POPE,
AND HIS MISCELLANEOUS QUARRELS.
Pope adopted a system of literary politics—collected with extraordinary care everything relative to his Quarrels—no politician ever studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions and intricate stratagems—some of his manœuvres—his systematic hostility not practised with impunity—his claim to his own works contested—Cibber’s facetious description of Pope’s feelings, and Welsted’s elegant satire on his genius—Dennis’s account of Pope’s Introduction to him—his political prudence further discovered in the Collection of all the Pieces relative to the Dunciad, in which he employed Savage—the Theobaldians and the Popeians; an attack by a Theobaldian—The Dunciad ingeniously defended, for the grossness of its imagery, and its reproach of the poverty of the authors, supposed by Pope himself, with some curious specimens of literary personalities—the Literary Quarrel between Aaron Hill and Pope distinguished for its romantic cast—a Narrative of the extraordinary transactions respecting the publication of Pope’s Letters; an example of Stratagem and Conspiracy, illustrative of his character.
Pope has proudly perpetuated the history of his Literary Quarrels; and he appears to have been among those authors, surely not forming the majority, who have delighted in, or have not been averse to provoke, hostility. He has registered the titles of every book, even to a single paper, or a copy of verses, in which their authors had committed treason against his poetical sovereignty.[192] His ambition seemed gratified 279 in heaping these trophies to his genius, while his meaner passions could compile one of the most voluminous of the scandalous chronicles of literature. We are mortified on discovering so fine a genius in the text humbling itself through all the depravity of a commentary full of spleen, and not without the fictions of satire. The unhappy influence his Literary Quarrels had on this great poet’s life remains to be traced. 280 He adopted a system of literary politics abounding with stratagems, conspiracies, manœuvres, and factions.
Pope’s literary quarrels were the wars of his poetical ambition, more perhaps than of the petulance and strong irritability of his character. They were some of the artifices he adopted from the peculiarity of his situation.
Thrown out of the active classes of society from a variety of causes sufficiently known,[193] concentrating his passions into a solitary one, his retired life was passed in the contemplation of his own literary greatness. Reviewing the past, and anticipating the future, he felt he was creating a new era in our literature, an event which does not always occur in a century: but eager to secure present celebrity, with the victory obtained in the open field, he combined the intrigues of the cabinet: thus, while he was exerting great means, he practised little artifices. No politician studied to obtain his purposes by more oblique directions, or with more intricate stratagems; and Pope was at once the lion and the fox of Machiavel. A book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place this great poet.
To keep his name alive before the public was one of his early plans. When he published his “Essay on Criticism,” anonymously, the young and impatient poet was mortified with the inertion of public curiosity: he was almost in despair.[194] Twice, perhaps oftener, Pope attacked Pope;[195] and 281 he frequently concealed himself under the names of others, for some particular design. Not to point out his dark familiar “Scriblerus,” always at hand for all purposes, he made use of the names of several of his friends. When he employed Savage in “a collection of all the pieces, in verse and prose, published on occasion of the Dunciad,” he subscribed his name to an admirable dedication to Lord Middlesex, where he minutely relates the whole history of the Dunciad, “and the weekly clubs held to consult of hostilities against the author;” and, for an express introduction to that work, he used the name of Cleland, to which is added a note, expressing surprise that the world did not believe that Cleland was the writer![196] 282 Wanting a pretext for the publication of his letters, he delighted Curll by conveying to him some printed surreptitious copies, who soon discovered that it was but a fairy treasure which he could not grasp; and Pope, in his own defence, had soon ready the authentic edition.[197] Some lady observed that Pope “hardly drank tea without a stratagem!” The female genius easily detects its own peculiar faculty, when it is exercised with inferior delicacy.
But his systematic hostility did not proceed with equal impunity: in this perpetual war with dulness, he discovered that every one he called a dunce was not so; nor did he find the dunces themselves less inconvenient to him; for many successfully substituted, for their deficiencies in better qualities, the lie that lasts long enough to vex a man; and the insolence that does not fear him: they attacked him at all points, and not always in the spirit of legitimate warfare.[198] They filled up his asterisks, and accused him of treason. They asserted that the panegyrical verses prefixed to his works (an obsolete mode of recommendation, which Pope condescended to practise), were his own composition, and to which he had affixed the names of some dead or some unknown writers. They 283 published lists of all whom Pope had attacked; placing at the head, “God Almighty; the King;” descending to the “lords and gentlemen.”[199] A few suspected his skill in Greek; but every hound yelped in the halloo against his Homer.[200] Yet the more extraordinary circumstance was, their hardy disputes with Pope respecting his claim to his own works, and the difficulty he more than once found to establish his rights. Sometimes they divided public opinion by even indicating the 284 real authors; and witnesses from White’s and St. James’s were ready to be produced. Among these literary coteries, several of Pope’s productions, in their anonymous, and even in their MS. state, had been appropriated by several pseudo authors; and when Pope called for restitution, he seemed to be claiming nothing less than their lives. One of these gentlemen had enjoyed a very fair reputation for more than two years on the “Memoirs of a Parish-Clerk;” another, on “The Messiah!” and there were many other vague claims. All this was vexatious; but not so much as the ridiculous attitude in which Pope was sometimes placed by his enraged adversaries.[201] He must have found himself in a more perilous situation when he hired a brawny champion, or borrowed the generous courage of some military friend.[202] To all these 285 troubles we may add, that Pope has called down on himself more lasting vengeance; and the good sense of Theobald, the furious but often acute remarks of Dennis; the good-humoured yet keen remonstrance of Cibber; the silver shaft, tipped with venom, sent from the injured but revengeful Lady Mary; and many a random shot, that often struck him, inflicted on him many a sleepless night.[203] The younger Richardson has recorded the personal sufferings of Pope when, one day, in taking up Cibber’s letter, while his face was writhing with agony, he feebly declared that “these things were as good as hartshorn to him;” but he appeared at that 286 moment rather to want a little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of Pope, in his second letter:—“Everybody tells me that I have made you as uneasy as a rat in a hot kettle, for a twelvemonth together.”[204]
Pope was pursued through life by the insatiable vengeance of Dennis. The young poet, who had got introduced to him, among his first literary acquaintances, could not fail, when the occasion presented itself, of ridiculing this uncouth son of Aristotle. The blow was given in the character of Appius, in the “Art of Criticism;” and it is known Appius was instantaneously recognised by the fierce shriek of the agonised critic himself. From that moment Dennis resolved to write down every work of Pope’s. How dangerous to offend certain tempers, verging on madness![205] Dennis, too, called on every one to join him in the common cause; and once he retaliated on Pope in his own way. Accused by Pope of being the writer of an account of himself, in Jacob’s “Lives of the Poets,” Dennis procured a letter from Jacob, which he published, and in which it appears that Pope’s own character in this collection, if not written by him, was by him very carefully corrected on the proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter. Dennis, whose brutal energy 287 remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the golden shaft of Apollo could not pierce.