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English Men of Letters
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
POPE
ALEXANDER POPE
BY
LESLIE STEPHEN
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1880.
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._
FIFTH THOUSAND.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The life and writings of Pope have been discussed in a literature more
voluminous than that which exists in the case of almost any other
English man of letters. No biographer, however, has produced a
definitive or exhaustive work. It seems therefore desirable to indicate
the main authorities upon which such a biographer would have to rely,
and which have been consulted for the purpose of the following
necessarily brief and imperfect sketch.
The first life of Pope was a catchpenny book, by William Ayre, published
in 1745, and remarkable chiefly as giving the first version of some
demonstrably erroneous statements, unfortunately adopted by later
writers. In 1751, Warburton, as Pope's literary executor, published the
authoritative edition of the poet's works, with notes containing some
biographical matter. In 1769 appeared a life by Owen Ruffhead, who wrote
under Warburton's inspiration. This is a dull and meagre performance,
and much of it is devoted to an attack--partly written by Warburton
himself--upon the criticisms advanced in the first volume of Joseph
Warton's Essay on Pope. Warton's first volume was published in 1756; and
it seems that the dread of Warburton's wrath counted for something in
the delay of the second volume, which did not appear till 1782. The
Essay contains a good many anecdotes of interest. Warton's edition of
Pope--the notes in which are chiefly drawn from the Essay--was published
in 1797. The Life by Johnson appeared in 1781; it is admirable in many
ways; but Johnson had taken the least possible trouble in ascertaining
facts. Both Warton and Johnson had before them the manuscript
collections of Joseph Spence, who had known Pope personally during the
last twenty years of his life, and wanted nothing but literary ability
to have become an efficient Boswell. Spence's anecdotes, which were not
published till 1820, give the best obtainable information upon many
points, especially in regard to Pope's childhood. This ends the list of
biographers who were in any sense contemporary with Pope. Their
statements must be checked and supplemented by the poet's own letters,
and innumerable references to him in the literature of the time. In 1806
appeared the edition of Pope by Bowles, with a life prefixed. Bowles
expressed an unfavourable opinion of many points in Pope's character,
and some remarks by Campbell, in his specimens of English poets, led to
a controversy (1819-1826) in which Bowles defended his views against
Campbell, Byron, Roscoe, and others, and which incidentally cleared up
some disputed questions. Roscoe, the author of the Life of Leo X.,
published his edition of Pope in 1824. A life is contained in the first
volume, but it is a feeble performance; and the notes, many of them
directed against Bowles, are of little value. A more complete biography
was published by R. Carruthers (with an edition of the works), in 1854.
The second, and much improved, edition appeared in 1857, and is still
the most convenient life of Pope, though Mr. Carruthers was not fully
acquainted with the last results of some recent investigations, which
have thrown a new light upon the poet's career.
The writer who took the lead in these inquiries was the late Mr. Dilke.
Mr. Dilke published the results of his investigations (which were partly
guided by the discovery of a previously unpublished correspondence
between Pope and his friend Caryll), in the _Athenæum_ and _Notes and
Queries_, at various intervals, from 1854 to 1860. His contributions to
the subject have been collated in the first volume of the _Papers of a
Critic_, edited by his grandson, the present Sir Charles W. Dilke, in
1875. Meanwhile Mr. Croker had been making an extensive collection of
materials for an exhaustive edition of Pope's works, in which he was to
be assisted by Mr. Peter Cunningham. After Croker's death these
materials were submitted by Mr. Murray to Mr. Whitwell Elwin, whose own
researches have greatly extended our knowledge, and who had also the
advantage of Mr. Dilke's advice. Mr. Elwin began, in 1871, the
publication of the long-promised edition. It was to have occupied ten
volumes--five of poems and five of correspondence, the latter of which
was to include a very large proportion of previously unpublished matter.
Unfortunately for all students of English literature, only two volumes
of poetry and three of correspondence have appeared. The notes and
prefaces, however, contain a vast amount of information, which clears up
many previously disputed points in the poet's career; and it is to be
hoped that the materials collected for the remaining volumes will not be
ultimately lost. It is easy to dispute some of Mr. Elwin's critical
opinions, but it would be impossible to speak too highly of the value of
his investigations of facts. Without a study of his work, no adequate
knowledge of Pope is attainable.
