Lecture The Fourth. Prior, Gay, And Pope
Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspiciousreign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was aworld-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.(108) Heloved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, "ina little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace,and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass thatevening and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a _Spielhaus_ with hiscompanions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down,in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, thecharms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner'sson in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Priorattracted some notice by writing verses at St. John's College, Cambridge,and, coming up to town, aided Montague(109) in an attack on the noble oldEnglish lion John Dryden, in ridicule of whose work, _The Hind and thePanther_, he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, _The Townand Country Mouse_. Aren't you all acquainted with it? Have you not allgot it by heart? What! have you never heard of it? See what fame is madeof! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequenceof _The Town and Country Mouse_, Matthew Prior was made Secretary ofEmbassy at the Hague! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, whichdistinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day; and haveseen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. InPrior's time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment.Could you write a copy of Alcaics? that was the question. Could you turnout a neat epigram or two? Could you compose _The Town and Country Mouse_?It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficulttreaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, areeasily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said goodthings that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments atVersailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV painted onthe walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of Englandhad any such decorations, "The monuments of my master's actions," Matsaid, of William, whom he cordially revered, "are to be seen everywhereexcept in his own house." Bravo, Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassador atParis,(110) where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate;and in a heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty QueenAnne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, ofwhich Fate had deprived him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty'spicture; without that he can't be happy.
Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore: Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power Higher to raise the glories of thy reign, In words sublimer and a nobler strain. May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, The votive tablet I suspend.
With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended forever like Mahomet's coffin. News came that the queen was dead. StatorJove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day,over the votive tablet. The picture was never got any more than the spoonsand dishes--the inspiration ceased--the verses were not wanted--theambassador wasn't wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffereddisgrace along with his patrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after,and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions andemoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played forgallant stakes--the bold men of those days--and lived and gave splendidly.
Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending an eveningwith Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe witha couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Thosewho have not read his late excellency's poems should be warned that theysmack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnsonspeaks slightingly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the greatSamuel, Prior's seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the mostcharmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.(111) Horace is always in hismind, and his song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easyturns and melody, his loves, and his Epicureanism, bear a greatresemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In readinghis works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happysimilarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In hisverses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme topoets, the vanity of human wishes--
So when in fevered dreams we sink, And, waking, taste what we desire, The real draught but feeds the fire, The dream is better than the drink.
Our hopes like towering falcons aim At objects in an airy height: To stand aloof and view the flight, Is all the pleasure of the game.
Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was singing? and, in theverses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where hesays--
The God of us verse-men, you know, child, the Sun, How after his journey, he sets up his rest. If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run, At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: No matter what beauties I saw in my way; They were but my visits, but thou art my home!
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war, And let us like Horace and Lydia agree; For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, As he was a poet sublimer than me.
If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasurefind singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading--to-day as inthat pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting theirdecay--
She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers Pointing, the lovely moralist said; See, friend, in some few leisure hours, See yonder what a change is made!
Ah, me! the blooming pride of May, And that of Beauty are but one: At morn both flourisht, bright and gay, Both fade at evening, pale and gone.
At dawn poor Stella danced and sung, The amorous youth around her bowed, At night her fatal knell was rung; I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.
Such as she is who died to-day, Such I, alas, may be to-morrow: Go, Damon, bid the Muse display The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow.
