers, and the edition of Wakefield ended with his opening volume. The world did not lose the benefit of his annotations. He published in 1796 his Observations on Pope, which consist of notes on the remaining poems, and of supplemental notes to the poems he had previously edited. Wakefield said that an "inculpable perfection pervaded the whole body of Pope's compositions," and in the extravagance of his admiration he overlaid the volume of his unfinished edition with weak rhapsodies which masked the useful part of his labours. He restrained his eulogistic excesses in his Observations, and kept more closely to his main design of tracing Pope's "imitations of his predecessors." All persons tolerably read in poetry could perceive that the obligations Pope acknowledged in his notes were but a fraction of the whole, and in 1740, Bowyer, the printer, with the assistance of Mr. Clarke, a clergyman, commenced a collection of parallel passages. From the letters of Clarke to Bowyer it appears that Pope was annoyed. Bowyer profited by his irritation, and offered to treat with him. "I think," wrote Clarke in 1742, "you buy his friendship cheap with a whole [Pg xx] [Pg xxi] [Pg xxii] hecatomb of notes, essays, illustrations, and the mob of commentators."[10] The progress of the negociation is not recorded. The result is revealed in the fact that Bowyer shortly afterwards became Pope's printer. The sensitiveness which was disturbed at the gleanings of Bowyer would have shuddered at the abundant harvest of Wakefield. He himself had no intention of depreciating the merits of Pope. He only wished to illustrate a favourite author. Many of the parallelisms are too slight to be applicable, or they are common phrases the property of every Englishman. A vast number remain which are a curious exhibition of Pope's patience and skill in the art of poetical mosaic, and of the large amount of borrowed beauties he intermixed with his undoubted originality. The interpretation of the text, though subordinate with Wakefield, was not neglected by him. He and a friend who assisted him, Dr. William Bennet, Bishop of Cloyne, have explained more allusions than all the other commentators, and the least known and appreciated of the editors of Pope is the man who has done the most for his author. The edition of Warton appeared in 1797. "His reason," he says in his preface, "for undertaking the work was the universal complaint that Dr. Warburton had disfigured and disgraced his edition with many forced and far-sought interpretations, totally unsupported by the passages which they were brought to elucidate." Warton had the stimulus of a second motive. He published in 1756 the first volume of his Essay on Pope, and his criticisms were roughly attacked in many passages of Ruffhead's Life of the poet, which was prompted and partly written by Warburton. While Warburton lived Warton did not venture to retaliate. The thirty years which intervened had not extinguished his resentment, and he seized the opportunity to revenge the ancient grudge. His consciousness of Warburton's defects did not keep Warton from repeating the error of filling page upon page with irrelevant matter. His Essay on Pope had been a receptacle for his store of miscellaneous reading, and in a separate work there was no objection to a medley of anecdote and criticism. He was seventy-five when he published his edition of Pope, and to save himself trouble he apportioned out the old farrago in notes. Profuse in digressions, he is sparing of needful explanations. His turn was for the lighter portions of criticism and biography, and most of his apposite remarks are critical opinions. They are often just, but never profound, for he had neither fervid feelings nor a robust understanding, and his highest qualities are a fair poetical taste, and a tolerable acquaintance with ancient and modern authors. Bowles was a school-boy at Winchester when Warton was head-master, and he intimated that this early connection was the cause of his being employed to revise the next edition of Pope. It appeared in 1806. His poetic sensibility was exquisite, and he was well-read, shrewd, and candid. His failing was a hurry of mind which disqualified him for a painstaking commentator. He was content to jot down in a careless, colloquial style the off-hand thoughts of his quick and cultivated intellect, and he did not add much to the scanty explanations of Warton and Warburton. The chief merit of his edition is his excellent literary criticism, which is truer, deeper, and more refined than that of his old Winchester master. The estimate Bowles formed of the poetry and character of Pope was allowed to pass unchallenged for thirteen years, when some remarks of Campbell, in his Specimens of British Poets, commenced a controversy which lasted from 1819 to 1826. In the series of pamphlets he published to vindicate his opinions, Bowles exhibited his wonted acuteness, courage, and negligence. With all his slips in minor points the fresh facts which have come to light have more than confirmed his view of Pope's moral obliquities, and in the discussion on the principles of poetry he reduced the whole of his adversaries to silence. He and Hazlitt were the only persons among the disputants, eminent or obscure, who showed any real comprehension of the subject. The next edition of Pope, justly considered by Mr. Croker to be the worst, came out in 1824, and was superintended