In the first dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath, he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit of his ancestors, and called him in his verses “low-born Allen.” Men are seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which was afterwards softened into “humble Allen.”
In the second dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.
About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley, his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and escaped; but Dodsley’s shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was, however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.
Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet, nor drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of reformation is imputed, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of opinion, that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his resentment; till, at last, he began to think he should be more safe, if he were less busy.
The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, who used to meet in the time of queen Anne, and denominated themselves the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an event very disastrous to polite letters.
If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never felt.
For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it.
The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle.
Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for his travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though the rest had been suppressed.
Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected. Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection from the Italians, who wrote in Latin, had been published at London, about the latter end of the last century, by a man who concealed his name, but whom his preface shows to have been well qualified for his undertaking. This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and, 1740, published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his predecessor’s preface. To these books, which had nothing but the mere text, no regard was paid; the authors were still neglected, and the editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness; he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on Man, of which he has given this account to Dr Swift:
“March 25, 1736.
“If ever I write any 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 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.”
This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added, at Warburton’s request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use.
When this book was printed, 1742, the laurel had been, for some time, upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope could regard with much kindness or esteem, though, in one of the imitations of Horace, he has liberally enough praised the Careless Husband. In the Dunciad, among other worthless scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet’s unkindness as more injurious, “because,” says he, “I never have offended him.”
It might have been expected, that Pope should have been, in some degree, mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such consequence appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned him afterwards contemptuously in one of his satires, and again in his epistle to Arbuthnot: and, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, attacked him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable. Perhaps he imagined, that, in ridiculing the laureate, he satirized those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance, with which he affected to insult the great.
The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had confidence enough in his own powers to believe, that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and, doubtless, did not want instigators, who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He, therefore, gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his resolution, from that time, never to bear another blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.
The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage had been driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions, he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a mummy and a crocodile. “This,” says he, “was received with loud claps, which indicated contempt of the play.” Pope, who was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the virulence of a “wit out of his senses;” to which he replied, “that he would take no other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the same provocation.”
He shows his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope’s behaviour at a tavern. The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world seeks nothing but d
iversion, which is given at the expense of the higher character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope would say of Cibber, nobody inquired, but in hope that Pope’s asperity might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.
He should, therefore, have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die, without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown as Cibber’s antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be felt would have been struck in vain.
But Pope’s irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he published a new edition of the Dunciad, in which he degraded Theobald from his painful preeminence, and enthroned Cibber in his stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has, therefore, depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry, and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.
Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another change, and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers. Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which raised Pope’s resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at a venture.
Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another pamphlet, which, Pope said, “would be as good as a dose of hartshorn to him;” but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father, the painter, on a visit, when one of Cibber’s pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said, “these things are my diversion.” They sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.
From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any original composition, nor proposed any other employment for his remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree.
He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction, established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the fabulous age: the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by Ruffhead; by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time or country in which he places them.
He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he expresses it, “going down the hill.” He had, for at least five years, been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr. Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation. Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss him.
While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand, crossed his legs and sat still; but lord Marchmont, who was younger and less captious, waited on the lady, who, when he came to her, asked, “What, is he not dead yet?” She is said to have neglected him, with shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little which he had to leave she had a very great part. Their acquaintance began early; the life of each was pictured on the other’s mind; their conversation, therefore, was endearing, for when they met, there was an immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had suffered his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.
In May, 1744, his death was approaching; on the th, he was all day delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think.
Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his understanding, answered, “It has so.” And added, “I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for mankind.” At another time he said, “I have known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship than” — His grief then suppressed his voice.
Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, “I do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you for putting me in mind of it.”
In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he said, “There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.”
He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly, that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument has been erected to him by his commentator, the bishop of Gloucester.
He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to lord Bolingbroke, and, if he should not be living, to the earl of Marchmont; undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his life. After a decent time, Dodsley, the bookseller, went to solicit preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world has been disappointed of what was “reserved for the next age.”
He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke, by a kind of posthumous offence. The political pamphlet, called the Patriot King, had been put into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very few copies, to be distributed, according to the author’s direction, among his friends, and Pope assure
d him that no more had been printed than were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer brought and resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies, which Pope had ordered him to print, and to retain in secret. He kept, as was observed, his engagement to Pope, better than Pope had kept it to his friend; and nothing was known of the transaction, till, upon the death of his employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to the right owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and delivered the whole impression to the flames.
Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from the example.
Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of vengeance excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the publick with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose; and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shown to a number more than sufficient to preserve the author’s claim; he could not gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke was dead: and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud would be defeated, and if left to himself, would be useless.
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