few days, she could be carried in a chair to Lincombe. Or the Duchess of Queensberry would certainly send her coach part way to fetch her to Amesbury. "Or lastly, Mr. Arbuthnot and I will come in a very good coach from hence any day you name, take you up at Lincombe, or Lady Cox's, and carry you and your maid safe either to London or Amesbury. All I beg is that you will not stay a moment at the only place in England (I am satisfied) where you can be so used; and where, for your sake and for my own too, I never will set foot more. However well I might wish the man, the woman is a minx and an impertinent one, and he will do what she will have him. I do not wonder they do not speak a word of me; [but] some words. I have spoken to him. I shall not write till I get home, if then; but show my resentment without lessening myself. For God's sake do the same."1 The letter concludes: "W. is a sneaking parson, and I told him he flattered." Pope's first letter to Allen after his return to Twickenham is not among the manuscripts preserved, and there may have been good reason for the omission. But as soon as Warburton came to town he patched up a truce, for on September 13 1 From Bristol Pope wrote to Bethel on August 16: "I wish we had consulted together about Miss Blount, who deserves all we can do, if ever a good heart deserved well. It would be very convenient to me, in the distribution of my affairs, to grant her an annuity of £100 a year, and take a £1,000, with which I would purchase the house at Twickenham, which I am convinced would be a wise bargain for me and my heirs." (From the unpublished MS.) Pope was writing to his friend in something of the old cordial spirit. Although his asthma had been worse, he was contemplating one or two more short flights into the country before he settled down for the winter. He was going to Amesbury and Salisbury with Arbuthnot, and later we hear that he had been seduced into Oxfordshire in my Lord Cornbury's coach, stayed two days at Rousham, and then went to Oxford in the vain hope of finding Dr. King. "However, I took possession of his lodging, and got away the next morning, undoctored the third time. The doctor has had an escape, and so have I. Thence I made a visit to the Duchess of Queensberry, and so returned to Twickenham." This was fairly "good going" for an invalid who could not stand "jumbling." In October Allen was seriously ill with an "in flammatory fever," and almost as soon as he recovered Mrs. Allen was laid up. Pope professed to be much hurt because he was not kept informed of the condition of the two invalids. He assured Allen that he desired to preserve "not only his form, but the strictness and essence of our friendship." CHAPTER LXI 1744 Cibber as Hero of "The Dunciad "-Last Illness and Death of Pope HE complete TH Dunciad," in four books, with Cibber as hero, vice Theobald deposed, was published in a quarto edition, under the editorship of Warburton, in 1743. In his Advertisement to the Reader, Warburton says: "I have long had a design of giving some notes on the works of this poet. Before I had the happiness of his acquaintance I had written a commentary on his "Essay on Man," and have since finished another on his "Essay on Criticism." There was one already on the "Dunciad," which had met with general approbation; but I still thought that some additions were wanting (of a more serious kind) to the humorous notes of Scriblerus, and even to those written by Mr. Cleland, Dr. Arbuthnot, and others. I had lately the pleasure to pass some months with the author in the country, where I prevailed upon him to do what I had long desired, and favour me with his explanation of several passages in his works. It happened that just at that juncture was published a ridiculous book against him,' full of personal reflections, which furnished him with a lucky opportunity of improving this poem by giving it the only thing it wanted, a more considerable hero. He was always sensible of its defects in that direction, and owned that he had let it pass with the hero he had purely for want of a better, not entertaining the least expectation that such a one was reserved for this post as has since obtained the laurel; but since that had happened, he could no longer deny this justice either to him or "The Dunciad." And And yet, I will venture to say, there was another motive which had still more weight with our author; this person was one who, from every folly (not to say vice) of which another would be ashamed, has constantly derived a vanity, and therefore was the man in the world who would be the least hurt by it.W. W." This edition contained several new notes, four new appendixes, and "Ricardus Aristarchus on the Hero of the poem," a ponderous bit of pleasantry by Warburton. Although Pope has done his task of fitting the vivacious Laureate into the niche occupied by the industrious Theobald with skill and ingenuity, it is impossible to deny that the satire has suffered in the process. The actual introduction of the new hero, under the name of Bayes (Cibber's favourite part in The Rehearsal), runs smoothly enough. 1 Cibber's Letter to Pope. 2 Johnson says that Pope "depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the old pedantry, and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald." Bayes, formed by nature stage and town to bless, Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate. The absurdity comes in when Cibber is given a Gothic library containing Caxtons, Wynkyns, dry bones of divinity, and all the rest of the "classics of an age that heard of none." The inconsistencies are more noticeable in the first book than in the other three, wherein the hero plays an almost passive part as a mere spectator of the scenes that show the power and glory of the goddess, or the folly of her subjects. Cibber, encouraged by the succès de scandale of his former letter to Pope, rushed into print again (January 8, 1744) with "Another occasional Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, wherein the new Hero's preferment to his throne in 'The Dunciad' seems not to be accepted, and the author of that poem his more rightful claim to it, is asserted. With an expostulatory address to the Rev. Mr. W. W-n, Author of the new Preface, and Adviser in the curious improvements of that Satire." This letter is a heavy-handed, long-winded bit of abuse, unrelieved by the good-humour or scandalous anecdotes of the previous effusion. A brief specimen will suffice: "If you had not been a blinder booby than myself you would have sate down quietly with the last black eye I gave you. For so loath was I to squabble with VOL. II 21 |