The ideal biographer of Pope, if he ever appears, must be endowed with
the qualities of an acute critic and a patient antiquarian; and it would
take years of labour to work out all the minute problems connected with
the subject. All that I can profess to have done is to have given a
short summary of the obvious facts, and of the main conclusions
established by the evidence given at length in the writings of Mr. Dilke
and Mr. Elwin. I have added such criticisms as seemed desirable in a
work of this kind, and I must beg pardon by anticipation if I have
fallen into inaccuracies in relating a story so full of pitfalls for the
unwary.
L. S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
EARLY YEARS 1
CHAPTER II.
FIRST PERIOD OF POPE'S LITERARY CAREER 21
CHAPTER III.
POPE'S HOMER 61
CHAPTER IV.
POPE AT TWICKENHAM 81
CHAPTER V.
THE WAR WITH THE DUNCES 111
CHAPTER VI.
CORRESPONDENCE 137
CHAPTER VII.
THE ESSAY ON MAN 159
CHAPTER VIII.
EPISTLES AND SATIRES 181
CHAPTER IX.
THE END 206
POPE.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
The father of Alexander Pope was a London merchant, a devout Catholic,
and not improbably a convert to Catholicism. His mother was one of
seventeen children of William Turner, of York; one of her sisters was
the wife of Cooper, the well-known portrait-painter. Mrs. Cooper was the
poet's godmother; she died when he was five years old, leaving to her
sister, Mrs. Pope, a "grinding-stone and muller," and their mother's
"picture in limning;" and to her nephew, the little Alexander, all her
"books, pictures, and medals set in gold or otherwise."
In after-life the poet made some progress in acquiring the art of
painting; and the bequest suggests the possibility that the precocious
child had already given some indications of artistic taste. Affectionate
eyes were certainly on the watch for any symptoms of developing talent.
Pope was born on May 21st, 1688--the _annus mirabilis_ which introduced
a new political era in England, and was fatal to the hopes of ardent
Catholics. About the same time, partly, perhaps, in consequence of the
catastrophe, Pope's father retired from business, and settled at
Binfield--a village two miles from Wokingham and nine from Windsor. It
is near Bracknell, one of Shelley's brief perching places, and in such a
region as poets might love, if poetic praises of rustic seclusion are to
be taken seriously. To the east were the "forests and green retreats" of
Windsor, and the wild heaths of Bagshot, Chobham and Aldershot stretched
for miles to the South. Some twelve miles off in that direction, one may
remark, lay Moor Park, where the sturdy pedestrian, Swift, was living
with Sir W. Temple during great part of Pope's childhood; but it does
not appear that his walks ever took him to Pope's neighbourhood, nor did
he see, till some years later, the lad with whom he was to form one of
the most famous of literary friendships. The little household was
presumably a very quiet one, and remained fixed at Binfield for
twenty-seven years, till the son had grown to manhood and celebrity.
From the earliest period he seems to have been a domestic idol. He was
not an only child, for he had a half-sister by his father's side, who
must have been considerably older than himself, as her mother died nine
years before the poet's birth. But he was the only child of his mother,
and his parents concentrated upon him an affection which he returned
with touching ardour and persistence. They were both forty-six in the
year of his birth. He inherited headaches from his mother, and a crooked
figure from his father. A nurse who shared their care, lived with him
for many years, and was buried by him, with an affectionate epitaph, in
1725. The family tradition represents him as a sweet-tempered child, and
says that he was called the "little nightingale," from the beauty of his
voice. As the sickly, solitary, and precocious infant of elderly
parents, we may guess that he was not a little spoilt, if only in the
technical sense.
