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"whenever he shall think fit to know me for what I " am."

Some years after this conversation, at the desire of Sir Richard Steele, they met. At first, a very cold civility, and nothing else, appeared on either side; for Mr. Addison had a natural reserve and gloom at the beginning of an evening, which, by conversation and a glass, brightened into an easy cheerfulness. Sir Richard Steele, who was a most social benevolent man, begged of him to fulfil his promise, in dropping all animosity against Mr. Pope. Mr. Pope then desired to be made sensible how he had offended, and observed, that the translation of Homer, if that was the great crime, was undertaken at the request, and almost at the command, of Sir Richard Steele. He entreated Mr. Addison to speak candidly and freely, though it might be with ever so much severity, rather than, by keeping up forms of complaisance, conceal any of his faults. This Mr. Pope spoke in such a manner as plainly indicated he thought Mr. Addison the aggressor, and expected him to condescend, and own himself the cause of the breach between them. But he was disappointed; for Mr. Addison, without appearing to be angry, was quite overcome with it. He began with declaring that he always had wished him well, had often endeavoured to be his friend, and in that light advised him, if his nature was capable of it, to divest himself of part of his vanity, which was too great for his merit; that he had not arrived et to that pitch of excellence he might ima

hgine, or think his most partial readers imagined; that when he and Sir Richard Steele corrected his verses they had a different air; reminding Mr. Pope of the amendment, by Sir Richard, of a line in the poem called the Messiah;

He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes.

Which is taken from the prophet Isaiah,

The Lord God will wipe all tears from off all faces;

From every face he wipes off every tear.

and it stands so altered in the newer editions of Mr. Pope's works. He proceeded to lay before him all the mistakes and inaccuracies, hinted at by the writers who had attacked Mr. Pope, and added many things Speaking of his Trans

which he himself objected to. lation in general, he said, that he was not to be blamed for endeavouring to get so large a sum of money, but that it was an ill-executed thing, and not equal to Tickell, which had all the spirit of Homer. Mr. Addison concluded, in a low hollow voice of feigned temper, that he was not solicitous about his own fame as a poet; that he had quitted the Muses to enter into the business of the public, and that all he spoke was through friendship to Mr. Pope, whom he advised to have a less exalted sense of his own merit.

Mr. Pope could not well bear such repeated reproaches, but boldly told Mr. Addison, that he appealed from his judgment to the public, and that he had long known him too well to expect any friendship from him; upbraided him with being a pensioner from his youth, sacrificing the very learning purchased by

the public money to a mean thirst of power; that he was sent abroad to encourage literature, in place of which he had always endeavoured to suppress merit At last, the contest grew so warm, that they parted without any ceremony; and Mr. Pope, upon this wrote the foregoing verses, which are esteemed too true a picture of Mr. Addison.

In this account, and indeed in all other accounts which have been given concerning this quarrel, it does not appear that Mr. Pope was the aggressor. If Mr. Addison entertained suspicions of Mr. Pope's being carried too far among the enemy, the danger was certainly Mr. Pope's, and not Mr. Addison's. It was his misfortune, and not his crime. If Mr. Addison should think himself capable of becoming a rival to Mr. Pope, and, in consequence of this opinion, publish a translation of part of Homer at the same time with Mr. Pope's, and if the public should decida in favour of the latter, by reading his and neglecting the other, can any fa to Mr. Pope? could he be blame abilities in so arduous a prov

that Mr. Addison (for **

undoubtedly his), c public? Besides

to insinuate face

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of Homer? In matters of genius the public judgment seldom errs; and in this case posterity has confirmed the sentence of that age which gave the preference to Mr. Pope: for his translation is in the hands of all readers of taste, while the other is seldom regarded but as a foil to Pope's.

It would appear as if Mr. Addison were himself so immersed in party business, as to contract his benevolence to the limits of a faction, which was infinitely beneath the views of a philosopher, and the rules which that excellent writer himself established. If this was the failing of Mr. Addison, it was not the error of Pope; for he kept the strictest correspondence with some persons whose affections to the Whig interest were suspected, yet was his name never called in question. While he was in favour with the Duke of Buckingham, the Lords Bolingbroke, Oxford, and Harcourt, Dr. Swift, and Mr. Prior, he did not drop his correspondence with the Lord Halifax, Mr. Craggs, and most of those who were at the head of the Whig interest. A professed Jacobite one day remonstrated to Mr. Pope, that the people of his party took it ill that he should write with Mr. Steele upon ever so indifferent a subject; at which he could not help smiling, and observed, that he hated narrowness of soul in any party; and that if he renounced his reason in religious matters, he should hardly do it on any other; and that he could pray not only for opposite parties, but even for opposite religions. Mr. Pope considered himself as a citizen of the world, and

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