Biographical Essays

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It must appear strange that Pope at twenty-one should choose to
come forward for the first time with a work composed at sixteen. A
difference of five years at that stage of life is of more effect
than of twenty at a later; and his own expanding judgment could
hardly fail to inform him, that his Pastorals were by far the worst
of his works. In reality, let us not deny, that had Pope never
written any thing else, his name would not have been known as a
name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from
oblivion by some satirist or writer of a Dunciad. Were a man to
meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.,"
_Love out of Mount Mlna by Whirlwind_"he would suppose himself
reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the
many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us:

"I know thee. love! on foreign mountains born.
Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed.
Thou wert from Aetna's burning entrails torn.
Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born."

But the very names "Damon" and "Strephon," "Phillis" and "Delia,"
are rank with childishness. Arcadian life is, at the best, a
feeble conception, and rests upon the false principle of crowding
together all the luscious sweets of rural life, undignified by the
danger which attends pastoral life in our climate, and unrelieved
by shades, either moral or physical. And the Arcadia of Pope's age
was the spurious Arcadia of the opera theatre, and, what is worse,
of the French opera.

The hostilities which followed between these rival wooers of the
pastoral muse are well known. Pope, irritated at what he conceived
the partiality shown to Philips in the Guardian, pursued the review
ironically; and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with
praises, draws into pointed relief some of his most flagrant
faults. The result, however, we cannot believe. That all the wits,
except Addison, were duped by the irony, is quite impossible. Could
any man of sense mistake for praise the remark, that Philips had
imitated "_every_ line of Strada; "that he had introduced
wolves into England, and proved himself the first of gardeners by
making his flowers "blow all in the same season." Or, suppose
those passages unnoticed, could the broad sneer escape him, where
Pope taxes the other writer (viz., himself) with having deviated"
into downright poetry; "or the outrageous ridicule of Philip's
style, as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, the
quotation from Gay, beginning,

"Rager, go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun
Will quite bego before ch' 'avs half a don!"

Philips is said to have resented this treatment by threats of
personal chastisement to Pope, and even hanging up a rod at
Button's coffee-house. We may be certain that Philips never
disgraced himself by such ignoble conduct. If the public indeed
were universally duped by the paper, what motive had Philips for
resentment? Or, in any case, what plea had he for attacking Pope,
who had not come forward as the author of the essay? But, from
Pope's confidential account of the matter, we know that Philips saw
him daily, and never offered him "any indecorum;" though, for some
cause or other, Pope pursued Philips with virulence through life.

In the year 1711, Pope published his Essay on Criticism, which some
people have very unreasonably fancied his best performance; and in
the same year his Rape of the Lock, the most exquisite monument of
playful fancy that universal literature offers. It wanted, however,
as yet, the principle of its vitality, in wanting the machinery of
sylphs and gnomes, with which addition it was first published in
1714.

In the year 1712, Pope appeared again before the public as the
author of the Temple of Fame, and the Elegy to the Memory of an
Unfortunate Lady. Much speculation has arisen on the question
concerning the name of this lady, and the more interesting question
concerning the nature of the persecutions and misfortunes which she
suffered. Pope appears purposely to decline answering the questions
of his friends upon that point; at least the questions have reached
us, and the answers have not. Joseph Warton supposed himself to
have ascertained four facts about her: that her name was Wainsbury;
that she was deformed in person; that she retired into a convent
from some circumstances connected with an attachment to a young man
of inferior rank; and that she killed herself, not by a sword, as
the poet insinuates, but by a halter. As to the latter statement,
it may very possibly be true; such a change would be a very slight
exercise of the poet's privileges. As to the rest, there are
scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. Pope certainly speaks of
her under the name of Mrs. (_i. e._ Miss) W--, which at least
argues a poetical exaggeration in describing her as a being "that
once had _titles_, honor, wealth, and fame;" and he may as
much have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty. It is indeed
noticeable, that he speaks simply of her _decent_ limbs,
which, in any English use of the word, does not imply much
enthusiasm of praise. She appears to have been the niece of a Lady
A--; and Mr. Craggs, afterwards secretary of state, wrote to Lady
A--on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in her fate. As to
her being a relative of the Duke of Buckingham's, that rests upon a
mere conjectural interpretation applied to a letter of that
nobleman's. But all things about this unhappy lady are as yet
enveloped in mystery. And not the least part of the mystery is a
letter of Pope's to a Mr. C--, bearing date 1732, that is, just
twenty years after the publication of the poem, in which Pope, in a
manly tone, justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses
against his unknown correspondent the very blame which he had
applied generally to the kinsman of the poor victim in 1712. Now,
unless there is some mistake in the date, how are we to explain
this gentleman's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to
Pope's anathema, with which the world had resounded for twenty
years?