The religion of the family made their seclusion from the world the more
rigid, and by consequence must have strengthened their mutual
adhesiveness. Catholics were then harassed by a legislation which would
be condemned by any modern standard as intolerably tyrannical. Whatever
apology may be urged for the legislators on the score of contemporary
prejudices or special circumstances, their best excuse is that their
laws were rather intended to satisfy constituents, and to supply a
potential means of defence, than to be carried into actual execution. It
does not appear that the Popes had to fear any active molestation in the
quiet observance of their religious duties. Yet a Catholic was not only
a member of a hated minority, regarded by the rest of his countrymen as
representing the evil principle in politics and religion, but was
rigorously excluded from a public career, and from every position of
honour or authority. In times of excitement the severer laws might be
put in force. The public exercise of the Catholic religion was
forbidden, and to be a Catholic was to be predisposed to the various
Jacobite intrigues which still had many chances in their favour. When
the pretender was expected in 1744, a proclamation, to which Pope
thought it decent to pay obedience, forbade the appearance of Catholics
within ten miles of London; and in 1730 we find him making interest on
behalf of a nephew, who had been prevented from becoming an attorney
because the judges were rigidly enforcing the oaths of supremacy and
allegiance.
Catholics had to pay double taxes and were prohibited from acquiring
real property. The elder Pope, according to a certainly inaccurate
story, had a conscientious objection to investing his money in the funds
of a Protestant government, and, therefore, having converted his capital
into coin, put it in a strong-box, and took it out as he wanted it. The
old merchant was not quite so helpless, for we know that he had
investments in the French _rentes_, besides other sources of income; but
the story probably reflects the fact that his religious
disqualifications hampered even his financial position.
Pope's character was affected in many ways by the fact of his belonging
to a sect thus harassed and restrained. Persecution, like bodily
infirmity, has an ambiguous influence. If it sometimes generates in its
victims a heroic hatred of oppression, it sometimes predisposes them to
the use of the weapons of intrigue and falsehood, by which the weak
evade the tyranny of the strong. If under that discipline Pope learnt to
love toleration, he was not untouched by the more demoralizing
influences of a life passed in an atmosphere of incessant plotting and
evasion. A more direct consequence was his exclusion from the ordinary
schools. The spirit of the rickety lad might have been broken by the
rough training of Eton or Westminster in those days; as, on the other
hand, he might have profited by acquiring a livelier perception of the
meaning of that virtue of fair-play, the appreciation of which is held
to be a set-off against the brutalizing influences of our system of
public education. As it was, Pope was condemned to a desultory
education. He picked up some rudiments of learning from the family
priest; he was sent to a school at Twyford, where he is said to have got
into trouble for writing a lampoon upon his master; he went for a short
time to another in London, where he gave a more creditable if less
characteristic proof of his poetical precocity. Like other lads of
genius, he put together a kind of play--a combination, it seems, of the
speeches in Ogilby's Iliad--and got it acted by his schoolfellows. These
brief snatches of schooling, however, counted for little. Pope settled
at home at the early age of twelve, and plunged into the delights of
miscellaneous reading with the ardour of precocious talent. He read so
eagerly that his feeble constitution threatened to break down, and when
about seventeen, he despaired of recovery, and wrote a farewell to his
friends. One of them, an Abbé Southcote, applied for advice to the
celebrated Dr. Radcliffe, who judiciously prescribed idleness and
exercise. Pope soon recovered, and, it is pleasant to add, showed his
gratitude long afterwards by obtaining for Southcote, through Sir Robert
Walpole, a desirable piece of French preferment. Self-guided studies
have their advantages, as Pope himself observed, but they do not lead a
youth through the dry places of literature, or stimulate him to severe
intellectual training. Pope seems to have made some hasty raids into
philosophy and theology; he dipped into Locke, and found him "insipid;"
he went through a collection of the controversial literature of the
reign of James II., which seems to have constituted the paternal
library, and was alternately Protestant and Catholic, according to the
last book which he had read. But it was upon poetry and pure literature
that he flung himself with a genuine appetite. He learnt languages to
get at the story, unless a translation offered an easier path, and
followed wherever fancy led "like a boy gathering flowers in the fields
and woods."
It is needless to say that he never became a scholar in the strict sense
of the term. Voltaire declared that he could hardly read or speak a
word of French; and his knowledge of Greek would have satisfied Bentley
as little as his French satisfied Voltaire. Yet he must have been fairly
conversant with the best known French literature of the time, and he
could probably stumble through Homer with the help of a crib and a guess
at the general meaning. He says himself that at this early period, he
went through all the best critics; all the French, English and Latin
poems of any name; "Homer and some of the greater Greek poets in the
original," and Tasso and Ariosto in translations.
