perhaps Lyttelton-in the year 1731, and may have been suggested by an accident which happened towards the close of the previous year. "A very unhappy accident," he writes to Lord Oxford on November 3, 1730, "which befell my mother, of a fall into the fire from which, however, it pleased God she has escaped without more hurt than her back bruised, and now well, and her clothes burnt off, has kept me many days from writing to your Lordship, and acknowledging your kind memory of me, which I will not say is shown by the kind present of brawn, it is shown so many hundred ways. I am sensible of the particular providence of God, as well as of his general on this occasion, and I flatter myself that after my long care and attendance-which is no more than duty, however, and gratitudeupon her infirm condition he would not suffer her to end tragically." Thrice before, in 1721, 1724, and 1729,' the old lady had been so dangerously ill that he had feared he should lose her. His casual mention of her in his letters on these occasions shows his deep attachment to her, and his unwearied attention in the midst of his own illness. When he was at Stanton Harcourt completing his Translation, his mother at first remained at Chiswick, and he went backwards and forwards to see her until he prevailed upon her to join him. He afterwards went from Stanton Harcourt to Cirencester on a visit to Lord Bathurst, but he told the Blounts that he should not "leave his mother seven days together." Mrs. Pope died on the 7th of June, 1733, aged 93. She was carried to her grave by six poor men to whom were given suits of dark grey cloth, and followed by six poor women in the same sort of mourning. Her son placed a monument to the memory of her and of his father in the parish church at Twickenham, and in a secret part of his grounds erected an obelisk with the inscription— Ah Editha! Mulierum Amantissima! Compare letters to Caryll, Feb., 1720-21, and October 19, 1729; and to Lord Oxford of Nov. 6, 1724, and Vale! January 6, 1728-29. * Letter from Pope to Teresa Blount of August, 1713. Arbuthnot himself, the old friend and trusted physician of Pope-without whose aid 'the world had wanted many an idle song'-only survived the publication of the Epistle by a month. He was a man of unfailing gaiety, cheerfulness, and amiability, qualities which, like those of Gay, endeared him to the splenetic poet by their contrast with his own. It appears from the correspondence between him and Pope that the idea of the 'Epistle' was suggested by a passage in one of his letters. He had long felt himself to be breaking, and on July 17, 1734, he wrote to his friend : "I make it my last request that you continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice which you seem naturally endued with, but still with a due regard to your own safety; and study more to reform than chastise, though the one often cannot be affected without the other." Pope in his reply, dated August 2nd, 1734, defends himself by arguing that "general satire in times of general vice has no force and is no punishment." On August 25th he returned to the subject: "I took very kindly your advice concerning avoiding ill will from writing satire, and it has worked so much upon me, considering the time and state you gave it in, that I determined to address to you one of my epistles written by piecemeal many years, and which I have now made haste to put together; wherein the question is stated, what were, and are my motives of writing, the objections to them, and my answers.' " It is interesting to note how deep was the impression made on him by Arbuthnot's counsel. In his satire 1738' he makes his interlocutor advance the same argument, to which he replies in verse with the same reasoning as he had used in the letter to his friend. The other poems of Pope, which are more distinctly of an autobiographical character, are the 'Imitation of the Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace,' inscribed to Hugh Bethel, and published in 1734, in which he applies Horace's description of the simple manners of Ofella to his own life at Twickenham; and the Imitation of the Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace,' published in 1737, in which he speaks of his boyhood and youth in Windsor Forest, and asserts his freedom from avarice. The Imitations addressed respectively to Bolingbroke (published in 1738) and to Murray (published in 1737) are more general, and seem to be suggested by the opportunities they offer both for moralising on some of the prevailing vices of the time, and also for paying compliments to his friends. The charming 'Imitation of Horace, Odes, Book IV. 1,' addressed to Murray, and published in 1736-7, has obviously a complimentary motive. The Sober Advice from Horace, as delivered in his Second Sermon,' was written in June, 1734, and published in December of the same year. It is described as an imitation "in the manner of Mr. Pope." Pope sent it in manuscript to Bolingbroke, enjoining him to keep the secret. He denied the authorship to Caryll, but it was included in the edition of his works published by Dodsley in 1738. He was doubtless moved to the imitation by the love of finding ingenious parallels, and by the desire of amusing those who were not too strict to