While wits and templars every sentence raise, [Pope regarded Addison with suspicion, for giving him advice, which was no doubt honest, not to introduce supernatural agency into his "Rape of the Lock." He thought Addison was jealous, and his advice insidious, although he had himself acted similarly in dissuading Addison from bringing his Cato on the stage. See the whole subject ably considered in Macaulay, p. 74-81.] POPE'S ACCOUNT OF HIS QUARREL WITH ADDISON. "PHILIPS seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me, in coffee-houses, and conversations; Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley,' in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly.-Lord Warwick2 himself told me one day, 'that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.' The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know, that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I should rather tell him himself fairly of his faults, and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.' I then subjoined the first sketch of what has been since called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after." Spence. Dr. Trapp, who was by at the time of this conversation, said that he wondered how so many people came to imagine that Mr. Pope did not write this copy of verses till after Addison's death; since so many people, and he himself for one, had seen it in Addison's life-time. Spence. A pamphlet containing Wycherley's Life. See note on Dunciad, i. 296. Who was but a weak man himself." M. S. P. 2 66 THE EARL OF WARWICK. "ONE reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious part of tale-bearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike of the marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years; occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a townresidence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good, however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick grew up a rake; and Addison fell in love." Macaulay. TICKELL'S AND POPE'S RIVAL TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER. TICKELL published the first book of the Iliad, (June 1715,) as translated by himself, in apparent opposition to Pope's Homer, of which the first part made its appearance at the same time. Addison declared that the rival versions were both good; but that Tickell's was the best that ever was made. Pope did not appear to be much dismayed; for," says he, "I have the town, that is, the mob, on my side." But he remarks, “that it is common for the smaller party to make up in diligence what they want in numbers; he appeals to the people as his proper judges, and, if they are not inclined to condemn him, he is in little care about the high-flyers at Button's.' Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge, for he considered him as the writer of Tickell's version. The grounds of this suspicion are thus recorded by Mr. Spence. "There had been a coldness (said Mr. Pope) between Mr. Addison and me for some time; and we had not been in company together for a good while anywhere but in Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day. On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he took me aside, and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern, if I stayed till those people were gone (Budgell and Philips)." He went accordingly; and after dinner Mr. Addison said, "that he had wanted for some time to talk with him; that his friend Tickell had formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad; that he designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over; that he must, therefore, beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because if he did it would have the air of double dealing." "I assured him that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation ; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added, that I would not desire him to look over my first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's, but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon. Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr. Addison, a few days after, returned it, with very high commendations. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street, and upon our falling into that subject the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion. This surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against Tickell in relation to this affair, makes it highly probable that there was some underhand dealing in that business; and, indeed, Tickell himself, who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned it to me." When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which, considering his honour and zeal for his departed friend, was the same as owning it. THE RIVAL TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER. Continued. GAY, in a letter to Pope, says,-"July 8, 1715. I have just set down Sir Samuel Garth at the opera. He bid me tell you that everybody is pleased with your translation (of the Iliad), but a few at Button's, and that Sir Richard Steele told him that the other translation was the best that ever was in any language. He treated me with extreme civility, and out of kindness give me a squeeze by the fore-finger. I am informed that at Button's your character is made very free with as to morals, &c., and Mr. Addison says, that your translation and Tickell's are both very well done, but that the latter has more of Homer. I am, &c." [This kind of gossip must have galled the malignant and splenetic heart of Pope and confirmed his envy and dislike of Addison. See Macaulay, p. 78.] POPE'S VILLA AT TWICKENHAM. POPE, in 1715, prevailed on his father to sell the estate at Binfield. He purchased the villa at Twickenham, so much celebrated from his residence in it, and retired thither with his parents. There he planted the vines and the quincunx which he has recorded in his poems; and being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it with fossil bodies, and rendered it a grotto.1 Mr. Pope's celebrated character of Atticus, which he afterwards ingrafted into his "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,"-and which was designed for Mr. Addison,-was written at this The anxiety with which Pope fitted up and continued to decorate this grotto, is shown in a long letter accompanied by a drawing, all in his own hand, addressed to Dr. Chartlett, Oct. 8, 1740, now in the publisher's possession. house, and is said to have been one of the first productions of his pen after he had entered his new residence. POPE'S CRITICS. AFTER the quarrel between Addison and Pope, a variety of lesser critics rose up against the latter. These authors, with their works, would probably have shortly sunk to oblivion, had not Mr. Pope himself taken a curious sort of pride and pleasure in collecting them as they appeared. He had them bound up in volumes of all sizes, twelves, octavos, quartos, and folios; to which he has prefixed this motto from JobBehold, my desire is that mine adversary had written a book. Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me. Chap. xxxi. ver. 35. These libellers being mostly anonymous, Mr. Pope to each libel wrote the name of the composer, with occasional remarks.--This collection was in being in the year 1769. [The reader who is interested in the details of this quarrel between Pope and Addison, will find them at large in Kippis's Biographia Britannica, in an article attributed to Judge Blackstone; Johnson's Lives of the Poets; D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors; Roscoe's Life of Pope; Drake's Essays; Miss Aikin's Life of Addison, [which gives some new evidence in favour of Addison's integrity in the matter;] and, last not least, in Mr. Macaulay's brilliant Essay.] SIR RICHARD STEELE'S FULL-BOTTOMED WIG. WHEN the Spectator wrote, large full-bottomed wigs were worn by all men of fashion. They probably answered to the high commodes of the ladies. It is said those long perukes were invented by a French barber, whose name was Duviller, in order to conceal a deformity in the shoulder, either of the Dauphin or the Duke of Burgundy; hence they were likewise called Duvillers. They had been long used in France, and were introduced into England soon after the Restoration, where they continued to be worn by men of fashion in 1709. A wig of this sort was an expensive part of dress. Duumvir's "fair wig" cost forty guineas. (Tatler, No. 54. See also Life of Colley Cibber.) It appears from a curious note of Sir John Hawkins, in his "History of Music," vol. iv. page 447, that it was common, about this time, for gentlemen to comb |