and was soon after made immortal by the following lines, in the Essay on Criticism: "Such late was Walsh, the Muse's judge and friend, 1 Pope's intimacy with Edward Blount, of Maple Durham, near Reading, and with his two sisters, Martha and Teresa Blount, commenced about 1707. For all the members of this family, which was of the Roman Catholic persuasion, Pope had a sincere esteem: but Martha Blount became the especial object of his affectionate regard, and continued till the close of his life to be the dearest of his friends. In various passages of harmless gallantry, scattered through the letters of Pope to Martha, Mr. Bowles has discovered indications of his having entertained for her a criminal passion; forgetting that in those days a much greater license in conversation and in epistolary correspondence was permitted between the sexes, than in our more decorous age. From passages, too, of the lady's letters to the 1 [Edward Blount was not the brother, but only a remote kinsman, of Martha and Teresa Blount.] poet, the same editor has taken occasion to throw out insinuations, which every unprejudiced mind must reject with scorn. From the seclusion of Binfield, Pope sometimes repaired to London, chiefly, we may suppose, for the sake of enjoying the society of literary men; and was a frequenter of Will's Coffee-house (in Russell Street, Covent Garden), the haunt of the most fashionable wits and writers of the day. It was probably on one of these occasions, that he became acquainted with Mr. Henry Cromwell, a somewhat coxcomical personage, who seems to have divided his time between elegant literature and the pleasures of the town. Their acquaintance ripened into friendship: the series of their published letters, however, reaches only from 1708 to 1711. Some displeasure conceived by the eccentric Cromwell, at the freedom with which Pope rallied him on his turn for trifling and pedantic criticism, appears 1 Mr. Bowles saw something very improper in the following note from "Mrs. Martha Blount to Pope. "Sunday Morning. "Sir. "My sister and I shall be at home all day. If any company come that you do not like, I'll go up into any room with you. I hope we shall see you. Yours, &c." to have abruptly put an end to their intercourse;1 but from the correspondence which they had together many years afterwards, in consequence of the publication of Pope's letters, by means of Mrs. Thomas, it is manifest that no quarrel had taken place between them. "2 " 8 The exact period at which the Essay on Crticism was composed cannot be determined. According to Ruffhead, it was produced "before Pope had attained his twentieth year." The two following notices concerning it in Spence's Anecdotes are at variance with each other. "My Essay on Criticism was written in 1709; and published in 1711; which is as little time as ever I let any thing of mine lay by me.' "I was with him [Walsh] at his seat in Worcestershire for a good part of the summer of 1705, and showed him my Essay on Criticism in 1706." 4 That he wrote it with rapidity, the matter having been all digested in prose, before he began to put it into verse, we learn from the same valuable volume: 5 and Malone, in a note on his edition of Spence, conjectures that Pope, in 1706, only showed to Walsh the Essay in its prose state. Though Pope had not yet appeared before the 1 See a letter from Pope to Gay, Nov. 18th, 1712; and Warburton's note on it. 2 Life of Pope, p. 66. 8 Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 170. 4 Ibid. p. 194. 5 Ibid. p. 142. world as an author, his Pastorals, having been handed about in manuscript, had made him known to Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, Garth, Congreve, Mainwaring, and other celebrated characters. By them he had been earnestly recommended to print the pieces in question: and Tonson, the bookseller, having seen one of them in the hands of Walsh and Congreve, had expressed his desire to become the publisher of poems which the best judges. had so highly praised. Accordingly, the Pastorals were printed in 1709, at the end of the sixth volume of Tonson's Miscellanies, which opened with the Pastorals of Ambrose Philips. To the same volume Pope also contributed January and May, from Chaucer, and The Episode of Sarpedon from Homer. Writing to him, May 17, 1709, Wycherley says, "I must thank you for a book of your Miscellanies, which Tonson sent me, I suppose, by your order; and all I can tell you of it is, that nothing has lately been better received by the public than your part of it. You have only displeased the critics by pleasing them too well; having not left them a word to say for themselves against you and your performances; so that now your hand is in, you must persevere till my prophecies of you be fulfilled. In earnest, all the best judges of good sense or poetry are admirers of yours, and like your part of the book so well, that the rest is liked the worse." The exquisitely melodious versification of Pope's Pastorals fascinated at once the public ear; nor need we wonder that in those days, when descriptive poetry was at its lowest ebb, they were supposed to exhibit pictures of nature. In 1711, the Essay on Criticism was given anonymously to the world. It is said that the sale of this admirable poem was at first slow; that about a month after its appearance, Pope went into his publisher's shop, and having tied up twenty copies, addressed them to the best judges of poetry in town, among others to Lord Lansdowne and the Duke of Buckingham; and that in consequence of this manœuvre, the Essay soon acquired the popularity which it deserved.1 Its publication raised up to Pope a bitter enemy in John Dennis, whose plays and poems gained 1 This anecdote was told to Warton (Life of Pope, p. xviii.) by Lewis, the bookseller, who published the first edition of the poem; and D'Israeli (Quarrels of Authors, vol. i. p. 145), heard it from a descendant of Lewis. "This information," observes Mr. Roscoe, "cannot, however, be received without some degree of hesitation. In a letter from Pope to his friend Mr. Craggs (July 19, 1711), speaking of a second edition, he says: This I think the book will not so soon arrive at, for Tonson's printer told me he drew off a thousand copies in his first impression:' from which it would appear that the Essay was originally printed for Tonson, and that the impression in the same year by Lewis was a subsequent publication."-Life of Pope, p. 64. The word "Tonson's," in the preceding quotation from Pope's |