The G.o.d of us verse-men, you know, child, the Sun, How after his journey, he sets up his rest.
If at morning o"er earth "tis his fancy to run, At night he declines on his Thetis"s breast.
So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: No matter what beauties I saw in my way; They were but my visits, but thou art my home!
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war, And let us like Horace and Lydia agree; For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, As he was a poet sublimer than me.
If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure find singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading-to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay-
She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers Pointing, the lovely moralist said; See, friend, in some few leisure hours, See yonder what a change is made!
Ah, me! the blooming pride of May, And that of Beauty are but one: At morn both flourisht, bright and gay, Both fade at evening, pale and gone.
At dawn poor Stella danced and sung, The amorous youth around her bowed, At night her fatal knell was rung; I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.
Such as she is who died to-day, Such I, alas, may be to-morrow: Go, Damon, bid the Muse display The justice of thy Chloe"s sorrow.
Damon"s knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! _Deus sit propitius huic potatori_, as Walter de Mapes sang.(112) Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior"s verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr.
Thomas Moore, and defended them, and showed that he remembered them very well too on an occasion when their morality was called in question by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.(113)
In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favourite, and to have a good place.(114) In his set all were fond of him. His success offended n.o.body. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of for Court favour, and hoped to win it; but the Court favour jilted him. Craggs gave him some South-Sea Stock; and at one time Gay had very nearly made his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too: and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jealous of him, were kind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of the last century, Gay"s face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress and _negligee_ of learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an honest boyish glee-an artless sweet humour. He was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woebegone at others, such a natural good creature that the Giants loved him. The great Swift was gentle and sportive with him,(115) as the enormous Brobdingnag maids of honour were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle round Pope,(116) and sport, and bark, and caper without offending the most thin-skinned of poets and men; and when he was jilted in that little Court affair of which we have spoken, his warm-hearted patrons the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry(117) (the "Kitty, beautiful and young", of Prior) pleaded his cause with indignation, and quitted the Court in a huff, carrying off with them into their retirement their kind gentle protege.
With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, as delightful as those who harboured Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended.(118) He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, and only occasionally diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him, and the remembrance of his pretty little tricks; and the raging old Dean of St. Patrick"s, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.(119)
Swift"s letters to him are beautiful; and having no purpose but kindness in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or anger to wreak, every word the Dean says to his favourite is natural, trustworthy, and kindly. His admiration for Gay"s parts and honesty, and his laughter at his weaknesses, were alike just and genuine. He paints his character in wonderful pleasant traits of jocular satire. "I writ lately to Mr. Pope,"
Swift says, writing to Gay; "I wish you had a little villakin in his neighbourhood; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six horses would carry you to j.a.pan." "If your ramble," says Swift, in another letter, "was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and friends" coaches-for you are as arrant a c.o.c.kney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under-ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you.
I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half a crown a day:" and then Swift goes off from Gay to pay some grand compliments to her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would have liked to warm himself too.
But we have Gay here before us, in these letters-lazy, kindly, uncommonly idle; rather slovenly, I"m afraid; for ever eating and saying good things; a little, round, French abbe of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted.
Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than their works; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem to ill.u.s.trate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay"s _Fables_, which were written to benefit that amiable prince, the Duke of c.u.mberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon the ill.u.s.trious young prince, whose manners they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the _Shepherd"s Week_, and the burlesque poem of _Trivia_ any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day, and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay"s gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Philips-his rival and Pope"s-a serious and dreary idyllic c.o.c.kney; not that Gay"s "b.u.mkinets and Hobnelias" are a whit more natural than the would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the quality of this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music-as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and Court ladies free and friendly with John Gay-which made Pope and Arbuthnot love him-which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him-and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the lonely tyrant"s brain, as he heard Gay"s voice with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter.
What used to be said about Rubini, _qu"il avait des larmes dans la voix_, may be said of Gay,(120) and of one other humourist of whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight,(121) in the _Beggar"s __ Opera_(122) and in its wearisome continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It charms and melts you. It"s indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay"s and Oliver Goldsmith"s best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose.
Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear:-
"I have just pa.s.sed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt"s, which he lent me. It overlooks a common hayfield, where, under the shade of a hayc.o.c.k, sat two lovers-as constant as ever were found in romance-beneath a spreading bush.
The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brave woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pails. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents" consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a hay-c.o.c.k; and John (who never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately, there was heard so loud a crash, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other"s safety, called to one another: those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair-John, with one arm about his Sarah"s neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies-only that Sarah"s eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They were buried the next day in one grave!"
And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those days-my Lord Duke of Kingston"s daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty"s Amba.s.sador at Constantinople.
We are now come to the greatest name on our list-the highest among the poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the _Dunciad_ be not a humourist, if the poet of the _Rape of the Lock_ be not a wit, who deserves to be called so?
Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest literary _artist_ that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own; borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower, river, stream, or any object which struck him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early age;(123) and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then he pa.s.sed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master, who came to him when he was eight years old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months under a fourth priest. "And this was all the teaching I ever had," he said, "and G.o.d knows it extended a very little way."
When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of _Alcander_, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This I did," he says, "without any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the happiest in my life." Is not here a beautiful holiday picture? The forest and the fairy story-book-the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida"s garden-peace and sunshine round about-the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him at his quiet home yonder-and Genius throbbing in his young heart, and whispering to him, "You shall be great; you shall be famous; you, too, shall love and sing; you will sing her so n.o.bly that some kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed. Every poet had a love.
Fate must give one to you too,"-and day by day he walks the forest, very likely looking out for that charmer. "They were the happiest days of his life," he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame: when he had gained that mistress she was no consoler.
That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain Lady M--, whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardour in language, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, and affected. He imitated love compositions as he had been imitating love poems just before-it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham pa.s.sion, expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into print years afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope"s correspondence, let them pa.s.s over that first part of it; over, perhaps, almost all Pope"s letters to women; in which there is a tone of not pleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments and politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that pa.s.sion probably came to a climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour much more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimace of love, and paltering with pa.s.sion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough copy, and favoured some other friend with it. He was so charmed with the letter of Gay"s, that I have just quoted, that he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writes letters _a deux fins_, and after having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish _rechauffe_ to a friend, is not very much in earnest about his loves, however much he may be in his piques and vanities when his impertinence gets its due.
But, save that unlucky part of the Pope Correspondence, I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more delightful.(124) You live in them in the finest company in the world. A little stately, perhaps; a little _apprete_ and conscious that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening; but in the tone of their voices-pitched, as no doubt they are, beyond the mere conversation key-in the expression of their thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something generous, and cheering, and enn.o.bling. You are in the society of men who have filled the greatest parts in the world"s story-you are with St. John the statesman; Peterborough the conqueror; Swift, the greatest wit of all times; Gay, the kindliest laugher-it is a privilege to sit in that company. Delightful and generous banquet! with a little faith and a little fancy any one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there is always a certain _cachet_ about great men-they may be as mean on many points as you or I, but they carry their great air-they speak of common life more largely and generously than common men do-they regard the world with a manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or to have an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who reads these n.o.ble records of a past age, salutes and reverences the great spirits who adorn it. You may go home now and talk with St. John; you may take a volume from your library and listen to Swift and Pope.
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any story more gallant and cheering, than the love and friendship which this company of famous men bore towards one another. There never has been a society of men more friendly, as there never was one more ill.u.s.trious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great and famous? and for liking them for the qualities which made them so? A mere pretty fellow from White"s could not have written the _Patriot King_, and would very likely have despised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best and greatest of men: a mere n.o.bleman of the Court could no more have won Barcelona, than he could have written Peterborough"s letters to Pope,(125) which are as witty as Congreve: a mere Irish Dean could not have written _Gulliver_; and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had a senate; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some one said of his friend, "There is something in that great man which looks as if he was placed here by mistake," "Yes," Pope answered, "and when the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one"s door for visitors." So these great spirits spoke of one another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever dawdled round a club-table, so faithful and so friendly.
