Pope, in his energetic Letter to Lord Hervey, that “masterpiece of invective,” says Warton, which Tyers tells us he kept long back from publishing, at the desire of Queen Caroline, who was fearful her counsellor would become insignificant in the public esteem, and at last in her own, such was the power his genius exercised;—has pointed out one of these causes. It describes himself as “a private person under penal laws, and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or conscience; yet it is by these alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all posts of profit or trust. I can interfere with the views of no man.”
The first publisher of the “Essay on Criticism” must have been a Mr. Lewis, a Catholic bookseller in Covent-garden; for, from a descendant of this Lewis, I heard that Pope, after publication, came every day, persecuting with anxious inquiries the cold impenetrable bookseller, who, as the poem lay uncalled for, saw nothing but vexatious importunities in a troublesome youth. One day, Pope, after nearly a month’s publication, entered, and in despair tied up a number of the poems, which he addressed to several who had a reputation in town, as judges of poetry. The scheme succeeded, and the poem, having reached its proper circle, soon got into request.
He was the author of “The Key to the Lock,” written to show that “The Rape of the Lock” was a political poem, designed to ridicule the Barrier Treaty; [so called from the arrangement made at the Peace of Utrecht between the ministers of Great Britain and the States General, as to the towns on the frontiers of the Dutch, which were to be permanently strengthened as barrier fortresses. Pope, in the mask of Esdras Barnivelt, apothecary, thus makes out his poem to be a political satire. “Having said that by the lock is meant the Barrier Treaty—first then I shall discover, that Belinda represents Great Britain, or (which is the same thing) her late Majesty. This is plainly seen in the description of her,
| “On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore.” |
Alluding to the ancient name of Albion, from her white cliffs, and to the cross which is the ensign of England. The baron who cuts off the lock, or Barrier Treaty, is the Earl of Oxford. Clarissa, who lent the scissors, my Lady Masham. Thalestris, who provokes Belinda to resent the loss of the lock or treaty, the Duchess of Marlborough; and Sir Plume, who is moved by Thalestris to re-demand it of Great Britain, Prince Eugene, “who came hither for that purpose.” He concludes 32 pages of similar argument by saying, “I doubt not if the persons most concerned would but order Mr. Bernard Lintott, the printer and publisher of this dangerous piece, to be taken into custody and examined, many further discoveries might be made both of this poet’s and his abettors secret designs, which are doubtless of the utmost importance to Government.” Such is a specimen of Pope’s chicanery.] Its innocent extravagance could only have been designed to increase attention to a work, which hardly required any such artifice. [In the preface to this production, “the uncommon sale of this book” is stated as one reason for the publication; “above six thousand of them have been already vended.”] In the same spirit he composed the “Guardian,” in which Phillips’s Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the “Guardian,” and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have discovered all the supercheries of this kind. After writing the finest works of genius, he was busily employed in attracting the public attention to them. In the antithesis of his character, he was so great and so little! But he knew mankind! and present fame was the great business of his life.
Cleland was the son of Colonel Cleland, an old friend of Pope; he and his son had served in the East Indian army; but the latter returned to London, and became a sort of literary jackal to Pope, and a hack author for the booksellers. He wrote several moral and useful works; but as they did not pay well, he wrote an immoral one, for which he obtained a better price, and a pension of 100l. a-year, on condition that he never wrote in that manner again. This was obtained for him by Lord Granville, after Cleland had been cited before the Privy Council, and pleaded poverty as the reason for such authorship.—Ed.