The artful wording of the very note in which Pope refers to the printed

book betrays his desire to keep the fact out of sight. His statement

could enlighten no one who was previously ignorant. It was not from

choice that he promulgated, however obscurely, the allegation of Mrs.

Whiteway that the work had its origin in London. But he was forced upon

one of two evils, and he selected the least. Mrs. Whiteway knew that the

letters must either have been printed by Pope, or have found their way

to the press by the corruption of those who had access to his papers.

She acquitted Pope, out of courtesy, perhaps, to his own protestations,

and accepted the second conclusion, that the London booksellers had

procured the manuscripts by bribes, though she could hardly have

entertained the serious belief that the Curlls had been at the expense

of purchasing and printing them, for no other purpose than to ship a

solitary copy to Ireland. She was eager to be cleared from any possible

imputation of abusing the trust which devolved on her through the

imbecility of Swift,[144] and her anxiety to absolve herself and the

Dean, is the secret of her son-in-law insisting upon writing a preface

to prove that the traitors must have been in England and not in Ireland.

He alone would have been responsible for the facts and arguments he

adduced, and they would have appeared in the edition of Faulkner, where

they would not have claimed the sanction of Pope. His ignorance could be

no reason why an independent person should not tell what he knew and

believed, and his unwillingness to be justified was in direct opposition

to his conduct through life. It was for a different cause that he

interfered with the execution of the design. Mr. Swift would have

disclosed the fact that the letters of the poet had been returned to him

through Lord Orrery, in 1737, that he had exclusive possession of the

letters of the Dean, that the ground-work of the collection was at

Twickenham, that it had been printed at London, and had come printed to

Dublin. When he insisted upon fulfilling his intention, Pope, to divert

him from it, must have been driven to propose the insertion of the

exculpatory note. He drew it up in a form which would bear one meaning

to those who were acquainted with the facts, and another to the

multitude who were in the dark. He had the contradictory ends to answer

of propitiating Mrs. Whiteway and concealing the truth, and his

language, like everything he wrote on the question, is consequently

vague and evasive.

In the same letter in which Pope ignored the existence of the printed

book to Allen, and pretended that the Irish edition was taken directly

from the originals, he further asserted that the "Dean's people" had at

length consented to give up the manuscripts. If the originals were

really in their possession there would be strong grounds for concluding

that the conspirators were at Dublin. If, on the contrary, the

allegation of the poet was a wilful untruth, this additional

misrepresentation must lead us to conclude that he was the author of a

fraud from which he defended himself by falsehood. Mrs. Whiteway had, it

is true, commissioned Mr. Nugent to acquaint him that she had secured

several of his letters. Mr. Nugent, having delivered the message in

March, 1740, informs her in April that he was authorised to receive

them, and begs her to transmit them to him in London by a safe

hand.[145] She evidently preferred that they should go direct to their

owner, and wrote to Pope in May, that she would forward them by the

first trustworthy messenger who would deliver them to Pope himself. It

was agreed between them that Mr. M'Aulay should be the person; but they

were ultimately sent to Lord Orrery, at his country seat in Ireland, in

January or February, 1741, and were, no doubt, conveyed by him to their

final destination when he visited England in March. The critic in the

Athenaeum plausibly conjectures that they were the letters which had been

written since the transmission of the collection in June, 1737, and the

late period at which they were received would account for none of them

appearing in the quarto, which was published by the middle of April,

1741.

When Pope, at the beginning of August, 1740, heard from Faulkner that

the Dean had given him permission to print, or rather to reprint, the

correspondence, he expressed his conviction to Mr. Nugent, who was still

meddling in the business, that the offer of returning the letters was a

feint. "I presume now," he added, "that she would have sent but a few of

no consequence, for the bookseller tells me there are several of Lord

Bolingbroke's, &c., which must have been in the Dean's own

custody."[146] Mrs. Whiteway had merely undertaken to return to Pope

the letters which were written by Pope, and it is not apparent why the

printing of several of the letters of Bolingbroke should have involved

the conclusion that she was practising a feint, and would only have sent

a few of no consequence. The incongruity of the observation seems to

have been the result of the guilt which dictated it. The poet was aware

that the originals promised him were a comparatively small number, which

had no connection with the printed letters, and he was meeting the

circumstance by anticipation, in the probable event of its reaching the

ears of Mr. Nugent. The rest of the correspondence was already in his

possession, and he assigned a foolish reason why Mrs. Whiteway would not

have sent it, because the real reason could not be stated.

It was several months subsequent to this communication to Mr. Nugent,

and after he had received the comments of Mrs. Whiteway on the volume

which came from England, that he opened his griefs to Mr. Allen. The

letter is not dated; but a letter to Warburton, which gives a portion of

the same information as a piece of novel intelligence, bears the date of

February 4, 1741. "They now offer," Pope tells Allen, "to send me the

originals, which have been so long detained, and I will accept of them,

though they have done their job." A few months later he reverted to the

subject and says to Allen, "It will please you to know that I have

received the packet of letters safe from Ireland by the means of Lord

Orrery."[147] He has not the candour to acknowledge that the letters

were voluntarily tendered him by Mrs. Whiteway long before the printed

collection had been heard of. He wished to have it believed that they

had only been offered to him since the booksellers "had done their job,"

and the motive for this deception must have been the desire to identify

the letters from Mrs. Whiteway with the letters in Faulkner's volume,

while he had a secret consciousness that they had nothing in common. It

might be conjectured, indeed, that he was speaking of a distinct

occurrence, and that Lord Orrery was the bearer of two sets of letters,

though Pope mentions only one, if it were not certain, as I shall now

proceed to show, that the originals of the printed collection sent to

Dublin were never offered to him at all.

After the collection had been consigned to Faulkner, Mrs. Whiteway wrote

her sentiments at large to Lord Orrery. She asked him, with reference to

a letter of Pope's, if he believed the collection genuine, and slight as

were her doubts, the question would have been absurd if she had

professedly the originals of the correspondence in her hands. She

declared her conviction that the poet had been betrayed by his own

servants, and since the letters extended over three and twenty years,

she could not have imagined that they had all the while been intercepted

on their road to the post, but must have assumed that they had been

abstracted from the cabinets in which they were stored away at

Twickenham. The main stress of her argument against the theory that the

work had been concocted in Ireland, was laid upon the presence of the

letters of the Dean, which Pope alone could command, and not upon the

letters of Pope, which might have been copied while they remained in the

possession of Swift; but she pointed out the improbability of the

supposition by remarking that no use had been made of the book in which

Swift had stitched specimens of the correspondence of various eminent

men, and which was peculiarly accessible from his habit of circulating

it among his friends. In particular, she noticed that she had formerly

his permission to take from it a letter of Pope, and she triumphantly

remarks that this letter had not been printed. The boast could have had

no force if all the printed correspondence had been the same

correspondence she had promised to return. The notion that she had

offered to send back the originals of the collection of 1741 is

inconsistent with every part of her defence--a defence in which she was

not afraid to challenge contradiction, since she authorised Lord Orrery

to pass it on to Pope. Neither could the originals have been offered by

Faulkner; for both at the time and afterwards he asserted that his

volume was only a reprint. Pope may even be said to bear testimony

against himself. He was eager to make it appear that the work was

composed of materials which must have been drawn from the papers of

Swift, and he took advantage of the erroneous phrase in Swift's

postscript of August 24, to add, in a note, "The book that is now

printed _seems_ to be part of the collection here spoken of." The

announcement that the "Dean's people" had acknowledged that they

possessed a large proportion of the originals would have decided the

question, and the silence of the poet is an admission that he dared not

repeat in public, where it would meet the eye of the persons implicated,

the fable he had palmed off upon Allen in private. Nay, when stating in

the quarto that Mrs. Whiteway and her son-in-law charged the whole

proceeding upon the corrupt practices of the London printers, he still

did not venture to retort that the originals had never left the custody

of the "Dean's people," who detained them in Dublin until, according to

his own expression, the Dublin printers had "done their job." The fact

was, that Allen had intimated his apprehension that Pope would be

suspected of being concerned in the publication, and Pope replied that

"the whole thing was so circumstanced that this could never be the

case." To stifle the suggestion, he based a falsehood upon a foundation

of truth, and spoke of the letters which Mrs. Whiteway had offered to

send him, in the beginning of 1740, as though they had been the

originals of the printed correspondence. His invention of a fiction to

establish his innocence, is a sure indication of his guilt.

The Dean's people promised Pope the copy of the correspondence, that he

might correct and expunge what he pleased. "I dare not," he wrote to

Allen, "even do this, for they would say I revised it." His mind

immediately veered from decision to uncertainty, and in the next

sentence but one he states that "he knows not whether to make any use of

the permission or not." A little further, and he comes to the conclusion

that until he sees the letters he can form no judgment of the proper

measures to be pursued. "The excessive earnestness," he adds, "the Dean

has been in for publishing them makes me hope they are castigated in

some degree; or he must be totally deprived of his understanding." Lord

Mansfield deposed, from the personal information of Pope, that his

imperfect memory of their contents increased his anxiety to stop the

publication.[148] In the midst of his apprehensions, his knowledge of

Swift's incapacity, and his conviction that it would be insanity to

allow the correspondence to go forth in its integrity, he yet resolved

not to expurgate the copy, and then doubted whether he would expurgate

it or not. This easy kind of hesitation, which has none of the

appearance of genuine alarm, was what might be expected in a man who had

already revised the letters to his heart's content, and was poorly

performing a borrowed part. Though he ended by refusing to retouch a

text of his own preparing, he employed the interval while the sheets

were submitted to his criticism in forestalling the Dublin edition. Mr.

