The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 / Poetry - Volume 1

by Alexander Pope

Proud of his dreary paradoxes, Warburton scorned the humble office of furnishing useful information. Pope had said, in his Imitations of Horace, that because three ladies liked a luckless play, a spendthrift had taken the whole house upon the poet's night,[8] which drew from Warburton the following note:—"The common reader, I am sensible, will be always more solicitous about the names of these three ladies, the unlucky play, and every other circumstance that attended this piece of gallantry, than for the explanation of our author's sense, or the illustration of his poetry, even where he is most moral and sublime. But had it been in Mr. Pope's purpose to indulge so impertinent a curiosity, he had sought elsewhere for a commentator on his writings. Which defect in these notes, the periodical scribblers, however, have been stupid and shameless enough to object to them."[9] Warburton's reserve was praiseworthy when his motive was respect for private feelings. His general neglect to clear up the allusions in Pope's poems did not admit of this apology, and in default of a better defence he called his critics "stupid and shameless." His habit when reasons failed him was to supply their place with abuse.

The edition of Warburton was published in 1751, and no attempt was made to supersede it till Gilbert Wakefield commenced a new edition in 1794. He was "labouring," he says, "for a subsistence," and the cost of the work, which was printed at his own expense, obliged him to bring out a volume at a time. Before the first volume was quite through the press he learned that Joseph Warton was engaged on a similar undertaking. Warton had the support of the London booksellers, and the edition of Wakefield ended with his opening volume. The world did not lose the benefit of his annotations. He published in 1796 his Observations on Pope, which consist of notes on the remaining poems, and of supplemental notes to the poems he had previously edited. Wakefield said that an "inculpable perfection pervaded the whole body of Pope's compositions," and in the extravagance of his admiration he overlaid the volume of his unfinished edition with weak rhapsodies which masked the useful part of his labours. He restrained his eulogistic excesses in his Observations, and kept more closely to his main design of tracing Pope's "imitations of his predecessors." All persons tolerably read in poetry could perceive that the obligations Pope acknowledged in his notes were but a fraction of the whole, and in 1740, Bowyer, the printer, with the assistance of Mr. Clarke, a clergyman, commenced a collection of parallel passages. From the letters of Clarke to Bowyer it appears that Pope was annoyed. Bowyer profited by his irritation, and offered to treat with him. "I think," wrote Clarke in 1742, "you buy his friendship cheap with a whole hecatomb of notes, essays, illustrations, and the mob of commentators."[10] The progress of the negociation is not recorded. The result is revealed in the fact that Bowyer shortly afterwards became Pope's printer. The sensitiveness which was disturbed at the gleanings of Bowyer would have shuddered at the abundant harvest of Wakefield. He himself had no intention of depreciating the merits of Pope. He only wished to illustrate a favourite author. Many of the parallelisms are too slight to be applicable, or they are common phrases the property of every Englishman. A vast number remain which are a curious exhibition of Pope's patience and skill in the art of poetical mosaic, and of the large amount of borrowed beauties he intermixed with his undoubted originality. The interpretation of the text, though subordinate with Wakefield, was not neglected by him. He and a friend who assisted him, Dr. William Bennet, Bishop of Cloyne, have explained more allusions than all the other commentators, and the least known and appreciated of the editors of Pope is the man who has done the most for his author.

The edition of Warton appeared in 1797. "His reason," he says in his preface, "for undertaking the work was the universal complaint that Dr. Warburton had disfigured and disgraced his edition with many forced and far-sought interpretations, totally unsupported by the passages which they were brought to elucidate." Warton had the stimulus of a second motive. He published in 1756 the first volume of his Essay on Pope, and his criticisms were roughly attacked in many passages of Ruffhead's Life of the poet, which was prompted and partly written by Warburton. While Warburton lived Warton did not venture to retaliate. The thirty years which intervened had not extinguished his resentment, and he seized the opportunity to revenge the ancient grudge. His consciousness of Warburton's defects did not keep Warton from repeating the error of filling page upon page with irrelevant matter. His Essay on Pope had been a receptacle for his store of miscellaneous reading, and in a separate work there was no objection to a medley of anecdote and criticism. He was seventy-five when he published his edition of Pope, and to save himself trouble he apportioned out the old farrago in notes. Profuse in digressions, he is sparing of needful explanations. His turn was for the lighter portions of criticism and biography, and most of his apposite remarks are critical opinions. They are often just, but never profound, for he had neither fervid feelings nor a robust understanding, and his highest qualities are a fair poetical taste, and a tolerable acquaintance with ancient and modern authors.

