The Works of Alexander Pope Part 7

[Footnote 140: Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.]

[Footnote 141: Pope to Lord Oxford, Dec. 14, 1725.]

[Footnote 142: Nichols's "Ill.u.s.trations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century," Vol. V. p. 379.]

[Footnote 143: Birch MSS. Brit. Mus., quoted in Warton's Pope, Vol. II.

p. 339. When Mr. Gerrard was about to return to Ireland from Bath, Pope wrote to him, May 17, 1740, to say that he had found another conveyance for the letter he had intended to send by him to Swift. Mr. Gerrard may nevertheless have carried over the printed correspondence, which would not have been openly entrusted to him by Pope, who professed to know nothing about it. The poet may have thought upon reflection that it would look less suspicious if his avowed letter and the anonymous parcel were not transmitted by the same bearer.]

[Footnote 144: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 145: Pope to Mr. Nugent, March 26, 1740, and Mr. Nugent to Mrs. Whiteway, April 2, 1740.]

[Footnote 146: Pope to Mr. Nugent, August 14, 1740.]

[Footnote 147: Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," p. 469. The letter to Allen was not published till twenty-five years after Pope's death.]

[Footnote 148: Millar _v._ Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2397.]

[Footnote 149: "Athenaeum" for Sept. 15, 1860.]

[Footnote 150: "Whereas there is an impression of certain letters between Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope openly printed in Dublin without Mr.

Pope's consent, and there is reason to think the same hath been, or will be done clandestinely in London, notice is hereby given that they will be speedily published with several additional letters, &c., composing altogether a second volume of his works in prose."--"London Daily Post"

for March 24, 1741, quoted in the "Athenaeum" for September 15, 1860. The advertis.e.m.e.nt displays the same cautious phraseology as was employed in the prefatory notice to the quarto, and speaks of the Dublin volume as only printed, not published. One motive which probably induced Faulkner to delay it was, that the work would have been incomplete without the additional letters.]

[Footnote 151: Page 89 in the quarto bears, in the cancelled division, the signature M., and the later page 89 has the signature N. The cause of the difference is plain. It is the ordinary habit to begin the body of a work on sheet B, and reserve the signature A, for the preliminary matter. This is the method adopted with the three previous quarto volumes of Pope's works, and was followed in the original quarto impression of the correspondence; but after the poet had cancelled the beginning of the volume, the sheet commonly marked B was in the second state of the quarto marked A, which occasioned the usual sheet N to become M. The discrepancy is an additional proof that the opening sheets had been cancelled and reprinted.]

[Footnote 152: There were probably minor cancels which did not disturb the general arrangement, as at page 124, where there is a note which purports to be copied from the Dublin edition. The final sheet of all was evidently printed after Faulkner's volume was in type.]

[Footnote 153: Pope to Lord Orrery, March, 1737.]

[Footnote 154: Curll, who delivered his answer upon oath, was no doubt aware that the work was not first published in Dublin. He therefore used the evasive word "printed," and left it to his opponents to detect the fallacy. The methods, however, by which Pope had obtained his priority would not permit him to plead it, nor was he likely, by mooting the question, to risk the revelation of his plot.]

[Footnote 155: Atkyns's Reports, Vol. II. p. 342.]

[Footnote 156: The other counsel were Sir Dudley Ryder, then Attorney-General, and Mr. Noel. They all paid Pope the tribute of refusing their fees.]

[Footnote 157: Tonson _v._ Collins, Blackstone's Reports, Vol. I. p.

311.]

[Footnote 158: Millar _v._ Taylor, Burrow's Reports, Vol. IV. p. 2396.

"I know," Lord Mansfield observed, "that Mr. Pope had no paper upon which the letters were written," which means that he had received this a.s.surance from Pope, and supposed it to be true. In one particular the memory of Lord Mansfield deceived him. Blackstone on the authority of the preface to the quarto of 1741, stated, while arguing the case of Tonson _v._ Collins, that the letters "were published with the connivance at least, if not under the direction of Swift," to which Lord Mansfield replied, "Certainly not. Dr. Swift disclaimed it, and was extremely angry." But this is opposed to the united evidence of Mrs.

Whiteway, Faulkner, and Pope, who all concur in testifying that Swift consented to the publication.]

[Footnote 159: Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery.]

[Footnote 160: Pope to Caryll, Feb. 3, 1729. Pope to Swift, March 23, 1737.]

[Footnote 161: To Lord Orrery, March, 1737. "His humanity, his charity, his condescension, his candour are equal to his wit, and require as good and true a taste to be equally valued. When all this must die, I would gladly have been the recorder of so great a part of it as s.h.i.+nes in his letters to me, and of which my own are but as so many acknowledgements."]

[Footnote 162: Pope to Nugent, August 14, 1740.]

[Footnote 163: The statement is recorded by Dr. Birch in his Journal, May 14, 1751. He received the information from Dr. Heberden, who was then attending Lord Bolingbroke in his last illness.]

[Footnote 164: "All's Well that Ends Well." Act II. Scene 2.]

[Footnote 165: In September, 1725, Arbuthnot had an illness which was expected to prove mortal. Pope, in announcing his recovery to Swift on October 15, added, "He goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than even health can make a man." He meant that Arbuthnot was able to go about again, which was still one of the commonest significations of the phrase. Arbuthnot did not leave England, and from his letter to Swift on October 17, it is clear that he had never entertained the design.]

[Footnote 166: Roscoe dated the letter 1726. Without recapitulating the circ.u.mstances, which are fatal to the conjecture, it is enough to say that on September 10, 1726, Pope was unable to hold a pen, owing to the injury he had received a day or two before when he was upset in Bolingbroke's carriage. It was several weeks before he recovered the use of his hand. In the case of Digby there is the additional difficulty that as the nurse did not die till after September, 1725, so he himself was dead before September, 1726.]

[Footnote 167: I did not discover the letters of Wycherley at Longleat till after his correspondence with Pope had been printed off.]

[Footnote 168: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.]

[Footnote 169: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 170: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 171: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.]

[Footnote 172: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 9.]

[Footnote 173: Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an account of some religious fanatics.]

[Footnote 174: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.]

[Footnote 175: The general impression produced by the correspondence was expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can place no reliance on his pa.s.sing words.]

[Footnote 176: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 177: This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much asperity in a preliminary advertis.e.m.e.nt, of which the original, corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 178: Advertis.e.m.e.nt to the edition of 1749.]

[Footnote 179: Advertis.e.m.e.nt to the edition of 1749. In the same year Warburton put forth a short pamphlet ent.i.tled, "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted, in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of the princ.i.p.al charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and "only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years before, when the subject was fresh, and Bolingbroke was living.--Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 526. Appendix, p. 573.]

[Footnote 180: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p.

573.]

[Footnote 181: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 232.]

[Footnote 182: "A Letter to the Editor of the Letters" in Ruffhead, p.

572.]

[Footnote 183: Warburton says that the expense had been considerable.--Ruffhead, 571.]

[Footnote 184: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 92.]

[Footnote 185: Macaulay's Essays. I Vol. edit. p. 718.]