Page images
PDF
EPUB

A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,

Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven.56

removed to Dover Street, "hoping still," as he said, "to keep a little habitation warm in town," and to afford half-a-pint of claret to his old friends.]

56 [The beautiful conclusion of this Epistle, in which Pope's filial tenderness is so finely yet unostentatiously displayed, seems originally to have formed part of an address intended for some other person. In a letter to Aaron Hill September 3, 1731, the passage is given as follows:

"While every joy, successful youth! is thine,

Be no unpleasing melancholy mine.

Me long, ah long! may these soft cares engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age,

With lenient arts prolong a parent's breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death.

Me, when the cares my better years have shown

Another's age, shall hasten on my own,

Shall some kind hands, like B***'s [Bolingbroke's] or thine,
Lead gently down, and favour the decline?

In wants, in sickness, shall a friend be nigh,

Explore my thought, and watch my asking eye?

Whether that blessing be denied or given,

Thus far is right; the rest belongs to Heaven."

Pope had several young friends to whom these affectionate lines might have been inscribed-as Murray (Lord Mansfield) Lord Polwarth, and George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. The latter is most likely to have been the "successful youth." He had distinguished himself at college, had written poetry, and even joined the party against Walpole's Administration, though his father was then a Lord of the Admiralty. Murray in 1731 was merely a law student, and Polwarth did not enter Parliament till 1734.]

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

DR. ARBUTHNOT.

Ver. 27. Friend to my life!] Dr. John Arbuthnot, the celebrated wit and scholar to whom this masterly epistle is addressed, was the son of a nonjuring clergyman in Scotland, and born at Arbuthnot, in the county of Kincardine, about the period of the Restoration. He studied medicine in his native country, but early in life removed to London, and subsisted for some time as a teacher of mathematics. In 1697 he appeared as an author in a work entitled "An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge." He afterwards published an "Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learn

ing." These works recommended him to the notice of the learned: a fortunate accident brought him into practice as a physician. He happened to be at Epsom on one occasion when Prince George was there, and was suddenly taken ill. Arbuthnot was called in, and having effected a cure, he was soon afterwards appointed one of the physicians in ordinary to the queen. This appointment he held till the death of the queen in 1714. He continued to practise, though, as Swift said, "He knew his art but not his trade," and enjoyed considerable professional distinction. In 1710 he had been elected a member of the Royal College of Physicians; in 1723 he was chosen Second Censor of the College; in 1727 he was made an Elect of the same institution, and was selected to pronounce the Harveian oration for that year. About the same time he challenged more public distinction, and acquired greater honour, by his Dissertations on Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures-a work of curious learning and elaborate research; and in 1732 he lent his powerful asssistance to the detection and exposure of the frauds committed under the name of the Charitable Corporations. He also published two medical treatises-one on the nature of aliments, and the other on the effects of air on human bodies. He died in 1735. His farewell letter to Pope will be found in our sketch of the poet's life.

Arbuthnot's friendship with Swift and Pope, and the writings to which the tripartite connexion gave rise, are, with posterity, the great distinguishing features in his life and history. To this connexion we owe most of his peculiar wit and humour, and our knowledge of his fine manly character, so humane, so just and true, so sweet-tempered and unassuming, yet so impatient of vice and folly, and so sternly independent. Swift said, " He has more wit than we all have, and more humanity than wit." In many instances, however, Arbuthnot's wit was too recondite and scholastic to produce equal effect with the dean's. The follies which he satirized, like the humours of Ben Jonson, were so far removed from ordinary life that they appeared to be only the creations of a fertile and ingenious brain. There was nothing palpable or real in their oddities and absurdities. His happiest work is his History of John Bull, which is inimitable as a political allegory, and parts of his Martinus Scriblerus have a rich vein of Cervantes-like fancy and humour. "The Art of Political Lying," and "It never Rains but it Pours," are also worthy of Swift. Pope, we have no doubt, was indebted to Arbuthnot for many of his quaint illustrations and ludicrous images. The doctor had the greater share of wit as well as of learning, and was careless of his reputation as an author. The treasures thus scattered about in conversation, or jotted down on detached slips of paper, the poet would eagerly appropriate, and set them in that happy artistic style, in contrast or combination, and with that felicity of expression in which he has never been excelled. The friendship of Arbuthnot is one of the highest honours of Pope-more valuable than all the testimonials in prose and verse which he delighted to marshal in due order before his works.

THE EARL OF HALIFAX.

Ver. 232. Full-blown Bufo puff'd by every quill.] Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, the celebrated statesman and once popular poet, seems to be the original of Bufo. He was ambitious to be considered the Mæcenas of his age, and his patronage of Addison, though not munificent, was well-timed and important in its results. Addison's "Letter from Italy to Charles, Lord Halifax," 1701, is the finest of his poems. Congreve, Steele, Rowe, and a host of minor authors, dedicated works to Halifax. Pope twice complimented him-first, in the preface to his Iliad, where he says, "The Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me, of whom it is hard to say, whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing to his generosity or his example." In the Epilogue to the Satires he again eulogizes him for his love of letters, and his abilities in Parliament. Pope stated to Spence that Halifax at one time, in the beginning of George the First's reign, proposed to settle a pension upon him; that he had taken time to consider the proposition, and about three months afterwards had written to the effect that all the difference he could find in having or not having a pension was, that if he had one he might live more at large in town, and that if he had not he might live happily enough in the country. Halifax does not seem to have pressed the matter; it dropped, and Pope said, "I had my liberty without a coach." Swift was probably not aware of this design of pensioning his friend, for he has remarked that Halifax's encouragements were only good words and good dinners. The death of this fortunate nobleman took place in 1715; and as Pope's satire was not published till 1734, it has been represented as highly improbable that the poet should have stigmatized him under the name of Bufo nineteen years after his death, and after having twice flattered him in his own name. The improbability is held to be greater when it is found that Pope alluded to Halifax in terms of respect and regard in a poem written four years later than the date of this character of Bufo. The objection is plausible, but it is overthrown by the evidence on the other side. All the circumstances in the character of Bufo apply to Halifax, and they will apply to no other.

"Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,
Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:
But still the great have kindness in reserve;
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve."

Bufo, then, must have been living and dispensing patronage in the time of Dryden, though the poet "came not nigh." The reason is obvious: Halifax, in conjunction with Prior, had written the City Mouse and Country Mouse in ridicule of Dryden's Hind and Panther, and the success of this travesty for a time clouded Dryden's popularity, and it is said affected him even to the shedding of tears. Halifax was a minister of the Crown six years before Dryden's death, but he wholly overlooked his claims as the first poet of the age. Dryden died in the year 1700, when Halifax, Lord Jefferies, and other men of quality made a subscription for a public funeral, and the poet was interred with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. Thus Halifax "helped

to bury" him whom if he had not "helped to starve," he had at least seriously injured. Pope's real sentiments regarding Halifax may be seen from his conversations with Spence. He considered him to be rather a pretender to taste than possessed of it, and he illustrates this with an anecdote respecting his Homer. The poet read part of his translation to the peer, in presence of Addison, Congreve, and Garth. His lordship objected to certain passages, which he wished to be revised. Pope was distressed at the loose and general nature of the observations made by Halifax, when Garth, on their way home, suggested an easy remedy. All you need do (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." Pope followed the advice, and found the result as predicted. The passages were read exactly as they were at first. Ay, now, Mr. Pope," cried the peer, “they are perfectly right: nothing can be better." Mr. Roscoe disbelieves this anecdote, because Lord Halifax had at one time the manuscript of the two first books of Homer in his hands, “where they had certainly been placed by Pope for the purpose of obtaining his remarks upon them, in a more deliberate form than he could expect to receive them on a cursory reading." The reading scene, however, may have taken place at an earlier period. The anecdote is distinctly and circumstantially told by Pope; Spence could not have invented it; and Mr. Roscoe's argument leaves the morality of the case pretty much the same. To fabricate the anecdote in depreciation of Halifax was as bad as to satirise him at one time and praise him at another.

[ocr errors]

Tickell dedicated his translation of the First Book of the Iliad to the memory of Lord Halifax, lamenting the misfortune which had befallen the learned world by the death of so generous and universal a patron; adding, that he was prompted to make the dedication by gratitude for the protection with which Halifax had begun to honour him. This must have piqued Pope. We ought to mention that the lines on Dryden are not in the first edition of the poem. They seem to have been introduced by Pope for the express purpose of identifying Bufo with Halifax.

LORD HERVEY.

Ver. 305. Let Sporus tremble.] John Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol. He was early attached to the Court of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Richmond, and in 1720 he married the "fair Lepell," one of the Princess's maids of honour. In the free language of that age, Pulteney and Lord Chesterfield signalized the event by a ballad in honour of both bride and bridegroom :

"For Venus had never seen bedded

So perfect a beau and a belle,

As when Hervey the handsome was wedded

To the beautiful Molly Lepell."

Pulteney some years afterwards wrote of the "handsome Hervey" in a very different strain, as "half man, half woman," and showered on him every epithet of contempt. Another lampoon of the day describes him as"Ne'er made for use, just fit for show,

Half wit, half fool, half man, half beau."

His manliness was in one respect vindicated by a duel with Pulteney. Lord Hervey had written several defences of Walpole, in answer to attacks in the Craftsman; and to one of these Pulteney published A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel. The reply was grossly personal; Hervey challenged his rival politician, and they fought with swords in St. James's Park. No serious result ensued, and Lord Hervey was left to the vengeance of Pope.

The germ of Pope's Sporus will be found in these party pasquinades; but the truth of the intellectual portrait was not fully disclosed till a very late period, 1848, when Mr. Croker published the long-hoarded Memoirs of the Reign of George II., by Lord Hervey. In this work the noble Vice-Chamberlain is seen more in the character of a malignant gossip than in that of an historian. He literally whispers at the ear of Eve-i. e. Queen Caroline, "half froth, half venom;" flatters all her prejudices, writes Court verses and lampoons for her gratification, evinces the grossest indelicacy in many of his communications, sneers at every high and sacred feeling; and throughout the whole work is seen to be destitute of all proper spirit and independence of character. As a politician Hervey was inconsistent, but evinced greater power in debate and more persevering application both in speaking and writing than would be surmised from Pope's satire. He never rose higher than Privy Seal, and this subordinate office he relinquished with great reluctance when Walpole's Administration was driven from power in 1742. His quarrel with the Prince, and secession from his party, had no ground of principle, but sprung originally from a desire for office, and, secondly, from jealousy as to a mistress.

"And Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring."

Lord Hervey's effeminacy arose partly from ill-health, but was carried to an extreme. Having been threatened with epileptic fits, he adopted a regimen fit for an anchorite. He took no wine or malt liquor, breakfasted on green tea unsweetened by sugar, and biscuits without butter; at dinner, he ate no meat but a little chicken; and once a week he indulged in a Scotch pill and took thirty grains of Indian root when his stomach was loaded. To soften his ghastly appearance, he used rouge. Another account represents him as drinking ass's milk; and when once asked at dinner whether he would have some beef, he answered: "Beef? Oh, no! Faugh! Don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things!" This is equal to Brummell's having once tried vegetables, and ate one pea: but both stories are no doubt mere dinner-table pleasantries. Lord Hervey died on the 8th of August, 1743.

« PreviousContinue »