CORRESPONDENCE.
I have now to describe one of the most singular series of transactions
to be found in the annals of literature. A complete knowledge of their
various details has only been obtained by recent researches. I cannot
follow within my limits of space all the ins and outs of the complicated
labyrinth of more than diplomatic trickery which those researches have
revealed, though I hope to render the main facts sufficiently
intelligible. It is painful to track the strange deceptions of a man of
genius as a detective unravels the misdeeds of an accomplished swindler;
but without telling the story at some length, it is impossible to give a
faithful exhibition of Pope's character.
In the year 1726, when Pope had just finished his labours upon Homer,
Curll published the juvenile letters to Cromwell. There was no mystery
about this transaction. Curll was the chief of all piratical
booksellers, and versed in every dirty trick of the Grub-street trade.
He is described in that mad book, Amory's _John Buncle_, as tall, thin,
ungainly, white-faced, with light grey goggle eyes, purblind,
splay-footed, and "baker-kneed." According to the same queer authority,
who professes to have lodged in Curll's house, he was drunk, as often as
he could drink for nothing, and intimate in every London haunt of vice.
"His translators lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn in
Holborn," and helped to compile his indecent, piratical, and catchpenny
productions. He had lost his ears for some obscene publication; but
Amory adds, "to his glory," that he died "as great a penitent as ever
expired." He had one strong point as an antagonist. Having no character
to lose, he could reveal his own practices without a blush, if the
revelation injured others.
Pope had already come into collision with this awkward antagonist. In
1716 Curll threatened to publish the Town Eclogues, burlesques upon
Ambrose Philips, written by Lady Mary, with the help of Pope and perhaps
Gay. Pope, with Lintot, had a meeting with Curll in the hopes of
suppressing a publication calculated to injure his friends. The party
had some wine, and Curll on going home was very sick. He declared--and
there are reasons for believing his story--that Pope had given him an
emetic, by way of coarse practical joke. Pope, at any rate, took
advantage of the accident to write a couple of squibs upon Curll,
recording the bookseller's ravings under the action of the drug, as he
had described the ravings of Dennis provoked by Cato. Curll had his
revenge afterwards; but meanwhile he wanted no extraneous motive to
induce him to publish the Cromwell letters. Cromwell had given the
letters to a mistress, who fell into distress and sold them to Curll for
ten guineas.
The correspondence was received with some favour, and suggested to Pope
a new mode of gratifying his vanity. An occasion soon offered itself.
Theobald, the hero of the Dunciad, edited in 1728 the posthumous works
of Wycherley. Pope extracted from this circumstance a far-fetched excuse
for publishing the Wycherley correspondence. He said that it was due to
Wycherley's memory to prove, by the publication of their correspondence,
that the posthumous publication of the works was opposed to their
author's wishes. As a matter of fact the letters have no tendency to
prove anything of the kind, or rather, they support the opposite theory;
but poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar, and took the first
pretext that offered, without caring for consistency or confirmation.
His next step was to write to his friend, Lord Oxford, son of Queen
Anne's minister. Oxford was a weak, good-natured man. By cultivating a
variety of expensive tastes, without the knowledge to guide them, he
managed to run through a splendid fortune and die in embarrassment. His
famous library was one of his special hobbies. Pope now applied to him
to allow the Wycherley letters to be deposited in the library, and
further requested that the fact of their being in this quasi-public
place might be mentioned in the preface as a guarantee of their
authenticity. Oxford consented, and Pope quietly took a further step
without authority. He told Oxford that he had decided to make his
publishers say that copies of the letters had been obtained from Lord
Oxford. He told the same story to Swift, speaking of the "connivance" of
his noble friend, and adding that, though he did not himself "much
approve" of the publication, he was not ashamed of it. He thus
ingeniously intimated that the correspondence, which he had himself
carefully prepared and sent to press, had been printed without his
consent by the officious zeal of Oxford and the booksellers.
