his personal patronage to the young aspirant after poetic fame, and invited him to his seat of Abberley in Worcestershirc. Walsh died in 1708, a year before the Pastorals were actually published; but he lived to point out to his young friend the path from which the latter never swerved during his literary career; he bade him be a 'correct poet,' or in other words, desired to limit the excursions of Pope's muse to regions already meted out by trustworthy predecessors, 'prescribed her heights and pruned her tender wing'.' 'The best of the modern poets in all languages,' wrote Walsh to Pope in 1706, ‘are those that have the nearest copied the ancients,' a maxim sufficiently characteristic of his critical standpoints. Another friend with whom Pope at this time became intimate and to whom he addressed many letters (published surreptitiously in 1727 by the mistress of his correspondent) was Henry Cromwell. Of the latter personally little is known; except that he was slovenly in his person and rode a hunting in a tye-wig2;' but his letters to Pope show him to have been an amateur critic as well as student, and he seems to have largely contributed to introduce Pope and his writings to the knowledge of society in town, where Cromwell was a resident. And thus among these patrons and friends the Pastorals during four years or thereabouts passed from hand to hand, and were again shown to other personages prominent in society or letters :-to George Granville afterwards Lord Lansdowne, a poet and patron of poets, modest on the head of his own performances, eager for the success of those of others;-to Lord Halifax who afterwards when first lord of the Treasury was to honour himself by offering a pension to Pope which the latter, equally to his honour, declined;-to Lord Somers, a venerated chief of the same party, the Whigs ;--and among the acknowledged leaders of literature to the popular Garth, and to Congreve the all-admired, the inimitable, who could afford to beam benignantly upon rising talent, though avowing himself careless of his own literary fame. Fortified by the approval of such patrons as these, the young poet could have no difficulty in finding an opportunity for ushering into the world his poetic offspring. Its sponsors had been secured beforehand; and the necessary midwife appeared in the person of the famous bookseller Jacob Tonson3, who expressed his desire to include Pope's Pastorals in the forthcoming volume of his Poetic Miscellany. Tonson and his brother-publisher Lintot were the Bacon and Bungay of our Augustan age; enterprising men whose rivalry was of high significance to the literary men of their times. If the one produced a poetic miscellany, the other was sure to outbid it by a miscellany to match; if the one rode down to Oxford to gather in the slowly-ripening fruits of academic leisure, his rival might be safely sought on the way to Cambridge; and thus to those authors whose name was not known enough to ensure a subscription-list, to poets critics and translators they were the best of friends. They kept their hands free from the lawless audacity of their contemporary Curll; and though the confraternity of authors was too small and weak to enable them to hold their own in a bargain, it cannot be doubted that the enterprise of these publishers helped to transfer much of the public attention from the stage to the bookseller's counter. Lintot soon afterwards became Pope's usual publisher; but the mysterious vagaries in which he loved to indulge in bringing out his works frequently led him to avail himself of other and inferior channels. In 1709, then, Pope's Pastorals saw the light of publicity; and as the same volume of Miscellanies (which included a few other of Pope's early pieces) commenced with the Pastorals of Ambrose Phillips (afterwards mercilessly burlesqued by Gay) the young poet found himself on his first appearance before the world unintentionally furnished with that invaluable aid towards a literary success—a foil. III. Between the years 1709 and 1715 falls the most varied and active period of Pope's personal life and literary career. It extends from the publication of the Pastorals to that of the first volume of his Iliad. As it was the latter work which established him as a Classic in the eyes of his contemporaries, and the proceeds of which furnished him with the means of leading a life congenial to his disposition and suitable to his temperament and health, so its publication marks the conclusion of his brief period of journeymanship in the world of literature. It was during this period too that after a few oscillations he finally determined the circle of his intimacy, and secured for himself the lasting enmity of some amongst his most persevering opponents. The literary world which Pope entered as the author of poems full of promise, but betraying no special mark such as to range him at once among the adherents of any particular school or coterie, was, as has been already sufficiently indicated, Idivided into two camps. Parnassus was split from summit to base; and it was upon the Tory half that the sun of Royal and government favour had just begun to shine with concentrated warmth. The Tory wits were accordingly with hardly an exception politicians above all; while the Whig writers