Pope had now established his reputation with the public as the
legitimate successor and heir to the poetical supremacy of Dryden.
His Rape of the Lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern
literature, and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking
to extend his fame, he might count upon a pretty general support in
applying what he had already established to the promotion of his
own interest. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1713, he formed a final
resolution of undertaking a new translation of the Iliad. It must
be observed, that already in 1709, concurrently with his Pastorals,
he had published specimens of such a translation; and these had
been communicated to his friends some time before. In particular,
Sir William Trumbull, on the 9th of April, 1708, urged upon Pope a
complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey. Defective skill in
the Greek language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the
timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite twenty years
old, restrained Pope for five years and more. What he had practised
as a sort of _bravura_, for a single effort of display, he
recoiled from as a daily task to be pursued through much toil, and
a considerable section of his life. However, he dallied with the
purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one who wishes to
hear them undervalued; until at length Sir Richard Steele
determined him to the undertaking, a fact overlooked by the
biographers, but which is ascertained by Ayre's account of that
interview between Pope and Addison, probably in 1716, which sealed
the rupture between them. In the autumn of 1713, he made his design
known amongst his friends. Accordingly, on the 21st of October, we
have Lord Lansdown's letter, expressing his great pleasure at the
communication; on the 26th, we have Addison's letter encouraging
him to the task; and in November of the same year occurs the
amusing scene so graphically described by Bishop Kennet, when Dean
Swift presided in the conversation, and, amongst other indications
of his conscious authority, "instructed a young nobleman, that the
best poet in England was Mr. Pope, who had _begun_ a
translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have
them all subscribe; for," says he," _the author shall not begin
to print until I have a thousand guineas for him_."

If this were the extent of what Swift anticipated from the work, he
fell miserably below the result. But, perhaps, he spoke only of a
cautionary _arrha_ or earnest. As this was unquestionably the
greatest literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting
the most lucrative of Sir Walter Scott's, if due allowance be made
for the altered value of money, and if we consider the Odyssey as
forming part of the labor, it may be right to state the particulars
of Pope's contract with Lintot.

