|WHEN, in the year 1741, after his quarrel with Gray, Horace Walpole lay
sick of a quinsy at Reggio, the shearing of his thin-spun life was only
postponed by the opportune intervention of a passing acquaintance. The
Rev. Joseph Spence, Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Professor of
Poetry to that University, then travelling in Italy as Governor to Henry
Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, promptly arrived to his aid, summoned Dr.
Cocchi posthaste from Florence, and thus became instrumental in enabling
the Prince of Letter-Writers to expand the thirty or forty epistles
he had already produced into that magnificent correspondence which,
incomplete even now, * fills no fewer than nine closely printed volumes.
* For example, a number of new letters are included in vol.
iii. of the privately-printed 'Letters and Journals of Lady
Mary Coke,' 1889-92.
Spence, to whom all Walpole's admirers owe a lasting debt of gratitude,
was one of the fortunate men of a fortunate literary age. In 1726 he had
published a 'genteel' critique of Pope's 'Odyssey,' conspicuous for its
courteous mingling of praise and blame, and not the less grateful to
the person criticised because--as Bennot Langton said, and as good luck
would have it--ten out of the twelve objections fell, upon the labours
of Pope's luckless coadjutors, Broome and Fenton. The book made Pope his
friend, and himself Professor of Poetry, in which capacity he patronised
Thomson, and protected Queen Caroline's thresher-laureate, Stephen Duck.
During the continental tours which he undertook in 1730 and 1737, and in
that above referred to, he collected the material for his 'Polymetis,'
a tall _folio_ on classical mythology, the earlier editions of which
are now chiefly sought after for their irreverent vignette of Dr. Cooke,
propositor of Eton, in the disguise of 'an ass's nowl.' Spence continued
to dally lightly with letters, editing Sackville's 'Gorboduc,'
annotating Virgil, writing a life of the blind poet Blacklock, and
comparing (after the manner of Plutarch), for Walpole's private press
at Strawberry, Mr. Robert Hill, the 'learned tailor' of Buckingham, with
that Florentine _helluo librorum_, Signor Antonio Magliabecchi. He
lived the mildly studious life of a quiet, easy-going clergyman of the
eighteenth century, nursing a widowed mother like Pope, and declining
to disturb the placid ripple of his days by the 'violent delights'
of matrimony. He is 'the completest scholar,' 'the sweetest tempered
gentleman breathing,' cries his enthusiastic friend, Mr. Christopher
Pitt, himself a virtuoso and a translator of Homer. He is 'extremely'
polite, friendly, cheerful, and master of an infinite fund of subjects
for agreeable conversation,' says Mr. Shenstone of the Leasowes. 'He was
a good-natured, harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny than
a genius,' says ungrateful Mr. Walpole. 'He was a poor creature, though
a very worthy man,' says clever Mr. Cambridge of the 'World' and the
'Scribleriad.' To strike an average between these varying estimates
is not a difficult task. It gives us a character amiable rather than
strong, finical rather than earnest, well-informed and ingenious rather
than positively learned. For the rest, 'Polymetis' has been supplanted
by Lempriere, and is as dead as Stephen Duck; and its author now lives
mainly by the 'priefs' which, like Sir Hugh Evans, he made in his
notebook,--in other words, by the Anecdotes of the Literary Men of his
age, which, when occasion offered, he jotted down from the conversation
of Pope, Young, Dean Lockier, and other notabilities into whose company
he came from time to time.
The story of Spence's 'Anecdotes' is a chequered one. At their author's
death they were still in manuscript, though their existence was an open
secret. Joseph Warton had handselled them for his 'Essay on Pope;' and
Warburton had used them for Ruffhead's 'Life.' When Spence died in 1768,
it was discovered that he had himself intended to print them,--that he
had, in fact, conditionally sold a selection of them to Robert Dodsley,
the bookseller (whom he had formerly befriended), for a hundred pounds.
But before publication was finally arranged both Spence and Robert
Dodsley died. Spence's executors--Bishop Lowth, Dr. Ridley, and Mr.