ranged with greater freedom through more various walks of literature. Whig patronage has perhaps at other times been distributed among literary men with a less immediate expectation of a quid pro quo than that of their opponents. At all events, Pope's early patrons had been chiefly connected with the former party; and, averse by nature from busying himself with political questions1, he was more likely to be drawn into the wider 1 Whenever as a boy, in reading Sir Wm. Temple's writings, he found anything political in them he had no manner of feeling for it. (Spence, quoted by Roscoe.) In 1714 he writes to Edward Blount that he is, 'thank God, below all the accidents of state-changes by his circumstances, and above them by his philosophy.' And to this indifference he adhered so consistently through circle of which Addison was the centre than among the fiery band where Swift loved to lord it over peers and prelates. Pope was both young enough and sympathetic enough to seek and find friends on either side; but it was with the Whig writers that during his visits to town in 1710 and the following year he appears to have principally associated. When in 1711 he published his Essay on Criticism, it was at once commended by Addison in the Spectator to the favour of a discerning public; Steele brimmed over with eager requests for contributions to the same paper from so accomplished a hand, and, about the commencement of the year 1712, appears to have introduced the young author to Addison himself. Unhappily it was not long before a relation thus auspiciously commenced was to be enveloped in a network of petty clouds, until it ended in the most pitiable, though far from the most violent, of Pope's literary quarrels. The quarrel-if a series of unreturned attacks can be called a quarrel-did not actually explode till the time of the publication of the Iliad. Yet its origin dates almost from the commencement of Pope's acquaintance with Addison, and connects itself with that Essay on Criticism by which Pope took rank among the most brilliant writers of his age. In his friendly notice of that poem Addison had taken exception to the attacks which it contains upon Blackmore and Dennis; but the praise bestowed upon the entire work had been too cordial to allow this exception to rankle in Pope's mind. In 1712 appeared in a volume of miscellanies published by Lintot the first edition of the young poet's fresh and sparkling Rape of the Lock. Addison's notice of this poem in the Spectator had been favourable, but not enthusiastic; while his own avowed followers Tickell and Ambrose Phillips had, as contributors to the same Miscellany, received a measure of eulogy which Pope might justly regard as excessive. When he informed Addison of his design to enlarge the Rape of the Lock by introducing the machinery of the Sylphs, Addison pronounced against the proposed addition. According to Warburton, Pope discerned (and as Warburton implies, truly discerned) in this advice the insidious intention of preventing an improvement sure of success. There is no reason for accepting Warburton's insinuation at more than its worth; and at best, therefore, this interpretation on the part of Pope of a very natural and plausible counsel must be viewed as an afterthought. For in April 1713 we find Pope furnishing Addison's tragedy of Cato with a prologue, which was duly printed with an encomium by Steele in Addison's new paper, the Guardian, to which Pope was himself an occasional contributor1. Dennis in his character of devil's advocate made a furious, though not wholly inept, onslaught upon the popular tragedy; and Pope took upon himself to stand forth as its defender. out life that Ruffhead (Life of Pope, p. 45) declares himself warranted by the best authorities in stating that Pope never wrote a single political paper. In his writings he can hardly be said to have ever manifested any political opinions genu inely his own; he took his party preferences and In 1713 was published a pamphlet entitled The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenzy of J. D. It contained an imaginary report pretending to be written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day; and was anonymous. It cannot be assumed with certainty that Addison was at first aware of the identity of its real author. In any case he directed Steele to write a note to its publisher, expressing Mr. Addison's disapproval of the treatment to which Dennis had been subjected. Thus to his inexpressible mortification, Pope found himself placed in the intolerable position of a disavowed champion, reprimanded for his officiousness by the very individual whom he had put himself forward to serve. The pamphlet itself is, in my opinion at least, quite unworthy of Pope. It is a palpable imitation of Swift's immortal hoax upon Partridge the prophet; but the extravagance of its supposition falls far short of that in the latter, and the commonplace character of the joke is unredeemed by any genuine humour in its execution. In any case Addison was fully justified in disavowing a proceeding otherwise certain to be attributed in some degree to his own inspiration, abhorrent though it was from every principle observed by him in the conduct of his literary life. On the other hand, if he was