The number of subscribers to the Iliad was 575, and the number of
copies subscribed for was 654. The work was to be printed in six
quarto volumes; and the subscription was a guinea a volume.
Consequently by the subscription Pope obtained six times 654
guineas, or 4218L. 6s., (for the guinea then passed for 21s. 6d.);
and for the copyright of each volume Lintot offered 200L,
consequently 1200L for the whole six; so that from the Iliad the
profit exactly amounted to 5310L. 16s. Of the Odyssey, 574 copies
were subscribed for. It was to be printed in five quarto volumes,
and the subscription was a guinea a volume. Consequently by the
subscription Pope obtained five times 574 guineas, or 3085L. 5s.;
and for the copyright Lintot offered 600L. The total sum received,
therefore, by Pope, on account of the Odyssey, was 3685L. 5s. But
in this instance he had two coadjutors, Broome and Fenton; between
them they translated twelve books, leaving twelve to Pope. The
notes also were compiled by Broome; but the Postscript to the notes
was written by Pope. Fenton received 300L, Broome 500L. Such at
least is Warton's account, and more probable than that of Ruffhead,
who not only varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum
given to the assistants by 100L. Thus far we had followed the
guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie upon the face of the
transaction. But we have since detected a written statement of
Pope's, unaccountably overlooked by the biographers, and serving of
itself to show how negligently they have read the works of their
illustrious subject. The statement is entitled to the fullest
attention and confidence, not being a hasty or casual notice of the
transaction, but pointedly shaped to meet a calumnious rumor
against Pope in his character of paymaster; as if he who had found
so much liberality from publishers in his own person, were
niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those relations to
others. Broome, it was alleged, had expressed himself dissatisfied
with Pope's remuneration. Perhaps he had. For he would be likely to
frame his estimate for his own services from the scale of Pope's
reputed gains; and those gains would, at any rate, be enormously
exaggerated, as uniformly happens where there is a basis of the
marvellous to begin with. And, secondly, it would be natural enough
to assume the previous result from the Iliad as a fair standard for
computation; but in this, as we know, all parties found themselves
disappointed, and Broome had the less right to murmur at this,
since the arrangement with himself as chief journeyman in the job
was one main cause of the disappointment. There was also another
reason why Broome should be less satisfied than Fenton. Verse for
verse, any one thousand lines of a translation so purely mechanical
might stand against any other thousand; and so far the equation of
claims was easy. A book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, and
Cocker's Golden Rule open before him, could do full justice to Mr.
Broome _as a poet_ every Saturday night. But Broome had a
separate account current for pure prose against Pope. One he had in
conjunction with Fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so
much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, except as to
the allowance for tare and tret as a discount in favor of Pope. But
the prose account, the account for notes, requiring very various
degrees of reading and research, allowed of no such easy equation.
There it was, we conceive, that Broome's discontent arose. Pope,
however, declares, that he had given him 500L, thus confirming the
proportions of Warton against Ruffhead, (that is, in effect,
Warburton,) and some other advantages which were not in money, nor
deductions at all from his own money profits, but which may have
been worth so much money to Broome, as to give some colorable truth
to Ruffhead's allegation of an additional 100L. In direct money, it
remains certain that Fenton had three, and Broome five hundred
pounds. It follows, therefore, that for the Iliad and Odyssey
jointly he received a sum of 8996L. 1s., and paid for assistance
800L, which leaves to himself a clear sum of 8196L. 1s. And, in
fact, his profits ought to be calculated without deduction, since
it was his own choice, from indolence, to purchase assistance.

The Iliad was commenced about October, 1713. In the summer of the
following year he was so far advanced as to begin making
arrangements with Lintot for the printing; and the first two books,
in manuscript, were put into the hands of Lord Halifax. In June,
1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers received their
copies of the first volume; and in July Lintot began to publish
that volume generally. Some readers will inquire, who paid for the
printing and paper, &c.? All this expense fell upon Lintot, for
whom Pope was superfluously anxious. The sagacious bookseller
understood what he was about; and, when a pirated edition was
published in Holland, he counteracted the injury by printing a
cheap edition, of which 7500 copies were sold in a few weeks; an
extraordinary proof of the extended interest in literature. The
second, third, and fourth volumes of the Iliad, each containing,
like the first, four books, were published successively in 1716,
1717, 1718; and in 1720, Pope completed the work by publishing the
fifth volume, containing five books, and the sixth, containing the
last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus.

The Odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, as Mr. Roscoe
virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the publication of it was
finished in 1725. The sale, however, was much inferior to that of
the Iliad; for which more reasons than one might be assigned. But
there can be no doubt that Pope himself depreciated the work, by
his undignified arrangements for working by subordinate hands. Such
a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of
rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it
to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its
arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But in literature such arrangements
are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much
exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of
mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords)" _a
knack_; "it was deliberately helping forward that idea to let
off parts of the labor. Only think of Milton letting off by
contract to the lowest offer, and to be delivered by such a day,
(for which good security to be found,) six books of Paradise Lost.
It is true, the great dramatic authors were often
_collaborateurs_, but their case was essentially different.
The loss, however, fell not upon Pope, but upon Lintot, who, on
this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather broadly of
prosecution. But that was out of the question. Pope had acted
indiscreetly, but nothing could be alleged against his honor; for
he had expressly warned the public, that he did not, as in the
other case, profess _to translate_, but _to undertake
[Endnote: 10] a translation_ of the Odyssey. Lintot, however,
was no loser absolutely, though he might be so in relation to his
expectations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, and
became sheriff of the county in which his estates lay.