The book (which was called the second volume of Wycherley's works) has
entirely disappeared. It was advertised at the time, but not a single
copy is known to exist. One cause of this disappearance now appears to
be that it had no sale at first, and that Pope preserved the sheets for
use in a more elaborate device which followed. Oxford probably objected
to the misuse of his name, as the fiction which made him responsible was
afterwards dropped. Pope found, or thought that he had found, on the
next occasion, a more convenient cat's-paw. Curll, it could not be
doubted, would snatch at any chance of publishing more correspondence;
and, as Pope was anxious to have his letters stolen and Curll was ready
to steal, the one thing necessary was a convenient go-between, who could
be disowned or altogether concealed. Pope went systematically to work.
He began by writing to his friends, begging them to return his letters.
After Curll's piracy, he declared, he could not feel himself safe, and
should be unhappy till he had the letters in his own custody. Letters
were sent in, though in some cases with reluctance; and Caryll, in
particular, who had the largest number, privately took copies before
returning them (a measure which ultimately secured the detection of many
of Pope's manoeuvres). This, however, was unknown to Pope. He had the
letters copied out; after (according to his own stating) burning
three-fourths of them, and (as we are now aware) carefully editing the
remainder, he had the copy deposited in Lord Oxford's library. His
object was, as he said, partly to have documents ready in case of the
revival of scandals, and partly to preserve the memory of his
friendships. The next point was to get these letters stolen. For this
purpose he created a man of straw, a mysterious "P. T.," who could be
personated on occasion by some of the underlings employed in the
underground transactions connected with the Dunciad and the Grub-street
Journal. P. T. began by writing to Curll in 1733, and offering to sell
him a collection of Pope's letters. The negotiation went off for a time,
because P. T. insisted upon Curll's first committing himself by
publishing an advertisement, declaring himself to be already in
possession of the originals. Curll was too wary to commit himself to
such a statement, which would have made him responsible for the theft;
or, perhaps, have justified Pope in publishing the originals in
self-defence. The matter slept till March 1735, when Curll wrote to Pope
proposing a cessation of hostilities, and as a proof of goodwill sending
him the old P. T. advertisement. This step fell in so happily with
Pope's designs that it has been suggested that Curll was prompted in
some indirect manner by one of Pope's agents. Pope, at any rate, turned
it to account. He at once published an insulting advertisement. Curll
(he said in this manifesto) had pretended to have had the offer from P.
T. of a large collection of Pope's letters; Pope knew nothing of P. T.,
believed the letters to be forgeries, and would take no more trouble in
the matter. Whilst Curll was presumably smarting under this summary slap
on the face, the insidious P. T. stepped in once more. P. T. now said
that he was in possession of the printed sheets of the correspondence,
and the negotiation went on swimmingly. Curll put out the required
advertisement; a "short, squat" man, in a clergyman's gown and with
barrister's bands, calling himself Smythe, came to his house at night as
P. T.'s agent, and showed him some printed sheets and original letters;
the bargain was struck; 240 copies of the book were delivered, and it
was published on May 12th.
So far the plot had succeeded. Pope had printed his own correspondence,
and had tricked Curll into publishing the book piratically, whilst the
public was quite prepared to believe that Curll had performed a new
piratical feat. Pope, however, was now bound to shriek as loudly as he
could at the outrage under which he was suffering. He should have been
prepared also to answer an obvious question. Every one would naturally
inquire how Curll had procured the letters, which by Pope's own account
were safely deposited in Lord Oxford's library. Without, as it would
seem, properly weighing the difficulty of meeting this demand, Pope
called out loudly for vengeance. When the Dunciad appeared, he had
applied (as I have said) for an injunction in Chancery, and had at the
same time secured the failure of his application. The same device was
tried in a still more imposing fashion. The House of Lords had recently
decided that it was a breach of privilege to publish a peer's letters
without his consent. Pope availed himself of this rule to fire the most
sounding of blank shots across the path of the piratical Curll. He was
as anxious to allow the publication, as to demand its suppression in the
most emphatic manner. Accordingly he got his friend, Lord Ilay, to call
the attention of the peers to Curll's advertisement, which was so worded
as to imply that there were in the book letters from, as well as to,
peers. Pope himself attended the house "to stimulate the resentment of
his friends." The book was at once seized by a messenger, and Curll
ordered to attend the next day. But on examination it immediately turned
out that it contained no letters from peers, and the whole farce would
have ended at once but for a further trick. Lord Ilay said that a
certain letter to Jervas contained a reflection upon Lord Burlington.