D. Swift believed that the correspondence was first published in

Ireland. Faulkner asserted that it was first published in England, and

Faulkner, who could not well be mistaken, was right. No advertisement of

the Irish volume is to be found in the "Dublin News Letter" till some

time after the English volume was on sale, and no copy exists in the

public libraries, or after long search could be heard of from the

second-hand booksellers, which does not contain the additional matter

inserted in the quarto.[149] In the prefatory notice to the quarto

itself we are told that the letters are taken "from an impression sent

from Dublin, and said to be printed by the Dean's direction." This was

the impression which had been privately forwarded to Pope, and the

language seems to have been carefully selected to avoid the assertion

that there had been a publication of the work. The poet's scheme may be

discerned in the account he gave to Allen. He informed him that the

book, being most of it printed, was "put past preventing," but that he

was "trying all the means possible to retard it." In plain words, he was

manoeuvring to keep back the Irish edition till his rival reprint was

in the market. When he had succeeded in his device, he repeated his old

tactics of advertising that the surreptitious collection was the cause

of his own, and at the same time bespoke the preference for his reprint

by announcing that it would contain "several additional letters."[150]

Apart from these additions, the quarto of Pope is a reproduction, with

some variations, of the Dublin impression, and a few notes which

Faulkner had doubtless found in the volume sent from England, are said

in the quarto to be taken from Faulkner. Nevertheless there is strong

internal evidence that a portion of the quarto had an independent

origin, and had been printed off before the Irish edition was received.

The correspondence consists of 209 pages, which are numbered

consecutively from 1 to 115. At this point the letters of Swift to Gay

commence, and instead of the numbers proceeding in regular order, they

go back to page 89, and are thence continued without any break to the

final page, 182. That the arrangement is not a typographical mistake is

clear from the signatures of the sheets being in accordance with the

paging,--a coincidence which was barely possible if the figures had been

a misprint. The correspondence of Swift with Gay begins on sheet N,

which is the letter of the alphabet that answers to page 89 in a quarto

volume, and this keeping between the letters and the figures is

preserved throughout. But there is a second coincidence which is

absolutely fatal to the idea that the confusion in the paging was an

error of the press. The quarto edition was accompanied by an edition in

folio, which was the same impression with the matter parcelled out into

pages of greater length, and with the requisite changes in the numbering

of the pages and the signatures of the sheets. In spite of the change

there is the identical peculiarity that distinguishes the quarto. The

numbers run on unbroken from 1 to 108, when we arrive at the letters to

Gay. Here we recommence with page 85, and starting from this new basis

the figures proceed in regular succession to the end. The sheet at page

85 is marked Y, the proper letter for the folio size, and as in the

quarto the signatures, in every instance, correspond with the pages. The

defect cannot be explained by the supposition that the work had been

divided into portions, which were printed separately for the sake of

expedition. With the text of the Dublin copy to guide his calculations,

no compositor could have committed the error of pronouncing that matter

which covers 115 pages could he contained in 88. The evident cause of

the anomaly is that, after the quarto in its original form had passed

through the press, Pope saw reason to cancel the opening part of the

volume which preceded Swift's correspondence with Gay. The materials in

their second form occupied more space than in their first, and instead

of filling only 88 pages in the quarto, and 84 in the folio, run on to

115 in the one, and 108 in the other. The consequence is that the pages

in excess bear the same numbers with the succeeding uncancelled pages

which could not be altered. The process is rendered further apparent by

the signatures to the sheets. In both folio and quarto, those on the

surplus pages, in the cancelled division of the volume, have an asterisk

affixed to denote that the signatures had been already employed;[151]

but though the sheets have this mark of repetition, they are placed in

the volume before the uncancelled sheets which retain the primitive

signatures, and which did not admit of any change. In the quarto, again,

a half sheet precedes the letters to Gay, which could not have happened

unless it had been a subsequent interpolation, when the matter was

insufficient to make the sheet complete. The half-sheet, the duplicate

paging, and the duplicate signatures, are all the result of the

insertion of fresh materials after the work was struck off, and betray

that there was an earlier form of the quarto of 1741, which contained

less than the Dublin edition, and which, therefore, being prior to it,

is a proof that the correspondence was originally printed by Pope. The

letters in the quarto are numbered, and since the series is unbroken

throughout, the original cancelled division must ostensibly have

comprised as many letters as when it was subsequently enlarged. But a

letter to Gay, dated Nov. 23, 1727, is found by the copies preserved in

the Oxford papers, to be compounded of three distinct letters, and this

system of fusion would have permitted the introduction of large

additions without deranging the continuity Of the numbers, which Pope

would have been anxious to preserve. The cancels he made to suit his

varying views were in accordance with his practice. The miscellaneous

prose works, which follow the letters, have in one place alone a cancel

of upwards of a hundred pages. Equally characteristic was the desire to

preserve any of the old sheets which could be retained, regardless of

the blemish to the book, and the trace they might afford of his

manoeuvres. It was a repetition of the paper-sparing policy which led

him to incorporate the suppressed sheets of his Wycherley into the

volume of 1735.[152]

On the 22nd of March, 1741, Pope called upon Lord Orrery at his house in

London, and found him writing to Swift. The poet took the pen from his

hand, and continued the letter. After large professions of affection, he

went on to say, "I must confess, a late incident has given me some pain;

but I am satisfied you were persuaded it would not have given me any,

and whatever unpleasant circumstances the printing our letters might be

attended with, there was one that pleased me,--that the strict

friendship we have borne each other so long is thus made known to all

mankind. As far as it was your will, I cannot be angry at what, in all

other respects, I am quite uneasy under. Had you asked me, before you

gave them away, I think I could have proposed some better monument for

our friendship, or, at least, of better materials." Any words addressed

to Swift were lost upon him now, and Pope in reality was speaking to

Lord Orrery, and to those who might hereafter read his protestations. He

had apparently forgotten that just four years before he had complained

to the same Lord Orrery, that the Dean had denied his request when he

wished to insert some of the letters in the quarto of 1737.[153] The

monument he was eager to erect to their friendship in 1737, he

repudiated in 1741. He affirmed that he could have proposed a better,

but never hinted what it was; or at least of choicer materials, but

never troubled himself further about them. This was the smallest part of

the contradiction. He refused his consent to the reprint of the book

sent to Dublin, and had even tried, he told Allen, to stop it by threats

of law. It is true, he confessed to Mr. Nugent at the outset, and

continued to confess to Allen, that he had no hope of prevailing; but

his efforts are not the less the measure of his pretended disgust. Yet

he instantly appropriated the correspondence he was anxious to stifle in

its birth, contrived to anticipate the Dublin edition, incorporated the

entire collection into his works, and published it simultaneously in

folio, quarto, and octavo. He stated in the prefatory notice, that he

had refused to revise the letters, because they were committed to the

press without his consent; but the annoyance which would not permit him

to revise the letters was no check to his haste in adopting, or to his

zeal in circulating them. For a man who was "quite uneasy" at their

appearance, his eagerness to countenance, to parade, and to propagate

them was amazing, and the manifest duplicity is not the least forcible

of the arguments which bring the whole contrivance home to Pope.

Warburton applauded him for the little resentment "he expressed at the

indiscretion of his old friend." He affected far more than his advocate

supposed; but if it had been otherwise it is strange that Warburton

should not have perceived that to talk of resentment was ridiculous when

the poet was espousing "the indiscretion," and was doing his utmost to

disseminate the letters he feigned a wish to suppress.

Curll republished the letters under the title of "Dean Swift's Literary

Correspondence." Pope filed a bill in Chancery against Curll on June 4,

1741. The poet not only demanded protection for his own letters, but

desired that the bookseller should be restrained from vending the

letters of Swift, who was not a party to the suit, nor had commissioned

any one to interfere on his behalf. The case was memorable both from its

intrinsic importance, and from the celebrity of the plaintiff. In his

answer, on the 13th of June, Curll admitted that nobody had authorised

his work. He rested his defence on three propositions. He maintained

that private correspondence did not come within the Copyright Act of

Queen Anne, because the Act was declared in the title to be for the

"Encouragement of _Learning_," whereas letters on familiar subjects were

not _learned_ productions; and because the Act was designed to protect

books which were avowedly composed for the press, whereas letters were

written without the intention of converting them into a literary

commodity. He said that he was informed, and believed, that the letters

were first "printed"[154] at Dublin, and he contended that all persons

in England had a right to reproduce books which were first "published"

in Ireland. He finally argued that letters were in the nature of a gift

to the receiver, and that after they were delivered to the Dean they

became his property. On the motion to dissolve the injunction on these

grounds, Lord Hardwicke decided that they were none of them valid. He

refused to recognise a distinction between letters and other

compositions. He denied that a prior publication in Ireland could

deprive an English author of his English rights. He, above all,

determined that though the paper on which the letter was written might

possibly be the property of the receiver, the matter remained the

property of the writer. For the same reason that he admitted Pope's

title to his own letters, he declined to continue the injunction with

respect to the letters addressed to him, which had never ceased to

belong to the persons who penned them.[155] The celebrated Murray was

one of the counsel for the poet,[156] and afterwards, when Lord Chief

Justice, he quoted and confirmed the decision of the Chancellor. "The

question," he said, "was whether the property was not transferred to the

correspondent. Lord Hardwicke thought not, and that the writer was still

the proprietor."[157] "Dean Swift," he said subsequently, "was certainly

the proprietor of the paper upon which Pope's letters to him were

written; but no disposition, no transfer of paper upon which the

composition is written can be construed a conveyance of the copy,

without the author's express consent to print and publish, much less

against his will."[158] Just and valuable as is the rule of law which

prohibits the publication of a letter without the permission of its

author, the manner in which Pope invoked it was singular. According to

his statement it was Swift that had prepared and put forth a

correspondence, in which more of the letters were from the pen of the

Dean than from the pen of the poet. Pope, while professing to be vexed

beyond measure at this exposure of private papers, asked for an

injunction, not for the purpose of suppressing them, but to obtain a

monopoly of the sale. He was not even content to reclaim his personal

share in the publication of the friend whom he upbraided for the act.