by Roscoe, the author of the Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and Leo X. He barely contributed a single illustrative note, his criticisms are platitudes, and his vindications of Pope a tissue of blunders. He was misled by his credulous faith in his hero, by the rashness with which he imposed his own guesses for facts, and above all by his want of penetration and research. His half-knowledge was worse than ignorance. A few of his multitudinous errors were exposed by Bowles whom he had attacked. Roscoe replied in a feeble, disingenuous pamphlet, which drew from Bowles his taunting and crushing retort, Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq. This ended the Pope controversy. The faults of plan and execution in the editions of Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe stand out in strong relief, and Mr. Croker resolved, as far as possible, to correct the mistakes, retrench the superfluities, and supply the omissions. Warton and Bowles dismissed a large proportion of the barren, oppressive commentaries of Warburton. Roscoe put back the whole of the bulky excrescence. Most of it had been adopted by Pope, and to relieve the text, without excluding interpretations sanctioned by the poet, Mr. Croker determined to print the pedantic lumber in appendixes. The notes of the other editors rested upon their intrinsic merits, and he intended to sift out the surplusage, and only retain what was pertinent. To curtail is easy. The difficulty was to clear up the many obscurities which remained, and Mr. Croker was anxious to furnish his share of explanation, though he was convinced that numerous contemporary allusions would always baffle curiosity. His chief attention was directed to the satires, and he continued for many years to pursue his investigations, and accumulate materials. His busy life was succeeded by failing health, and he died before he had prepared his notes for the press. The results of his research have luckily all been preserved, for his habit was to write them out in full at the time. He was an acute and eager enquirer into political, personal, and social history, and no man could have been more competent to bring to the surface the under-current of forgotten circumstances. I have kept to the plan sketched out by Mr. Croker. "A commentary," says Johnson, "must arise from the fortuitous discoveries of many men in devious walks of literature," and few poets have had more commentators than Pope. I have borrowed whatever I met with in previous writers that throw light upon his meaning, faults, and beauties, have cast aside what was plainly inapplicable and erroneous, and have done what I could to fill up deficiencies. My own notes will be [Pg xxiii] [Pg xxiv] [Pg xxv] recognised by the absence of any signature; all other notes throughout the work have the names of their authors attached, even when a note is by the same author as the text. The extracts from Warton are sometimes taken from his Essay, and both in his case and that of Bowles I have occasionally joined together scattered fragments which were connected in their subject. The rest of the arrangements will be understood at a glance. The letters of Pope demand a more particular discussion. Estimated by their intrinsic merits they would call for little notice. "He laboured them," says Horace Walpole, "as much as the Essay on Man, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been written to anybody."[11] Their dry and frigid generalities could not be more happily exposed. The chief importance of the correspondence is in its relation to the morality of Pope, and the fame of men whose reputation is involved in the question of his uprightness. His real nature has always been hotly debated. "His detractors," says De Quincey, "fancy that in his character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles; or, to adopt the distinction of Shakespeare, they see nothing but 'dust a little gilt,' and we 'gold a little dusted.'"[12] Pope boasted loudly of his virtue, and his champions judge him by his own representations. His accusers hold that his professions were hypocritical, as when Lord Macaulay speaks of his "spite and envy, thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface."[13] The charges brought against him are thickly scattered over his life, and either the guilty appearances are deceptive, or we must admit that his mind was essentially corrupt. His correspondence brings up the ever-recurring enquiry, and we have to decide whether his letters are not many of them fraudulent, and the circumstances attending their publication a series of ignominious plots, infamous false accusations, and impudent lies. Every examination into the history of the letters was slight before Mr. Dilke engaged in the laborious task. His familiarity with the books, pamphlets, and periodicals of the time could not be exceeded, and his doubts once awakened he accepted nothing upon trust. With an immense amount of research and skill he proceeded to track Pope through his tortuous courses. He laid bare the ramifications of the plot against Curll, which was only known in a few of its prominent particulars. He detected, what none of the editors and biographers had perceived, the base manœuvres and deceit which accompanied the publication of the "Letters to and from Dr. Swift." He was originally put upon his investigations by the manuscript collection of Pope's letters to