Pope at any rate acquired a wide knowledge of English poetry. Waller,
Spenser, and Dryden were, he says, his great favourites in the order
named, till he was twelve. Like so many other poets, he took infinite
delight in the _Faery Queen_; but Dryden, the great poetical luminary of
his own day, naturally exercised a predominant influence upon his mind.
He declared that he had learnt versification wholly from Dryden's works,
and always mentioned his name with reverence. Many scattered remarks
reported by Spence, and the still more conclusive evidence of frequent
appropriation, show him to have been familiar with the poetry of the
preceding century, and with much that had gone out of fashion in his
time, to a degree in which he was probably excelled by none of his
successors, with the exception of Gray. Like Gray he contemplated at one
time the history of English poetry which was in some sense executed by
Warton. It is characteristic, too, that he early showed a critical
spirit. From a boy, he says, he could distinguish between sweetness and
softness of numbers, Dryden exemplifying softness and Waller sweetness;
and the remark, whatever its value, shows that he had been analysing
his impressions and reflecting upon the technical secrets of his art.
Such study naturally suggests the trembling aspiration, "I, too, am a
poet." Pope adopts with apparent sincerity the Ovidian phrase,
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
His father corrected his early performances and when not satisfied, sent
him back with the phrase, "These are not good rhymes." He translated any
passages that struck him in his reading, excited by the examples of
Ogilby's Homer and Sandys' Ovid. His boyish ambition prompted him before
he was fifteen to attempt an epic poem; the subject was Alcander, Prince
of Rhodes, driven from his home by Deucalion, father of Minos; and the
work was modestly intended to emulate in different passages the beauties
of Milton, Cowley, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Claudian.
Four books of this poem survived for a long time, for Pope had a more
than parental fondness for all the children of his brain, and always had
an eye to possible reproduction. Scraps from this early epic were worked
into the Essay on Criticism and the Dunciad. This couplet, for example,
from the last work comes straight, we are told, from Alcander,--
As man's Mæanders to the vital spring
Roll all their tides, then back their circles bring.
Another couplet, preserved by Spence, will give a sufficient taste of
its quality:--
Shields, helms, and swords all jangle as they hang,
And sound formidinous with angry clang.
After this we shall hardly censure Atterbury for approving (perhaps
suggesting) its destruction in later years. Pope long meditated another
epic, relating the foundation of the English government by Brutus of
Troy, with a superabundant display of didactic morality and religion.
Happily this dreary conception, though it occupied much thought, never
came to the birth.
The time soon came when these tentative flights were to be superseded by
more serious efforts. Pope's ambition was directed into the same channel
by his innate propensities and by the accidents of his position. No man
ever displayed a more exclusive devotion to literature, or was more
tremblingly sensitive to the charm of literary glory. His zeal was never
distracted by any rival emotion. Almost from his cradle to his grave his
eye was fixed unremittingly upon the sole purpose of his life. The whole
energies of his mind were absorbed in the struggle to place his name as
high as possible in that temple of fame, which he painted after Chaucer
in one of his early poems. External conditions pointed to letters as the
sole path to eminence, but it was precisely the path for which he had
admirable qualifications. The sickly son of the Popish tradesman was cut
off from the bar, the senate, and the church. Physically contemptible,
politically ostracized, and in a humble social position, he could yet
win this dazzling prize and force his way with his pen to the highest
pinnacle of contemporary fame. Without adventitious favour and in spite
of many bitter antipathies, he was to become the acknowledged head of
English literature, and the welcome companion of all the most eminent
men of his time. Though he could not foresee his career from the start,
he worked as vigorously as if the goal had already been in sight; and
each successive victory in the field of letters was realized the more
keenly from his sense of the disadvantages in face of which it had been
won. In tracing his rapid ascent, we shall certainly find reason to
doubt his proud assertion,--
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways,
but it is impossible for any lover of literature to grudge admiration to
this singular triumph of pure intellect over external disadvantages, and
the still more depressing influences of incessant physical suffering.
