"The editor (Mallet) being in company with the person to whom Mr. Pope
has consigned the care of his works (Warburton), and who, he thought,
had some intention of writing Mr. Pope's life, told him he had an
anecdote, which he believed nobody knew but himself. I was sitting one
day (said he) with Mr. Pope, in his last illness, who coming suddenly
out of a reverie, which you know he frequently fell into at that time,
and fixing his eyes steadfastly upon me; 'Mr. M. (said he), I have had
an odd kind of vision. Methought I saw my own head open, and Apollo
came out of it; I then saw your head open, and Apollo went into it;
after which our heads closed up again.' The gentleman (Warburton)
could not help smiling at his vanity; and with some humour replied,
'Why, sir, if I had an intention of writing _your_ life, this might
perhaps be a proper anecdote; but I don't see, that in Mr. Pope's it
will be of any consequence at all.'" P. 14.
This exhibits a curious instance of an author's egotism, or rather of
Mallet's conceit, contriving, by some means, to have his name slide
into the projected Life of Pope by Warburton, who appears, however,
always to have treated him with the contempt Pope himself evidently
did.[240] What opinion could the poet have entertained of the taste
of that weak and vain critic, who, when Pope published anonymously
"The Essay on Man," being asked if anything new had appeared, replied
that he had looked over a thing called an "Essay on Man," but,
discovering the utter want of skill and knowledge in the author, had
thrown it aside. Pope mortified him by confiding to him the secret.
"The Apollo Vision" was a stinging anecdote, and it came from
Warburton either directly or indirectly. This was followed up by
"A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism,
the Idea of a Patriot King," &c., a dignified remonstrance of
Warburton himself; but "The Impostor Detected and Convicted, or the
Principles and Practices of the Author of the Spirit of Patriotism
(Lord Bolingbroke) set forth in a clear light, in a Letter to a
Member of Parliament in Town, from his Friend in the Country, 1749,"
is a remarkable production. Lord Bolingbroke is the impostor and
the concealed Jacobite. Time, the ablest critic on these party
productions, has verified the predictions of this seer. We discover
here, too, a literary fact, which is necessary to complete our
present history. It seems that there were omissions and corrections
in the edition Pope printed of "The Patriot King," which his caution
or his moderation prompted, and which such a political demagogue as
Bolingbroke never forgave. They are thus alluded to: "Lord B. may
remember" (from a conversation held, at which the writer appears
to have been present), "that a difference in opinion prevailed, and
a few points were urged by that gentleman (Pope) in opposition to some
particular tenets which related to the limitation of the English
monarchy, and to the ideal doctrine of a patriot king. These were Mr.
P.'s reasons for the emendations he made; and which, together with
the consideration that both their lives were at that time in a
declining state, was the true cause, and no other, of his care to
preserve those letters, by handing them to the press, with the
precaution mentioned by the author." Indeed the cry raised against
the _dead man_ by Bolingbroke and Mallet, was an artificial one:
that it should ever have tainted the honour of the bard, or that it
should ever have been excited by his "Philosopher and Friend," are
equally strange; it is possible that the malice of Mallet was more at
work than that of Bolingbroke, who suffered himself to be the dupe
of a man held in contempt by Pope, by Warburton, and by others. But
the pamphlet I have just noticed might have enraged Bolingbroke,
because his true character is ably drawn in it. The writer says that
"a person in an eminent station of life abroad, when Lord B----
was at Paris to transact a certain affair, said, _C'est certainement
un homme d'esprit, mais un coquin sans probite_." This was a very
disagreeable truth!
In one of these pamphlets, too, Bolingbroke was mortified at his
dignity being lessened by the writer, in comparing his lordship with
their late friend Pope.--"I venture to foretell, that the name of Mr.
Pope, in spite of your unmanly endeavours, shall revive and blossom in
the dust, from his own merits; and presume to remind you, that
_yours_, had it not been for _his_ genius, _his_ friendship, _his_
idolatrous veneration for _you_, might, in a short course of years,
have died and been forgotten." Whatever the degree of genius
Bolingbroke may claim, doubtless the verse of Pope has embalmed his
fame. I have never been able to discover the authors of these
pamphlets, who all appear of the first rank, and who seem to have
written under the eye of Warburton. The awful and vindictive
Bolingbroke, and the malignant and petulant Mallet, did not long brood
over their anger: he or they gave it vent on the head of Warburton, in
those two furious pamphlets, which I have noticed in the "Quarrels of
Warburton." All these pamphlets were published in the same year, 1749,
so that it is now difficult to arrange them according to their
priority. Enough has been shown to prove, that the loud outcry of
Bolingbroke and Mallet, in their posthumous attack on Pope, arose from
their unforgiving malice against him, for the preference by which the
poet had distinguished Warburton; and that Warburton, much more than
Pope, was the real object of this masked battery.