Damon's knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! _Deus sitpropitius huic potatori_, as Walter de Mapes sang.(112) Perhaps SamuelJohnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior's verses, enjoyed them more thanhe was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr.Thomas Moore, and defended them, and showed that he remembered them verywell too on an occasion when their morality was called in question by thatnoted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.(113)
In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favourite, andto have a good place.(114) In his set all were fond of him. His successoffended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of forCourt favour, and hoped to win it; but the Court favour jilted him. Craggsgave him some South-Sea Stock; and at one time Gay had very nearly madehis fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too: and sohis friends, instead of being angry with him, and jealous of him, werekind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies ofthe early part of the last century, Gay's face is the pleasantest perhapsof all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the fulldress and _negligee_ of learning, without which the painters of those daysscarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder withan honest boyish glee--an artless sweet humour. He was so kind, so gentle,so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woebegone atothers, such a natural good creature that the Giants loved him. The greatSwift was gentle and sportive with him,(115) as the enormous Brobdingnagmaids of honour were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle roundPope,(116) and sport, and bark, and caper without offending the mostthin-skinned of poets and men; and when he was jilted in that little Courtaffair of which we have s
poken, his warm-hearted patrons the Duke andDuchess of Queensberry(117) (the "Kitty, beautiful and young", of Prior)pleaded his cause with indignation, and quitted the Court in a huff,carrying off with them into their retirement their kind gentle protege.With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful asthose who harboured Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gaylived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and hissaucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, andso ended.(118) He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, andonly occasionally diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him,and the remembrance of his pretty little tricks; and the raging old Deanof St. Patrick's, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to open the letterwhich Pope wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.(119)
Swift's letters to him are beautiful; and having no purpose but kindnessin writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or anger to wreak,every word the Dean says to his favourite is natural, trustworthy, andkindly. His admiration for Gay's parts and honesty, and his laughter athis weaknesses, were alike just and genuine. He paints his character inwonderful pleasant traits of jocular satire. "I writ lately to Mr. Pope,"Swift says, writing to Gay; "I wish you had a little villakin in hisneighbourhood; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach andsix horses would carry you to Japan." "If your ramble," says Swift, inanother letter, "was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of yourhealth; but I know your arts of patching up a journey betweenstage-coaches and friends" coaches--for you are as arrant a Cockney as anyhosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours,that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up sevenyears to finish, besides two or three under-ones that may add anotherthousand pounds to your stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you.I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well,without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds bringsyou but half a crown a day:' and then Swift goes off from Gay to pay somegrand compliments to her Grace the Duchess of Queensberry, in whosesunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would haveliked to warm himself too.
But we have Gay here before us, in these letters--lazy, kindly, uncommonlyidle; rather slovenly, I'm afraid; for ever eating and saying good things;a little, round, French abbe of a man, sleek, soft-handed, andsoft-hearted.
Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than theirworks; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem toillustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay's _Fables_, which werewritten to benefit that amiable prince, the Duke of Cumberland, thewarrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to perusesince a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they didnot effect much benefit upon the illustrious young prince, whose mannersthey were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity ourgentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the sixpastorals called the _Shepherd's Week_, and the burlesque poem of _Trivia_any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day,and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry whatcharming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin,fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The prettylittle personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings,and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dancetheir loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer,or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and dieof despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; orrepose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; orpiping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples ina stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than thatof Philips--his rival and Pope's--a serious and dreary idyllic Cockney; notthat Gay's "Bumkinets and Hobnelias" are a whit more natural than thewould-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the qualityof this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with asecret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics andcapers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music--as you mayhave seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turningover head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of woodenshoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and asmile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who havethat sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks andCourt ladies free and friendly with John Gay--which made Pope and Arbuthnotlove him--which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him--anddrove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured thelonely tyrant's brain, as he heard Gay's voice with its simple melody andartless ringing laughter.
What used to be said about Rubini, _qu'il avait des larmes dans la voix_,may be said of Gay,(120) and of one other humourist of whom we shall haveto speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight,(121) in the_Beggar's __ Opera_(122) and in its wearisome continuation (where theverses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there isa peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It charms and meltsyou. It's indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay'sand Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, orfreshness of a rose.
Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that mostpeople here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it isalways pleasant to hear:--
"I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's, which he lent me. It overlooks a common hayfield, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers--as constant as ever were found in romance--beneath a spreading bush. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brave woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pails. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a hay-cock; and John (who never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately, there was heard so loud a crash, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another: those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair--John, with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies--only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave!"
And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, thatthe great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal itand to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to bein love in those days--my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married toMr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople.
