The Works of Alexander Pope Part 6

[Footnote 92: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 444, 445.]

[Footnote 93: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 431.]

[Footnote 94: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.]

[Footnote 95: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 96: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 444.]

[Footnote 97: From a letter which Lord Oxford addressed to Swift on June 19, 1735, he would appear to have known no more than the rest of the public. "Master Pope," he writes, "is under persecution from Curll, who has by some means (wicked ones most certainly) got hold of some of Pope's private letters, which he has printed, and threatens more."]

[Footnote 98: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.]

[Footnote 99: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III, p.

x.]

[Footnote 100: Pope to Buckley, July 13, [1735].]

[Footnote 101: Art. Atterbury in "A General Biographical Dictionary translated from Bayle, interspersed with several thousand lives never before published. By Rev. J. P. Bernard, Rev. T. Birch, Mr. John Lockman, and other hands." Vol II. p. 447.]

[Footnote 102: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 447.]

[Footnote 103: Pope to Fortescue, March 26, 1736, and April, 1736.]

[Footnote 104: Pope to Allen, June 5 and Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 105: Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 106: Pope to Fortescue, April, 1736.]

[Footnote 107: Pope to Allen, Nov. 6, 1736.]

[Footnote 108: Chancery Bill, Dodsley _v._ Watson.]

[Footnote 109: Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 63.]

[Footnote 110: Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 465.]

[Footnote 111: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 112: Pope to Allen, June 5, 1736.]

[Footnote 113: Pope probably kept back from the quarto the unpublished letters he inserted in the octavo that their novelty might a.s.sist the sale of the edition which was intended to come out last. He would not use the new letters without his unfailing pretext that they "were in such hands as to be in imminent danger of being printed."]

[Footnote 114: These particulars are derived from the Chancery Bill _Dodsley_ v. _Watson_, and from the doc.u.ments preserved by Pope's solicitor, Mr. Cole, and now in the possession of his successors in the business, Messrs. Janssen and Co. I owe the extracts from Cole's papers to Mr. Dilke, who was indebted for them to the present members of the firm.]

[Footnote 115: Vol. I. p. xliii.]

[Footnote 116: The words were introduced by the poet's friend and counsel Murray when he revised, or, in legal phrase, settled the bill.

The rough draft submitted to him is among the papers of Mr. Cole, and the parallel pa.s.sage only states that the letters written and received by Mr. Pope "having fallen into the hands of several booksellers, they thought fit to print a surrept.i.tious edition," which did not preclude the supposition that one or more of the editions might be genuine.

Whenever Pope, throughout the business, could use equivocal language he always selected it.]

[Footnote 117: "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence," 12mo. Vol. III. p.

xii.]

[Footnote 118: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423, 447.]

[Footnote 119: Vol. I. p. 1. He is speaking of Curll's reprint, which has no letters that were not in the original P. T. volume.]

[Footnote 120: Pope to Swift, May 17, 1739.]

[Footnote 121: Covent Garden Journal, No. 23, March 21, 1752.]

[Footnote 122: Warton's Pope, Vol. I. p. lv.]

[Footnote 123: The second edition of the octavo has a few more notes than the first edition. To distinguish it I have quoted it by the t.i.tle of Cooper 1737, from the name of the publisher. I had not seen the first edition of the octavo till after Vol. I. of the Correspondence was printed, and I have erroneously stated of one or two letters that they originally appeared in the Cooper edition of 1737 which had not any new letters.]

[Footnote 124: De Quincey, Works, Vol. xv. p. 132.]

[Footnote 125: Works, Vol. vii. p. 66.]

[Footnote 126: Carruthers, Life of Pope, p. 442.]

[Footnote 127: Warburton's Pope, Ed. 1753, Vol. IX. p. 111.]

[Footnote 128: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 129: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 130: It is among the papers of his friend Lord Bathurst. The letter is undated, and was published without any date by Curll. When Pope reproduced it in the quarto of 1737, he dated it August, 1723; and in the quarto of 1741 he changed the date to January, 1723, which must be incorrect, since Bolingbroke was then abroad, and did not return to England till June. Swift's reply is dated September 20, and as it was between this period and June that the joint letter must have been written, August is either the true date, or a close approximation to it.]

[Footnote 131: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 132: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 133: It is stated in a note to the Dublin edition of the collection of 1741 that the original of Bolingbroke's appendix had been discovered among Swift's papers since the publication of the letter by Curll.]

[Footnote 134: Lord Orrery to Pope, Oct. 4, 1738.]

[Footnote 135: Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740. This letter was first published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for August, 1849. It is printed, together with the other letters on the subject, among the Pope and Swift correspondence in this edition.]

[Footnote 136: The earliest of the three letters bears in the body of the work, the heading "Mr. Gay to Dr. Swift;" but in the Table of Contents it is ent.i.tled "From Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope," and the language in portions of the letter itself shows that it was the production of both.]

[Footnote 137: "I never," said the poet to Caryll, November 19, 1712, "kept any copies of such stuff as I write," which would be decisive of his custom at that early date, if much reliance could be placed on his word. In 1716 he commenced correspondence with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and afterwards published several of the letters among his "Letters to Ladies." He was then at enmity with her, and as she retained the originals, he must either have borrowed them prior to the quarrel for the purpose of copying them, or else must have copied them before they were sent. There is no direct evidence to show at what time he commenced the practice of transcribing letters; but at the close of 1726 he began to compile the collection of 1735, and thenceforward he was sure to let nothing escape which could contribute to his design.]

[Footnote 138: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 139: Dr. Hawkesworth published a letter from Swift to Pope, introducing his cousin, Mr. D. Swift, and three more were published by Mr. D. Swift himself. He does not say by what means he obtained them, but they form part of a collection of some seventy stray letters addressed by Swift to thirty or forty different persons, who had certainly not returned them.]