Rolle--thought suppression for a time desirable; and the surviving
Dodsley, James, although, says Joseph Warton, 'he probably would have
gained £400 or £500 by it,' was easily prevailed upon, out of regard
for Spence, to relinquish the bargain. The manuscript selection was then
presented by the executors to Spence's old pupil, Lord Lincoln, who had
become Duke of Newcastle, while the original 'Anecdotes,' and a fair
copy, remained in Bishop Lowth's possession. The Newcastle MS. was lent
to Johnson, who employed it for his 'Lives of the Poets,' giving great
offence to the Duke by acknowledging the loan without mentioning the
name of the lender; and Malone had access to it for his Dryden, at the
same time compiling from it a smaller selection, which he annotated
briefly. By a series of circumstances too lengthy to detail, this last,
some years after Malone's death, passed into the hands of Mr. John
Murray, who published it in 1820. In the same year, and, by a curious
coincidence, upon the same day, appeared another edition based upon the
Lowth papers, which had also found their way into other hands. This was
prefaced and annotated by Mr. S. W. Singer, and a second edition of it
was issued in 1858 by J. R. Smith. Beyond these three editions of the
'Anecdotes,' there has been no other reprint but the excellent little
compilation in the 'Camelot' series which the late Mr. John Underhill
put forth in 1890.
As will be gathered from the above, Spence's own selection is still
unpublished, and is supposed to remain in the possession of the
Newcastle family. But as Malone extracted all of it that he thought
worth keeping, and as Singer printed the materials on which it was
based, it is not likely that its publication now, even if it were found
to be practicable, would be of material interest, except to show what
Spence personally regarded as deserving of preservation. With respect
to the 'Anecdotes' themselves, there can be little doubt that, whatever
their subsequent extension may have been, they originated in Spence's
acquaintanceship with Pope; and that their first purpose was the
bringing together of such dispersed data as might serve for the basis of
his biography. (So much, in fact, Spence told Warburton when they
were returning from Twickenham after Pope's death; and then, like the
courteous, amiable 'silver penny' that he was, surrendered all his
memoranda to his more pretentious companion, in whose subsequent 'Life,'
for Ruffhead's 'Life of Pope' is really Warburton's, nearly every
anecdote of value is derived from Spence.) From collecting Popiana to
collecting _ana_ of Pope's contemporaries, would be a natural step;
and it would be but a step farther to add, from time to time, such
supplementary notes or _impressions de voyage_ as presented themselves,
even if they had no special connection with the primary matter, which
is Pope and Pope's doings. Indeed, in Singer's opinion, Spence's
'Anecdotes' already contain, not only 'a complete though brief
autobiography' of the poet, but also 'the most exact record of his
opinions on important topics,'--a record which is 'probably the more
genuine and undisguised, because not premeditated, but elicited by the
impulse of the moment.' This, as far as it relates to Pope's views
on abstract literary questions, is no doubt true; but 'genuine,'
'undisguised,' and 'unpremeditated' are scarcely the epithets which
modern criticism has taught us to apply to some, at least, of Pope's
utterances concerning his contemporaries; and in these respects we are
more exactly informed than the Oxford Professor of Poetry. Take, for
instance, the well-known Wycherley correspondence. 'People have pitied
you extremely,' says sympathetic Mr. Spence, who professes to
speak _verbatim_, 'on reading your letters to Wycherley [i.e., the
correspondence which Pope had printed]; surely 'twas a very difficult
thing for you to keep well with him!' And thereupon Mr. Pope, of
Twickenham and Parnassus, replies that 'it was the most difficult thing
in the world;' that he was 'extremely plagued up and down, for almost
two years,' with Wycherley's verses; that Wycherley was really angry at
having them so much corrected; that his memory was entirely gone,--and
so forth. * All of which Mr. Spence confidingly transfers to his
tablets. But thanks to the publication by Mr. Courthope in 1889, from
the manuscripts at Longleat, of most of Wycherley's autograph letters,
we now know that the correspondence to which Spence referred had been
considerably 'edited' by Pope with the view of misrepresenting his
dealings with Wycherley; and there is even something more than a
suspicion that he actually concocted those of Wycherley's letters
for which there are no equivalent vouchers in the Marquis of Bath's
collection.
* He did not tell Spence (as he might have done) that his
own 'Damn with faint praise' was borrowed from the man he
was decrying. 'And with faint praises one another damn,' is
a line in one of Wycherley's prologues.
In any case, the real documents show clearly that, instead of resenting
the amendments and alterations of his 'Deare Little Infallible,' as he
calls him, the old dramatist received them with effusive gratitude; and,
far from reproaching the poet for neglecting to visit him (which Pope
implied), constantly delayed or postponed his own visits to Pope at
Binfield;--in short, did, in reality, just the very reverse of what he
is represented as doing in Pope's garbled correspondence. So that, in
these worshipful _communiqués_ to Spence, Pope must simply have been
playing at that eighteenth-century pastime to which Swift refers in the
'Polite Conversation' as 'Selling a Bargain.'