Now the letter was found in a first batch of fifty copies sent to
Curll, and which had been sold before the appearance of the Lords'
messenger. But the letter had been suppressed in a second batch of 190
copies, which the messenger was just in time to seize. Pope had of
course foreseen and prepared this result.
The whole proceeding in the Lords was thus rendered abortive. The books
were restored to Curll, and the sale continued. But the device meanwhile
had recoiled upon its author; the very danger against which he should
have guarded himself had now occurred. How were the letters procured?
Not till Curll was coming up for examination does it seem to have
occurred to Pope that the Lords would inevitably ask the awkward
question. He then saw that Curll's answer might lead to a discovery. He
wrote a letter to Curll (in Smythe's name) intended to meet the
difficulty. He entreated Curll to take the whole of the responsibility
of procuring the letters upon himself, and by way of inducement held out
hopes of another volume of correspondence. In a second note he tried to
throw Curll off the scent of another significant little fact. The sheets
(as I have mentioned) were partly made up from the volume of Wycherley
correspondence;[15] this would give a clue to further inquiries; P. T.
therefore allowed Smythe to say (ostensibly to show his confidence in
Curll) that he (P. T.) had been employed in getting up the former
volume, and had had some additional sheets struck off for himself, to
which he had added letters subsequently obtained. The letter was a
signal blunder. Curll saw at once that it put the game in his hands. He
was not going to tell lies to please the slippery P. T., or the short
squat lawyer-clergyman. He had begun to see through the whole
manoeuvre. He went straight off to the Lords' committee, told the
whole story, and produced as a voucher the letters in which P. T. begged
for secrecy. Curll's word was good for little by itself, but his story
hung together and the letter confirmed it. And if, as now seemed clear,
Curll was speaking the truth, the question remained, who was P. T., and
how did he get the letters? The answer, as Pope must have felt, was only
too clear.
But Curll now took the offensive. In reply to another letter from
Smythe, complaining of his evidence, he went roundly to work; he said
that he should at once publish all the correspondence. P. T. had
prudently asked for the return of his letters; but Curll had kept
copies, and was prepared to swear to their fidelity. Accordingly he soon
advertised what was called the _Initial Correspondence_. Pope was now
caught in his own trap. He had tried to avert suspicion by publicly
offering a reward to Smythe and P. T., if they would "discover the whole
affair." The letters, as he admitted, must have been procured either
from his own library or from Lord Oxford's. The correspondence to be
published by Curll would help to identify the mysterious appropriators,
and whatever excuses could be made ought now to be forthcoming. Pope
adopted a singular plan. It was announced that the clergyman concerned
with P. T. and Curll had "discovered the whole transaction." A narrative
was forthwith published to anticipate Curll and to clear up the mystery.
If good for anything, it should have given, or helped to give, the key
to the great puzzle--the mode of obtaining the letters. There was
nothing else for Smythe or P. T. to "discover." Readers must have been
strangely disappointed on finding not a single word to throw light upon
this subject, and merely a long account of the negotiations between
Curll and P. T. The narrative might serve to distract attention from the
main point, which it clearly did nothing to elucidate. But Curll now
stated his own case. He reprinted the narrative with some pungent notes;
he gave in full some letters omitted by P. T., and he added a story
which was most unpleasantly significant. P. T. had spoken, as I have
said, of his connexion with the Wycherley volume. The object of this
statement was to get rid of an awkward bit of evidence. But Curll now
announced, on the authority of Gilliver, the publisher of the volume,
that Pope had himself bought up the remaining sheets. The inference was
clear. Unless the story could be contradicted, and it never was, Pope
was himself the thief. The sheets common to the two volumes had been
traced to his possession. Nor was there a word in the P. T. narrative to
diminish the force of these presumptions. Indeed it was curiously
inconsistent, for it vaguely accused Curll of stealing the letters
himself, whilst in the same breath it told how he had bought them from
P. T. In fact, P. T. was beginning to resolve himself into thin air,
like the phantom in the Dunciad. As he vanished, it required no great
acuteness to distinguish behind him the features of his ingenious
creator. It was already believed at the time that the whole affair was
an elaborate contrivance of Pope's, and subsequent revelations have
demonstrated the truth of the hypothesis. Even the go-between, Smythe,
was identified as one James Worsdale, a painter, actor, and author, of
the Bohemian variety.
