BOLINGBROKE AND MALLET’S POSTHUMOUS QUARREL WITH POPE.
Lord Bolingbroke affects violent resentment for Pope’s pretended breach of confidence in having printed his “Patriot King”—Warburton’s apology for Pope’s disinterested intentions—Bolingbroke instigates Mallet to libel Pope, after the poet’s death—The real motive for libelling Pope was Bolingbroke’s personal hatred of Warburton, for the ascendancy the latter had obtained over the poet—Some account of their rival conflicts—Bolingbroke had unsettled Pope’s religious opinions, and Warburton had confirmed his faith—Pope, however, refuses to abjure the Catholic religion—Anecdote of Pope’s anxiety respecting a future state—Mallet’s intercourse with Pope: anecdote of “The Apollo Vision,” where Mallet mistook a sarcasm for a compliment—Mallet’s character—Why Leonidas Glover declined writing the Life of Marlborough—Bolingbroke’s character hit off—Warburton, the concealed object of this posthumous quarrel with Pope.
On the death of Pope, 1500 copies of one of Lord Bolingbroke’s works, “The Patriot King,” were discovered to have been secretly printed by Pope, but never published. The honest printer presented the whole to his lordship, who burned the edition in his gardens at Battersea. The MS. had been delivered to our poet by his lordship, with a request to print a few copies for its better preservation, and for the use of a few friends.
Bolingbroke affected to feel the most lively resentment for what he chose to stigmatise as “a breach of confidence.” “His thirst of vengeance,” said Johnson, “incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation,” apologised for Pope. The irregular conduct which Bolingbroke stigmatised as a breach of trust, was attributed to a desire of perpetuating the work of his friend, who might have capriciously destroyed it. Our poet could have no selfish motive; he could not gratify his vanity by publishing the work as his own, nor his avarice by 322 its sale, which could never have taken place till the death of its author; a circumstance not likely to occur during Pope’s lifetime.[237]
The vindictive rage of Bolingbroke; the bitter invective he permitted Mallet to publish, as the editor of his works; and the two anonymous pamphlets of the latter, which I have noticed in the article of Warburton; are effects much too disproportionate to the cause which is usually assigned. Johnson does not develope the secret motives of what he has energetically termed “Bolingbroke’s thirst of vengeance.” He and Mallet carried their secret revenge beyond all bounds: the lordly stoic and the irritated bardling, under the cloak of anonymous calumny, have but ill-concealed the malignity of their passions. Let anonymous calumniators recollect, in the midst of their dark work, that if they escape the detection of their contemporaries, their reputation, if they have any to lose, will not probably elude the researches of the historian;—a fatal witness against them at the tribunal of posterity.
The preface of Mallet to the “Patriot King” of Bolingbroke, produced a literary quarrel; and more pamphlets than perhaps I have discovered were published on this occasion.
Every lover of literature was indignant to observe that the vain and petulant Mallet, under the protection of Pope’s
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