disapprove on principle of the morality of the piece. As, however, it was not published in any edition later than Dodsley's, and was ignored by Warburton, it may be assumed that the poet, either by the advice of the latter, or from his own feeling, was desirous to suppress it. Whatever value is to be attached to the Imitations of Horace and to the Epistle to Arbuthnot' as chapters of autobiography, there can be but one opinion as to their literary merit. The ingenuity of the parallels in the one, and the ease, spirit, breeding and dignity in the style of both, place them among the most delightful compositions in the English language. As we revert to the starting point of Pope's literary carcer, and compare these works with the 'Pastorals' and other pocms written when he was in bondage to the style of the classics, we perceive how completely he had attained the object he had set before his mind in the Essay on Criticism,' and how, by mastering the true spirit and method of the great writers of antiquity, he had learned to apply them to his own language and his own time. CHAPTER XIII AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PERIOD. Edition of Wycherley's Works-Clandestine Dealings with Curll-Surreptitious Edition of Correspondence in 1735-Authorised Edition of 1737—Publication of Correspondence with Swift. 1729-1741. In dealing with Pope's clandestine publication of his corre spondence, I shall take the facts of the case to have been conclusively established by Mr. Elwin's exhaustive examination, and shall confine myself to such a narrative as may render as intelligible as possible the intricacies of the poet's extraordinary plot. It will be seen that the fraud was of a twofold nature, part of it relating to the manner in which the correspondence was published, and part to the alteration of the letters themselves. The key to Pope's proceedings isto be found in the 'Narrative of the Method by which Mr. Pope's Private Letters were Procured and Published by Edmund Curll, Bookseller,' which was published by Cooper in 1735, and in the 'Preface prefixed to the First Genuine Edition in Quarto, 1737'; both being read in connection with the actual facts as we now know them. From the Narrative' it appears that the starting point of the whole conspiracy was the publication by Curll in 1726 of Pope's correspondence with Cromwell. We cannot of course know exactly what were the poct's feelings on this occasion, but it may be inferred that he was at first annoyed at being shown to the public corresponding with a person so insignificant as Cromwell. He spoke of the correspondence to Caryll as "very unfit to see the light in many regards," and he afterwards pre 1 Letter from Pope to Caryll of Oct. 5, 1727. tended to Spence that it was written with an intention not immediately apparent. He also affected to depreciate the character of the letters in a note to the 'Dunciad." Had he published the authorized edition of his letters in 1726 instead of in 1737 the language of the following paragraph of the Preface to that edition, which can now only be regarded as rhetorical, might have been accepted as sincere. "But however this collection may be received, we cannot but lament the cause, and the necessity of such a publication, and heartily wish no honest man may be reduced to the same. To state the case fairly in the present situation. A bookseller advertises his intention to publish your letters; he openly promises encouragement, or even pecuniary rewards, to those who will help him to any; and engages to insert whatever they shall send. Any scandal is sure of a reception, and any enemy who sends it free from a discovery. Any domestic or servant, who can snatch a letter from your pocket or cabinet, is encouraged to that vile practice. If the quantity falls short of a volume, anything else shall be joined with it, more especially scandal, which the collector can think for his interest, all recommended under your name. You have not only theft to fear, but forgery. Any bookseller, though conscious in what manner they were obtained, not caring what may be the consequence to your fame or quiet, will sell and dispense them in town and country. The better your reputation is, the more your name will cause them to be demanded, and consequently the more you will be injured. The injury is of such a nature as the law, which does not punish for intentions, cannot prevent; and when done may punish, but not redress. You are therefore reduced either to enter into a personal treaty with such a man (which, though the readiest, is the meanest of all methods), or to take such other measures to suppress them as are contrary to your inclination, or to publish them, as are contrary to your modesty." Finding, however, that the public, ever greedy for personality, were interested in the correspondence, Pope began to view the matter with different eyes. Whether he conceived the design of publishing his own correspondence as early as 1726 is uncertain: we only know that almost immediately after the appearance of Curll's volume containing his correspondence with Cromwell he became persistent in his applications to Caryll to return him his letters, and that he made the same request to Lord Digby, to the widow of Edward Blount, 1 Note to Dunciad, ii. 70. |