Though Curll had fairly won the game, and Pope's intrigue was even at
the time sufficiently exposed, it seems to have given less scandal than
might have been expected. Probably it was suspected only in literary
circles, and perhaps it might be thought that, silly as was the
elaborate device, the disreputable Curll was fair game for his natural
enemy. Indeed, such is the irony of fate, Pope won credit with simple
people. The effect of the publication, as Johnson tells us, was to fill
the nation with praises of the admirable moral qualities revealed in
Pope's letters. Amongst the admirers was Ralph Allen, who had made a
large fortune by farming the cross-posts. His princely benevolence and
sterling worth were universally admitted, and have been immortalized by
the best contemporary judge of character. He was the original of
Fielding's Allworthy. Like that excellent person, he seems to have had
the common weakness of good men in taking others too easily at their own
valuation. Pope imposed upon him just as Blifil imposed upon his
representative. He was so much pleased with the correspondence, that he
sought Pope's acquaintance, and offered to publish a genuine edition at
his own expense. An authoritative edition appeared accordingly in 1737.
Pope preferred to publish by subscription, which does not seem to have
filled very rapidly, though the work ultimately made a fair profit.
Pope's underhand manoeuvres were abundantly illustrated in the history
of this new edition. It is impossible to give the details; but I may
briefly state that he was responsible for a nominally spurious edition
which appeared directly after, and was simply a reproduction of Curll's
publication. Although he complained of the garbling and interpolations
supposed to have been due to the wicked Curll or the phantom P. T., and
although he omitted in his avowed edition certain letters which had
given offence, he nevertheless substantially reproduced in it Curll's
version of the letters. As this differs from the originals which have
been preserved, Pope thus gave an additional proof that he was really
responsible for Curll's supposed garbling. This evidence was adduced
with conclusive force by Bowles in a later controversy, and would be
enough by itself to convict Pope of the imputed deception. Finally, it
may be added that Pope's delay in producing his own edition is explained
by the fact that it contained many falsifications of his correspondence
with Caryll, and that he delayed the acknowledgment of the genuine
character of the letters until Caryll's death removed the danger of
detection.
The whole of this elaborate machinery was devised in order that Pope
might avoid the ridicule of publishing his own correspondence. There had
been few examples of a similar publication of private letters; and
Pope's volume, according to Johnson, did not attract very much
attention. This is, perhaps, hardly consistent with Johnson's other
assertion that it filled the nation with praises of his virtue. In any
case it stimulated his appetite for such praises, and led him to a fresh
intrigue, more successful and also more disgraceful. The device
originally adopted in publishing the Dunciad apparently suggested part
of the new plot. The letters hitherto published did not include the most
interesting correspondence in which Pope had been engaged. He had been
in the habit of writing to Swift since their first acquaintance, and
Bolingbroke had occasionally joined him. These letters, which connected
Pope with two of his most famous contemporaries, would be far more
interesting than the letters to Cromwell or Wycherley, or even than the
letters addressed to Addison and Steele, which were mere stilted
fabrications. How could they be got before the world, and in such a way
as to conceal his own complicity?