He tried to prevent any one except himself from profiting by Swift's

part of the book, and at the same time that he was endeavouring to

secure goods which did not belong to him, he reproached their owner for

displaying them. His conduct once more betrayed the truth he laboured to

conceal. He was the compiler of the collection, and instinctively

regarded a rival edition as an invasion of his rights. His proceedings

were unnatural, if Swift was the sole originator of the work; but if it

had a different source we can perceive why Pope was jealous of the least

interference with property which, from the outset, he considered to be

exclusively his own.

A fatality attended the correspondence of Pope. Curll, in defiance of

him, printed his letters to Cromwell. Lord Oxford, in spite of his

disapproval, printed his letters to Wycherley. An unknown person, by

unknown means, obtained the whole of the collection of 1735, printed it

secretly at his own expense, and sold it for a song. To render the

history uniform and complete, Swift, who would not permit Pope to print

their letters, printed them himself, while Pope, changing sides with

him, remonstrated and threatened. That nothing might be wanting to the

singularity of the case, the three last sets of letters stole into the

world when they were under the vigilant guardianship of the poet, and

the two last sets got abroad after the abiding paroxysm of terror,

engendered by the indiscretion of a single dissolute friend, had induced

him to wrest his correspondence from friends of every degree for the

purpose of securing it from the possibility of publication. Mrs.

Whiteway remarked to Lord Orrery, that among the letters in the Dean's

stitched book were numbers from the greatest men in England for genius,

learning, and power,--from Bolingbroke, Oxford, Bathurst, and

Peterborough; from Addison, Congreve, Prior, Parnell, and Gay. She said

these were as easily pilfered, and would have been as interesting to the

world, as the letters of Pope and Swift;[159] but nobody invaded the

sanctity of the private correspondence of the poet's contemporaries,

even when the papers were open to half the gossips of Dublin. He stood

alone in a misfortune which happened to him no less than four times,

and which it is to be feared would have happened a fifth if he had lived

long enough to accumulate the materials for a fresh volume. He relaxed

his correspondence with Caryll in 1729, and with Swift in 1737, as a

means to compel them to resign his former letters, and to both he used

the same expression,--that "he did not write upon the terms of other

_honest_ men."[160] The fallacy of the parallel was in the epithet. If

he had resembled other men in their honesty he might have shared in

their immunity from the alleged treachery of friends like Oxford and

Swift, and of enemies like Curll.

Of all the deceptions which the poet practised to get his correspondence

under the eye of the world, his dealings towards Swift are the worst. He

had failed to gain his consent to putting forth the letters while any

judgment yet remained to him; but no sooner had he sunk into dotage

than, trusting to his inability to detect the cheat, Pope beguiled him

into sanctioning the publication by sending him the volume ready

printed, with a flattering exhortation, the echo of what he had written

on a former occasion,[161] "importing that it was criminal to suppress

such an amiable picture of the Dean and his private character."[162] The

moment Swift fell into the pit his friend had dug for him, his friend

denounced him for the act. "I think," he wrote to Mr. Nugent, "I can

make no reflections upon this strange incident but what are truly

melancholy, and humble the pride of human nature,--that the greatest of

geniuses, though prudence may have been the companion of wit (which is

very rare) for their whole lives past, may have nothing left them at

last but their vanity. No decay of body is half so miserable!"

Extraordinary language to come from the pen of the man whose vanity,

without any excuse from the decay of his faculties, had made him eager

to print the letters in 1737, and who had been only thwarted in his

desire because Swift was wanting in the vanity by which he himself was

impelled,--infamous language when the deed he reprobated was his own,

and Swift the innocent dupe; and when having traded successfully in the

mental afflictions of his friend, he proceeded to hold up his victim, as

the criminal. But the simulated indignation is less revolting than the

simulated fondness. "When the heart is full of tenderness," he said to

the Dean, in the letter of March 22, 1741, "it must be full of concern

at the absolute impotency of all words to come up to [it]. I value and

enjoy more the memory of the pleasure and endearing obligations I have

formerly received from you than the perfect possession of any other.

Think it not possible that my affection can cease but with my last

breath. If I could think yours was exhausted I should grieve, but not

reproach you. If I felt myself even hurt by you I should be confident

you knew not the blow you gave, but had your hand guided by another."

The hand which guided him was the same hand that was at that moment

aiming a blow at his reputation. Taking advantage of his cruel malady

and prostrate understanding, Pope was even then endeavouring to fasten

upon him the stigma of his own personal treachery, and this pretended

magnanimity in forgiving a deed which he had contrived and instigated

was in itself a calumny and a fraud.

If any doubt could exist that it was Pope who put forth the collection

of 1735, and the Swift collection of 1741, we have still in the quarto

of 1737 his own avowed version of a large portion of his correspondence.

He published it with the express object of correcting the corrupt text

of spurious editions, and there remains the inquiry whether he published

it truly. When he burnt three-fourths of it, and deposited copies of the

rest in the library of Lord Oxford, he professed to have preserved the

originals from which the copies were taken. Lord Bolingbroke discovered

a great number of returned letters among his papers after his death, and

told Dr. Heberden that they contained many alterations and corrections,

which he supposed had been made with the intention of printing them some

time or other.[163] From this it would be inferred that those which had

been printed were not part of the collection, and that the poet had

found it inexpedient to retain vouchers, which would condemn if they did

not acquit him. Unfortunately the whole of the manuscripts were

destroyed by Lord Bolingbroke, and beyond the unsatisfactory information

conveyed in his remark, nothing can now be known of them. The literal

interpretation of his language is favoured by the evidence yet within

our reach, and we should conclude that Pope had not kept originals which

would have revealed alterations in the published letters of a far more

serious nature than any which Bolingbroke appears to have suspected.

John Caryll, a Roman Catholic country gentleman residing in Sussex, was

among the intimate correspondents of Pope for twenty-five years, from

1710 to 1735. The poet wrote to him on Nov. 19, 1712, and asked to have

the "whole cargo of his epistles returned," which he said might be of

use "in a design he had lately engaged in." This design was probably to

furnish some essays to the "Guardian," which commenced on the 12th of

March, 1713. He promised to restore the letters when he had done with

them, and his friend at once complied with his desire. After the

surreptitious publication of his correspondence with Cromwell, Pope, in

December, 1726, renewed his petition to Caryll to make over to him "all

such papers as he had too partially preserved;" but the object of the

request this time was "to put them out of the power of Curll." The poet

announced that he would send back those which could do no hurt to the

character of himself, his friend, or any other person; that he would

retain those which "would serve to bear testimony of his own love for

good men, or theirs for him;" and implied, as a consequence, that he

would destroy those which did not fall under either of these heads. By

this division the insignificant letters alone would have been restored

to Caryll, and whether he was mistrustful of the use to which Pope might

apply the remainder, or whether he was anxious to preserve intact the

memorials of his intimacy with a celebrated man, he did not think fit to

accede to the demand. A diminution in the frequency and cordiality of

their correspondence ensued, and lasted for upwards of two years. Caryll

at length complained, and Pope replied in February 1729, that he could

not open his mind to his acquaintances unless they would return him at

the end of every year "the forfeitures of his discretion, and commit to

his justice what he trusted only to their indulgence." Upon this

intimation that compliance was to be the condition of intimacy, Caryll

yielded the point, and the receipt of the letters was acknowledged by

the poet on the 8th of April. The Sussex squire defeated the purpose for

which they were extorted by copying the greater part of the collection.

He persevered in the practice till near the close of his life. The last

letter from Pope which he caused to be transcribed is dated July 17,

1735, and he died on the 6th of April, 1736. When his grandson sold the

hereditary estate in 1767, and retired from England to the continent,

the family papers were left behind, stowed away in boxes, where they

remained for nearly three quarters of a century. They then came into the

possession of Mr. Dilke, and have since been presented by his grandson,

Sir Charles W. Dilke, to the British Museum. Among the manuscripts were

a dozen folio books, containing the farm and domestic accounts, and in a

volume similar in appearance Mr. Dilke discovered the copies of the

letters of Pope, together with copies of others from the Dukes of

Berwick, Beaufort, and Norfolk, from Dryden, Wycherley, Steele, Roger

Lestrange, St. Evremond, and Le Grand. The external and internal

evidence leaves no doubt of their authenticity. One unexpected

confirmation of their genuineness turned up in an autograph letter of

Pope to the younger Caryll, dated Nov. 8, 1712, and which was sent by

Mr. Tuckwell to Mr. Croker. The letters to the younger Caryll remained

with his widow. The few which exist are originals in the custody of

different collectors, and this letter of Nov. 8 is a link in a series of

facts that are only known through the transcripts in the Caryll folio.

