postscribing to the "Odyssey" that I was not surprised with anything in it but the mention of my own name, which heartily vexes me, and is, I think, a license that deserves a worse epithet than I have it in my nature to give it." After this transaction Fenton does not appear to have corresponded with Pope, and he died four years later. The poet praised him after his death, and wrote his epitaph. For Broome another distinction was reserved. Pope sneered at him in the "Dunciad," and "laughed unmercifully" at his poetry in the "Treatise on the Bathos." Strange to say, the general quality of the verse by Broome and Fenton in the "Odyssey," as Dr. Johnson has pointed out, is so much on a level with Pope's, that it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish between them. The first three books of the "Odyssey" were published in April, 1725. A month earlier Pope's edition of "Shakespeare "had appeared in six quarto volumes, an edition chiefly notable for the Preface, his best piece of work in prose. In the summer of 1726, Dean Swift came over to England, after an absence of twelve years, and stayed for many weeks with Pope at Twickenham. "I have lived these two months past," he wrote to Tickell in July, "for the most part in the country, either at Twickenham with Mr. Pope or rambling with him and Mr. Gay for a fortnight together. Yesterday my Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Congreve made up five at dinner at Twickenham." Pope's nature was not sordid; he gave away an eighth part of his income in charity, but as a host he was neither genial nor hospitable. "You have not forgot," Swift writes to Gay, "Gentlemen, I will leave you to your wine,' which was but the remainder of a pint when four glasses were drunk. I tell that story to everybody, in commendation of Mr. Pope's abstemiousness." If this story were worth telling, Swift was not the man to tell it, for he was never a liberal host himself, and in his later years, when a friend came to him in expectation of a dinner, he was in the habit of giving him a shilling instead. Yet Swift could be nobly generous. He gave away a third of his income in charity, and put by another third in order to build a hospital for lunatics after his decease. Swift's visit was a memorable one, for he brought with him the MS. of "Gulliver's Travels," which he said he wrote to vex the world rather than to divert it." The book was published before the close of the year. During this visit the two great wits resolved to publish a Miscellany of their writings in prose and verse, and Arbuthnot was a partner in the enterprise. Among the contributions brought forward by Pope was a rough draft of the Dunciad," and Swift urged him to carry out the plan. The way in which he did carry it out is far from creditable to the poet. To a "Treatise on the Bathos," which he had written for the Miscellany, he added a chapter "devoted to the baldest personality, consisting of a comparison of a number of living authors, whose identity could be easily recognized by their initials, to Flying Fishes, Swallows, Ostriches, Parrots, Didappers, Porpoises, Frogs, Eels, and Tortoises. This device answered its purpose perfectly. The enraged authors rushed into print, and, as Savage says in his History, for half a year or more the common newspapers were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they could possibly devise." 66 6 1 Courthope's "Life of Pope," p. 214. Pope had now the opportunity which he wanted. In May, 1728, the " Dunciad" appeared, and was read with avidity by a public eager for the scandal that gave venom to its every page. A little later an enlarged edition was published, full of the mystifications in which Pope delighted. If we could imagine the first poet of our day attacking with all the force of his genius, and with a total disregard of truth and delicacy, every insignificant writer that may have criticised him unfavourably, and out of pure spite placing also in his poetical pillory men of high reputation, and flinging dirt at them with the energy of a scavenger-we might perhaps understand the excitement caused by the publication of the Dunciad." Pope was beyond question the greatest poet of his age; he had "no brother near the throne," and the comparative narrowness of the world of letters made his greatness the more conspicuous. It was a coarse age, and it is but just to remember that he had suffered deeply from the taunts of his opponents. By the publication of this amazing satire, however, his enemies were multiplied tenfold. So irritated was the poet by the abuse that followed the success of the Dunciad," that, with the help of two friends, he started the "Grub Street Journal," and once more "slew the slain" in its columns. The cruel blows thus inflicted in verse and prose made him in danger of personal assault, and when Pope went abroad, he carried a brace of pistols, and was accompanied by a large dog. He said he would not go a step out of his way for such villains. 66 The "Journal" existed for seven years, and Pope's next publication (in 1742) was the "New or Greater Dunciad," now known as the "Fourth Book," in which, a year later, the Shakespearian commentator Theobald was dethroned from his eminence, in order to give place to Colley Cibber as the King of Dulness. Pope made a conspicuous blunder in this selection. Cibber had many faults, but dulness was not one of them. He was no poet, and any amount of satire levelled at such a verse-maker for wearing the laurel wreath would have been legitimate enough, but all readers of Cibber's "Apology" will admit what his contemporaries knew, that he was one of the liveliest of men and of no mean ability. Moreover, he had far too good an opinion of himself to care much for Pope's stings. In “A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope," he says, "I wrote more to be fed than to be famous; and since my writings still give me a dinner, do you rhyme me out of my stomach if you can,” and he suggests by the following story that the poet's malice would recoil upon himself: "An honest lusty grenadier, while a little creeping creature of an ensign for some trifling fault was impatiently laying on him with his cane, quietly folded his arms across, and shaking his head, only replied to his valiant officer, Have a care, dear captain! don't strike so hard. Upon my soul you will hurt yourself!'" It is evident that to attack a man so fortified against assault was to waste powder. Pope made a still worse error in placing Bentley, a great scholar and a man of genius, among his motley crowd of dullards. The "Dunciad" is illustrated and burdened by prefaces, commentaries, and criticisms, written under feigned names by Warburton and other friends, and also by the poet himself. Obscure hints and personal allusions abound, and so weighted is the satire in its numerous editions with prose comments, that the notes occupy a larger space than the text. "It may fairly be doubted," says Professor Ward, "whether the mystification in which every step connected with the publication of the various editions of the "Dunciad" was intentionally involved by Pope has not answered an end beyond that proposed to himself by the poet, and provided a tangle of literary difficulties which no learned ingenuity will ever suffice entirely to unravel." There is much in the "Dunciad" that belonged to the time, and has died with it. The peddling animosities that gave a point to many of the couplets have no interest for the modern reader, but the poem is not dependent on them for its vitality, and its publication lifted Pope to the position which he holds to this day—unless Dryden be his rival-as the greatest of English satirists. It has been sometimes asked whether Pope was a poet. Let the magnificent lines describing the victory of Dulness, with which he concludes the "Dunciad," be the answer: "She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain; In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave and die; |
