It would appear from Pope's letter to Caryll of November 29, 1712, that he was at that date already contemplating the addition to his poem. The Tories were in fact as anxious for a poetical glorification of the Peace of Utrecht as the Whigs had been, when the subject of the day was the campaign of Blenheim, and it is a remarkable proof of the changed temper of the nation that a Whig poet should have been the first to celebrate the triumph of the Ministry. Pope writes to Caryll in high praise of Tickell's 'Prospect of Peace,' which had recently appeared and had been eulogised by Addison in the 'Spectator' of October 30, 1712, with the added expression of a hope that "the poem would meet with a reward from its patrons as so noble a performance deserved." Partly in consequence of this advertisement, no doubt, the poem ran through five editions, and Pope, finding some good lines in it bearing a striking resemblance to some he had composed himself, asks Caryll's opinion on their relative value.

It seems probable therefore that Lansdown, an active Tory, and one of the twelve peers created in 1711, had been commissioned by the Ministry to play the part which Boyle had performed in suggesting the composition of 'The Campaign. The results to Pope were not so immediately lucrative as they had proved to Addison, but the reputation which the poem justly gained for him went far towards making his fortune by procuring him the friendship of Swift, who writes to Stella on March 9, 1713: "Mr. Pope has published a fine poem called Windsor Forest. Read it." Warton says that "a person of no small rank informed him that Mr. Addison was inexpressibly chagrined at the noble conclusion of Windsor Forest,' both as a politician and as a poet,-as a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet because he was deeply conscious that his own Campaign, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry." This story rests on no foundation. How far Addison

Essay on the Genius of Pope,' 5th edition, vol. i., p. 29.

was jealous of the poetical superiority of 'Windsor Forest' we have no means of knowing; but that he could not have disapproved of it on political grounds is evident from the praise which he had already bestowed on Tickell's 'Peace.'

It may fairly be concluded, too, that if Addison had been 'inexpressibly chagrined' at the praise Pope obtained for 'Windsor Forest,' he would not have accepted his 'Prologue' to 'Cato,' which play was acted within two months after the appearance of the poem. Pope had been allowed to read the tragedy in February, 1713. "It drew tears from me," he said, "in several parts of the fourth and fifth acts, where the beauty of virtue appears so charming that I believe if it comes upon the theatre we shall enjoy that which Plato thought the greatest pleasure an exalted soul could be capable of, a view of virtue itself drest in person, colour, and action. The emotion which the mind will feel from this character, and the sentiments of humanity which the distress of such a person as Cato will stir up in us, must necessarily fill an audience with so glorious a disposition, and sovereign a love of virtue, that I question if any play has ever conduced so immediately to morals as this." He afterwards said to Spence: "When Mr. Addison had finished his 'Cato,' he brought it to me, desired to have my sincere opinion on it, and left it with me for three or four days. I gave him my opinion sincerely, which was 'that I thought he had better not act it, and that he would get reputation enough by only printing it.' This I said as thinking the lines well written, but the piece not theatrical enough." It is difficult to see what motive Pope can have had for deliberately inventing this story, but it is on the whole charitable to suppose that, having forgotten his early opinion of the play, he threw his more mature judgment into the form of a piquant anecdote which had no foundation in reality. The sentiments which he expressed in his letter to Caryll were repeated in the Prologue he wrote for the play :

Pope to Caryll February, 1712-13.

Spence's 'Anecdotes,' p. 196.

"Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was:
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heav'n itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state."

It was not, however, this spectacle which really moved the London public. What the audience seized upon, when the play was produced on April the 13th, was the allegorical reference to the political situation with which the mind of the nation was fully occupied. "The town is so fond of it," Pope writes to Caryll on April 30, 1713, "that the orange-wenches and fruit-women in the parks offer the books at the side of the coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by the common hawkers."