The recovery of documents, which Pope did not suspect were in existence,

discloses to us his mode of dealing with his correspondence when, having

no idea that it could rise up against him, he ventured to use it without

reserve.

After calling in his letters to his friends, Pope proceeded to arrange

them in order, and said "they formed altogether an unimportant, but yet

an innocent history of himself." "You make, I assure you," he wrote to

Caryll, July 8, 1729, "no small figure in these annals from 1710 to 1720

odd. Upon my word, sir, I am glad to see how long, and how often, and

how much I have been obliged to you, as well as how long, how often, and

how much I have been sensible of and expressed it." Notwithstanding this

assurance, Caryll made a very small figure indeed in the published

collection. Four letters only were addressed to the "Hon. J. C., Esq."

in the volume of 1735, and these initials, in the quarto of 1737, were

added to a fifth letter which had previously been headed, "Mr. Pope to

----." One other letter, in the quarto, bore the title to "Mr. C----";

but it was separated from the former group, and it is from the Caryll

copy that we learn how to fill up the blank. Both in the edition of 1735

and 1737 Pope published a letter to the "Hon. James Craggs, Esq.," which

induced Roscoe to conclude that he was the person indicated by the

initials, and it is not improbable that the poet designed to mislead his

readers, especially as the claim of Caryll to be styled Honourable was

only a Jacobite assumption, derived from his being heir to his uncle,

who had been created a peer by the exiled James II. But though Pope did

not wish to repeat in public his profuse professions in private, and

appear as the familiar friend and constant correspondent of a Roman

Catholic country gentleman, he as little desired to suppress the choicer

portions of the effusions he had addressed to him. He conceived the idea

of re-directing them, and compiled from them, in whole or in part, four

fictitious letters to Blount, four to Addison, two to Congreve, and one

each to Wycherley, Steele, Trumbull, and Digby. A second letter to

Digby, which appeared in the edition of 1735, was transferred to

Arbuthnot in the quarto of 1737. Half a dozen letters at most were

allotted to the initials of the Sussex squire, while fifteen were

assigned to more imposing names, and a sixteenth was printed in a group

of three to the "Hon. ----" Rather than credit an imposition so

childish, and yet so unwarrantable, we should have recourse to the

theory that Pope sometimes sent the same letter to different persons.

Swift assured him that the best system extant for the conduct of human

life might be collected from his epistles, and they certainly abound in

generalities which, like the clown's answer, that suited all questions,

might have been written to anybody. But a comparison of the printed

letters with the Caryll copies, shows that this solution is

inadmissible, and the observation of the clown, when his answer proved

inopportune, is equally applicable to the contrivance of Pope--"I see

things may serve long, and not serve ever."[164]

The "Spectator" of the 10th of November, 1712, contained some remarks by

Pope on the verses which the Emperor Hadrian composed when he was dying.

The poet asked Caryll's opinion of the criticism, and the substance of

his reply is embodied in the rejoinder of Pope. "The supposition you

draw from the suspicion that Adrian was addicted to magic, seems to me a

little uncharitable,--that he might fear no sort of Deity, good or

bad,--since in the third verse he plainly testifies his apprehension of

a future state by being solicitous whither his soul was going. As to

what you mention of his using gay and ludicrous expressions, I have

already owned my opinion that the expressions are not so, but that

diminutives are often in Latin taken for expressions of tenderness and

concern." This comment is introduced, in the printed correspondence,

into the letter to Steele of November 29, 1712, and if it was sent to

him as well as to Caryll both must have objected to the gay and

ludicrous expressions of Hadrian, both must have spoken of the suspicion

that he was addicted to magic, both must have inferred from it that he

feared no sort of Deity, good or bad, and the language of both must have

been as identical as their ideas.

"I know," Pope wrote to Caryll, August 22, 1717, "you will take part in

rejoicing for the victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, in the zeal

you bear to the Christian interest, though your cousin of Oxford, with

whom I dined yesterday, says there is no other difference in the

Christians beating the Turks or the Turks beating the Christians, than

whether the Emperor shall first declare war against Spain, or Spain

declare it against the Emperor." In the published version the passage

forms part of a letter to Edward Blount dated September 8, 1717, and

either we must admit that it was never written to him, or believe that

Caryll and Blount had each an Oxford cousin, that the poet dined with

the Oxford cousin of Caryll on August 21, and with the Oxford cousin of

Blount on September 7, that both these cousins made, at their respective

dinners, the same epigrammatic observation in the very same words, and

that the extraordinary coincidence struck Pope so little that he did not

even remark upon it.

Another passage of a letter to Caryll, dated September 20, [1713]

reappears in a letter to Blount dated February 10, 1716. "I am just

returned from the country, whither Mr. Rowe did me the favour to

accompany me, and to pass a week at Binfield. I need not tell you how

much a man of his turn could not but entertain me; but I must acquaint

you there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition almost peculiar to

that gentleman, which renders it impossible to part from him without

that uneasiness and chagrin which generally succeeds all great

pleasures. I have just been taking a solitary walk by moonshine in St.

James's Park, full of reflections of the transitory nature of all human

delights, and giving my thoughts a loose into the contemplation of those

sensations of satisfaction which probably we may taste in the more

exalted company of separate spirits, when we range the starry walks

above." Thus Pope, who on his return to town in September, 1713, after a

week's companionship with Rowe, took a solitary walk by moonlight and

meditated on the transitory nature of human delights, and the happy

intercourse of spirits, was led by the power of association, after

another week spent at Binfield with Rowe in February, 1716, to renew the

solitary walk by moonlight the instant he returned, and indulge in the

old contemplation on the transitory nature of human delights, and the

happy intercourse of separate spirits. What renders more singular the

second moonlight walk is that the date assigned to it was the memorable

season when the Thames was frozen over, and when the quantity of snow

was as unusual as the intensity of the cold. The thaw commenced the day

before the fragile little bard sallied out for his stroll, and he must

indeed have been lost in contemplation "of the starry walks above" not

to have been checked in his moonlight rambles by the deplorable

condition of the walks below. None of the phenomena which were

attracting the attention of the rest of the world,--the breaking up of

the long and terrible winter, the deluge of melting snow, the chilling

atmosphere, the dreary prospect,--received a passing notice from him. He

saw nothing except the moonshine, despite its watery gleam, and thought

of nothing except the spirits in the stars.

In the collection of 1735 there appeared a letter to Digby, which is

dated September 10, 1724, and is compounded from two letters, to Caryll

of November 23 and December 25, 1725. In the letter of November 23, Pope

says to Caryll, "My time has been spent in a trembling attendance upon

death, which has at last seized one of our family,--my poor old nurse."

This sentence was inserted in the letter to Digby, but as the nurse did

not die till November 5, 1725, the information could not have been

communicated to him in September, 1724. The motive of the poet in

altering the dates of his letters when he assigned a fanciful address to

them was probably to adapt the chronology to the circumstances of his

new _dramatis personae_. His earliest letter to Edward Blount is dated

August, 1714, and when he transferred the moonlight reverie from 1713 to

1716, he may have been influenced by the consideration that in the

former year his correspondence with Blount had not commenced. The letter

to Caryll of November 23, and the letter to Digby of September 10, both

open with the same compliment on their return from the Continent, and

the date may have been altered from 1725 to 1724 to make it harmonise

with Digby's travels abroad. In remedying one inconsistency, Pope fell

into another. A new use was found for the letter in the quarto of 1737.

Arbuthnot died in February, 1735, at the very time when there is reason

to suppose that the poet printed the P. T. collection. The final letter

in the volume is from the Doctor, and it was apparently added at the

last moment. It was then too late to be thinking of a re-distribution of

the materials, and the idea was not executed, or perhaps conceived till

1737, when the address, which had been changed from Caryll to Digby, was

once more changed from Digby to Arbuthnot. In the interval Pope appears

to have detected the anachronism. He retained the day of the month, but

struck out the year. He preserved the announcement, "death has seized

one of our family," but dropped the words "my poor old nurse." Her death

nevertheless could alone have been meant; for in the letters to Caryll,

as in the letter to Digby, several contemporaneous particulars are

mentioned, which being repeated in the letter to Arbuthnot, limit its

date to the period of the poor old nurse's decease. In both cases Pope's

time had been spent in attending upon the dying patient, in both cases

he and his mother had been ill together, in both cases these incidents

had hindered his writing, in both cases he had been questioned

respecting the effect produced upon his mind by the attacks upon his

translation of the "Odyssey," and in both cases he had been less

troubled by the criticisms upon his writings than by the imputations

upon his morals, in consequence of some reports which had been spread of

his intrigues with Martha Blount. It follows that the letter to

Arbuthnot, though dated September 10, must have been written subsequent

to the death of the nurse on November 5. But there is unanswerable

evidence that at that time, and for weeks and months afterwards, he had

constant personal intercourse with the poet. He was at his elbow, and

not on the Continent,[165] and the event could not have been

communicated to him as news upon his return from any journey he ever

made to France. The year was omitted by Pope exactly because he could

fix upon none which would bear the test of examination.[166] When it is

plain that the letter could not have been addressed to Arbuthnot, it is

superfluous to dwell upon the improbability that he and Caryll should

have put the same question with regard to the "railing papers about the

'Odyssey,'" or to enumerate the other coincidences which are beyond the

range of belief. The letter in all its shapes contains a passage which

forms a strange comment upon Pope's proceedings, and is the bitterest

sentence that will ever be pronounced upon them: "Falsehood is folly,

says Homer, and liars and calumniators at last hurt none but themselves,

even in this world. In the next, it is charity to say, God have mercy on

them. They were the devil's vice-regents upon earth, who is the father

of lies, and, I fear, has a right to dispose of his children."

