A vulgar squib like this would not have appeared so silly in those days as in ours. Men who wrote too freely were frequently punished by Lynch law, and Defoe mentions several attempts that were made upon his person. Pope, feeble though he was in body, was free from the taint of cowardice, and laughed at the threats of his opponents just as he occasionally laughed at their attacks on paper. He could afford to do so always, but sometimes read them with bitterness. Men like Dennis, Theobald, and Gildon were not likely permanently to damage his reputation, but they often touched him to the quick, and Pope found it impossible to conceal what he felt. "These things are my diversion," he once exclaimed with a ghastly smile, but as he spoke he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation. His more notable quarrels were with Addison and with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In the first case, it is to be feared, he had only himself to blame; in the second, the provocation may have come from Lady Mary, but Pope had no right to resent what was at worst a lady's folly, and never showed himself less the man than when he assailed his former friend. Addison has been painted in the brightest colours by his admirers, and especially by the latest and

greatest, Lord Macaulay. He is one of the most delightful of writers, and, according to Steele and Tickell, was the most agreeable of men. He was sixteen years older than Pope, and had reached the summit of the mountain when the younger poet was still struggling at the base. There should have been no jealousy here, for the paths of the two men were diverse. Pope owed everything to his pen; he was either a great poet, an inimitable satirist, or he slunk at once among the common herd. The position of Addison was more assured. He was a statesman as well as an author, he had gained one of the highest posts in the state, he had won fame, wealth, and a countess (though whether the lady were a gain may be questioned), and if Pope beat him in verse, and he did beat him incontestably, he could not approach his admirable prose, which remains perhaps unequalled to this day. Addison had his faults, but we do not believe that a rancorous jealousy was one of them. As much cannot be said of Pope, and it is sad to believe that the keenest satire he ever penned was written unworthily. The famous Lady Mary controversy is more painful still, and the disgrace to Pope is deeper. There may have been severe provocation. The pretty, lively, witty woman had been flattered by Pope's

His un

attentions, or had amused herself with his strange gallantry. He wrote beautiful verses in her praise, and once, according to her own report, spoke words of love in her ear. The "woman of fashion," as Mrs. Oliphant calls her, burst into a fit of laughter, and the poet's love was turned to deadly hate. manly satire of Lady Mary is, we think, the worst act of Pope's life, for the story that he took a bribe of 10007. from the Duchess of Marlborough to suppress the character of Atossa is, to say the least, not proven, despite Mrs. Oliphant's assertion to the contrary. Lady Mary, grossly treated as she had been, retaliated after a gross fashion, in lines sneering at Pope's deformity. She even wrote to Lord Peterborough to ask if the poet's disgusting couplet applied to hera significant proof of the frank coarseness of the age. Had she remained silent the provocation would have been forgotten, and she would have commanded the sympathy of the world.

We have mentioned but two quarrels of the many which engaged Pope's thoughts and pen, and for our purpose these will suffice; but it is significant that not only was the poet quarrelling through the best portion of his life, but that his spirit seems to have animated several of the editors and authors who have attempted to vindicate or to blacken his name.

Warburton, who did a great deal of dirty work for Pope in his notes to the 'Dunciad,' was continually slashing right and left at real or imaginary foes: he abused his friends, he maligned his enemies, he condescended to mean acts, such, unhappily, as he might have learnt from Pope, and he disgraced his name and his profession by a succession of ignoble quarrels. "I do not know," said Dr. Johnson to the king who talked of the controversy between Warburton and Lowth," which of them calls names best." No sooner was Pope dead than Bolingbroke, who had wept over his deathbed and was appointed his sole executor, began to traduce his memory, and what he could not decently say himself he paid Mallet to say for him. Between the philosopher and the bishop there existed, according to Disraeli, a mortal hatred, and without tracing all the literary quarrels that had their fountain-head at Twickenham, it will suffice to refer to the controversy which raged at the beginning of this century between Bowles and Roscoe, in which Byron and Campbell took so prominent a part.

In no account of Pope is it possible, however much we might desire it, to pass over the mystifications of his correspondence. The researches pursued with such masterly ability by Mr. Dilke have proved incontestably the meanness and duplicity of Pope in

the publication of his correspondence.* It is wearisome and painful to follow this acute critic in his elaborate exposure of the poet's machinations. It exhibits him in the most contemptible light; it shows, what was never seen so clearly before, that in his miserable anxiety to enhance his literary fame, Pope was willing not only to deceive the public, but also to deceive and libel his most intimate friends. We now know that his published letters were cooked and re-cooked, that he sometimes altered the opinions of his correspondents to suit his personal views, that in many cases the letters were not addressed to the persons whose names they bear, that the dates were changed or omitted to conceal the deception, and that at the very time Pope was lamenting the publication of his letters he was

designing to send a fresh instalment of them to the press." Everybody who has read any of the biographies of Pope will remember the plot against Curll; how that bookseller was communicated with

See The Papers of a Critic.' 2 vols. John Murray. Mr. Dilke's "discoveries," for such they may be called, were printed in the Athenæum' more than twenty years ago. His facts are incontestable, his arguments cannot be impugned; nevertheless, in the reprint of the Aldine edition of Pope's Poetical Works,' the Memoir, by Dyce, is published without a line of correction or any intimation that recent criticism with regard to the correspondence has upset the statements of Roscoe which are accepted by the io grapher.