網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

designed;' and abused Pope most plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress this portrait; which he accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the Duchess's death, it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards here inserted with those of Philomede and Chloe. This is the greatest blemish in our poet's moral character."1 On this note of Warton, Mr. Roscoe justly observes, that the story of Pope's having accepted a bribe to suppress the portrait "is a calumny which requires no other refutation than the independence of his character, and the uniform integrity of his life. . . . . It does not appear that these vigorous and sarcastic lines were printed till after the death of Pope and the Duchess, both of whom died in the same year, 1744."2 The Epistle in question now forms the Second of the Moral Essays.

In the same year, the second volume of our author's Miscellaneous Works was published in folio and quarto, to range with the former volume, and with the translations of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Address to the Reader concludes thus: "It will be but justice to me to believe that nothing more is mine, notwithstanding all that hath been published in my name, or added to my Miscellanies, since 1717, by any bookseller whatsoever. A. Pope." In this volume were printed for the

1 Warton's note on Moral Essays, ep. ii. v. 120.
2 Roscoe's note, ibid.

first time the Satires of Donne versified; a rifaccimento which Pope was induced to attempt, by the desire of showing those persons who had complained of the boldness of his own Satires, that English writers of the most respectable character had formerly arraigned vice as publicly, and painted it in even stronger colours. With this view also he had begun to “ versify" the Satires of Hall:1 that he did not proceed far in his improvements on that vigorous poet, will not, perhaps, occasion much regret to the lovers of our early literature.

In October of this year, Lord Peterborough, who possessed a considerable portion of Pope's esteem, died on ship-board during his passage to Lisbon.

A Sermon against Adultery: being Sober Advice from Horace to the Young Gentlemen about town, as delivered in his Second Sermon. Imitated in the manner of Mr. Pope, printed anonymously and without date, appeared, I imagine, either in 1734 or 1735; as in the latter year was published A Letter to Mr. Pope, occasioned by Sober Advice from Horace, &c. The piece in question our poet did not choose to acknowledge on account of its indecencies, but that

1 Mr. Roscoe (Life of Pope, p. 436) speaks of "the works of Hall preceding those of Donne ;" but Mr. J. P. Collier, in his Poetical Decameron, vol. i. p. 153, has shewn, that Donne ought to be considered as the earliest English satirist.

2 Our author's poetical Epistle to Teresa Blount, on her leaving the town after the coronation, originally concluded

it is a genuine production has never been doubted. Together with the Sermon he gave "the original text, as restored by the Reverend R. Bentley, Doctor of Divinity, and some Remarks on the Version," putting the name of that matchless scholar to several very gross notes. "I have been told," says the author of the Letter to Pope, "that the great critic himself, who did not read the Sermon till he heard something about his son and you, said after, 'Tis an impudent dog; but I talked against his Homer, and the portentous cub never forgives."

The Essay on Man, and the Moral Epistles, were intended to form portions of a great system of ethics which Pope had been for some years revolving in his mind. We now find him impressed with an idea that his poetical powers were on the wane, and that he should never be able to complete the task. In a letter to Swift, March 25th, 1736, he says, "If ever I write more epistles in verse, one of them shall be addressed to you. I have long concerted it and begun it, but I would make what bears your

with some lines of extreme coarseness; his verses To Mr. Moore, on the Worm Powder, contained, as first printed, an abominable stanza; he certainly composed the very reprehensible Version of the First Psalm, published by Curll; and I have seen in the possession of a gentleman who had copied them from Pope's well known handwriting, several Epigrams, than which nothing more disgusting is to be found in Elegantia Latini Sermonis, or the Poems of Rochester.

In Pope's time English literature was still tainted by the licentiousness of Charles the Second's reign.

name as finished as my last work ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest. The subject is large, and will divide into four Epistles, which naturally follow the Essay on Man, viz. 1. Of the Extent and Limits of Human Reason and Science. 2. A View of the useful and therefore attainable, and of the unuseful and therefore unattainable, Arts. 3. Of the Nature," Ends, Application, and Use of different Capacities. 4. Of the Use of Learning, of the Science of the World, and of Wit. It will conclude with a satire against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by pictures, characters, and examples. But alas! the task is great, and non sum qualis eram! My understanding indeed, such as it is, is extended rather than diminished: I see things more in the whole, more consistent, and more clearly deduced from, and related to, each other. But what I gain on the side of philosophy, I lose on the side of poetry: the flowers are gone when the fruits begin to ripen, and the fruits perhaps will never ripen perfectly."

With the methods, to which Pope is said to have resorted in order to obtain a pretext for publishing a collection of his letters, every reader has been made acquainted by the narrative of Dr. Johnson.1 That account, which tends so greatly to lower the character of our author in

1 Johnson's Life of Pope, being in every body's hands, I have not thought it necessary to swell this Memoir by extracting from it the passages in question.

the estimation of the world, had been adopted by succeeding biographers, till the late Octavius Gilchrist, and more particularly Mr. Roscoe, after a minute examination of the subject, showed that the whole story was 66 a tissue of gross mistakes and groundless imputations." A detail of facts is here necessary.

Mr. Henry Cromwell had entrusted to the keeping of his mistress, Elizabeth Thomas,1 the letters which had passed between himself and Pope; and these the lady, being reduced to great straits, sold to Curll the bookseller, who printed them in a small volume, in 1727. On this, Pope wrote to Cromwell, to learn by what means the letters had been made public. Cromwell's inquiries on the subject drew from Mrs. Thomas, whom he had not seen for seven years, an epistle in which she told him, " to end all dispute, you were pleased to make me a free gift of them, [the letters] to do what I pleased with them." This assertion of the lady, Cromwell assured Pope, was "straining the point too far." In short, the poet could obtain from his early friend no satisfaction for this breach of confidence but apologies and professions of esteem.

1 To this woman, who possessed considerable talents, Dryden gave the poetical name of Corinna: some of her verses will be found in Specimens of British Poetesses, p. 157. She fabricated the ridiculous account of Dryden's funeral, which seems to have obtained credit till the appearance of Malone's edition of that poet's Prose Works. Her Memoirs, written by herself, are full of the most preposterous figments.

« 上一頁繼續 »