On June 12, 1713, Pope wrote to Caryll, "As I hope, and would flatter

myself, that you know me and my thoughts so entirely as never to be

mistaken in either, so it is a pleasure to me that you guessed so right

in regard to the author of that 'Guardian' you mentioned." On June 23 he

wrote again, and said, "Your last is the more obliging as it hints at

some little niceties in my conduct which your candour and affection

prompt you to recommend to me." Both these sentences are inserted in an

undated letter to Addison, which is compiled from three letters to

Caryll, and no one could credit that Caryll and Addison had

independently, and almost simultaneously communicated their guesses to

Pope that he was the author of a particular essay in the "Guardian," and

at the same time "hinted at little niceties in his conduct." The

remainder of the letter to Addison is full of inconsistencies. The

result of the imposition is to confound dates, events, opinions, and

persons. Addison knows Pope and his thoughts so entirely as never to be

mistaken in either; Addison's candour and affection prompt him to advise

Pope in little niceties of conduct, and the perfect knowledge, the

affection, the candour, and the advice, which are represented as

proceeding from the most exquisite genius of the age, all appertain to

an obscure country gentleman whose intimacy could not confer, in the

eyes of the world, any lustre upon his friend. The whole of the letters

to Addison are an absolute fiction. Four out of the five are from the

Caryll correspondence, and the internal evidence is opposed to the

genuineness of the fifth. The deception is aggravated by the erroneous

aspect it imparts to the celebrated quarrel. In the letters which

preceded the commencing rupture Pope appears as the zealous champion and

bosom associate of the man he afterwards maligned, and we are left to

suppose that the vaunted generosity on one side had been met by envy and

hostility on the other. It is of virtual forgeries like these, which

were specially concocted for the public, that the poet had the hardihood

to say in his preface, "Many of them having been written on the most

trying occasions, and all in the openness of friendship, are a proof

what were his real sentiments, as they flowed warm from his heart,

without the least thought that ever the world should be witness to

them." He not only pretended that they derived a value from being the

spontaneous expression of his feelings as they rose, but pledged his

word that his motive in treasuring them up was to supply an authentic

register of historical, literary, and personal events, and especially to

provide a corrective to the misrepresentations of less scrupulous

chroniclers. "I think more and more of it," he said to Lord Oxford,

September 15, 1729, when dwelling upon the value of the collected

letters and the importance of preserving them, "as finding what a number

of facts they will settle the truth of, both relating to history and

criticism, and parts of private life and character of the eminent men of

my time." In the preface to the quarto of 1737 he made a statement of

the same nature, and protested that the letters he kept were selected

from the letters he destroyed, "merely as they preserved the memory of

some friendships which would be ever dear to him, or set in a true light

some matters of fact from which the scribblers of the times had taken

occasion to asperse either his friends or himself." He volunteered the

declaration to Lord Oxford when he was engaged in the manufacture of the

correspondence which was to falsify the facts he pretended it "would

settle the truth of," and he renewed the assertion in public as a

prelude to the fabrications themselves.

The Wycherley correspondence furnishes fresh illustrations of the

malpractices of the poet. For Pope's own share in it the published

version is our only authority. The originals of Wycherley's part in it

were placed in Lord Oxford's library in October, 1729, and withdrawn in

June, 1735; but there still exist among the Oxford papers copies of six

out of the eighteen published letters, besides six which are

unpublished.[167] Imperfect as is the series, it is sufficient to show

the infidelity of the work Pope put forth to the world. The letter

borrowed from the Caryll group may conveniently be considered in

connection with the rest. It was probably not included in the original

volume of the Wycherley correspondence, which Pope published in 1729,

for it is printed in the edition of 1735 on an interpolated half sheet

signed * C. This is placed between sheet B and sheet C, and the numbers

of its four pages--11 to 14--are repeated on sheet C. The space being

greater than was required the letter has been divided into an unusual

number of paragraphs, which are double the ordinary distance from each

other, and as this device for spreading out the matter only brought it

three or four lines over the top of the fourth page the remainder is

left blank, contrary to the plan adopted in the rest of the book.[168]

Pope we may presume had not completed in 1729 his task of reconstructing

his letters to Caryll, and first introduced the manufactured letter into

the old sheets of the Wycherley when he incorporated them into the

volume of 1735. A single circumstance is enough to prove that the letter

is fictitious. It is made up of extracts from two letters to Caryll of

July 31, 1710, and January 25, 1711, and in the former of the two the

poet quotes a remark from the "Tatler" on the reason why women are

vainer than men. The passage is repeated in the letter to Wycherley

which is dated June 23, 1705, nearly four years before the "Tatler"

commenced, and Pope imagined he had obliterated the anachronism by

changing the phrase "the 'Tatler' observes of women" into the general

formula "it is observed of women."

The concoction of the letter to Wycherley out of the letters to Caryll

is attended by the usual distortion of facts. The extract from the

letter of July 31 is an expostulation against Caryll's extravagant

compliments. A few months after the date which Pope assigned to the

passage when he applied it to Wycherley, the old dramatist had addressed

a kindred remonstrance to Pope. "I must confess," he wrote March 22,

1705-6, "you try my patience, as you say in the beginning of your

letter, not by the many lines in it, but the too many compliments you

make me for nothing, in which you prove yourself, though a sincere

friend, a man of too much fiction; for I have not seen so much poetry in

prose a great while, since your letter is filled with so many fine words

and acknowledgments of your obligations to me, the only asseverations of

yours I dare contradict; for I must tell you your letter is like an

author's epistle before his book,--written more to show his wit to the

world than his sincerity or gratitude to his friend, whom he libels with

praise, so that you have provoked my modesty even whilst you have

soothed my vanity; for I know not whether I am more complimented than

abused, since too much praise turns irony, as too great thanks for small

favours turns ingratitude, or too much ceremony in religion

hypocrisy."[169] Pope thought fit in the published letters to reverse

the parts. He ascribed the adulation to Wycherley, and the rebuke of it

to himself. He gives a false air of manly independence to his youthful

character, and does it at the expense of his friend.

The extract from the letter to Caryll of January 25, 1711, which forms

the second portion of the made-up letter to Wycherley of June 23, 1705,

is a comment on the eulogy lavished by Caryll on some verses of the

poet. The change of name and date flattered in a double manner the

vanity of Pope,--the applause appeared to proceed from a celebrated wit

instead of from a country squire, and to be bestowed upon a lad of

seventeen instead of upon a man who was nearly twenty-three. He always

aspired to the credit of precocity, and some of his falsifications seem

to have had no other purpose than to exaggerate his juvenile fame.

Wycherley wrote to him on February 19, 1708-9, and spoke of the genius

which promised him immortality, of his great, vigorous and active mind.

In a postscript it is mentioned that the "Miscellany," which contained

Pope's Pastorals, would not be out for three weeks.[170] Pope

suppressed, amongst other passages, the allusion which fixed the period

at which the panegyric was penned, and altered the year to 1706-7, for

no perceptible reason except that he wished to antedate the praise.

There can be little doubt that his opening letter to Wycherley was

manufactured or misplaced with a similar object. It is printed in the

edition of 1735 on an interpolated half sheet, marked *B, the pages of

which are correctly numbered from 1 to 4. As the first page of sheet B

which follows is numbered 3, it is evident that it was originally

preceded by only two pages, which must have been cancelled, and the

present letter put in their place.[171] This new letter is dated

December 26, 1704, and contains his reflections on a compliment which he

alleges had been paid to him by Wycherley--that his compositions were

above the attacks of envious critics. "It is pleasant to remark," says

Dr. Johnson, "how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to

treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from

them."[172] He did not in fact publish a single line till more than four

years later, and with our present evidence that the letter was an

interpolated after-thought, we cannot but suspect that Wycherley's

premature compliment, and Pope's premature cant both belonged to a

subsequent period, or perhaps were fabricated for the press. "The

author's age then sixteen," says the poet in a note, and in this

ostentatious announcement we have the motive to the act. The opinion of

Warburton, that the letters of the boy displayed all the characteristics

of the man, is an argument the more that they were the productions of

the man and not of the boy.

"I have received," writes Wycherley, in an unpublished letter, dated

December 6, 1707, "yours of the 29th of November, which has so much

overpaid mine in kindness that, as Voiture says, I doubt whether the

best effects of those fine expressions of your friendship to me can be

more obliging than they themselves; and for my humility you talk of, you

have lessened while you magnify it, as by commending my good nature with

so much more of yours you have made me almost incapable of being

grateful to you; for you have said so many kind things of me you have

hardly left me anything of the same kind to return you, and the best

actions are not capable of making you amends for so many good words you

have given me, by which you justly magnify them and yourself by saying

they are sincere, so that you have obliged me to be vain rather than not

think you a Plain Dealer. Thus, even against your own opinion, your

freedom with me proves not you a fool, but me so, especially if I could

think half the good you say of me my due. As for the good book you sent

me I took it as kindly as the reprimand from the good man, which I think

you heard, and was that I should not stand in my own light."[173] Pope

printed his letter of November 29, to which this letter was a reply, and

it touches upon none of the topics to which Wycherley refers. There are

none of the fine expressions of friendship, none of the many honied

words, none of the encomiums on his correspondent's good nature and

humility. He reproves him, on the contrary, in rather a lofty tone for

his excessive acknowledgments for trifling services, tells him he will

continue the revision of the poems the old dramatist had submitted to

him, insists that he must be permitted to alter and add as well as omit,

and in answer to an observation of Wycherley, that "the sprightliness of

wit despises method," assures him that if method is neglected his verses

had better be converted into separate maxims in prose. As Pope's letter

does not contain one syllable upon the subjects to which Wycherley

alludes in his reply, so the reply takes no notice of the subjects which

monopolise the epistle of Pope. Though he had discoursed exclusively

upon the remodelling of Wycherley's poems, Wycherley himself disdains to

offer in return a single word of thanks, of encouragement, of

acquiescence, or dissent. The omission cannot be explained by the

supposition that the copy was abridged. Whatever passages might have

been left out, those would certainly have been retained which confirmed

under Wycherley's own hand the particulars which were Pope's professed

justification for printing the letters, and his excuse for depositing

them in the library of Lord Oxford.

The Wycherley correspondence concludes with a letter from Pope dated May

2, 1710. A coldness then ensued of which Dr. Johnson gives this

account: "The fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His esteem

of Pope was such that he submitted some poems to his revision, and when

Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was sufficiently bold in his

criticisms and liberal in his alterations, the old scribbler was angry

to see his pages defaced, and felt more pain from the detection than

content from the amendment of his faults. They parted, but Pope always

considered him with kindness, and visited him a little time before he

died."[174] The statement is incomplete. Pope engaged in the revision as

early as April, 1706, when he describes to Wycherley the nature of the

emendations he has made: "Some parts I have contracted as we do

sun-beams to improve their energy and force; some I have taken quite

away, as we take branches from a tree to add to the fruit; others I have

entirely new expressed, and turned more into poetry." In November, 1707,

he informs his friend that he has subjected the poem on "Dullness" to

the same process, that he has condensed the piece one half, suppressed

deficiencies, heightened the language, and smoothed the versification.

Far from being angry at these "bold criticisms and liberal alterations,"

the old scribbler was profuse in his thanks, and replied to Pope's

request, that he would keep the assistance a secret, by declaring that

he always does, and always will own to whose genius and judgment he is

indebted for the improvement of his unmusical numbers and harsher sense.

Between three and four years afterwards he submitted a fresh set of

poems to Pope's castigation, and in two successive letters of April 1

and April 11, 1710, entreats him to show no mercy in his corrections;

"for I had rather," he says, "be condemned by my friend in private, than

exposed to my foes in public." Pope answered that the repetitions were

more numerous than he anticipated, and that crossing them out defaced

the copy to a degree that he feared would be displeasing. "Let me know,"

he added, "if I am to go on at this rate, or if you would prescribe any

other method." Wycherley rejoined that tautology was the last fault of

which he would be guilty, that he thought with care he could remove the

blemish, and that he would not occupy Pope in a task which might

"prevent his writing on new subjects of his own." "All," he continues,

"that I desire of you is to mark in the margin, without defacing the

copy at all, any repetition of words, matter, or sense, which if you

will be so kind as to do for me, you will supply my want of memory with

your good one, and my deficiencies of sense with the infallibilities of

yours,--which if you do you will most infinitely oblige me, who almost

repent the trouble I have given you, since so much." The comment on

Pope's strong criticism is equally cordial: "As to what you call freedom

with me, which you desire me to forgive, you may be assured I would not

forgive you unless you did use it; for I am so far from thinking your

plainness a fault or an offence to me that I think it a charity and an

obligation, which I shall always acknowledge with all sort of gratitude

to you for it, who am therefore, dear Mr. Pope, your most obliged humble

servant." Dr. Johnson overlooked the rude ordeal to which Wycherley's

vanity had been exposed in April, 1706, and the proof he then gave that

he had not in his character the slightest tincture of irritable

impatience at the wholesale correction of his works. He implored a

renewal of the rigour when he invoked, with full experience of the

treatment he was to expect, the same good offices in April, 1710, and

the anger which Johnson imputes to him on that occasion at the detection

of his faults is not only in singular contradiction to the whole of his

previous conduct, but is belied, as we have seen, by his letter to Pope.

The notion that he was offended at the freedom of his friend's remarks

was an inference drawn from the tone of Pope's reply, and not from the

language of Wycherley himself.

"I am sorry," Pope commences, "you persist to take ill my not accepting

your invitation, and to find, if I mistake not, your exception not

unmixed with some suspicion." The letter of Wycherley is dated April 27,

1710, and if the contents of the letter of Pope, which is dated May 2,

did not show that it was the answer, all doubt would be removed by the

fact that it was headed "The Answer" by the poet, both in the octavo of

1735, and the quarto of 1737. This led to the conclusion that Wycherley,

while professing to receive the strictures on his verses with kindness,

had at the same time manifested in his letter some displeasure which

his friend thought proper to omit, and which connected their quarrel

with the secret soreness of the author at the candour of the

critic.[175] Pope did indeed suppress the beginning and the end of

Wycherley's communication; but the passages he kept back betray the

falsity of his own insinuation. "I answered," the letter begins, "yours

of the 15th, which I think was the last I had from you, about three days

after my receiving it; but having not yet received any answer to it from

you, I doubt your old pain of the head-ache has prevented it, which

gives me a great deal of concern for you, insomuch that I have had

thoughts of making you a visit before my journey into Shropshire, which

has been delayed by delays and disappointments to me out of the

country." The end is as follows: "My most humble service pray to Sir

William Trumbull, and your good father and mother, whilst I can assure

you from hence all the world here are your servants and friends. I know

not but I may see you very suddenly at Binfield after all my broken

promises."[176] Instead, therefore, of Wycherley being annoyed at Pope's

refusal to accept his invitation, it was Wycherley who was designing to

visit Pope; and instead of his persisting to take ill any part of his

friend's conduct, his language was throughout expressive of cordiality

and kindness.

The first intimation of a rupture is in a letter of Pope to Cromwell, on

August 21, 1710, in which he says, "Since Mr. Wycherley left London, I

have not heard a word from him, though just before, and once since, I

writ to him, and though I know myself guilty of no offence but of doing

sincerely just what he bid me." On October 28, he reverts to the

subject, and protests by everything that is holy that he is not

acquainted with the cause of the estrangement. He goes on, however, to

state that he did not suppose any man could have been so suspicious as

not to credit his own experience of a friend, and avers that he had done

nothing which deserved to be concealed--a defence which seems to

indicate a consciousness that Wycherley had heard some disparaging

report. It was subsequently asserted by Pope's enemies, and never

contradicted by Pope, that the alienation was produced by a copy of

satirical verses he had written on the man he affected to caress. His

offensive reply of May 2, to the genial letter of April 27, might alone

explain the resentment of Wycherley, if the ungracious answer in its

printed shape could be received as authentic. But I have shown that the

opening sentence, in which Pope regrets that his correspondent persisted

in taking ill his not accepting an invitation, is altogether fictitious,

and with the evidence before us in the critical epistle of November 29,

1707, that he replaced his complimentary effusions by unvarnished

truths, we may suspect that the uncompromising tone of his final letter

was softened in the original, and that the published version is merely

another instance of his anxiety to conceal the deference he had shown to

Wycherley before the celebrity of the old dramatist had been eclipsed by

the fame of the youthful poet. The almost eastern style which Pope

adopted towards him a year and a half after the close of their

correspondence, may be seen in one of his genuine epistles to Cromwell,

which was printed by Curll. "I am highly pleased," the poet writes,

November 12, 1711, "with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's

present temper, which seems so favourable to me. I shall ever have such

a fund of affection for him, as to be agreeable to myself when I am so

to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the surface

of the earth, if you will pardon a poetical similitude, is clearer or

gloomier, just as the sun is brighter or more overcast." Whatever may

have caused the sun to be overcast, there could have been little ground

of complaint against Wycherley, or Pope would not have fabricated the

pretence that he had provoked his anger by declining an invitation.

On the appearance of Theobald's edition of the Posthumous Works of

Wycherley, the poet poured out his indignation to Lord Oxford. "I

foresaw," he said, October 6, 1729, "some dirty trick in connection with

my friend Wycherley's papers which they were publishing, and nothing can

at once do justice so well to him and to me, who was by him employed in

them, as the divulging of some parts of his and my letters." At the

moment that he was penning this denunciation against "dirty tricks in

relation to Wycherley's papers," though no trick had been practised, he

was busily engaged in aspersing his friend by garbling the papers he

professed to divulge out of justice to his memory. His motives were not

malignant. He was simply desirous to do credit to himself, but to effect

this end he did not scruple to falsify their private correspondence, and

under the plea of justifying a man who was in his grave, took advantage

of his death to libel him in safety. When with our scanty means of

testing the fidelity of the letters, we find that part of them were

misplaced, distorted, and invented, the rest of the series must be

received with distrust, and some which cannot be proved to be fabricated

are among the most suspicious of the whole.

Where the originals of Pope's letters were in hostile hands, as was the

case with his letters to Cromwell and to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he

was compelled to be sparing in his operations. He omitted sentences and

altered phrases, but could not venture upon wholesale perversions of the

truth. Of the bulk of the letters he published we have neither the

originals nor reliable copies; but when we chance to light upon the

materials from which he worked, we find, as might be expected, that he

was not more conscientious in his use of them than in his reckless

falsification of his correspondence with Wycherley and Caryll. The

volume of 1735 concludes with a letter from Arbuthnot, dated July 17,

1734, and in the quarto of 1737 we have the pretended reply of the poet.

Among the Arbuthnot papers in the possession of Mr. Baillie, is the

actual answer sent by Pope, and it turns out that the printed substitute

is an elaborate composition that has hardly any resemblance to the

genuine text. He must have revised the letter of Arbuthnot as well as

remodelled his own. "I am almost displeased," he remarks in the real,

not in the counterfeit reply, "at your expression '_scarcely_ any of

those suspicions or jealousies which affect the truest friendships;' for

I know of _not one_ on my part." He accordingly erased from Arbuthnot's

letter the expression he disapproved, and fathered upon him the

unqualified assertion, "I think since our first acquaintance there has

not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies that often affect

the sincerest friendships." To what extent he may have carried this

principle of altering the opinions of his correspondents to fit his

personal views cannot be discovered. A single instance of the artifice

in a man so unscrupulous destroys all confidence in the documents which

rest on his unsupported authority, and there is often reason to suspect

that he gives us not what others said, but what he thought it

advantageous to himself that they should say.

In comparison with this perversion of facts, the attempt of Pope to

improve his letters, regarded as literary productions, would be of

trifling moment, if it did not present another example of the audacious

falsehoods he imposed upon the world. Speaking in the preface to the

quarto of 1737 of the correspondence he reprinted from what he calls the

surreptitious editions, he says "for the chasms in it, we had not the

means to supply them, the author having destroyed too many letters to

preserve a series." He intends us to infer that the selection was not

his own, though the passage is virtually an admission that the

collection of P. T. was the collection deposited with Lord Oxford, or

there could not have been such an identity between them as that none of

the gaps in the P. T. volume could be filled up from the bound book in

the Oxford library. "Nor," he continues, "would he go about to amend

them, except by the omission of some passages improper, or at least

impertinent to be divulged to the public, or of such entire letters as

were either not his, or not approved of by him." He would have us

believe that they had been dragged before the world in their first crude

state, without a single subsequent touch from his pen, though he had

previously amended them with studious care--had culled the best

passages, blended extracts from two or three letters into one, and

constantly corrected composition which had been originally laboured.

Some of his ambitious epistles, like his letter to Arbuthnot of July

26, 1734, were no doubt mere essays, which were only written when they

were committed to the press. In the quarto of 1741, he repeated the

device he had employed in the quarto of 1737. He pretended in both cases

that the correspondence he printed himself had been printed by others

without his knowledge, and in defiance of his wish. He next adopted and

republished the letters he affected to repudiate, and having already

revised them to the uttermost, asserted that he could not be induced to

revise them at all. So completely had truth with him been swallowed up

in vanity. "Had he," he tells us in the preface to the quarto of 1737,

"sat down with a design to draw his own picture, he could not have done

it so truly, for whoever sits for it, whether to himself or another,

will inevitably find his features more composed than his appear in these

letters; but if an author's hand, like a painter's, be more

distinguishable in a slight sketch than a finished picture, this very

carelessness will make them the better known from such counterfeits as

have been, and may be, imputed to him." He did everything he professed

to have left undone. The careless sketch was a studied portrait got up

for exhibition, and the minutest details had been disposed with a view

to flatter the likeness and increase the effect.

In the conduct of Pope to Bolingbroke there are points of resemblance to

his conduct in the case of the correspondence, which render the evidence

a material supplement to the present inquiry. Bolingbroke allowed him to

get put into type the political letters on "The Spirit of Patriotism,"

on "The Idea of a Patriot King," and on "The State of Parties," under

the promise that the pamphlet should be confined to five or six persons,

who were named by the author. Pope fulfilled his pledge by causing a

separate edition of 1500 copies to be struck off, and enjoined the

printer to lay by the sheets "with great secresy till further

orders."[177] In the dangerous manoeuvre of printing covertly the

original volume of the Swift correspondence which he sent to the Dean,

he may, perhaps, have remained concealed from the inferior agents, and

have conducted the details of the business through the medium of

Worsdale. In the instance of the pamphlet he was not afraid to put

himself into the power of the printer, who, says Bolingbroke, "kept his

word with him better than he kept his with his friend."[178] The poet

not only committed a breach of trust in preparing a work for sale which

he received upon the condition that it should remain strictly private,

but he had the boldness to tamper with the substance of the work, and in

the impression, which was ultimately designed for the public, "he took

upon him to divide the subject, and to alter and omit passages according

to the suggestions of his own fancy."[179] From Warburton we learn that

Pope "frequently told his acquaintance that Lord Bolingbroke would at

his death leave his writings to his disposal,"[180] and the changes he

introduced by anticipation into the single instalment within his power

show the manner in which he designed to discharge his functions, and

strengthen the suspicion that he may have falsified the letters of his

correspondents as well as his own. Johnson, in censuring Lyttelton for

publishing the posthumous edition of Thomson's poem on "Liberty," in an

abridged form, condemns a practice "which, as it has a manifest tendency

to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of

authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be

justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration or kindness of the

friend."[181] The freedom used by Pope was especially reprehensible from

the concealment he practised. The copy of the pamphlet which he sent to

Bolingbroke, and the other privileged persons, did not exhibit the

modified text, and though the occurrence took place several years before

the death of the poet he never, in all that time, whispered one word

upon the subject to the author of the tracts, from which it is clear

that he neither intended him to learn what he had done, nor expected him

to approve the changes he had made. It was not till he was in his grave

that his deception was divulged by the application of the printer to

Bolingbroke for instructions how to dispose of the impression. Warburton

argued that Pope must have wished his friend to have a knowledge of the

clandestine edition and clandestine alterations, or he would have

ordered the work to be destroyed during his final illness,[182] as if,

in the lingering hope that life would be protracted a little longer, it

had not happened times out of number that men had deferred burning

tale-telling papers till their minds were diverted from the duty by the

lassitude of sickness, and as if such procrastination was not in the

highest degree probable when the poet had been first at the pains of

revising the work, and next at the cost of an edition of 1500

copies.[183] He may even have believed that his secret, under any

circumstances, was safe with the printer. A theory which has been

verified by endless examples is a more credible alternative than to

assume that Pope had designed to leave behind him evidences of a

dishonesty which he had not dared to disclose during years of familiar

intercourse, and which, notwithstanding that Bolingbroke was perpetually

at his side, he did not venture to reveal in his dying hours when he

might have palliated his motives, and obtained pardon for his fault. But

if we admit the supposition of Warburton, and allow that he had

ultimately arrived at the resolution of suffering the course of events

to betray the misdoings he had not the courage to confess, there will

still remain the facts, which Warburton never questioned, that he

pretended to Bolingbroke that some half dozen copies had alone been

printed, when he had printed a distinct edition of 1500; that he handed

an impression to the author which was taken faithfully from the

manuscript, while the impression he hid from him was garbled and

adulterated; and that, having concealed the double treachery for years,

he left the world without an allusion to the wrongful act he had

committed. Johnson justly considered that the resentment of Bolingbroke

at this violation of faith was with reason "more acrimonious in

proportion as the violator had been more trusted or loved," for the

professions which win confidence increase the baseness of betraying it;

but with equal justice Johnson condemned the "thirst for vengeance"

which excited Bolingbroke "to blast the memory" of the man who had lived

with him in a constant interchange of affection, and who, both in public

and private, had paid him the tribute of his heartiest homage and

applause.[184]

The scrutiny to which the lives of celebrated men are subjected is one

of the severest penalties they pay for fame. Their private weaknesses

have often been exposed with wanton cruelty; but the delinquencies of

Pope are public acts by which he himself has challenged inquiry. He

endeavoured to pass off a sophisticated correspondence for genuine, and

the interests of truth demand that the deception should be exposed. He

laboured to throw his own misdoings upon innocent men, and justice

requires that his victims should be absolved, and the discredit,

augmented beyond measure by the perfidy and deceit, be laid where it is

due. He was the bitter satirist of individuals out of an assumed

indignation at everything base, and his claim to adopt this lofty

strain, his sincerity in it, and his fairness, are all involved in his

personal dealings. The office of an editor is neither that of an

advocate nor of an accuser. He is a judge, whose only client is truth. I

have endeavoured to investigate the facts with impartiality, and narrate

them with fidelity, and if I have anywhere failed, it is from

unconscious, not from wilful error; but having once been satisfied of

the guilt of Pope, I do not pretend to think that genius is an

extenuation of rascality. He rightly refused others the benefit of the

plea, and said in the Essay on Man, whoever is "wickedly wise is but the

more a fool, the more a knave." The sketch which Lord Macaulay has given

of his character, when describing his conduct on the appearance of

Tickell's version of the first book of the Iliad, is not too severe for

the treacheries and falsehoods which were the instruments of his

malevolence, cowardice and vanity. "An odious suspicion had sprung up in

the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there

was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The work on

which he had staked his reputation was to be depreciated. The

subscription, on which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be

defeated. With this view, Addison had made a rival translation; Tickell

had consented to father it, and the wits at Button's had consented to

puff it. We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which he knew

to be false. We have not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be

true; and the evidence on which he believed it he found in his own bad

heart. His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as

malicious as that of which he had suspected Addison and Tickell. He was

all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to save himself from

the consequences of injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the

habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he was

taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon on

Aaron Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and equivocated. He

published a still fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; he was

taxed with it; and he lied with more than usual effrontery and

vehemence. He puffed himself, and abused his enemies, under feigned

names. He robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised the hue and

cry after them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest,

and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have committed from a

love of fraud alone. He had a habit of stratagem, a pleasure in

outwitting all who came near him. Whatever his object might be, the

indirect road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke, Pope

undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was in his nature to

feel for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead, when it was

discovered that from no motive, except the mere love of artifice, he had

been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke."[185] Many of the

falsehoods and perfidies I have detailed have come to light since

Macaulay wrote, and there are more behind which will appear in their

proper place in Pope's life and works. There have been no lack of men

whose moral conduct was in an almost inverse ratio with their

intellectual gifts; but there never was an author of equal genius, who

habitually practised such despicable deceptions for such paltry

purposes;

"Who for this end would earn a lasting name,

Join moral infamy to mental fame,

Would tear aside the friendly veil of night

To stand degraded in a blaze of light."

His crooked policy was ineffectual, even when his worst devices were

undetected. Few believed that he was vexed at the publication of his

letters, or that they were careless effusions, or that the virtues he

paraded in them were the just reflection of his mind. Both men and

compositions will seem to be what they are, and the poet's protestations

did not prevent the world from discovering that his epistles were

laboured, that many of his sentiments were feigned, and that he eagerly

promoted the publications he pretended to deplore.

Having finished a discussion which from its nature will be dull to many,

and from its length will be wearisome to all, I turn to speak of the

present edition of the Correspondence. The last edition published in the

lifetime of Pope comprised, according to Mr. Croker's calculation, 354

letters. These, Mr. Croker states, were increased by Warburton to 384,

by Warton to 502, by Bowles to 644, and by Roscoe to 708, or exactly

double the number that were included in the last edition of the poet.

The present edition will contain more new letters than were collected by

Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe combined, and many of them are of

immeasurably greater importance in determining the character and conduct

of Pope than any which have previously appeared. There are others among

them which, under ordinary circumstances, would be too trivial to be

printed; but particulars, which are separately insignificant, have

assisted in dispelling some of the mystery or exposing some of the

deceptions in which it was the poet's pleasure to involve his life, and

as nobody can pronounce with certainty what facts may be of service to

future inquirers, I have thought it better to add a few superfluous

pages than to run the risk of rejecting materials which may prove useful

hereafter. I have, in like manner, admitted letters which had a

biographical value, although they were neither written by Pope nor to

him. Second-hand statements cannot supply the place of authentic

documents, and to have dissociated the subsidiary from the main

correspondence would have frequently deprived both of the increased

importance they derive from being read in connection.

In Pope's own, and every succeeding edition, the letters are divided

into groups. The arrangement of the entire collection in one consecutive

chronological series is, in his case, neither desirable nor possible. It

is not desirable because a unity of subject often runs through his

intercourse with particular persons, and the interposition of the topics

upon which he touched with other friends, far from presenting a

connected view of his thoughts and actions, would reduce the whole to a

medley of disjointed fragments. It is not possible because many of his

letters are undated, and, though we can frequently determine their place

in each class, there are no means of settling their order when all the

letters of doubtful date are thrown together. In numerous instances the

year in which they were written can at most be discovered, and the

attempt to fix their precedency within that period would be attended

with as much uncertainty as if they were shuffled like a pack of cards.

The liberties which Pope took with his correspondence in preparing it

for publication diminish the authority of that extensive portion of it

which we owe to his printed or manuscript copies alone, and have

rendered it essential to specify the source from which, every letter is

derived. Where the letter was sent to one person and was published by

Pope as if it had been addressed to another, it is inserted in its

proper place, and again in the group to which it was falsely assigned by

the writer. Unless the correspondence was exhibited in its double form,

a just idea could not easily be obtained of the shape and colour he

imparted to it, or of the relations which he pretended to have

maintained with his contemporaries. Where the direction was not changed,

and we possess both the genuine and the corrected letter, the true

version is given in the text, and any variations in his amended version

which seemed worthy of notice are pointed out in the notes. Even here,

from the nature and extent of the alterations, it has sometimes been

necessary to preserve a letter in its twofold state.

The greater part of the collection of 1735 was reproduced in the quarto

of 1737; but as the texts are not always identical the earliest has been

followed, except where there is manifestly an error of the press, or

where the quarto supplies passages which are not in the volume of P. T.

I had once intended to subjoin the whole of the various readings at the

foot of the page. I abandoned the design upon finding that the vast

majority of them were verbal, and apparently unimportant changes, which

could only have interested the few curious inquirers who would always

have recourse to the original editions. I have not the less carefully

collated these original editions throughout, and have thus got rid of

numerous mistakes which had become traditional in the subsequent

reprints. The notes signed "Pope, 1735," were first published in the P.

T. collection, with the exception of a few in the Wycherley group,

which, though they are only known to us through the P. T. volume, had

undoubtedly appeared in 1729. Many of the P. T. notes were transferred

to the authorised impression of 1737, and they were nearly all in the

copies which the poet delivered to Warburton for posthumous publication.

The notes signed "Pope, 1737," were added in the quarto of that year;

and those signed "Cooper, 1737," are from the octavos which bear the

name of this bookseller on the title-page.

Language was current in Pope's day which would be considered grossly

indelicate in ours, and though he abounds in refined and elevated

strains, he was yet among the worst offenders of his time. "He and

Swift," says Dr. Johnson, "had an unnatural delight in ideas physically

impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of

which every ear shrinks from the mention." His correspondence is not

altogether free from the defect; but no editor can now efface the blots

which Warburton, Warton, and Bowles felt bound to preserve. Roscoe set

aside a few sentences, and showed by his inconsistency the uselessness

of the process. He confined his expurgations to the part of Pope's works

which were little read, and where the omissions in consequence would

rarely be remarked; but did not venture to disturb a single syllable of

the far more numerous and more objectionable passages which occur in the

pieces that are in the hands of all the world. The stains which sully so

much of our beautiful literature are unhappily indelible, and it could

answer no useful end to adopt the capricious principle of Roscoe in

removing the lesser blemishes which are seldom noticed, and leaving the

worst and most conspicuous defilements undisturbed. More freedom may be

used with the unpublished letters; but I have exercised the discretion

very sparingly, and have not excluded every coarse word, phrase, or

idea, when it was characteristic of the age, the man, and his writings,

and when, though an offence against taste, it could not be injurious to

morals.

I have mentioned at the several places where their contributions are

inserted, the numerous persons to whose liberality Mr. Croker and myself

have been obliged for materials and assistance. The services rendered by

Mr. Dilke require to be noticed here. Until he published his articles in

the Athenaeum little had been added to our knowledge of Pope since

Johnson produced his masterly Life. The truths which Mr. Dilke

established, and the errors he dissipated, were not more important than

the change he gave to the former superficial investigations. His rigid

scrutiny became the standard for every subsequent inquirer. He loved his

studies for their own sake, and never did a man of letters work less for

personal ends. He at once placed at my disposal his Caryll

correspondence, which he had carefully annotated, and the explanation of

all its obscure allusions are due to him. He supplied me with a

multitude of letters which were widely scattered through books and

periodicals, and collated others with the originals in the British

Museum and Bodleian Library. Large masses of the letters are undated, or

dated falsely, and he was at the labour of fixing dates which sometimes

appeared to defy conjecture. He lent me his rare editions, was unwearied

in answering questions, in solving difficulties, in revising proofs, and

in communicating, without reserve, his stores of information. He was

then suffering from a long and painful illness, and he died when only

the first volume of correspondence was printed, or I should have had his

generous and invaluable aid to the end.

Mr. Bowles remarked in the course of the skirmish of pamphlets he

provoked, that the editorship of Pope's works had been to no one a bed

of roses. For the larger part of the discomforts his commentators may

have endured, Pope himself was responsible. His mysteries, his

double-dealings, his falsifications, and his quarrels have rendered half

the acts of his life a fertile theme for debate. None of the angry

controversialists who mingled fifty years ago in the fray had prepared

properly for the contest, and the insolence and assumption, the

virulence and the dogmatism, were commonly greatest with the persons

whose acquaintance with the subject was the least. The intemperate, and

usually ignorant warfare, left nearly all the vexed questions in

confusion, and it is only in recent years that a new generation of

dispassionate students have begun to replace the blunders of sciolism by

facts. In the many battles yet to be fought over Pope there will be this

advantage which will be certain to produce solid results, that the

critic will be in possession of the materials for judgment, and will not

have to write without knowledge of his cause.