Amid the chorus of approval, however, one voice was heard in opposition. Like all unsuccessful authors, Dennis had a great contempt for contemporary judgment, besides possessing a clear perception and many sound critical instincts. He saw the fundamental weakness of Cato' on dramatic grounds, and no doubt, as his manner was, spoke loudly and dogmatically on the subject in the coffee-houses. Pope, in whose mind Dennis's remarks on his own deformity had rankled bitterly, heard of his rage, and perceiving an opportunity of revenge,, had recourse to one of those curious stratagems of which his history is so full, and which appear to have been inspired partly by vindictiveness, partly by sheer love of mischief. He induced Lintot the publisher to urge Dennis to print some remarks on 'Cato,' and the latter, only too ready to be persuaded, brought out a violent pamphlet, the most humorous part of which is preserved in Johnson's Life of Addison Hardly had this appeared, when it was followed by an answer in the shape of The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Denn-, an officer of the Custom House." According to Dennis, Pope himself offered,

1 See Prose Works, Vol. X., p. 450.

through Lintot, to show Addison the MS. of this pamphlet. As the humour of the piece depended entirely on its personality, it naturally did not commend itself to the taste of the ex-'Spectator,' who, being well content to leave 'Cato' to the public judgment, told Steele to write Lintot the following letter:

“MR. LINTOT,

"Mr. Addison desired me to tell you, that he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Dr. Norris's Account. When he thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis's objections to his writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no just reason to complain of. But when the papers above mentioned were offered to be communicated to him, he said he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it. "I am, Sir, "Your very humble servant, "RICHARD STEELE."

In this incident we may see undoubtedly the beginning of the breach which afterwards took place between Pope and Addison. The former must have been galled at the refusal of the author of 'Cato' to accept his aid; he would have reflected still more bitterly that Addison had probably fathomed his motive for intervening in the quarrel; and what would have irritated him most of all, if its contents were reported to him, would have been the somewhat haughty letter which the man whom he was professing to serve had caused to be written to a bookseller by the hand of a third party.'

1 I have followed the narrative of Dennis as given in his 'Remarks on the Dunciad' (1729). In his remarks on the Rape of the Lock' (1728) ho tells substantially the same story, but, obviously writing without the letter before him, says that Addison had caused Steele to write to him, saying that he knew nothing of the pamphlet till he saw it in print. He imputes, as he naturally would, the motive of Popo's suggestion to Lintot to the envy the former felt at Addison's success. This is of course unjust. But as Pope never denied the allega

tion of Dennis,-whose truthfulness besides has never been questioned,that it was through his instigation that Lintot urged Dennis to print his 'Remarks on Cato,' the old critic's story must be believed. Mr. Dilke, indeed, endeavours to prove that Dr. Norris's Account was not written by Pope. He urges that Dennis never spoke of Pope as the author till long after the publication (see 'Papers of a Critic,' p. 255). But this is a mistako. Denuis wrote to B. B. (Barton Booth) in 1717: "And now lot him, if he pleases, have recourse

Almost at the same time he obtained what he thought proof of an unfriendly disposition towards him at Button's. It has been already said that the sixth volume of Tonson's Miscellany, which concluded with Pope's Pastorals, opened with those of Ambrose Philips.. The latter were insipid compositions. They were a compromise between the Eclogues of Virgil and the Shepherd's Calendar' of Spenser, exhibiting the classical form of the one and the English nomenclature, though not the rustic dialect of the other. Repeating all the usual stock-in-trade of pastoral poetry, lovers' complaints, descriptions of rural scenery, compliments, riddles, and proverbs, they affected a certain superficial originality by substituting the fairy mythology of England for the rural deities of Greece and Rome. To the singular sweetness of versification which characterised Pope's Pastorals they could make no pretence. Nevertheless on their first appearance they were much admired. Pope himself, who, as his own work had been highly praised by competent judges, could afford to be magnanimous, agreed with the Tatler that we had no better Eclogues in our language,' and spoke with special praise of some lines in Philips' fifth Eclogue, to which he said 'nothing could be objected except that they were too lofty for pastoral.

As time went on, however, he perceived that Philips' performance was being exalted, and certainly unjustly, at the expense of his own. His rival shepherd was a man of mark at Button's. A great talker, vain, self-conscious, observable for the foppery of his dress, and particularly his red stockings, Philips was also noted as one of the most strenuous Whigs in the coffee-house, and as usual, political zeal procured for his poetry an admiration which was not due to its intrinsic merits. Addison had bestowed, in the 'Spectator,' lavish praise on his not very remarkable invention of replacing with the fairies the fauns, satyrs, and wood-nymphs of the Pagan pastoral

to his old method of lies and slander, and print a second Dr. Norris's Account." · 'Remarks on Windsor

Forest.'

1 Letter to Cromwell, Oct. 28, 1710.