How many good authors might pursue their studies in quiet, would they never reply to their critics but on matters of fact, in which their honour may be involved. I have seen very tremendous criticisms on some works of real genius, like serpents on marble columns, wind and dart about, and spit their froth, but they die away on the pillars that enabled them to erect their malignant forms to the public eye. They fall in due time; and weak must be the substance of that pillar which does not stand, and look as beautiful, when the serpents have crawled over it, as before. Dr. Brown, in his “Letter to Bishop Lowth,” has laid down an axiom in literary criticism:—“A mere literary attack, however well or ill-founded, would not easily have drawn me into a public expostulation; for every man’s true literary character is best seen in his own writings. Critics may rail, disguise, insinuate, or pervert; yet still the object of their censures lies equally open to all the world. Thus the world becomes a competent judge of the merits of the work animadverted on. Hence, the mere author hath a fair chance for a fair decision, at least among the judicious; and it is of no mighty consequence what opinions the injudicious form concerning mental abilities. For this reason, I have never replied to any of those numerous critics who have on different occasions honoured me with their regard.”
Sir William Blackstone’s Discussion on the Quarrel between Addison and Pope was communicated by Dr. Kippis in his “Biographia Britannica,” vol. i. p. 56. Blackstone is there designated as “a gentleman of considerable rank, to whom the public is obliged for works of much higher importance.”
Dennis asserts in one of his pamphlets that Pope, fermenting with envy at the success of Addison’s Cato, went to Lintot, and persuaded him to engage this redoubted critic to write the remarks on Cato—that Pope’s gratitude to Dennis for having complied with his request was the well-known narrative of Dennis “being placed as a lunatic in the hands of Dr. Norris, a curer of mad people, at his house in Hatton-garden, though at the same time I appeared publicly every day, both in the park and in the town.” Can we suppose that Dennis tells a falsehood respecting Pope’s desiring Lintot to engage Dennis to write down Cato? If true, did Pope wish to see Addison degraded, and at the same time take an opportunity of ridiculing the critic, without, however, answering his arguments? The secret history of literature is like that of politics?
[Dennis took a strong dislike to Addison’s Cato, and his style of criticism is thus alluded to in the humorous account of his frenzy written by Pope: “On all sides of his room were pinned a great many sheets of a tragedy called Cato, with notes on the margin by his own hand. The words absurd, monstrous, execrable, were everywhere written in such large characters, that I could read them without my spectacles.” Warton says that “Addison highly disapproved of this bitter satire on Dennis, and Pope was not a little chagrined at this disapprobation; for the narrative was intended to court the favour of Addison, by defending his Cato: in which seeming defence Addison was far from thinking our author sincere.”]
In the notes to the Prologue to the Satires.
Pope’s conjecture was perfectly correct. Dr. Warton confirms it from a variety of indisputable authorities.—Warton’s “Pope,” vol. iv. p. 34.