Pope had told Swift (in 1730) that he had kept some of the letters in a
volume for his own secret satisfaction; and Swift had preserved all
Pope's letters along with those of other distinguished men. Here was an
attractive booty for such parties as the unprincipled Curll! In 1735
Curll had committed his wicked piracy, and Pope pressed Swift to return
his letters, in order to "secure him against that rascal printer." The
entreaties were often renewed, but Swift for some reason turned his deaf
ear to the suggestion. He promised, indeed (Sept. 3, 1735), that the
letters should be burnt--a most effectual security against
republication, but one not at all to Pope's taste. Pope then admitted
that, having been forced to publish some of his other letters, he should
like to make use of some of those to Swift, as none would be more
honourable to him. Nay, he says, he meant to erect such a minute
monument of their friendship as would put to shame all ancient memorials
of the same kind.[16] This avowal of his intention to publish did not
conciliate Swift. Curll next published in 1736 a couple of letters to
Swift, and Pope took advantage of this publication (perhaps he had
indirectly supplied Curll with copies) to urge upon Swift the insecurity
of the letters in his keeping. Swift ignored the request, and his
letters about this time began to show that his memory was failing and
his intellect growing weak.
Pope now applied to their common friend Lord Orrery. Orrery was the dull
member of a family eminent for its talents. His father had left a
valuable library to Christ Church, ostensibly because the son was not
capable of profiting by books, though a less creditable reason has been
assigned.[17] The son, eager to wipe off the imputation, specially
affected the society of wits, and was elaborately polite both to Swift
and Pope. Pope now got Orrery to intercede with Swift, urging that the
letters were no longer safe in the custody of a failing old man. Orrery
succeeded, and brought the letters in a sealed packet to Pope in the
summer of 1737. Swift, it must be added, had an impression that there
was a gap of six years in the collection; he became confused as to what
had or had not been sent, and had a vague belief in a "great collection"
of letters "placed in some very safe hand."[18] Pope, being thus in
possession of the whole correspondence, proceeded to perform a
manoeuvre resembling those already employed in the case of the Dunciad
and of the P. T. letters. He printed the correspondence clandestinely.
He then sent the printed volume to Swift, accompanied by an anonymous
letter. This letter purported to come from some persons who, from
admiration of Swift's private and public virtues, had resolved to
preserve letters so creditable to him, and had accordingly put them in
type. They suggested that the volume would be suppressed if it fell into
the hands of Bolingbroke and Pope (a most audacious suggestion!), and
intimated that Swift should himself publish it. No other copy, they
said, was in existence. Poor Swift fell at once into the trap. He
ought, of course, to have consulted Pope or Bolingbroke, and would
probably have done so had his mind been sound. Seeing, however, a volume
already printed, he might naturally suppose that, in spite of the
anonymous assurance, it was already too late to stop the publication. At
any rate, he at once sent it to his publisher, Faulkner, and desired him
to bring it out at once. Swift was in that most melancholy state in
which a man's friends perceive him to be incompetent to manage his
affairs, and are yet not able to use actual restraint. Mrs. Whiteway,
the sensible and affectionate cousin who took care of him at this time,
did her best to protest against the publication, but in vain. Swift
insisted. So far Pope's device was successful. The printed letters had
been placed in the hands of his bookseller by Swift himself, and
publication was apparently secured. But Pope had still the same problem
as in the previous case. Though he had talked of erecting a monument to
Swift and himself, he was anxious that the monument should apparently be
erected by some one else. His vanity could only be satisfied by the
appearance that the publication was forced upon him. He had, therefore,
to dissociate himself from the publication by some protest at once
emphatic and ineffectual; and, consequently, to explain the means by
which the letters had been surreptitiously obtained.
The first aim was unexpectedly difficult. Faulkner turned out to be an
honest bookseller. Instead of sharing Curll's rapacity, he consented, at
Mrs. Whiteway's request, to wait until Pope had an opportunity of
expressing his wishes. Pope, if he consented, could no longer complain;
if he dissented, Faulkner would suppress the letters. In this dilemma,
Pope first wrote to Faulkner to refuse permission, and at the same time
took care that his letter should be delayed for a month. He hoped that
Faulkner would lose patience, and publish. But Faulkner, with provoking
civility, stopped the press as soon as he heard of Pope's objection.
