Addison were characteristic on both sides. Steele introduced them to each other in 1712. Several trifling circumstances which occurred in the three following years conspired to create an unpleasant state of feeling between them, which was brought to a climax in 1715 by the encouragement given by Addison to his friend Tickell in his project of a rival translation of Homer. Pope's version and that by Tickell came out nearly together, and nothing can be clearer than the great superiority of the former. Yet Addison (one cannot but fear, out of jealousy), while praising both translations, pronounced that Tickell's “had more of Homer." This was the occasion of Pope's writing that wonderful piece of satire, which will be found at a subsequent page. Addison made no direct reply, but a few months later. he, in a paper published in the Freeholder, spoke in terms of high praise of Pope's translation. The poet's susceptible nature was touched by this generosity, and he, in his turn, immortalised Addison in his fifth satire :— "And in our days (excuse some courtly stains) No whiter page than Addison remains; He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth, And sets the passions on the side of truth; Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art, And pours each human virtue in the heart." Far more close and cordial were the relations between Pope and Swift. Their acquaintance began at the time of Swift's residence in London, between 1710 and 1713. The famous Dean was twenty-one years older than Pope; but there must have been a strong inherent sympathy between their characters, for they became fast friends at once, and continued so until Swift's mind broke down. Each had all the tastes of the author and man of letters; each was audacious and satirical; each saw through and despised the hollowness of society, though in their different ways each strove to raise himself in it. Swift's ambition was for power; he wished that his literary successes should serve merely as a basis and vantage-ground whence to scale the high places of the State; Pope's ambition was purely for fame, and he regarded literary success, not as a means, but as an end. It certainly shows some real elevation of soul in both, that two men, each so irritable, and whose very points of resemblance might have made it easier for them to come into collision, should have remained steady friends for twenty-five years. The utter absence of jealousy in both will perhaps account for the fact. Soon after they became acquainted, Swift was able to do Pope a great service. In 1713, the prospectus of the translation of the Iliad appeared; and Swift, who was at that time a real power in London society, used his opportunities to get the subscription list well filled. Chiefly by his exertions, the list became such a long one, that the proceeds amounted to a small fortune for Pope, and set him at ease on the score of money matters for the remainder of his life. His labours in connection with the translation of Homer extended from 1713 to 1725. He employed in translating the Odyssey the services of two minor poets, Fenton and Broome, so that only one-half of the version is from his own hand. In 1725 Pope published an edition of Shakspeare. His preface shows a juster appreciation of the great dramatist than was then common; yet his own taste pointed too decidedly to the French and classical school to admit of his doing full justice to the chief of the Romantic. He was the first to amend two or three corrupt readings by slight and happy alterations, which have since been universally adopted. Such is his substitution of "south" for the old reading "sound," in the lines in Twelfth Night— "Oh! it came o'er mine ear like the sweet south That breathes over a bank of violets;" and of "strides" for "sides," (and Tarquin's ravishing strides,") in Macbeth. M The first three books of the Dunciad, which was dedicated to Swift, appeared anonymously in 1728. In it the poet revenges himself on a number of obscure poets and feeble critics, who had-though not without provocation -attacked and libelled him. The very obscurity of these individuals detracts much from the permanent interest of the satire. The persons and parties introduced by Dryden in his Absalom and Achitophel occupied elevated situations upon the public stage, and, as the satire itself is conceived and composed in a corresponding strain of elevation, it is probable that, so long as English history interests us, that satire will be read. But the Cookes, Curlls, Concanens, and other personages of the Dunciad are to us simple names which suggest no ideas; and even the intellectual mastery of the author, great though it be, is hardly so evident to us as the frantic vindictiveness which strains every nerve to say the most wounding and humiliating things. The famous Essay on Man appeared anonymously in 1732. It was the fruit of Pope's familiar intercourse with the sceptic Lord Bolingbroke, and reflects in the popular literature the opinions of a philosophical school presently to be noticed. No poem in the language contains a greater number of single lines which have passed into proverbs.* The various satirical pieces known as the Moral Essays and the Imitations of Horace, with Prologue and Epilogue, were published between the years 1731 and 1738. “A mighty maze, but not without a plan.” "The proper study of mankind is man." "The enormous faith of many made for one." "Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; "The rest is all but leather or prunella." "An honest man's the noblest work of God." "Damn'd to everlasting fame." "But looks through Nature up to Nature's God." "From grave to gay, from lively to severe," &c., &c. A fourth book was added to the Dunciad in 1742, and the whole poem was re-cast, so as to assign the enviable distinction of king of the dunces to Colly Cibber, the poet laureate, instead of Theobald. Pope died in May, 1744. Politically, Pope occupied through life a position of much dignity. Both Halifax and Secretary Craggs desired to pension him, but he declined their offers. Thanks to Homer, he could say truly "I live and thrive, Indebted to no prince or peer alive." His neutral position is again indicated in the lines "In moderation placing all my glory, While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory." But in principle, it is clear that he infinitely preferred the politics of Locke to those of Filmer. This is proved by such lines as May you, my Cam and Isis, preach it long, The right divine of kings to govern wrong.'' On the other hand, some of his dearest and most intimate friends, as Swift and Bolingbroke, were Tories. In religious belief, Pope was of course professedly a Catholic, but there is scarcely a page of his poetry in which the leaven of that scepticism which pervaded the society in which he moved may not be traced. At the court of the Prince of Wales at Richmond, where Pope was a frequent and a welcome guest, free-thinking was in favour, and Tindal, the Deist, was zealously patronised: - "But art thou one whom new opinions sway, The religious indifferentism which Pope assumed had undoubtedly many conveniences, in an age when serious and bonâ-fide Catholicism was repressed by every kind of vexatious penal disability, and the literary circle in which he lived was composed exclusively of Protestants or unbelievers. He styled himself— "Papist or Protestant, or both between, Like good Erasmus, in an honest mean." Perhaps, too, it may be said, that, independently of external influences, his own highly intellectualised nature predisposed him to set reason above faith, to value great thinkers more than great saints. But he would not let himself be driven or persuaded into any act of formal apostasy. When, upon the death of his father, in 1717, his friend Bishop Atterbury hinted that he was now free to consult his worldly interests by joining the established church, Pope absolutely rejected the proposal - upon singular and non-Catholic grounds, it is true--but so decidedly as to make it impossible that the advice should be repeated. As he grew older, Pope's sympathies with the free-thinking school, at least with the rank and file of their writers, seem to have declined; very disrespectful mention is made of them in the Dunciad. Their spokesman is thus introduced in the fourth book: "Be that my task,' replies a gloomy clerk, When moral evidence shall quite decay" &c. Finally, whatever may have been the aberrations of his life, its closing scene was one of faith and pious resignation. The priest who administered to him the last sacraments " came out from the dying man, penetrated to the last degree with the state of mind in which he found his penitent, resigned, and wrapt up in the love of God and man." Bolingbroke, like the friends of Béranger, on *Carruthers' Life of Pope. |