POPE adopted a system of literary politics--collected with
extraordinary care everything relative to his Quarrels--no
politician ever studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique
directions and intricate stratagems--some of his manoeuvres--his
systematic hostility not practised with impunity--his claim to his
own works contested--CIBBER'S facetious description of POPE'S
feelings, and WELSTED'S elegant satire on his genius--DENNIS'S
account of POPE'S Introduction to him--his political prudence
further discovered in the Collection of all the Pieces relative to
the _Dunciad_, in which he employed SAVAGE--the THEOBALDIANS and
the POPEIANS; an attack by a Theobaldian--The _Dunciad_
ingeniously defended, for the grossness of its imagery, and its
reproach of the poverty of the authors, supposed by POPE himself,
with some curious specimens of literary personalities--the
Literary Quarrel between AARON HILL and POPE distinguished for its
romantic cast--a Narrative of the extraordinary transactions
respecting the publication of POPE'S Letters; an example of
Stratagem and Conspiracy, illustrative of his character.
POPE has proudly perpetuated the history of his Literary Quarrels; and
he appears to have been among those authors, surely not forming the
majority, who have delighted in, or have not been averse to provoke,
hostility. He has registered the titles of every book, even to a
single paper, or a copy of verses, in which their authors had
committed treason against his poetical sovereignty.[192] His ambition
seemed gratified in heaping these trophies to his genius, while his
meaner passions could compile one of the most voluminous of the
scandalous chronicles of literature. We are mortified on discovering
so fine a genius in the text humbling itself through all the depravity
of a commentary full of spleen, and not without the fictions of
satire. The unhappy influence his _Literary Quarrels_ had on this
great poet's life remains to be traced. He adopted a system of
literary politics abounding with stratagems, conspiracies, manoeuvres,
and factions.
Pope's literary quarrels were the wars of his poetical ambition, more
perhaps than of the petulance and strong irritability of his
character. They were some of the artifices he adopted from the
peculiarity of his situation.
Thrown out of the active classes of society from a variety of causes
sufficiently known,[193] concentrating his passions into a solitary
one, his retired life was passed in the contemplation of his own
literary greatness. Reviewing the past, and anticipating the future,
he felt he was creating a new era in our literature, an event which
does not always occur in a century: but eager to secure present
celebrity, with the victory obtained in the open field, he combined
the intrigues of the cabinet: thus, while he was exerting great means,
he practised little artifices. No politician studied to obtain his
purposes by more oblique directions, or with more intricate
stratagems; and Pope was at once the lion and the fox of Machiavel. A
book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus
has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place
this great poet.
To keep his name alive before the public was one of his early plans.
When he published his "Essay on Criticism," anonymously, the young and
impatient poet was mortified with the inertion of public curiosity: he
was almost in despair.[194] Twice, perhaps oftener, Pope attacked
Pope;[195] and he frequently concealed himself under the names of
others, for some particular design. Not to point out his dark familiar
"Scriblerus," always at hand for all purposes, he made use of the
names of several of his friends. When he employed SAVAGE in "a
collection of all the pieces, in verse and prose, published on
occasion of the _Dunciad_," he subscribed his name to an admirable
dedication to Lord Middlesex, where he minutely relates the whole
history of the _Dunciad_, "and the weekly clubs held to consult of
hostilities against the author;" and, for an express introduction to
that work, he used the name of Cleland, to which is added a note,
expressing surprise that the world did not believe that Cleland was
the writer![196] Wanting a pretext for the publication of his
letters, he delighted CURLL by conveying to him some printed
surreptitious copies, who soon discovered that it was but a fairy
treasure which he could not grasp; and Pope, in his own defence, had
soon ready the authentic edition.[197] Some lady observed that Pope
"hardly drank tea without a stratagem!" The female genius easily
detects its own peculiar faculty, when it is exercised with inferior
delicacy.
But his systematic hostility did not proceed with equal impunity: in
this perpetual war with dulness, he discovered that every one he
called a dunce was not so; nor did he find the dunces themselves
less inconvenient to him; for many successfully substituted, for
their deficiencies in better qualities, the lie that lasts long
enough to vex a man; and the insolence that does not fear him: they
attacked him at all points, and not always in the spirit of
legitimate warfare.[198] They filled up his asterisks, and accused
him of treason. They asserted that the panegyrical verses prefixed
to his works (an obsolete mode of recommendation, which Pope
condescended to practise), were his own composition, and to which
he had affixed the names of some dead or some unknown writers.