Pope hereupon discovered that the letters were certain to be published,
as they were already printed, and doubtless by some mysterious
"confederacy of people" in London. All he could wish was to revise them
before appearance. Meanwhile he begged Lord Orrery to inspect the book,
and say what he thought of it. "Guess in what a situation I must be,"
exclaimed this sincere and modest person, "not to be able to see what
all the world is to read as mine!" Orrery was quite as provoking as
Faulkner. He got the book from Faulkner, read it, and instead of begging
Pope not to deprive the world of so delightful a treat, said with dull
integrity, that he thought the collection "unworthy to be published."
Orrery, however, was innocent enough to accept Pope's suggestion, that
letters which had once got into such hands would certainly come out
sooner or later. After some more haggling, Pope ultimately decided to
take this ground. He would, he said, have nothing to do with the
letters; they would come out in any case; their appearance would please
the Dean, and he (Pope) would stand clear of all responsibility. He
tried, indeed, to get Faulkner to prefix a statement tending to fix the
whole transaction upon Swift; but the bookseller declined, and the
letters ultimately came out with a simple statement that they were a
reprint.
Pope had thus virtually sanctioned the publication. He was not the less
emphatic in complaining of it to his friends. To Orrery, who knew the
facts, he represented the printed copy sent to Swift as a proof that
the letters were beyond his power; and to others, such as his friend
Allen, he kept silence as to this copy altogether; and gave them to
understand that poor Swift--or some member of Swift's family--was the
prime mover in the business. His mystification had, as before, driven
him into perplexities upon which he had never calculated. In fact, it
was still more difficult here than in the previous case to account for
the original misappropriation of the letters. Who could the thief have
been? Orrery, as we have seen, had himself taken a packet of letters to
Pope, which would be of course the letters from Pope to Swift. The
packet being sealed, Orrery did not know the contents, and Pope asserted
that he had burnt it almost as soon as received. It was, however, true
that Swift had been in the habit of showing the originals to his
friends, and some might possibly have been stolen or copied by designing
people. But this would not account for the publication of Swift's
letters to Pope, which had never been out of Pope's possession. As he
had certainly been in possession of the other letters, it was easiest,
even for himself, to suppose that some of his own servants were the
guilty persons; his own honour being, of course, beyond question.
To meet these difficulties, Pope made great use of some stray phrases
dropped by Swift in the decline of his memory, and set up a story of his
having himself returned some letters to Swift, of which important fact
all traces had disappeared. One characteristic device will be a
sufficient specimen. Swift wrote that a great collection of "_my_
letters to _you_" is somewhere "in a safe hand." He meant, of course, "a
collection of _your_ letters to _me_"--the only letters of which he
could know anything. Observing the slip of the pen, he altered the
phrase by writing the correct words above the line. It now stood--
"your me
my letters to you."
Pope laid great stress upon this, interpreting it to mean that the
"great collection" included letters from each correspondent to the
other--the fact being that Swift had only the letters from Pope to
himself. The omission of an erasure (whether by Swift or Pope) caused
the whole meaning to be altered. As the great difficulty was to explain
the publication of Swift's letters to Pope, this change supplied a very
important link in the evidence. It implied that Swift had been at some
time in possession of the letters in question, and had trusted them to
some one supposed to be safe. The whole paragraph, meanwhile, appears,
from the unimpeachable evidence of Mrs. Whiteway, to have involved one
of the illusions of memory, for which he (Swift) apologizes in the
letter from which this is extracted. By insisting upon this passage, and
upon certain other letters dexterously confounded with those published,
Pope succeeded in raising dust enough to blind Lord Orrery's not very
piercing intelligence. The inference which he desired to suggest was
that some persons in Swift's family had obtained possession of the
letters. Mrs. Whiteway, indeed, met the suggestion so clearly, and gave
such good reasons for assigning Twickenham as the probable centre of the
plot, that she must have suspected the truth. Pope did not venture to
assail her publicly, though he continued to talk of treachery or evil
influence.
