The Works of Alexander Pope Part 4

The notes signed "Pope, 1737," were added in the quarto of that year; and those signed "Cooper, 1737," are from the octavos which bear the name of this bookseller on the t.i.tle-page.

Language was current in Pope's day which would be considered grossly indelicate in ours, and though he abounds in refined and elevated strains, he was yet among the worst offenders of his time. "He and Swift," says Dr. Johnson, "had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention." His correspondence is not altogether free from the defect; but no editor can now efface the blots which Warburton, Warton, and Bowles felt bound to preserve. Roscoe set aside a few sentences, and showed by his inconsistency the uselessness of the process. He confined his expurgations to the part of Pope's works which were little read, and where the omissions in consequence would rarely be remarked; but did not venture to disturb a single syllable of the far more numerous and more objectionable pa.s.sages which occur in the pieces that are in the hands of all the world. The stains which sully so much of our beautiful literature are unhappily indelible, and it could answer no useful end to adopt the capricious principle of Roscoe in removing the lesser blemishes which are seldom noticed, and leaving the worst and most conspicuous defilements undisturbed. More freedom may be used with the unpublished letters; but I have exercised the discretion very sparingly, and have not excluded every coa.r.s.e word, phrase, or idea, when it was characteristic of the age, the man, and his writings, and when, though an offence against taste, it could not be injurious to morals.

I have mentioned at the several places where their contributions are inserted, the numerous persons to whose liberality Mr. Croker and myself have been obliged for materials and a.s.sistance. The services rendered by Mr. Dilke require to be noticed here. Until he published his articles in the Athenaeum little had been added to our knowledge of Pope since Johnson produced his masterly Life. The truths which Mr. Dilke established, and the errors he dissipated, were not more important than the change he gave to the former superficial investigations. His rigid scrutiny became the standard for every subsequent inquirer. He loved his studies for their own sake, and never did a man of letters work less for personal ends. He at once placed at my disposal his Caryll correspondence, which he had carefully annotated, and the explanation of all its obscure allusions are due to him. He supplied me with a mult.i.tude of letters which were widely scattered through books and periodicals, and collated others with the originals in the British Museum and Bodleian Library. Large ma.s.ses of the letters are undated, or dated falsely, and he was at the labour of fixing dates which sometimes appeared to defy conjecture. He lent me his rare editions, was unwearied in answering questions, in solving difficulties, in revising proofs, and in communicating, without reserve, his stores of information. He was then suffering from a long and painful illness, and he died when only the first volume of correspondence was printed, or I should have had his generous and invaluable aid to the end.

Mr. Bowles remarked in the course of the skirmish of pamphlets he provoked, that the editors.h.i.+p of Pope's works had been to no one a bed of roses. For the larger part of the discomforts his commentators may have endured, Pope himself was responsible. His mysteries, his double-dealings, his falsifications, and his quarrels have rendered half the acts of his life a fertile theme for debate. None of the angry controversialists who mingled fifty years ago in the fray had prepared properly for the contest, and the insolence and a.s.sumption, the virulence and the dogmatism, were commonly greatest with the persons whose acquaintance with the subject was the least. The intemperate, and usually ignorant warfare, left nearly all the vexed questions in confusion, and it is only in recent years that a new generation of dispa.s.sionate students have begun to replace the blunders of sciolism by facts. In the many battles yet to be fought over Pope there will be this advantage which will be certain to produce solid results, that the critic will be in possession of the materials for judgment, and will not have to write without knowledge of his cause.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, Vol. iii. p.

368.]

[Footnote 2: Marchmont Papers, Vol. ii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 3: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. ii. p. 165.]

[Footnote 4: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. iii. p. 72.]

[Footnote 5: Prior's Life of Malone, p. 385.]

[Footnote 6: Prior's Malone, p. 370.]

[Footnote 7: Hurd said of Warburton's Pope, that "it was the best edition that was ever given of any cla.s.sic."]

[Footnote 8: Imit. Bk. i. Epist. vi. ver. 87.]

[Footnote 9: This last sentence was added by Warburton in the later editions of his Pope.]

[Footnote 10: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. IV. p. 429-437.]

[Footnote 11: Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, Vol. vi. p.

422.]

[Footnote 12: De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863. Vol. xv. p. 137. He usually maintained the opposite view, and sided altogether with the "they who could see nothing in Pope but 'dust a little gilt.'" "There is nothing,"

he says, "Pope would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most pathetic memorial from his personal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. Simply and const.i.tutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought, or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a prayer to G.o.d, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what people affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth."]

[Footnote 13: Macaulay's Essays, 1 Vol. ed. p. 719.]

[Footnote 14: Athenaeum, July 8, 1854, Sept. 1, Sept. 8, and Sept. 15, 1860.]

[Footnote 15: Mrs. Thomas to Cromwell, June 27, 1727.]

[Footnote 16: "Lives of the Poets," edited by Cunningham, Vol. III. p.

62.]

[Footnote 17: "The Curlliad," p. 22.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. I. p. x.x.xviii. Where no other work is mentioned, the references throughout this Introduction are to the present edition of Pope's Correspondence.]

[Footnote 19: Mr. Croker and myself have been indebted to the kindness of the present Marquess of Bath for the use of the Oxford papers preserved at Longleat. They are most important for the light they throw upon the character and proceedings of Pope.]

[Footnote 20: Lord Oxford to Pope, Oct. 9, 1729.]

[Footnote 21: Pope to Lord Oxford, Oct. 16, 1729.]

[Footnote 22: Pope to Swift, Nov. 28, 1729.]

[Footnote 23: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 62.]

[Footnote 24: Vol. I. p. x.x.xvii.]

[Footnote 25: The father was probably Lord Digby, and the letters were those addressed to the Hon. Robert Digby, who died in April, 1726.]

[Footnote 26: Vol. I. pp. x.x.xvii, x.x.xviii.]

[Footnote 27: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 423.]

[Footnote 28: Warton's "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 255.]

[Footnote 29: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 424.]

[Footnote 30: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 425.]

[Footnote 31: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 421, 423.]

[Footnote 32: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 441.]

[Footnote 33: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.]

[Footnote 34: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 422.]

[Footnote 35: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 425, 441.]

[Footnote 36: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 442.]

[Footnote 37: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 432.]

[Footnote 38: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 434.]

[Footnote 39: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 443.]

[Footnote 40: Vol. I. Appendix, p. 428.]

[Footnote 41: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 428, 433.]

[Footnote 42: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 61. Mr. Roscoe says that no evidence for this statement appears. Johnson is himself the evidence. He went to London in 1737, when he was 28 years of age, to try his fortunes as an author, and became intimate with Savage, who was the ally of Pope, with Dodsley, who published the authentic edition of the poet's correspondence, and with numerous other persons from whom he was likely to have received reliable information upon a fact so recent. It is not to be supposed that Johnson imagined or invented a circ.u.mstance which there is nothing to discredit.]

[Footnote 43: Vol. I. Appendix, pp. 433, 434.]