We have pursued the Homeric labors uninterruptedly from their
commencement in 1713, till their final termination in 1725, a
period of twelve years or nearly; because this was the task to
which Pope owed the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life,
since it was this which enabled him to decline a pension from all
administrations, and even from his friend Craggs, the secretary, to
decline the express offer of 300L per annum. Indeed Pope is always
proud to own his obligations to Homer. In the interval, however,
between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope listened to proposals made
by Jacob Tonson, that he should revise an edition of Shakspeare.
For this, which was in fact the first attempt at establishing the
text of the mighty poet, Pope obtained but little money, and still
less reputation. He received, according to tradition, only 217L.
12s. for his trouble of collation, which must have been
considerable, and some other trifling editorial labor. And the
opinion of all judges, from the first so unfavorable as to have
depreciated the money-value of the book enormously, perhaps from a
prepossession of the public mind against the fitness of Pope for
executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since pronounced
this work the very worst edition in existence. For the edition we
have little to plead; but for the editor it is but just to make
three apologies. In the _first_ place, he wrote a brilliant
preface, which, although (like other works of the same class) too
much occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, for the
sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep injustice to
Shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, extended his fame, by
giving the sanction and countersign of a great wit to the national
admiration. _Secondly_, as Dr. Johnson admits, Pope's failure
pointed out the right road to his successors. _Thirdly_, even
in this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated scale of
merit, as distributed amongst the long succession of editors
through that century, Pope holds a rank proportionable to his age.
For the year 1720, he is no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer,
Capell, Warburton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively
below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below Steevens, as
he again was below Malone and Read.

The gains from Shakspeare would hardly counterbalance the loss
which Pope sustained this year from the South Sea Bubble. One
thing, by the way, is still unaccountably neglected by writers on
this question. How it was that the great Mississippi Bubble, during
the Orleans regency in Paris, should have happened to coincide with
that of London. If this were accident, how marvellous that the same
insanity should possess the two great capitals of Christendom in
the same year? If, again, it were not accident, but due to some
common cause, why is not that cause explained? Pope to his nearest
friends never stated the amount of his loss. The biographers report
that at one time his stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand
pounds. But that is quite impossible. It is true, that as the stock
rose at one time a thousand per cent., this would not imply on
Pope's part an original purchase beyond twenty-five hundred pounds
or thereabouts. But Pope has furnished an argument against _that,
_ which we shall improve. He quotes, more than once, as
applicable to his own case, the old proverbial riddle of Hesiod,
_----- ----- ------, the half is more than the whole_. What
did he mean by that? We understand it thus: That between the
selling and buying, the variations had been such as to sink his
shares to one half of the price they had once reached, but, even at
that depreciation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had
been at first. But the half of 25,000 would be a far larger sum
than Pope could have ventured to risk upon a fund confessedly
liable to daily fluctuation. 3000 English pounds would be the
utmost he could risk; in which case the half of 25,000 pounds
would have left him so very much richer, that he would have
proclaimed his good fortune as an evidence of his skill and
prudence. Yet, on the contrary, he wished his friends to understand
at times that he had lost. But his friends forgot to ask one
important question: Was the word _loss_ to be understood in
relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth which he once
possessed, or in relation to the absolute sum invested in the South
Sea fund? The truth is, Pope practised on this, as on other
occasions, a little finessing, which is the chief foible in his
character. His object was, that, according to circumstances, he
might vindicate his own freedom from the common mania, in case his
enemies should take that handle for attacking him; or might have it
in his power to plead poverty, and to account for it, in case he
should ever accept that pension which had been so often tendered
but never sternly rejected.