Bowles was a school-boy at Winchester when Warton was head-master, and he intimated that this early connection was the cause of his being employed to revise the next edition of Pope. It appeared in 1806. His poetic sensibility was exquisite, and he was well-read, shrewd, and candid. His failing was a hurry of mind which disqualified him for a painstaking commentator. He was content to jot down in a careless, colloquial style the off-hand thoughts of his quick and cultivated intellect, and he did not add much to the scanty explanations of Warton and Warburton. The chief merit of his edition is his excellent literary criticism, which is truer, deeper, and more refined than that of his old Winchester master. The estimate Bowles formed of the poetry and character of Pope was allowed to pass unchallenged for thirteen years, when some remarks of Campbell, in his Specimens of British Poets, commenced a controversy which lasted from 1819 to 1826. In the series of pamphlets he published to vindicate his opinions, Bowles exhibited his wonted acuteness, courage, and negligence. With all his slips in minor points the fresh facts which have come to light have more than confirmed his view of Pope's moral obliquities, and in the discussion on the principles of poetry he reduced the whole of his adversaries to silence. He and Hazlitt were the only persons among the disputants, eminent or obscure, who showed any real comprehension of the subject.

The next edition of Pope, justly considered by Mr. Croker to be the worst, came out in 1824, and was superintended by Roscoe, the author of the Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and Leo X. He barely contributed a single illustrative note, his criticisms are platitudes, and his vindications of Pope a tissue of blunders. He was misled by his credulous faith in his hero, by the rashness with which he imposed his own guesses for facts, and above all by his want of penetration and research. His half-knowledge was worse than ignorance. A few of his multitudinous errors were exposed by Bowles whom he had attacked. Roscoe replied in a feeble, disingenuous pamphlet, which drew from Bowles his taunting and crushing retort, Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq. This ended the Pope controversy.

The faults of plan and execution in the editions of Warburton, Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe stand out in strong relief, and Mr. Croker resolved, as far as possible, to correct the mistakes, retrench the superfluities, and supply the omissions. Warton and Bowles dismissed a large proportion of the barren, oppressive commentaries of Warburton. Roscoe put back the whole of the bulky excrescence. Most of it had been adopted by Pope, and to relieve the text, without excluding interpretations sanctioned by the poet, Mr. Croker determined to print the pedantic lumber in appendixes. The notes of the other editors rested upon their intrinsic merits, and he intended to sift out the surplusage, and only retain what was pertinent. To curtail is easy. The difficulty was to clear up the many obscurities which remained, and Mr. Croker was anxious to furnish his share of explanation, though he was convinced that numerous contemporary allusions would always baffle curiosity. His chief attention was directed to the satires, and he continued for many years to pursue his investigations, and accumulate materials. His busy life was succeeded by failing health, and he died before he had prepared his notes for the press. The results of his research have luckily all been preserved, for his habit was to write them out in full at the time. He was an acute and eager enquirer into political, personal, and social history, and no man could have been more competent to bring to the surface the under-current of forgotten circumstances.

I have kept to the plan sketched out by Mr. Croker. "A commentary," says Johnson, "must arise from the fortuitous discoveries of many men in devious walks of literature," and few poets have had more commentators than Pope. I have borrowed whatever I met with in previous writers that throw light upon his meaning, faults, and beauties, have cast aside what was plainly inapplicable and erroneous, and have done what I could to fill up deficiencies. My own notes will be recognised by the absence of any signature; all other notes throughout the work have the names of their authors attached, even when a note is by the same author as the text. The extracts from Warton are sometimes taken from his Essay, and both in his case and that of Bowles I have occasionally joined together scattered fragments which were connected in their subject. The rest of the arrangements will be understood at a glance.