In Pope's life, it is to be feared, there were not a few of these
equivocal mercantile transactions. He certainly imposed on Spence's
credulity when he told him that 'there was a design whieh does not
generally appear,' in other words, a cryptic significance, in his
correspondence with Henry Cromwell. And he also, with equal certainty,
disposed of 'a great Pennyworth' (in the current phrase) when he gave
him the--from his own point of view--eminently plausible account of
the circumstances which led to the notorious character of 'Atti-cus.'
Whether Spence, who could not be said to be unwarned, since he records
Addison's caution to Lady Mary against Pope's 'devilish tricks,' had any
lurking suspicion that Pope was not to be relied upon, does not appear.
But it is obvious that, without Spence's 'Anecdotes,' Pope's biographers
would have played but a sorry figure. From Spence it is that we get the
best account of Pope's precocious early years and studies; of his boyish
epic of Alcander, Prince of Rhodes, with its under-water scene, and its
four books of one thousand lines; of the manner of his translation of
Homer and his plan for the 'Essay on Man;' and of a number of facts
concerning the trustworthiness of which there can be no reasonable
doubt. Nor can there be any doubt as to the bulk of his purely critical
utterances. Many of these, and especially such as deal with individual
authors, are now become trite and faded. However novel may have been the
announcement under George the Second, we now learn without a shock of
surprise that Chaucer is an unequalled taleteller, that Bacon was a
great genius, that Milton's style is exotic. But, upon his own craft,
Pope's axioms are still sometimes worth hearing. 'A poem on a slight
subject,' he says, 'requires the greater care to make it considerable
enough to be read.' 'After writing a poem one should correct it all
over, with one single view at a time. Thus, for language: if an elegy,
"These lines are very good, but are they not of too heroical a strain?"
and so _vice versa_' 'There is nothing so foolish as to pretend to be
sure of knowing a great writer by his style.' '_Nil admirari_ is as true
in relation to our opinions of authors as it is in morality; and one
may say, _O, admiratores, servum pecus!_ fully as justly as _O, Imitator
es!_' 'The great secret how to write well is to know thoroughly what one
writes about, and not to be affected.' This last, however, is scarcely
more than an Horatian commonplace.
With the aid of Spence's 'Anecdotes' we gain admission to the little
villa by the Thames where, during the spring of 1744, wasted by an
intolerable asthma, but waiting serenely for the end, Pope lay sinking
slowly. Many of his sayings, and the sayings of those who visited his
sick-room, have their only chronicle in this collection. About three
weeks before his death, he printed his '_Ethic Epistles,_' copies of
which he gave away to different persons. 'Here am I, like Socrates,'
he told Spence, 'distributing my morality to my friends, just as I
am dying.' On Sunday, the 6th of May, he lost his mind for several
hours,--a circumstance which sets him wondering 'that there should be
such a thing as human vanity.' Already his spirit was escaping fitfully
to the Unknown. There are false colours on the objects about him; he
looks at everything 'as through a curtain;' he sees 'a vision.' Most of
all he suffers from his inability to think. But the old love of letters
still survives; he quotes his own verses; and when in his waking moments
Spence reads to him the 'Daphnis and Chloe' of Longus, he marvels how
the infected mind of the Regent Orleans can have relished so innocent a
book. As to his condition he has no illusions. On the 15th, after having
been visited by Thompson the quack, who had been treating him (as Ward
treated Fielding) for dropsy, and professed to find him better, he
described himself to Lyttelton as 'dying of a hundred good symptoms!' *
* This must have been a commonplace. 'Like the sick man, we
are just expiring with all sorts of good symptoms,' says
Swift, in the 'Conduct of the Allies,' 1711.
'On every catching and recovery of his mind,' Spence tells us, 'he
was always saying something kindly either of his present or his absent
friends'--'as if his humanity had outlived his understanding.' Many
of the well-known figures of the day still came and went about his
bedside--Bolingbroke from Battersea, tearful and melancholy, full-blown
Warburton, Lyttelton above-mentioned, Marchmont, blue-eyed Martha
Blount; and it was 'very observable' how the entry of the lady seemed
to give him temporary strength, or a new turn of spirits. To the last
he continued to struggle manfully with his malady. On the 27th, to the
dismay of his friends, he had himself brought down to the room where
they were at dinner; on the 28th his sedan chair was carried for three
hours into the garden he loved so well, then filled with the blossoms
of May and smelling of the coming summer. On the 29th he took the air
in Bushey Park, and a little later in the day received the sacrament,
flinging himself fervently out of bed to receive it on his knees. 'There
is nothing that is meritorious, he said afterwards, 'but virtue and
friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' On
the next day, the 30th of May, 1774, he died. 'They did not know the
exact time,' writes the faithful friend to whom we owe so many of these
'trivial, fond records,'--'for his departure was so easy that it was
imperceptible even to the standers-by.'