Pope had indeed certain special advantages which he was not slow in
turning to account. In one respect even his religion helped him to
emerge into fame. There was naturally a certain free-masonry amongst the
Catholics allied by fellow-feeling under the general antipathy. The
relations between Pope and his co-religionists exercised a material
influence upon his later life. Within a few miles of Binfield lived the
Blounts of Mapledurham, a fine old Elizabethan mansion on the banks of
the Thames, near Reading, which had been held by a royalist Blount in
the civil war against a parliamentary assault. It was a more interesting
circumstance to Pope that Mr. Lister Blount, the then representative of
the family, had two fair daughters, Teresa and Martha, of about the
poet's age. Another of Pope's Catholic acquaintances was John Caryll, of
West Grinstead in Sussex, nephew of a Caryll who had been the
representative of James II. at the Court of Rome, and who, following his
master into exile, received the honours of a titular peerage and held
office in the melancholy court of the Pretender. In such circles Pope
might have been expected to imbibe a Jacobite and Catholic horror of
Whigs and freethinkers. In fact, however, he belonged from his youth to
the followers of Gallio, and seems to have paid to religious duties just
as much attention as would satisfy his parents. His mind was really
given to literature; and he found his earliest patron in his immediate
neighbourhood. This was Sir W. Trumbull, who had retired to his native
village of Easthampstead in 1697, after being ambassador at the Porte
under James II., and Secretary of State under William III. Sir William
made acquaintance with the Popes, praised the father's artichokes, and
was delighted with the precocious son. The old diplomatist and the young
poet soon became fast friends, took constant rides together, and talked
over classic and modern poetry. Pope made Trumbull acquainted with
Milton's juvenile poems, and Trumbull encouraged Pope to follow in
Milton's steps. He gave, it seems, the first suggestion to Pope that he
should translate Homer; and he exhorted his young friend to preserve his
health by flying from tavern company--_tanquam ex incendio_. Another
early patron was William Walsh, a Worcestershire country gentleman of
fortune and fashion, who condescended to dabble in poetry after the
manner of Waller, and to write remonstrances upon Celia's cruelty,
verses to his mistress against marriage, epigrams, and pastoral
eclogues. He was better known, however, as a critic, and had been
declared by Dryden to be, without flattery, the best in the nation. Pope
received from him one piece of advice which has become famous. We had
had great poets--so said the "knowing Walsh," as Pope calls him--"but
never one great poet that was correct;" and he accordingly recommended
Pope to make correctness his great aim. The advice doubtless impressed
the young man as the echo of his own convictions. Walsh died (1708),
before the effect of his suggestion had become fully perceptible.
The acquaintance with Walsh was due to Wycherley, who had submitted
Pope's Pastorals to his recognized critical authority. Pope's
intercourse with Wycherley and another early friend, Henry Cromwell, had
a more important bearing upon his early career. He kept up a
correspondence with each of these friends, whilst he was still passing
through his probationary period; and the letters published long
afterwards under singular circumstances to be hereafter related, give
the fullest revelation of his character and position at this time. Both
Wycherley and Cromwell were known to the Englefields of Whiteknights,
near Reading, a Catholic family, in which Pope first made the
acquaintance of Martha Blount, whose mother was a daughter of the old
Mr. Englefield of the day. It was possibly, therefore, through this
connexion that Pope owed his first introduction to the literary circles
of London. Pope, already thirsting for literary fame, was delighted to
form a connexion which must have been far from satisfactory to his
indulgent parents, if they understood the character of his new
associates.