We are now come to the greatest name on our list--the highest among thepoets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we haveto rank him. If the author
of the _Dunciad_ be not a humourist, if thepoet of the _Rape of the Lock_ be not a wit, who deserves to be called so?Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which weshould respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatestliterary _artist_ that England has seen. He polished, he refined, hethought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own;borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or asimile from a flower, river, stream, or any object which struck him in hiswalk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an earlyage;(123) and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then hepassed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master,who came to him when he was eight years old, he went to a school atTwyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned allthat he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he wentwith his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few monthsunder a fourth priest. "And this was all the teaching I ever had," hesaid, "and God knows it extended a very little way."
When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for whichhe had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. Helearned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of_Alcander_, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius,Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of theEnglish, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This I did," he says,"without any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages byhunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than readthe books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me,and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as theyfell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the happiest inmy life." Is not here a beautiful holiday picture? The forest and thefairy story-book--the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees,battling with the Cid for the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida'sgarden--peace and sunshine round about--the kindest love and tendernesswaiting for him at his quiet home yonder--and Genius throbbing in his youngheart, and whispering to him, "You shall be great; you shall be famous;you, too, shall love and sing; you will sing her so nobly that some kindheart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed. Every poet had a love.Fate must give one to you too,"--and day by day he walks the forest, verylikely looking out for that charmer. "They were the happiest days of hislife," he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame: when he had gainedthat mistress she was no consoler.
That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, whenPope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain LadyM----, whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardour inlanguage, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, andaffected. He imitated love compositions as he had been imitating lovepoems just before--it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion,expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into printyears afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of myhearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope'scorrespondence, let them pass over that first part of it; over, perhaps,almost all Pope's letters to women; in which there is a tone of notpleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments andpolitenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert,prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, andthat little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verseand prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that passion probably came toa climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, orsome such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour muchmore genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimaceof love, and paltering with passion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one ofhis fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the roughcopy, and favoured some other friend with it. He was so charmed with theletter of Gay's, that I have just quoted, that he had copied that andamended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writesletters _a deux fins_, and after having poured out his heart to thebeloved, serves up the same dish _rechauffe_ to a friend, is not very muchin earnest about his loves, however much he may be in his piques andvanities when his impertinence gets its due.
But, save that unlucky part of the Pope Correspondence, I do not know, inthe range of our literature, volumes more delightful.(124) You live inthem in the finest company in the world. A little stately, perhaps; alittle _apprete_ and conscious that they are speaking to whole generationswho are listening; but in the tone of their voices--pitched, as no doubtthey are, beyond the mere conversation key--in the expression of theirthoughts, their various views and natures, there is something generous,and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society of men who have filledthe greatest parts in the world's story--you are with St. John thestatesman; Peterborough the conqueror; Swift, the greatest wit of alltimes; Gay, the kindliest laugher--it is a privilege to sit in thatcompany. Delightful and generous banquet! with a little faith and a littlefancy any one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figuresout of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there isalways a certain _cachet_ about great men--they may be as mean on manypoints as you or I, but they carry their great air--they speak of commonlife more largely and generously than common men do--they regard the worldwith a manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than thetimid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or tohave an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who reads these noblerecords of a past age, salutes and reverences the great spirits who adornit. You may go home now and talk with St. John; you may take a volume fromyour library and listen to Swift and Pope.
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, Try tofrequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the mostwholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life isthat. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrowspirits admire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any storymore gallant and cheering, than the love and friendship which this companyof famous men bore towards one another. There never has been a society ofmen more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who daresquarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society ofmen great and famous? and for liking them for the qualities which madethem so? A mere pretty fellow from White's could not have written the_Patriot King_, and would very likely have despised little Mr. Pope, thedecrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best andgreatest of men: a mere nobleman of the Court could no more have wonBarcelona, than he could have written Peterborough's letters to Pope,(125)which are as witty as Congreve: a mere Irish Dean could not have written_Gulliver_; and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. Toname his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had asenate; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect andadmiration always. His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that whensome one said of his friend, "There is something in that great man whichlooks as if he was placed here by mistake," "Yes," Pope answered, "andwhen the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes animagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home, as a coachcomes to one's door for visitors." So these great spirits spoke of oneanother. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that everdawdled round a club-table, so faithful and so friendly.