They published lists of all whom Pope had attacked; placing at the
head, "God Almighty; the King;" descending to the "lords and
gentlemen."[199] A few suspected his skill in Greek; but every
hound yelped in the halloo against his Homer.[200] Yet the more
extraordinary circumstance was, their hardy disputes with Pope
respecting his claim to his own works, and the difficulty he more
than once found to establish his rights. Sometimes they divided public
opinion by even indicating the real authors; and witnesses from
White's and St. James's were ready to be produced. Among these
literary coteries, several of Pope's productions, in their anonymous,
and even in their MS. state, had been appropriated by several
pseudo authors; and when Pope called for restitution, he seemed to be
claiming nothing less than their lives. One of these gentlemen had
enjoyed a very fair reputation for more than two years on the
"Memoirs of a Parish-Clerk;" another, on "The Messiah!" and there were
many other vague claims. All this was vexatious; but not so much as
the ridiculous attitude in which Pope was sometimes placed by his
enraged adversaries.[201] He must have found himself in a more
perilous situation when he hired a brawny champion, or borrowed the
generous courage of some military friend.[202] To all these troubles
we may add, that Pope has called down on himself more lasting
vengeance; and the good sense of Theobald, the furious but often
acute remarks of Dennis; the good-humoured yet keen remonstrance of
Cibber; the silver shaft, tipped with venom, sent from the injured
but revengeful Lady Mary; and many a random shot, that often struck
him, inflicted on him many a sleepless night.[203] The younger
Richardson has recorded the personal sufferings of Pope when, one
day, in taking up Cibber's letter, while his face was writhing with
agony, he feebly declared that "these things were as good as
hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a
little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of
Pope, in his second letter:--"Everybody tells me that I have made you
as uneasy as a rat in a hot kettle, for a twelvemonth together."[204]
Pope was pursued through life by the insatiable vengeance of Dennis.
The young poet, who had got introduced to him, among his first
literary acquaintances, could not fail, when the occasion presented
itself, of ridiculing this uncouth son of Aristotle. The blow was
given in the character of Appius, in the "Art of Criticism;" and it is
known Appius was instantaneously recognised by the fierce shriek of
the agonised critic himself. From that moment Dennis resolved to write
down every work of Pope's. How dangerous to offend certain tempers,
verging on madness![205] Dennis, too, called on every one to join him
in the common cause; and once he retaliated on Pope in his own way.
Accused by Pope of being the writer of an account of himself, in
Jacob's "Lives of the Poets," Dennis procured a letter from Jacob,
which he published, and in which it appears that Pope's own character
in this collection, if not written by him, was by him very carefully
corrected on the proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous
attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter.
Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a
critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of
criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the
golden shaft of Apollo could not pierce.
The political prudence of Pope was further discovered in the
"Collection of all the Pieces relative to the _Dunciad_," on which
he employed Savage: these exemplified the justness of the satire,
or defended it from all attacks. The precursor of the _Dunciad_
was a single chapter in "The Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in
Poetry;" where the humorous satirist discovers an analogy between
flying-fishes, parrots, tortoises, &c., and certain writers, whose
names are designated by initial letters. In this unlucky alphabet of
dunces, not one of them but was applied to some writer of the day;
and the loud clamours these excited could not be appeased by the
simplicity of our poet's declaration, that the letters were placed at
random: and while his oil could not smooth so turbulent a sea, every
one swore to the flying-fish or the tortoise, as he had described
them. It was still more serious when the _Dunciad_ appeared. Of that
class of authors who depended for a wretched existence on their
wages, several were completely ruined, for no purchasers were to be
found for the works of some authors, after they had been inscribed
in the chronicle of our provoking and inimitable satirist.[206]
It is in this collection by Savage I find the writer's admirable
satire on the class of literary prostitutes. It is entitled "An Author
to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney." It has been ably commended by Johnson
in his "Life of Savage," and on his recommendation Thomas Davies
inserted it in his "Collection of Fugitive Pieces;" but such is the
careless curiosity of modern re-publishers, that often, in preserving
a decayed body, they are apt to drop a limb: this was the case with
Davies; for he has dropped the preface, far more exquisite than the
work itself. A morsel of such poignant relish betrays the hand of the
master who snatched the pen for a moment.
This preface defends Pope from the two great objections justly raised
at the time against the _Dunciad_: one is, the grossness and
filthiness of its imagery; and the other, its reproachful allusions to
the poverty of the authors.
The _indelicacies_ of the _Dunciad_ are thus wittily apologised
for:--
"They are suitable to the subject; a subject composed, for the most
part, of authors whose writings are the refuse of wit, and who in
life are the very excrement of Nature. Mr. Pope has, too, used dung;
but he disposes that dung in such a manner that it becomes rich
manure, from which he raises a variety of fine flowers. He deals in
rags; but like an artist, who commits them to a paper-mill, and brings
them out useful sheets. The chemist extracts a fine cordial from the
most nauseous of all dung; and Mr. Pope has drawn a sweet poetical
spirit from the most offensive and unpoetical objects of the
creation--unpoetical, though eternal writers of poetry."
The reflections on the _poverty_ of its heroes are thus ingeniously
defended:--"Poverty, not proceeding from folly, but which may be owing
to virtue, sets a man in an amiable light; but when our wants are of
our own seeking, and prove the motive of every ill action (for the
poverty of bad authors has always a bad heart for its companion), is
it not a vice, and properly the subject of satire?" The preface then
proceeds to show how "all these _said writers_ might have been _good
mechanics_." He illustrates his principles with a most ungracious
account of several of his contemporaries. I shall give a specimen of
what I consider as the polished sarcasm and caustic humour of Pope, on
some favourite subjects.