Henry Cromwell, a remote cousin of the Protector, is known to other than
minute investigators of contemporary literature by nothing except his
friendship with Pope. He was nearly thirty years older than Pope, and
though heir to an estate in the country, was at this time a gay, though
rather elderly, man about town. Vague intimations are preserved of his
personal appearance. Gay calls him "honest hatless Cromwell with red
breeches;" and Johnson could learn about him the single fact that he
used to ride a-hunting in a tie-wig. The interpretation of these outward
signs may not be very obvious to modern readers; but it is plain from
other indications that he was one of the frequenters of coffee-houses,
aimed at being something of a rake and a wit, was on speaking terms with
Dryden, and familiar with the smaller celebrities of literature, a
regular attendant at theatres, a friend of actresses, and able to
present himself in fashionable circles and devote complimentary verses
to the reigning beauties at the Bath. When he studied the _Spectator_ he
might recognize some of his features reflected in the portrait of Will
Honeycomb. Pope was proud enough for the moment at being taken by the
hand by this elderly buck, though, as Pope himself rose in the literary
scale and could estimate literary reputations more accurately, he
became, it would seem, a little ashamed of his early enthusiasm, and, at
any rate, the friendship dropped. The letters which passed between the
pair during four or five years down to the end of 1711, show Pope in his
earliest manhood. They are characteristic of that period of development
in which a youth of literary genius takes literary fame in the most
desperately serious sense. Pope is evidently putting his best foot
forward, and never for a moment forgets that he is a young author
writing to a recognized critic--except, indeed, when he takes the airs
of an experienced rake. We might speak of the absurd affectation
displayed in the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most
genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope
as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in
elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style;
he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his
head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism
of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one
place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of
his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for
precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally
alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey,
quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from
Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical
translations, adduces authorities, ventures to censure Mr. Rowe's
amplifications of Lucan, and, in this respect, thinks that Breboeuf,
the famous French translator, is equally a sinner, and writes a long
letter as to the proper use of the cæsura and the hiatus in English
verse. There are signs that the mutual criticisms became a little trying
to the tempers of the correspondents. Pope seems to be inclined to
ridicule Cromwell's pedantry, and when he affects satisfaction at
learning that Cromwell has detected him in appropriating a rondeau from
Voiture, we feel that the tension is becoming serious. Probably he found
out that Cromwell was not only a bit of a prig, but a person not likely
to reflect much glory upon his friends, and the correspondence came to
an end, when Pope found a better market for his wares.
Pope speaks more than once in these letters of his country retirement,
where he could enjoy the company of the muses, but where, on the other
hand, he was forced to be grave and godly, instead of drunk and
scandalous as he could be in town. The jolly hunting and drinking
squires round Binfield thought him, he says, a well-disposed person, but
unluckily disqualified for their rough modes of enjoyment by his sickly
health. With them he has not been able to make one Latin quotation, but
has learnt a song of Tom Durfey's, the sole representative of
literature, it appears, at the "toping-tables" of these thick-witted
fox-hunters. Pope naturally longed for the more refined or at least
more fashionable indulgences of London life. Beside the literary
affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive
affectation--unfortunately not peculiar to any period--of the youth who
wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world. Pope,
as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent;
and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this score,
though the offence is far graver when the same tendency appears, as it
sometimes does, in his letters to women. There is no proof that Pope was
ever licentious in practice. He was probably more temperate than most of
his companions, and could be accused of fewer lapses from strict
morality than, for example, the excellent but thoughtless Steele. For
this there was the very good reason that his "little, tender, crazy
carcass," as Wycherley calls it, was utterly unfit for such excesses as
his companions could practice with comparative impunity. He was bound
under heavy penalties to be through life a valetudinarian, and such
doses of wine as the respectable Addison used regularly to absorb, would
have brought speedy punishment. Pope's loose talk probably meant little
enough in the way of actual vice, though, as I have already said,
Trumbull saw reasons for friendly warning. But some of his writings are
stained by pruriency and downright obscenity; whilst the same fault may
be connected with a painful absence of that chivalrous feeling towards
women which redeems Steele's errors of conduct in our estimate of his
character. Pope always takes a low, sometimes a brutal view of the
relation between the sexes.
Enough, however, has been said upon this point. If Pope erred, he was
certainly unfortunate in the objects of his youthful hero-worship.