The letters of Pope demand a more particular discussion. Estimated by their intrinsic merits they would call for little notice. "He laboured them," says Horace Walpole, "as much as the Essay on Man, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been written to anybody."[11] Their dry and frigid generalities could not be more happily exposed. The chief importance of the correspondence is in its relation to the morality of Pope, and the fame of men whose reputation is involved in the question of his uprightness. His real nature has always been hotly debated. "His detractors," says De Quincey, "fancy that in his character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles; or, to adopt the distinction of Shakespeare, they see nothing but 'dust a little gilt,' and we 'gold a little dusted.'"[12] Pope boasted loudly of his virtue, and his champions judge him by his own representations. His accusers hold that his professions were hypocritical, as when Lord Macaulay speaks of his "spite and envy, thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface."[13] The charges brought against him are thickly scattered over his life, and either the guilty appearances are deceptive, or we must admit that his mind was essentially corrupt. His correspondence brings up the ever-recurring enquiry, and we have to decide whether his letters are not many of them fraudulent, and the circumstances attending their publication a series of ignominious plots, infamous false accusations, and impudent lies.

Every examination into the history of the letters was slight before Mr. Dilke engaged in the laborious task. His familiarity with the books, pamphlets, and periodicals of the time could not be exceeded, and his doubts once awakened he accepted nothing upon trust. With an immense amount of research and skill he proceeded to track Pope through his tortuous courses. He laid bare the ramifications of the plot against Curll, which was only known in a few of its prominent particulars. He detected, what none of the editors and biographers had perceived, the base manœuvres and deceit which accompanied the publication of the "Letters to and from Dr. Swift." He was originally put upon his investigations by the manuscript collection of Pope's letters to Caryll, and these revealed a new set of frauds in the evidence they supplied of letters converted into a fictitious correspondence. His inclination was to favour Pope whenever there was an opening for a liberal interpretation, and it was not from hostility that he exposed the net-work of fraud, and brought out the dark traits of a dishonourable disposition with new and terrible force. He printed his discoveries in the Athenæum[14], and after studying the facts afresh by the light of his essays, I am compelled to adopt his conclusions. The evidence upon which they rest is often circumstantial and intricate, and cannot be followed to the end without steady attention, and some trial of patience.

The letters of the poet which were first sent to the press were given by Cromwell to his mistress, Elizabeth Thomas, who sold them in her distress to Curll for ten guineas. She was a shameless woman, and boldly justified her conduct. "Everyone," she said, "knows that the person to whom a letter is addressed has the same right to dispose of it as he has of goods purchased with his money." The right which originally belonged to Cromwell, of publishing to the world whatever had been written to him in the confidence of friendship, he had, by his gift, transferred to herself; and thus it appeared that Cromwell had a right to be treacherous to Pope, and Mrs. Thomas a right to be treacherous to both Pope and Cromwell. With more reason she inferred that neither of them at heart would be vexed at the proceeding. Cromwell, she urged, could not be angry that the world should know "the professions of love, gratitude, and veneration made him by so celebrated an author," and Pope could not resent the exhibition of the "early pregnancy of his genius." "And yet," she continued, "had either of you been asked, common modesty would have obliged you to refuse what you would not be displeased with if done without your knowledge."[15] There can be little doubt, from his subsequent conduct, that this was the light in which the publication was viewed by the poet, notwithstanding his assertion in a note to the Dunciad, "that he was ashamed of the letters as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of the writer." Mrs. Thomas did him an incalculable injury, not by revealing his secrets, but by flattering his vanity. The favourable reception of his correspondence originated the desire to give some further specimens to the world, and led him into the miserable series of falsehoods and frauds by which he endeavoured to accomplish his design without seeming to be privy to it.