high rank, and a brilliant declamatory and specious writer on philosophical subjects. He held Pope, as it were, by a spell, and the spell was never broken.3 The arrival of the peer was therefore hailed by the poet as affording him more than an equivalent for the loss of Atterbury. The agreeable companion was restored—the eloquent, philosophical Mentor-and from him no chilling religious counsels or grave lectures on Protestantism were to be feared. Bolingbroke was often at Twickenham, and when his family inheritance (worth about £3000 per annum) was recovered, the poet spent much of his time at Battersea or at Dawley, a property near Uxbridge in Middlesex, which Bolingbroke had purchased of Lord Tankerville, and which he decorated with the insignia and even the implements of husbandry. Pope gives us a sketch of this rural I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your letter between two hay-cocks; but his attention is somewhat diverted by casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of what you say, but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the triumvirate, between yourself and me; tho' he says that he doubts he shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the power, like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures, like Antony. It is upon a foresight of this, that he has fitted up his farm, and you will agree that this scheme of retreat at least is not founded upon weak appearances. Upon his return from the Bath, all peccant humours, he finds, are purged out of him; and his great temperance and economy are so signal, that the first is fit for my constitution, and the latter would enable you to lay up so much money as to buy a bishopric in England. As to the return of his health and vigour, were you here, you might inquire of his hay-makers; but as to his temperance I can answer that (for one whole day) we have had nothing for dinner but mutton-broth, beans and bacon, and a barn-door fowl. Now his lordship is run after his cart, I have a moment left to myself to tell you, that I overheard him yesterday agree with a painter for £200 to paint his countryhall with trophies of rakes, spades, prongs, &c., and other ornaments, merely to countenance his calling this place a farm. 3 Arbuthnot knew Bolingbroke better. The Doctor's son, Mr. George Arbuthnot, informed Dr. Beattie, author of "The Minstrel," that his father had told him he knew Bolingbroke was an infidel and a vain worthless man. THE FARM AT DAWLEY. 181 The design, it appears, was carried into effect; for Mallet tells us that the hall was painted in black crayons, so that at first it resembled figures scratched with charcoal or the smoke of a candle upon the kitchen-walls of farm-houses. Here, happy in the possession of moral tranquillity, the once-ambitious politician was to repose for life! "I am in my own farm," he writes to Swift; "here I shoot strong and tenacious roots; I have caught hold of the earth, to use a gardener's phrase, and neither my enemies nor my friends will find it an easy matter to transplant me again." And as a practical commentary on his text, he immediately commenced political agitation, joining with Pulteney against Walpole, and writing interminable letters in the Craftsman! Pope was insensibly led more into opposition by Bolingbroke, though on the first arrival of his friend he seems to have resolved on eschewing party politics. He wrote to Swift: : The civilities I have met with from opposite sets of people, have hindered me from being violent or sour to any party; but at the same time the observations and experiences I cannot but have collected, have made me less fond of, and less surprised at any: I am therefore the more afflicted and the more angry at the violences and hardships I see practised by either. The merry vein you knew me in, is sunk into a turn of reflection, that has made the world pretty indifferent to me; and yet I have acquired a quietness of mind which by fits improves into a certain degree of cheerfulness, enough to make me just so good-humoured as to wish that world well. My friendships are increased by new ones, yet no part of the warmth I felt for the old is diminished. Aversions I have none, but to knaves (for fools I have learned to bear with), and such I cannot be commonly civil to; for I think those men are next to knaves who converse with them. The greatest man in power of this sort shall hardly make me bow to him, unless I had a personal obligation, and that I will take care not to have. The top pleasure of my life is one I learned from you both how to gain and how to use; the freedom of friendship with men much my superiors. To have pleased great men, according to Horace, is a praise; but not to have flattered them and yet not to have displeased them, is a greater. I have carefully avoided all intercourse with poets and scribblers, unless where by great chance I have found a modest one. By these means I have had no quarrels with any personally; none have been enemies, but who were also strangers to me; and as there is no great need of an eclaircissement with such, whatever they