We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the exceptionof Congreve, were what we should now call men's men. They spent many hoursof the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of each day nearly, in clubs andcoffee-houses, where they dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went byword of mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion ofone or the other. The chiefs spoke, the faithful _habitues_ sat round;strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had his head quarters atWill's, in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street, at which placePope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company used to assemble onthe first floor--what w
as called the dining-room floor in those days--andsat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded that the beauxof the day thought it a great honour to be allowed to take a pinch out ofDryden's snuff-box. When Addison began to reign, he with a certain craftypropriety--a policy let us call it--which belonged to his nature, set up hiscourt, and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace wasButton's, opposite Will's.(126) A quiet opposition, a silent assertion ofempire, distinguished this great man. Addison's ministers were Budgell,Tickell, Philips, Carey; his master of the horse, honest Dick Steele, whowas what Duroc was to Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson; the man who performedhis master's bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel.Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every day. Themale society passed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as muchtime as ladies of that age spent over Spadille and Manille.
For a brief space, upon coming up to town, Pope formed part of KingJoseph's court, and was his rather too eager and obsequious humbleservant.(127) Dick Steele, the editor of the _Tatler_, Mr. Addison's man,and his own man too--a person of no little figure in the world of letters,patronized the young poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope didthe tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet quite as a boyof Wycherley's decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that dotingold wit): he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get afooting and a recognition. He thought it an honour to be admitted intotheir company; to have the confidence of Mr. Addison's friend, CaptainSteele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honour of heraldingAddison's triumph of _Cato_ with his admirable prologue, and heading thevictorious procession as it were. Not content with this act of homage andadmiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by assaulting Addison'senemies, and attacked John Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highlyoffended his lofty patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr.Dennis and inform him that Mr. Pope's pamphlet against him was writtenquite without Mr. Addison's approval.(128) Indeed, _The Narrative of Dr.Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D._ is a vulgar and mean satire, andsuch a blow as the magnificent Addison could never desire to see anypartisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely alliedwith Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has beenprinted in Swift's works, too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand.Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious genius of theyoung Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who had never seen a university inhis life, and came and conquered the Dons and the doctors with his wit. Heapplauded, and loved him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief.I wish Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever hasbeen penned would never have been written then; and one of the bestcharacters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. But he whohad so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was more than that. WhenPope, trying for himself, and soaring on his immortal young wings, foundthat his, too, was a genius, which no opinion of that age could follow, herose and left Addison's company, settling on his own eminence, and singinghis own song.
It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. Addison; norlikely that after escaping from his vassalage and assuming an independentcrown, the sovereign whose allegiance he quitted should view himamicably.(129) They did not do wrong to mislike each other. They butfollowed the impulse of nature, and the consequence of position. WhenBernadotte became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden wasnaturally Napoleon's enemy. "There are many passions and tempers ofmankind," says Mr. Addison in the _Spectator_, speaking a couple of yearsbefore their little differences between him and Mr. Pope took place,"which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one risingin the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the worldwith the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are aptto think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Thosewho were once his equals envy and defame him, because they now see him thesuperior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look uponhim as their equal." Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking that, asyoung Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university education, hecouldn't know Greek, therefore he couldn't translate Homer, encourage hisyoung friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, to translate that poet, and aid himwith his own known scholarship and skill?(130) It was natural that Mr.Addison should doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have ahigh opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, and should help that ingeniousyoung man. It was natural, on the other hand, that Mr. Pope and Mr. Pope'sfriends should believe that this counter-translation, suddenly advertisedand so long written, though Tickell's college friends had never heard ofit--though, when Pope first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr.Addison knew nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen's--it wasnatural that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, passions, andprejudices of their own, should believe that Tickell's translation was butan act of opposition against Pope, and that they should call Mr. Tickell'semulation Mr. Addison's envy--if envy it were.
And were there one whose fires True genius kindles and fair fame inspires, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Like Cato give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise; Who but must laugh if such a man there be, Who would not weep if Atticus were he?
