“On his meeting me there (Button’s Coffee-House) he took me aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern if I would stay till those people (Budgell and Philips) were gone. We went accordingly, and after dinner Mr. Addison said ‘that he had wanted for some time to talk with me: that his friend Tickell had formerly, while at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad. That he now designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over: he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double dealing.’ I assured him that I did not take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added ‘that I would not desire him to look over my first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell’s, but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.’ Accordingly, I sent him the second book the next morning; and in a few days he returned it with very high commendation. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the Iliad I met Dr. Young in the street, and, upon our falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell’s having such a translation by him so long. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that he and Tickell were so intimately acquainted at Oxford that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till this occasion.”[64]
It is scarcely necessary to say that, after the light that has been thrown on Pope’s character by the detection of the frauds he practised in the publication of his correspondence, it is impossible to give any credence to the tales he poured into Spence’s ear, tending to blacken Addison’s character and to exalt his own. Tickell’s MS. of the translation is in existence, and all the evidence tends to show that he was really the author of it. But the above statement may be taken to reflect accurately enough the rage, the resentment, and the suspicion which disturbed Pope’s own mind on the appearance of the rival translation. We can scarcely doubt that it was this, and this alone, which roused him to such glowing indignation and inspired him to write the character of Atticus. When the verses were made public, after Addison’s death, he probably perceived that the public would not consider the evidence for Addison’s collusion with Tickell to be sufficiently strong to afford a justification for the bitterness of the satire. It was necessary to advance some stronger plea for such retaliation, especially as rumour confidently asserted that the lines had not been written till after Addison was dead. Hence the story told by Pope to Spence, proving first that the lines were not only written during Addison’s lifetime, but were actually sent to Addison himself; and secondly, that they were only composed after the strongest evidence had been afforded to the poet of his rival’s malignant disposition towards him. Hence, too, the publication in 1735 of the letter to Craggs, which, containing as it did many of the phrases and metaphors employed in the verses, seemed to supply indirect evidence that both were written about the same period.
With regard to Pope’s story, it is not too much to say that it entirely breaks down on examination. He professes to give it on the authority of Lord Warwick himself, reckoning, of course, that the evidence of Addison’s own step-son would be conclusive with the public. But Addison was not married to the Countess of Warwick till August, 1716; and in the previous May he had bestowed the most liberal praise on Pope’s translation in one of his papers in the Freeholder. For Lord Warwick, therefore, to argue at that date that Addison’s “jealous temper could never admit of a settled friendship” between him and Pope was out of the question. If, on the other hand, Lord Warwick told his story to Pope before his mother’s marriage, the difficulty is equally great. The letter to Craggs, which, if it was ever sent to the latter at all, must obviously have been written in the same “heat” which prompted the satire on Atticus, is dated July 15, 1715. This fits in well enough with the date of the dispute about the rival translations of the Iliad, but not with Lord Warwick’s story, for Wycherley, after whose death Gildon, we are told, was hired by Addison to abuse Pope, did not die till the December of that year.
Again, the internal evidence of the character itself points to the fact that, when it was first composed, its “heat” was not caused by any information the poet had received of a transaction between Addison and Gildon. The following is the first published version of the satire:
“If Dennis writes and rails in furious pet
I’ll answer Dennis when I am in debt.
If meagre Gildon draw his meaner quill,
I wish the man a dinner and sit still.
But should there One whose better stars conspire
To form a bard, and raise a genius higher,
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to live, converse, and write with ease;
Should such a one, resolved to reign alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes,
Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise,
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Alike reserved to blame or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend,
Fearing e’en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne’er obliged;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint the fault, and hesitate dislike,
Who when two wits on rival themes contest,
Approves of both, but likes the worst the best:
Like Cato, give his little senate laws
And sits attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars every sentence praise
And wonder with a foolish face of praise:
Who would not laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Addison were he?”
There is sufficient corroborative evidence to allow us to believe that these lines were actually written, as Pope says, during Addison’s lifetime; and if they were, the character of the satire would naturally suggest that its motive was Addison’s supposed conduct in the matter of the two translations of the Iliad. There is nothing in them to indicate any connection in the poet’s mind between Gildon and Addison; on the other hand, the allusion to the “two wits” shows the special grievance that formed the basis, in his imagination, of the whole character. Afterwards we find that “meaner quill” is replaced by “venal quill;” and the couplet about the rival translations is suppressed. The inference is plain. When Pope was charged with having written the character after Addison’s death, he found himself obliged, in self-defence, to furnish a moral justification for the satire; and, after his own unfortunate manner, he proceeded to build up for himself a position on a number of systematic falsehoods. His story was probably so far true that the character was really written while Addison was alive; on the other hand, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the entire statement about Gildon and Lord Warwick is fabulous; and, as the assertion that the lines were sent to Addison immediately after their composition is associated with these myths, this, too, may fairly be dismissed as equally undeserving of belief.
As to the truth of the character of Atticus, however, it by no means follows, because Pope’s account of its origin is false, that the portrait itself is altogether untrue. The partizans of Addison endeavour to prove that it is throughout malicious and unjust. But no one can fail to perceive that the character itself is a very extraordinary picture of human nature; and there is no reason to suppose that Addison was superior to the weaknesses of his kind. On the contrary, there is independent evidence to show that he was strongly influenced by that literary jealousy which makes the groundwork of the ideal character. This the piercing intelligence of Pope no doubt plainly discerned; his inflamed imagination built up on this foundation the wonderful fabric that has ever since continued to enchant the world. The reader who is acquainted with his own heart will probably not find much difficulty in determining what elements in the character are derived from the substantial truth of nature, and what are to be ascribed to the exaggerated perceptions of Genius.