writ or said I never retaliated, not only never seeming to know, but often really never knowing, anything of the matter. There are very few things that give me the anxiety of a wish; the strongest I have would be to pass my days with you, and a few such as you. But fate has dispersed them all about the world; and I find to wish it is as vain as to wish to see the millennium and the kingdom of the just upon earth. This is about as unreal and imaginary as Bolingbroke's picture of philosophical retirement. Swift approved of his friend's abstinence as to party warfare, but he considered that it was more his happiness than his merit to choose his favourites indifferently from either side; and he knew human nature too well to be deceived by the boasted retirement and perfect tranquillity said to be enjoyed at Dawley and Twickenham. "I have no very strong faith in you pretenders to retirement," he says; "you are not of an age for it, nor have gone through either good or bad fortune enough to go into a corner and form conclusions de contemptu mundi et fuga sæculi." In truth, this style of writing on the part of Pope was a mere habit, and was generally expressed at the busiest periods of his life. But the poet might have asked his friend what good or bad fortune he had expe POPE PROJECTS WRITING A FAIRY TALE. 18? rienced to justify his contempt and hatred of mankind? The misanthropy of Swift was less pardonable and more incongruous with his good sense and superiority of understanding, than Pope's self-delusion or unmeaning rhetoric. In the autumn of 1722 Pope commenced a correspondence with a lady whose name has not transpired. A series of twelve letters to this fair incognita was published from the originals by Dodsley, in 1769. She appears to have resided in Hertfordshire, wrote occasional verses, and was an intimate friend of Mrs. Howard. The lady sat for her portrait, as one of Jervas's "shepherdesses" or Kneller's beauties, and Pope was ready with a poetical offering :— Though sprightly Sappho force our love and praise, Sappho, of course, was Lady Mary, whose influence seems then to have been on the decline. Pope sends his correspondent some more lines; part of those addressed to Gay, disclosing his passion for Lady Mary, when he was the "stricken deer" panting in the shades with the arrow in his heart. He is silent as to the object of the lines, but he adds, "God Almighty long preserve you from a feeling of them!" The last of these letters-which are mere complimentary effusions-is dated Sept. 26, 1723, and contains a suggestion relative to a fairy tale. "I have long had an inclination," he says, "to tell a fairy tale, the more wild and exotic the better; therefore a vision, which is confined to no rules of probability, will take in all the variety and luxuriancy of description you will-provided there be an apparent moral to it. I think one or two of the Persian tales would give one hints for such an invention; and perhaps if the scenes were taken from real places that are known, in order to compliment particular gardens and buildings of a fine taste (as, I believe, several of Chaucer's descriptions do, though it is what nobody has observed1), it would add great beauty to the whole." Such a work from the youthful Pope, when his fancy was redolent of sylphs and other aerial divinities, might have proved an interesting contribution to our imaginative literature; but it may be questioned whether he had enough of the pure creative power and fine essence of poetry, apart from human interest, to have been perfectly successful in such a tale. Addison's prose allegories show more of this inspiration, and Collins's poetry is full of it. The ill success of his Shakspeare, and the clamour raised against him for his "undertaking" the Odyssey, had the effect of determining Pope to make his next appearance as an author in the character of a satirist. In a letter to Swift, written in 1725, he mentions the hatred entertained towards him by bad people, and he specifies Gildon and Cibber. The former was a friend of Ambrose Philips, and in his Complete Art of Poetry, published in 1718, he had studiously depreciated Pope. His criticism, however, was unworthy of notice. Cibber had very little gall in his composition, but Pope's feud was of long standing. Swiftever wise in counsel, when no cloud of passion intervened— dissuaded his friend from the course he saw he was meditating. "Take care," he said, "the bad poets do not outwit you as they have served the good ones in every age, whom they have provoked to transmit their names to posterity. Mævius is as well known as Virgil, and Gildon will be as well known as you if his name gets into your verses.' Pope accepted the caution, though he could not abide by it, in the spirit and temper of a man of sense. He agreed with Swift, 4 Pope probably alludes to the scenery of Woodstock Park, supposed to be described by Chaucer, when he lived "Within a lodge out of the way, Beside a well in a forest." His house adjoined to the entrance of Woodstock Park, and Fair Rosamond's Well still exists. See Chaucer's Dream, and Parliament of Birds. |