"I sent the verses to Mr. Addison," said Pope, "and he used me verycivilly ever after." No wonder he did. It was shame very likely more thanfear that silenced him. Johnson recounts an interview between Pope andAddison after their quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried tobe contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope's must have pierced anyscorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison's memory. His greatfigure looks out on us from the past--stainless but for that--pale, calm,and beautiful; it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, likeSt. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Gay and askedhis pardon, as he bade his stepson come and see his death, be sure he hadforgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.
Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, anddescribes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until twoo'clock in the morning over punch and burgundy amidst the fumes oftobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the "pace" of those_viveurs_ of the former age was awful. Peterborough lived into the veryjaws of death; Godolphin laboured all day and gambled at night;Bolingbroke,(131) writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, datinghis letter at six o'clock in the morning, and rising, as he says,refreshed, serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of his London life;when about that hour he used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure,and jaded with business; his head often full of schemes, and his heart asoften full of anxiety. It was too hard, too coarse a life for thesensitive, sickly Pope. He was the only wit of the day, a friend writes tome, who wasn't fat.(132) Swift was fat; Addison was fat; Steele was fat;Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat--all that fuddling andpunch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the livesand enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew in agreat measure from this boisterous London company, and being put into anindependence by the gallant exertions of Swift(133) and his privatefriends, and by the enthusiastic national admiration which justly rewardedhis great achievement of the _Iliad_, purchased that famous villa ofTwickenham which his song and life celebrated; duteou
sly bringing his oldparents to live and die there, entertaining his friends there, and makingoccasional visits to London in his little chariot, in which Atterburycompared him to "Homer in a nutshell".
"Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man," Pope quaintly said to Spence, speakingof the manner and habits of the famous old patriarch of Will's. Withregard to Pope's own manners, we have the best contemporary authority thatthey were singularly refined and polished. With his extraordinarysensibility, with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with hispower and dread of ridicule, Pope could have been no other than what wecall a highly-bred person. His closest friends, with the exception ofSwift, were among the delights and ornaments of the polished society oftheir age. Garth,(134) the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele hasdescribed so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was"all beauty", and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians withoutknowing it; Arbuthnot,(135) one of the wisest, wittiest, mostaccomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age;the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, andchivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope,the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world hasever seen. The favourite recreation of his leisure hours was the societyof painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are lettersbetween him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be--Richardson, acelebrated artist of his time, and who painted for him a portrait of hisold mother, and for whose picture he asked and thanked Richardson in oneof the most delightful letters that ever was penned,(136)--and thewonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better thanany artist of his day.(137)
It is affecting to note, through Pope's correspondence, the marked way inwhich his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of thetime--generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines--all have a kindword, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tendedso affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that theyknew how much he loved her, and that they pleased him by thinking of her.If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever hespeaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almostsacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of themost astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown ofpoetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for theyoung chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translationof the _Iliad_; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting andassailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneeringwith sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror;when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, wasstruggling through the crowd of shouting friends and furious detractors tohis temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, "My deare,"says she, "my deare, there's Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead the same daythat Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well; but your brother is sick.My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear fromyou, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer; and this with myblessing." The triumph marches by, and the car of the young conqueror, thehero of a hundred brilliant victories--the fond mother sits in the quietcottage at home, and says, "I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you,my deare".
In our estimate of Pope's character, let us always take into account thatconstant tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded andsanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction.(138) Itaccompanied him always: his life seems purified by those artless andheartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fondattachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touchingto read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which hishalf-sister regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustratesher love. "I think no man was ever so little fond of money." Mrs. Rackettsays about her brother, "I think my brother when he was young read morebooks than any man in the world"; and she falls to telling stories of hisschooldays, and the manner in which his master at Twyford ill-used him. "Idon't think my brother knew what fear was," she continues; and theaccounts of Pope's friends bear out this character for courage. When hehad exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and personal assaultwere brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instantallowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in hisdaily walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him company. "Ihad rather die at once," said the gallant little cripple, "than live infear of those rascals."