Cromwell seems to have been but a pedantic hanger-on of literary
circles. His other great friend, Wycherley, had stronger claims upon
his respect, but certainly was not likely to raise his standard of
delicacy. Wycherley was a relic of a past literary epoch. He was nearly
fifty years older than Pope. His last play, the _Plain Dealer_, had been
produced in 1677, eleven years before Pope's birth. The _Plain Dealer_
and the _Country Wife_, his chief performances, are conspicuous amongst
the comedies of the Restoration dramatists for sheer brutality. During
Pope's boyhood he was an elderly rake about town, having squandered his
intellectual as well as his pecuniary resources, but still scribbling
bad verses and maxims on the model of Rochefoucauld. Pope had a very
excusable, perhaps we may say creditable, enthusiasm for the
acknowledged representatives of literary glory. Before he was twelve
years old he had persuaded some one to take him to Will's, that he might
have a sight of the venerable Dryden; and in the first published
letter[1] to Wycherley he refers to this brief glimpse, and warmly
thanks Wycherley for some conversation about the elder poet. And thus,
when he came to know Wycherley, he was enraptured with the honour. He
followed the great man about, as he tells us, like a dog; and,
doubtless, received with profound respect the anecdotes of literary life
which fell from the old gentleman's lips. Soon a correspondence began,
in which Pope adopts a less jaunty air than that of his letters to
Cromwell, but which is conducted on both sides in the laboured
complimentary style which was not unnatural in the days when Congreve's
comedy was taken to represent the conversation of fashionable life.
Presently, however, the letters began to turn upon an obviously
dangerous topic. Pope was only seventeen when it occurred to his friend
to turn him to account as a literary assistant. The lad had already
shown considerable powers of versification, and was soon employing them
in the revision of some of the numerous compositions which amused
Wycherley's leisure. It would have required, one might have thought,
less than Wycherley's experience to foresee the natural end of such an
alliance. Pope, in fact, set to work with great vigour in his favourite
occupation of correcting. He hacked and hewed right and left; omitted,
compressed, rearranged, and occasionally inserted additions of his own
devising. Wycherley's memory had been enfeebled by illness, and now
played him strange tricks. He was in the habit of reading himself to
sleep with Montaigne, Rochefoucauld, and Racine. Next morning he would,
with entire unconsciousness, write down as his own the thoughts of his
author, or repeat almost word for word some previous composition of his
own. To remove such repetitions thoroughly would require a very free
application of the knife, and Pope would not be slow to discover that he
was wasting talents fit for original work in botching and tinkering a
mass of rubbish.
Any man of ripe years would have predicted the obvious consequences;
and, according to the ordinary story, those consequences followed. Pope
became more plain-speaking, and at last almost insulting in his
language. Wycherley ended by demanding the return of his manuscripts, in
a letter showing his annoyance under a veil of civility; and Pope sent
them back with a smart reply, recommending Wycherley to adopt a previous
suggestion and turn his poetry into maxims after the manner of
Rochefoucauld. The "old scribbler," says Johnson, "was angry to see his
pages defaced, and felt more pain from the criticism than content from
the amendment of his faults." The story is told at length, and with his
usual brilliance, by Macaulay, and has hitherto passed muster with all
Pope's biographers; and, indeed, it is so natural a story, and is so far
confirmed by other statements of Pope, that it seems a pity to spoil it.
And yet it must be at least modified, for we have already reached one of
those perplexities which force a biographer of Pope to be constantly
looking to his footsteps. So numerous are the contradictions which
surround almost every incident of the poet's career, that one is
constantly in danger of stumbling into some pitfall, or bound to cross
it in gingerly fashion on the stepping-stone of a cautious "perhaps."
The letters which are the authority for this story have undergone a
manipulation from Pope himself, under circumstances to be hereafter
noticed; and recent researches have shown that a very false colouring
has been put upon this as upon other passages. The nature of this
strange perversion is a curious illustration of Pope's absorbing vanity.
Pope, in fact, was evidently ashamed of the attitude which he had not
unnaturally adopted to his correspondent. The first man of letters of
his day could not bear to reveal the full degree in which he had fawned
upon the decayed dramatist, whose inferiority to himself was now plainly
recognized. He altered the whole tone of the correspondence by omission,
and still worse by addition. He did not publish a letter in which
Wycherley gently remonstrates with his young admirer for excessive
adulation; he omitted from his own letters the phrase which had provoked
the remonstrance; and, with more daring falsification, he manufactured
an imaginary letter to Wycherley out of a letter really addressed to
his friend Caryll. In this letter Pope had himself addressed to Caryll a
remonstrance similar to that which he had received from Wycherley. When
published as a letter to Wycherley, it gives the impression that Pope,
at the age of seventeen, was already rejecting excessive compliments
addressed to him by his experienced friend. By these audacious
perversions of the truth, Pope is enabled to heighten his youthful
independence, and to represent himself as already exhibiting a graceful
superiority to the reception or the offering of incense; whilst he thus
precisely inverts the relation which really existed between himself and
his correspondent.
The letters, again, when read with a due attention to dates, shows that
Wycherley's proneness to take offence has at least been exaggerated.
Pope's services to Wycherley were rendered on two separate occasions.
The first set of poems were corrected during 1706 and 1707, and
Wycherley, in speaking of this revision, far from showing symptoms of
annoyance, speaks with gratitude of Pope's kindness, and returns the
expressions of goodwill which accompanied his criticisms. Both these
expressions, and Wycherley's acknowledgment of them, were omitted in
Pope's publication. More than two years elapsed, when (in April, 1710)
Wycherley submitted a new set of manuscripts to Pope's unflinching
severity; and it is from the letters which passed in regard to this last
batch that the general impression as to the nature of the quarrel has
been derived. But these letters, again, have been mutilated, and so
mutilated as to increase the apparent tartness of the mutual retorts;
and it must therefore remain doubtful how far the coolness which ensued
was really due to the cause assigned. Pope, writing at the time to
Cromwell, expresses his vexation at the difference, and professes
himself unable to account for it, though he thinks that his corrections
may have been the cause of the rupture. An alternative rumour,[2] it
seems, accused Pope of having written some satirical verses upon his
friend. To discover the rights and wrongs of the quarrel is now
impossible, though, unfortunately, one thing is clear, namely, that Pope
was guilty of grossly sacrificing truth in the interests of his own
vanity. We may, indeed, assume, without much risk of error, that Pope
had become too conscious of his own importance to find pleasure or pride
in doctoring another man's verses. It must remain uncertain how far he
showed this resentment to Wycherley openly, or gratified it by some
covert means; and how far, again, he succeeded in calming Wycherley's
susceptibility by his compliments, or aroused his wrath by more or less
contemptuous treatment of his verses.
A year after the quarrel, Cromwell reported that Wycherley had again
been speaking in friendly terms of Pope, and Pope expressed his pleasure
with eagerness. He must, he said, be more agreeable to himself when
agreeable to Wycherley, as the earth was brighter when the sun was less
overcast. Wycherley, it may be remarked, took Pope's advice by turning
some of his verses into prose maxims; and they seem to have been at last
upon more or less friendly terms. The final scene of Wycherley's
questionable career, some four years later, is given by Pope in a letter
to his friend, Edward Blount. The old man, he says, joined the
sacraments of marriage and extreme unction. By one he supposed himself
to gain some advantage of his soul; by the other, he had the pleasure
of saddling his hated heir and nephew with the jointure of his widow.
When dying, he begged his wife to grant him a last request, and, upon
her consent, explained it to be that she would never again marry an old
man. Sickness, says Pope in comment, often destroys wit and wisdom, but
has seldom the power to remove humour. Wycherley's joke, replies a
critic, is contemptible; and yet one feels that the death scene, with
this strange mixture of cynicism, spite, and superstition, half redeemed
by imperturbable good temper, would not be unworthy of a place in
Wycherley's own school of comedy. One could wish that Pope had shown a
little more perception of the tragic side of such a conclusion.
Pope was still almost a boy when he broke with Wycherley; but he was
already beginning to attract attention, and within a surprisingly short
time he was becoming known as one of the first writers of the day. I
must now turn to the poems by which this reputation was gained, and the
incidents connected with their publication. In Pope's life, almost more
than in that of any other poet, the history of the author is the history
of the man.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The letter is, unluckily, of doubtful authenticity; but it
represents Pope's probable sentiments.
[2] See Elwin's Pope, Vol. I., cxxxv.