To accuse innocent people of a crime which you know yourself to have
committed is bad enough. It is, perhaps, even baser to lay a trap for a
friend, and reproach him for falling into it. Swift had denied the
publication of the letters, and Pope would have had some grounds of
complaint had he not been aware of the failure of Swift's mind, and had
he not been himself the tempter. His position, however, forced him to
blame his friend. It was a necessary part of his case to impute at least
a breach of confidence to his victim. He therefore took the attitude--it
must, one hopes, have cost him a blush--of one who is seriously
aggrieved, but who is generously anxious to shield a friend in
consideration of his known infirmity. He is forced, in sorrow, to admit
that Swift has erred, but he will not allow himself to be annoyed. The
most humiliating words ever written by a man not utterly vile, must have
been those which Pope set down in a letter to Nugent, after giving his
own version of the case: "I think 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 but their vanity. No decay of body is
half so miserable." The most audacious hypocrite of fiction pales beside
this. Pope, condescending to the meanest complication of lies to justify
a paltry vanity, taking advantage of his old friend's dotage to trick
him into complicity, then giving a false account of his error, and
finally moralizing, with all the airs of philosophic charity, and taking
credit for his generosity, is altogether a picture to set fiction at
defiance.
I must add a remark not so edifying. Pope went down to his grave soon
afterwards, without exciting suspicion except among two or three people
intimately concerned. A whisper of doubt was soon hushed. Even the
biographers who were on the track of his former deception did not
suspect this similar iniquity. The last of them, Mr. Carruthers, writing
in 1857, observes upon the pain given to Pope by the treachery of
Swift--a treachery of course palliated by Swift's failure of mind. At
last Mr. Dilke discovered the truth, which has been placed beyond doubt
by the still later discovery of the letters to Orrery. The moral is,
apparently, that it is better to cheat a respectable man than a rogue;
for the respectable tacitly form a society for mutual support of
character, whilst the open rogue will be only too glad to show that you
are even such an one as himself.
It was not probable that letters thus published should be printed with
scrupulous accuracy. Pope, indeed, can scarcely have attempted to
conceal the fact that they had been a good deal altered. And so long as
the letters were regarded merely as literary compositions, the practice
was at least pardonable. But Pope went further; and the full extent of
his audacious changes was not seen until Mr. Dilke became possessed of
the Caryll correspondence. On comparing the copies preserved by Caryll
with the letters published by Pope, it became evident that Pope had
regarded these letters as so much raw material, which he might carve
into shape at pleasure, and with such alterations of date and address as
might be convenient, to the confusion of all biographers and editors
ignorant of his peculiar method of editing. The details of these very
disgraceful falsifications have been fully described by Mr. Elwin,[19]
but I turn gladly from this lamentable narrative to say something of the
literary value of the correspondence. Every critic has made the obvious
remark that Pope's letters are artificial and self-conscious. Pope
claimed the opposite merit. "It is many years," he says to Swift in
---4, "since I wrote as a wit." He smiles to think "how Curll would be
bit were our epistles to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they
would fall short of every ingenious reader's anticipations." Warburton
adds in a note that Pope used to "value himself upon this particular."
It is indeed true that Pope had dropped the boyish affectation of his
letters to Wycherley and Cromwell. But such a statement in the mouth of
a man who plotted to secure Curll's publication of his letters, with
devices elaborate enough to make the reputation of an unscrupulous
diplomatist, is of course only one more example of the superlative
degree of affectation, the affectation of being unaffected. We should be
indeed disappointed were we to expect in Pope's letters what we find in
the best specimens of the art: the charm which belongs to a simple
outpouring of friendly feeling in private intercourse; the sweet
playfulness of Cowper, or the grave humour of Gray, or even the sparkle
and brilliance of Walpole's admirable letters. Though Walpole had an eye
to posterity, and has his own mode of affectation, he is for the moment
intent on amusing, and is free from the most annoying blemish in Pope's
writing, the resolution to appear always in full dress, and to mount as
often as possible upon the stilts of moral self-approbation. All this is
obvious to the hasty reader; and yet I must confess my own conviction
that there is scarcely a more interesting volume in the language than
that which contains the correspondence of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Pope.