As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed forhimself--a euthanasia--a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection,serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the veryhallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there wassomething almost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, lookingup, and with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him.He said to me, "What's that?" pointing into the air with a very steadyregard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatestsoftness, "'twas a vision!" He laughed scarcely ever, but his companionsdescribe his countenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile.
"When," said Spence,(139) the kind anecdotist whom Johnson despised, "whenI was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching andrecovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present orabsent friends; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as ifhumanity had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, 'It has so,'and then added, 'I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heartfor his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. Ihave known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man'slove than----' Here," Spence says, "St. John sunk his head, and lost hisvoice in tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words.It is the cloak thrown over the father's face in the famous Greek picturewhich hides the grief and heightens it.
In Johnson's _Life of Pope_, you will find described with rather amalicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of thegreat little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it wasnecessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with otherpeople at table.(140) He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning andrequired a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled thesemisfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person thebutt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speakingof him, says, "If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope'sChristian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A.P. E." Pope catalogues, at the end of the _Dunciad_, with a ruefulprecision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. Thatgreat critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, a fool, a coward, aPapist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must beremembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular institution inthose days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes: and dragged theirenemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed themwith garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for thoseclumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, andwrite Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, withsuch a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only ofan ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaksout into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, ordiscrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or ticklesthe boorish wag; and many of Pope's revilers laughed, not so much becausethey were wicked, as because they knew no better.
Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the poet he was;and through his life, however much he protested that he disregarded theirabuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One ofCibber's pamphlets coming into Pope's hands, whilst Richardson the painterwas with him, Pope turned round and said, "These things are mydiversions;" and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel,said he saw his features "writhing with anguish". How little human nature
changes! Can't one see that little figure? Can't one fancy one is readingHorace? Can't one fancy one is speaking of to-day?
The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate thesociety of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, causedhim to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formedthe rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to thesemen as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits andcompany which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feudbetween Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong toeither, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate eachother. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope's triumphpassed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down onit from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, andWelsted, and Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the crowd below,to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Streetthan Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them wasdreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison,he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the _Dunciad_ and theprose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthlesslittle tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was sounmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among usthe Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men'swant; he gloats over poor Dennis's garret, and flannel nightcap, and redstockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll's authors, thehistorian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind arch in Petty France,the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in BudgeRow, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, whocontributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literarycalling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen;at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addisona minister, and Prior an ambassador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swiftall but a bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that libel ofthe _Dunciad_. If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of themlived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at leastnobody came to disturb them in their straw; if three of them had but onecoat between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, atany rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, and paid his twopencelike a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty andmeanness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule.It was Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted withthe mischief, as who would not be that reads it?) believe that author andwretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowheel,tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorouslandladies, were always associated together. The condition of authorshipbegan to fall from the days of the _Dunciad_: and I believe in my heartthat much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling wasoccasioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those.Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author.The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begintheir career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read!to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one's self hisconqueror. It is easy to shoot--but not as Pope did--the shafts of hissatire rise sublimely: no poet's verse ever mounted higher than thatwonderful flight with which the _Dunciad_ concludes(141):--
She comes, she comes! the sable throne behold! Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old; Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away; Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, Closed one by one to everlasting rest;-- Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night. See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head; Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, Morality expires. Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.(142)
In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very greatestheight which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself the equal ofall poets of all times. It is the brightest ardour, the loftiest assertionof truth, the most generous wisdom, illustrated by the noblest poeticfigure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. Itis heroic courage speaking: a splendid declaration of righteous wrath andwar. It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defiance tofalsehood and tyranny, deceit, dullness, superstition. It is Truth, thechampion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the great world-tyrant witharmies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious singlecombat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since societybegan.
In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what itactually is, for that were vain; but what it is like, and what are thesensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in consideringPope's admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from othercourage and greatness, and into comparing him with those who achievedtriumphs in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of theactions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you willfind frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of themeanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great soulflashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendour ofPope's young victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail andsalute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero.