Spence's almost idolatrous admiration of, and devotion to, Pope, is
evident from the pains he took to preserve every little anecdote of him
that he could elicit from conversation with him, or with those who knew
him. Unfortunately, he had not Boswell's address and talent for
recording gossip, or the _Anecdotes_ would have been a much more racy
book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and
it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed
have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle bit of sterling."
I have the original MS. of the two last Dialogues of the _Essay on the
Odyssey_ as written by Spence, and on the first page is the following
note:--"The two last Evenings corrected by Mr. Pope." On a blank page at
the end, Spence has again written:--"MS. of the two last Evenings
corrected with Mr. Pope's own hand, w'ch serv'd y'e Press, and is so
mark'd as usual by Litchfield."
This will elucidate Malone's note in his copy of the book, which Mr.
Bolton Corney has transcribed. I think the first three dialogues were
published in a little volume before Spence became acquainted with Pope,
and perhaps led to that acquaintance. Their intercourse afterwards might
supply some capital illustrations for a new edition of Mr. Corney's
curious chapter on _Camaraderie Littéraire_. The MS. copy of Spence's
Essay bears frequent marks of Pope's correcting hand by erasure and
interlineary correction, silently made. I transcribe the few passages
where the poet's revision of his critic are accompanied by remarks.
In Evening the Fourth, Spence had written:--"It may be inquired, too,
how far this translation may make a wrong use of terms borrowed from the
arts and sciences, &c. [The instances are thus pointed out.] As where we
read of a ship's crew, Od. 3. 548. The longitude, Od. 19. 350. Doubling
the Cape, Od. 9. 90. Of Architraves, Colonnades, and the like, Od. 3.
516." Pope has erased this and the references, and says:--"_These are
great faults; pray don't point 'em out, but spare your servant_."
At p. 16. Spence had written:--"Yellow is a proper epithet of fruit; but
not of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon
which Pope observes:--"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as
gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in
one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a
thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would
not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among
us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep.
Was any one to translate the _purpureis oloribus_ of Horace, 'purple
swans' would not be so literal as to miss the sense of the author
entirely." Upon which Pope has remarked:--"The sea is actually of a deep
purple in many places, and in many views."
Upon a passage in Spence's _Criticism_, at p. 45., Pope says:--"I think
this too nice." And the couplet objected to by Spence--
"Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secur'd,
With ribs of steel, and marble heart immur'd,"
he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All too
forced and over-charged."
At p. 51. Spence says:--"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a
man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen
sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as
beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging
those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of fate?" Of
the two first instances, Pope says:--"Intended to be comic in a
sarcastic speech." And of the last:--"I think not at all mean, see the
Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.
The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence
had written:--"The _Odyssey_, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings
of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in
instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well
as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. _Horace ventured to say
thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this
later production by the same hand_." For the words in Italics Pope has
substituted:--"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of
both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a
note:--"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and
judgment of Horace to the _Iliad_. He says it, at the beginning of his
Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally
as examples of morality; though the _Iliad_ be mentioned first: but then
follows--'_Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit
nobis exemplar Ulyssem_,' &c. of the Odyssey."
At p. 34. Spence says:--"There seems to be something mean and awkward in
this image:--
"'His _loose head_ tottering as with wine opprest
Obliquely drops, and _nodding_ knocks his breast.'"
Here Pope says:--"Sure these are good lines. {397} They are not mine."
Of other passages which please him, he occasionally says,--"This is good
sense." And on one occasion, where Spence had objected, he says
candidly:--"This is bad, indeed,"--"and this."
At p. 50. Spence writes:--"There's a passage which I remember I was
mightily pleased with formerly in reading _Cervantes_, without seeing
any reason for it at that time; tho' I now imagine that which took me in
it comes under this view. Speaking of Don Quixote, the first time that
adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on
this occasion in the following manner:--'He saw the sea, which he had
never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at
Salamanca.'" On this occasion Pope suggests,--"Dr. Swift's fable to
Ph----s, of the two asses and Socrates."
S.W. SINGER.
April 8. 1850.
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