aware that Pope was the author, Addison showed at once timidity and discourtesy in the indirect method of blame adopted by him. But whether he was so aware, remains very uncertain1. A painful soreness was naturally enough created in Pope's mind. But before Addison's conduct in the transaction is stigmatised as it has been, it should be shown that an interpretation which leaves it unimpeachable deserves to be rejected. This episode produced a twofold result. Although Pope continued to remain on friendly terms with Addison (his Epistle to the latter, occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals, was written in 1715), yet an angry feeling had been aroused against the latter in Pope's mind which, if charged with the sense of any additional energy, could not fail to explode. He was thus naturally rendered more amenable to the attractions of another coterie to which Addison gave no laws, and where his satellites were treated with open scorn. And, in the second place, it established Dennis in the position of a foe with a grievance quite sufficient in his case to lead to permanent hostility. John Dennis was one of those old campaigners who can boast more scars than laurels; but with whom a long experience in the wars goes to supply the want of regular training or native capacity. As an original author, he occupied a place among the rank and file of his contemporaries. He wrote or altered nine dramatic pieces, among which two comedies are said by an indefatigable and conscientious searcher of such wares to display considerable merit. As a critic, he undoubtedly possessed certain characteristics which would have ensured him the prominence he coveted even in our own times. He was free from that sentiment which with the generality 1 Dennis made two statements on the subject, thoroughly contradictory to one another. See Carruthers' Life of Pope, where an opposite conclusion is suggested to that preferred above 2 Geneste. of critics so fatally interferes with a due exercise of the judicial faculty—a respect for success. Indeed he avowed it as his guiding principle in the choice of his victims, to select leading instances of unmerited popularity. His Remarks on Cato had not failed to exemplify his ability of occasionally hitting the nail on the head amidst a series of random blows. Pope's burlesque of his characteristics had failed to crush him by its exaggerated ridicule. In 1716 Dennis retorted by his Character of Mr Pope, in which the latter was abused for an imitation of Horace which he had never published; and in 1720 he saluted the completion of Pope's Iliad by a discharge of minute cavils, of which as usual a certain proportion were by no means defective in point. Finally (for it is necessary to omit the subsidiary passes in this prolonged duel) Dennis found his place in the Dunciad, and lived to receive from Pope the sneeringly-bestowed alms of a prologue written for his benefit in his blind old age. He died shortly afterwards in 1734, secure of a certain kind of immortality. Pope's first acquaintance with Swift, destined to ripen into an intimacy of paramount influence upon the younger of the pair, connects itself with the publication of Windsor Forest early in 1713. In the summer of the same year Swift returned to Ireland, after performing services of inestimable value to the Tory party, but disappointed in his just hopes of episcopal preferment. Later in the year he paid another visit to England, in order to heal if he could the breach widening from day to day between the Tory chiefs Oxford and Bolingbroke. In the succeeding winter commenced a correspondence between him and Pope which was continued for a quarter of a century, until Swift's mind was at last overwhelmed by the dark cloud of which it had long foreseen and dreaded the approach. In 1713 Swift was at the height of his influence among the party to whose side personal resentment had originally driven him over. But if the subtle flattery conveyed in the courtesy, frequently descending even to obsequiousness, of his lordly friends had helped to attach him to their service, yet when they fell it was his own proud nature which caused him to adhere with equal stedfastness to a hopeless cause. Swift gradually introduced Pope to the entire clique of politicians and writers who were deluding themselves by the intricacies of their own devices. Thus Pope became acquainted with Robert Harley Earl of Oxford, the lord treasurer, an arch-intriguer who had only attained to power in order to prove his incapacity for its exercise, and whose supporters had begun to doubt the political sagacity with which they had credited his artful manipulation of national difficulties. Thus too he was made known to one whom he was afterwards to venerate as his guide and philosopher, -to Henry St John Viscount Bolingbroke. Pope's literary conscience prevented him from accepting Bolingbroke as a brother poet; in every other capacity he was willing to offer homage to this dazzling and unsafe leader. Connected with both Dean and Secretary, though by a courageous consistency of character elevated above either, was Atterbury bishop of Rochester, the representative scholar of Oxford University; the one Jacobite who was found ready for action at the critical moment of Queen |