"Mr. Thomas _Cooke_.--His enemies confess him not without merit. To do
the man justice, he might have made a tolerable figure as a _Tailor_.
'Twere too presumptuous to affirm he could have been a _master_ in any
profession; but, dull as I allow him, he would not have been
despicable for a third or a fourth hand journeyman. Then had his wants
have been avoided; for, he would at least have learnt to _cut his coat
according to his cloth_.
"Why would not Mr. _Theobald_ continue an attorney? Is not _Word-catching_
more serviceable in splitting a cause, than explaining a fine poet?
"When Mrs. _Haywood_ ceased to be a strolling-actress, why might not
the lady (though once a theatrical queen) have subsisted by turning
_washerwoman_? Has not the fall of greatness been a frequent distress
in all ages? She might have caught a beautiful bubble, as it arose
from the suds of her tub, blown it in air, seen it glitter, and then
break! Even in this low condition, she had played with a bubble; and
what more is the vanity of human greatness?
"Had it not been an honester and more decent livelihood for Mr.
_Norton_ (Daniel De Foe's son of love by a lady who vended oysters)
to have dealt in a _fish-market_, than to be dealing out the dialects
of Billingsgate in the Flying-post?
"Had it not been more laudable for Mr. _Roome_, the son of an
_undertaker_, to have borne a link and a mourning-staff, in the long
procession of a funeral--or even been more decent in him to have sung
psalms, according to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have
been altering the _Jovial Crew, or Merry Beggars_, into a _wicked_
imitation of the _Beggar's Opera_?"
This satire seems too exquisite for the touch of Savage, and is quite
in the spirit of the author of the _Dunciad_. There is, in Ruffhead's
"Life of Pope," a work to which Warburton contributed all his care, a
passage which could only have been written by Warburton. The strength
and coarseness of the imagery could never have been produced by the
dull and feeble intellect of Ruffhead: it is the opinion, therefore,
of Warburton himself, on the _Dunciad_. "The _good purpose_ intended
by this satire was, to the _herd_ in general, of less efficacy than
our author hoped; for _scribblers_ have not the common sense of _other
vermin_, who usually abstain from mischief, when they see any of their
kind _gibbeted_ or _nailed up_, as terrible examples."--Warburton
employed the same strong image in one of his threats.
One of Pope's Literary Quarrels must be distinguished for its romantic
cast.
In the Treatise on the _Bathos_, the initial letters of the bad
writers occasioned many heartburns; and, among others, Aaron Hill
suspected he was marked out by the letters A. H. This gave rise to a
large correspondence between Hill and Pope. Hill, who was a very
amiable man, was infinitely too susceptible of criticism; and Pope,
who seems to have had a personal regard for him, injured those nice
feelings as little as possible. Hill had published a panegyrical
poem on Peter the Great, under the title of "The Northern Star;" and
the bookseller had conveyed to him a criticism of Pope's, of which
Hill publicly acknowledged he mistook the meaning. When the Treatise
of "The Bathos" appeared, Pope insisted he had again mistaken the
initials A. H.--Hill gently attacked Pope in "a paper of very
pretty verses," as Pope calls them. When the _Dunciad_ appeared,
Hill is said "to have published pieces, in his youth, bordering upon
the bombast." This was as light a stroke as could be inflicted; and
which Pope, with great good-humour, tells Hill, might be equally
applied to himself; for he always acknowledged, that when a boy, he
had written an Epic poem of that description; would often quote absurd
verses from it, for the diversion of his friends; and actually
inserted some of the most extravagant ones in the very Treatise on
"The Bathos." Poor Hill, however, was of the most sickly delicacy,
and produced "The Caveat," another gentle rebuke, where Pope is
represented as "sneakingly to approve, and want the worth to cherish
or befriend men of merit." In the course of this correspondence,
Hill seems to have projected the utmost stretch of his innocent
malice; for he told Pope, that he had almost finished "An Essay on
Propriety and Impropriety in Design, Thought, and Expression,
illustrated by examples in both kinds, from the writings of Mr.
Pope;" but he offers, if this intended work should create the least
pain to Mr. Pope, he was willing, with all his heart, to have it run
thus:--"An Essay on Propriety and Impropriety, &c., illustrated by
Examples of the first, from the writings of Mr. Pope, and of the
rest, from those of the author."--To the romantic generosity of this
extraordinary proposal, Pope replied, "I acknowledge your generous
offer, to give _examples of imperfections_ rather out of _your own
works_ than mine: I consent, with all my heart, to your confining them
to _mine_, for two reasons: the one, that I fear your sensibility
that way is greater than my own: the other is a better; namely,
that I intend to correct the faults you find, if they are such as I
expect from Mr. Hill's cool judgment."[207]
Where, in literary history, can be found the parallel of such an offer
of self-immolation? This was a literary quarrel like that of lovers,
where to hurt each other would have given pain to both parties. Such
skill and desire to strike, with so much tenderness in inflicting a
wound; so much compliment, with so much complaint; have perhaps never
met together, as in the romantic hostility of this literary chivalry.