To enjoy it, indeed, we must not expect to be in sympathy with the
writers. Rather we must adopt the mental attitude of spectators of a
scene of high comedy--the comedy which is dashed with satire and has a
tragical side to it. We are behind the scenes in Vanity Fair, and
listening to the talk of three of its most famous performers, doubting
whether they most deceive each other or the public or themselves. The
secret is an open one for us, now that the illusion which perplexed
contemporaries has worn itself threadbare.
The most impressive letters are undoubtedly those of Swift--the stern
sad humourist, frowning upon the world which has rejected him, and
covering his wrath with an affectation, not of fine sentiment, but of
misanthropy. A soured man prefers to turn his worst side outwards. There
are phrases in his letters which brand themselves upon the memory like
those of no other man; and we are softened into pity as the strong mind
is seen gradually sinking into decay. The two other sharers in the
colloquy are in effective contrast. We see through Bolingbroke's
magnificent self-deceit; the flowing manners of the statesman who,
though the game is lost, is longing for a favourable turn of the card,
but still affects to solace himself with philosophy, and wraps himself
in dignified reflections upon the blessings of retirement, contrast with
Swift's downright avowal of indignant scorn for himself and mankind. And
yet we have a sense of the man's amazing cleverness, and regret that he
has no chance of trying one more fall with his antagonists in the open
arena. Pope's affectation is perhaps the most transparent and the most
gratuitous. His career had been pre-eminently successful; his talents
had found their natural outlet; and he had only to be what he apparently
persuaded himself that he was, to be happy in spite of illness. He is
constantly flourishing his admirable moral sense in our faces, dilating
upon his simplicity, modesty, fidelity to his friends, indifference to
the charms of fame, till we are almost convinced that he has imposed
upon himself. By some strange piece of legerdemain he must surely have
succeeded in regarding even his deliberate artifices, with the
astonishing masses of hypocritical falsehoods which they entailed, as in
some way legitimate weapons against a world full of piratical Curlls and
deep laid plots. And, indeed, with all his delinquencies, and with all
his affectations, there are moments in which we forget to preserve the
correct tone of moral indignation. Every now and then genuine feeling
seems to come to the surface. For a time the superincumbent masses of
hypocrisy vanish. In speaking of his mother or his pursuits he forgets
to wear his mask. He feels a genuine enthusiasm about his friends; he
believes with almost pathetic earnestness in the amazing talents of
Bolingbroke, and the patriotic devotion of the younger men who are
rising up to overthrow the corruptions of Walpole; he takes the
affectation of his friends as seriously as a simple-minded man who has
never fairly realized the possibility of deliberate hypocrisy; and he
utters sentiments about human life and its objects which, if a little
tainted with commonplace, have yet a certain ring of sincerity and, as
we may believe, were really sincere for the time. At such moments we
seem to see the man behind the veil--the really loveable nature which
could know as well as simulate feeling. And, indeed, it is this quality
which makes Pope endurable. He was--if we must speak bluntly--a liar and
a hypocrite; but the foundation of his character was not selfish or
grovelling. On the contrary, no man could be more warmly affectionate or
more exquisitely sensitive to many noble emotions. The misfortune was
that his constitutional infirmities, acted upon by unfavourable
conditions, developed his craving for applause and his fear of censure,
till certain morbid tendencies in him assumed proportions which,
compared to the same weaknesses in ordinary mankind, are as the growth
of plants in a tropical forest to their stunted representatives in the
North.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] The evidence by which the statements in this chapter are supported
is fully set forth in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope's Works, Vol. I., and
in the notes to the Orrery Correspondence in the third volume of
letters.
[15] This is proved by a note referring to "the present edition of the
posthumous works of Mr. Wycherley," which, by an oversight, was allowed
to remain in the Curll volume.
[16] These expressions come from two letters of Pope to Lord Orrery in
March, 1737, and may not accurately reproduce his statements to Swift;
but they probably represent approximately what he had said.
[17] It is said that the son objected to allow his wife to meet his
father's mistress.
[18] See Elwin's edition of Pope's Correspondence, iii., 399, note.
[19] Pope's Works, vol. i. p. cxxi.