Caryll, and these revealed a new set of frauds in the evidence they supplied of letters converted into a fictitious correspondence. His inclination was to favour Pope whenever there was an opening for a liberal interpretation, and it was not from hostility that he exposed the net-work of fraud, and brought out the dark traits of a dishonourable disposition with new and terrible force. He printed his discoveries in the Athenæum[14], and after studying the facts afresh by the light of his essays, I am compelled to adopt his conclusions. The evidence upon which they rest is often circumstantial and intricate, and cannot be followed to the end without steady attention, and some trial of patience. The letters of the poet which were first sent to the press were given by Cromwell to his mistress, Elizabeth Thomas, who sold them in her distress to Curll for ten guineas. She was a shameless woman, and boldly justified her conduct. "Everyone," she said, "knows that the person to whom a letter is addressed has the same right to dispose of it as he has of goods purchased with his money." The right which originally belonged to Cromwell, of publishing to the world whatever had been written to him in the confidence of friendship, he had, by his gift, transferred to herself; and thus it appeared that Cromwell had a right to be treacherous to Pope, and Mrs. Thomas a right to be treacherous to both Pope and Cromwell. With more reason she inferred that neither of them at heart would be vexed at the proceeding. Cromwell, she urged, could not be angry that the world should know "the professions of love, gratitude, and veneration made him by so celebrated an author," and Pope could not resent the exhibition of the "early pregnancy of his genius." "And yet," she continued, "had either of you been asked, common modesty would have obliged you to refuse what you would not be displeased with if done without your knowledge."[15] There can be little doubt, from his subsequent conduct, that this was the light in which the publication was viewed by the poet, notwithstanding his assertion in a note to the Dunciad, "that he was ashamed of the letters as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of the writer." Mrs. Thomas did him an incalculable injury, not by revealing his secrets, but by flattering his vanity. The favourable reception of his correspondence originated the desire to give some further specimens to the world, and led him into the miserable series of falsehoods and frauds by which he endeavoured to accomplish his design without seeming to be privy to it. The letters to Cromwell were published in Curll's "Miscellanea," of which the title-page says "Printed in the year 1727;" but the dedication to the letters themselves is dated June, 1726, and it was in 1726 that they appeared. The incidental and scanty notices of them at the time are sufficient to indicate the impression they produced. Thompson, writing in October to Aaron Hill, says that "though careless and uncorrected, they are full of wit and gaiety." There may have been many who thought that they did as much credit to the heart as to the head of the poet. "I have read the collection of letters you mention," Fenton wrote to Broome in September, 1726, "and was delighted with nothing more than that air of sincerity, those professions of esteem and respect, and that deference paid to his friend's judgment in poetry which I have sometimes seen expressed to others, and I doubt not with the same cordial affection. If they are read in that light, they will be very entertaining and useful in the present age; but in the next, Cicero, Pliny, and Voiture may regain their reputation." The comments on Pope's sincerity were plainly ironical. Fenton considered him to be extremely hypocritical, and some person concerned in the publication of 1726 must have formed the same opinion of his character, if the ludicrous tail-piece is intended to be typical of the letters. A little man whose diminutive stature did not permit him to clasp the taller figure in his arms while they stood upon a level, is represented as having jumped off the [Pg xxvi] [Pg xxvii] [Pg xxviii] [Pg xxix] ground and seized his companion round the waist, who, with his hands thrown into the air at the painful vehemence of the embrace, is struggling to get loose. Undiscerning persons, who judged the poet by his words, would form a different estimate, and would perceive only proofs of his excellence where Fenton saw examples of his habitual insincerity. "His correspondence," says Johnson, of the later collection of 1735, "filled the nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship."[16] The letters to Cromwell had more than an ephemeral success. Curll, in his reply in 1729 to the attack on him in the Dunciad, after noticing Pope's affected depreciation of them, says, "However, they sell very well; price 5s."[17] The poet had already devised an excuse for following them up by a second set. Theobald, who had earned his lasting enmity by pointing out the errors in his edition of Shakespeare, was employed by some booksellers to edit the posthumous papers of Wycherley, which had been purchased from his heir. The work appeared in 1728. Pope saw in this circumstance a pretence for dragging his own letters before the world, and an opportunity of gratifying his spleen against Theobald. He said that the poems were disreputable to the memory of his early friend, a...