In 1723 Pope lost one of his dearest friends, Bishop Atterbury, by
banishment; a sentence most justly incurred, and mercifully
mitigated by the hostile Whig government. On the bishop's trial a
circumstance occurred to Pope which flagrantly corroborated his own
belief in his natural disqualification for public life. He was
summoned as an evidence on his friend's behalf. He had but a dozen
words to say, simply explaining the general tenor of his lordship's
behavior at Bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though
supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he broke down. Lord
Bolingbroke, returning from exile, met the bishop at the sea-side;
upon which it was wittily remarked that they were "exchanged." Lord
Bolingbroke supplied to Pope the place, or perhaps more than
supplied the place, of the friend he had lost; for Bolingbroke was
a free-thinker, and so far more entertaining to Pope, even whilst
partially dissenting, than Atterbury, whose clerical profession
laid him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is reason
to think, of conscience.

In 1725, on closing the Odyssey, Pope announces his intention to
Swift of quitting the labors of a translator, and thenceforwards
applying himself to original composition. This resolution led to
the Essay on Man, which appeared soon afterwards; and, with the
exception of two labors, which occupied Pope in the interval
between 1726 and 1729, the rest of his life may properly be
described as dedicated to the further extension of that Essay. The
two works which he interposed were a collection of the fugitive
papers, whether prose or verse, which he and Dean Swift had
scattered amongst their friends at different periods of life. The
avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the secret
motive, as disclosed in Pope's confidential letters, was to make it
impossible thenceforwards for piratical publishers like Curll. Both
Pope and Swift dreaded the malice of Curll in case they should die
before him. It was one of Curll's regular artifices to publish a
heap of trash on the death of any eminent man, under the title of
his Remains; and in allusion to that practice, it was that
Arbuthnot most wittily called Curll "one of the new terrors of
death." By publishing _all_, Pope would have disarmed Curll
beforehand; and that was in fact the purpose; and that plea only
could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, the other sixty
years old, for reprinting _jeux d'esprit_ that never had any
other apology than the youth of their authors. Yet, strange to say,
after all, some were omitted; and the omission of one opened the
door to Curll as well as that of a score. Let Curll have once
inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he would soon have driven it
home.

This Miscellany, however, in three volumes, (published in 1727, but
afterwards increased by a fourth in 1732,) though in itself a
trifling work, had one vast consequence. It drew after it swarms of
libels and lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at Pope, although
the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page.
These libels in _their_ turn produced a second reaction; and,
by stimulating Pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for
the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of
Pope's works; a monument of satirical power the greatest which man
has produced, not excepting the MacFleckno of Dryden, namely, the
immortal Dunciad.

In October of the year 1727, this poem, in its original form, was
completed. Many editions, not spurious altogether, nor
surreptitious, but with some connivance, not yet explained, from
Pope, were printed in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto
and acknowledged edition was published in London early in "1728-9,"
as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the
reader,) in 1729. On March 12 of which year it was presented by the
prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king and queen at St.
James's.

Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and
afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the
efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in
fact, than all his Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared
his friends to expect for the future only an indolent companion and
a hermit. Events rapidly succeeded which tended to strengthen the
impression he had conceived of his own decay, and certainly to
increase his disgust with the world. In 1732 died his friend
Atterbury; and on December the 7th of the same year Gay, the most
unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and the one with whom he
had at one time been domesticated, expired, after an illness of
three days, which Dr. Arbuthnot declares to have been "the most
precipitate" he ever knew. But in fact Gay had long been decaying,
from the ignoble vice of too much and too luxurious eating. Six
months after this loss, which greatly affected Pope, came the last
deadly wound which this life could inflict, in the death of his
mother. She had for some time been in her dotage, and recognized no
face but that of her son, so that her death was not unexpected; but
that circumstance did not soften the blow of separation to Pope.
She died on the 7th of June, 1733, being then ninety-three years
old. Three days after, writing to Richardson the painter, for the
purpose of urging him to come down and take her portrait before the
coffin was closed, he says, "I thank God, her death was as easy as
her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even a
sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of
tranquillity," that "it would afford the finest image of a saint
expired that ever painting drew. Adieu, may you die as happily."
The funeral took place on the 11th; Pope then quitted the house,
unable to support the silence of her chamber, and did not return
for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself to the sight of her
vacant apartment.

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