We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men"s men. They spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of each day nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by word of mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion of one or the other. The chiefs spoke, the faithful _habitues_ sat round; strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had his head quarters at Will"s, in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street, at which place Pope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company used to a.s.semble on the first floor-what was called the dining-room floor in those days-and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded that the beaux of the day thought it a great honour to be allowed to take a pinch out of Dryden"s snuff-box. When Addison began to reign, he with a certain crafty propriety-a policy let us call it-which belonged to his nature, set up his court, and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was b.u.t.ton"s, opposite Will"s.(126) A quiet opposition, a silent a.s.sertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison"s ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Philips, Carey; his master of the horse, honest d.i.c.k Steele, who was what Duroc was to Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson; the man who performed his master"s bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel.
Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every day. The male society pa.s.sed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as much time as ladies of that age spent over Spadille and Manille.
For a brief s.p.a.ce, upon coming up to town, Pope formed part of King Joseph"s court, and was his rather too eager and obsequious humble servant.(127) d.i.c.k Steele, the editor of the _Tatler_, Mr. Addison"s man, and his own man too-a person of no little figure in the world of letters, patronized the young poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did the tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet quite as a boy of Wycherley"s decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that doting old wit): he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get a footing and a recognition. He thought it an honour to be admitted into their company; to have the confidence of Mr. Addison"s friend, Captain Steele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honour of heralding Addison"s triumph of _Cato_ with his admirable prologue, and heading the victorious procession as it were. Not content with this act of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by a.s.saulting Addison"s enemies, and attacked John Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highly offended his lofty patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr.
Dennis and inform him that Mr. Pope"s pamphlet against him was written quite without Mr. Addison"s approval.(128) Indeed, _The Narrative of Dr.
Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D._ is a vulgar and mean satire, and such a blow as the magnificent Addison could never desire to see any partisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely allied with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has been printed in Swift"s works, too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand.
Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious genius of the young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who had never seen a university in his life, and came and conquered the Dons and the doctors with his wit. He applauded, and loved him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief.
I wish Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever has been penned would never have been written then; and one of the best characters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. But he who had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was more than that. When Pope, trying for himself, and soaring on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, was a genius, which no opinion of that age could follow, he rose and left Addison"s company, settling on his own eminence, and singing his own song.
It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. Addison; nor likely that after escaping from his va.s.salage and a.s.suming an independent crown, the sovereign whose allegiance he quitted should view him amicably.(129) They did not do wrong to mislike each other. They but followed the impulse of nature, and the consequence of position. When Bernadotte became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden was naturally Napoleon"s enemy. "There are many pa.s.sions and tempers of mankind," says Mr. Addison in the _Spectator_, speaking a couple of years before their little differences between him and Mr. Pope took place, "which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and defame him, because they now see him the superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal." Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking that, as young Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university education, he couldn"t know Greek, therefore he couldn"t translate Homer, encourage his young friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen"s, to translate that poet, and aid him with his own known scholarship and skill?(130) It was natural that Mr.
Addison should doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have a high opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen"s, and should help that ingenious young man. It was natural, on the other hand, that Mr. Pope and Mr. Pope"s friends should believe that this counter-translation, suddenly advertised and so long written, though Tickell"s college friends had never heard of it-though, when Pope first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr.
Addison knew nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen"s-it was natural that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, pa.s.sions, and prejudices of their own, should believe that Tickell"s translation was but an act of opposition against Pope, and that they should call Mr. Tickell"s emulation Mr. Addison"s envy-if envy it were.
And were there one whose fires True genius kindles and fair fame inspires, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise; d.a.m.n with faint praise, a.s.sent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne"er obliged; Like Cato give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise; Who but must laugh if such a man there be, Who would not weep if Atticus were he?
"I sent the verses to Mr. Addison," said Pope, "and he used me very civilly ever after." No wonder he did. It was shame very likely more than fear that silenced him. Johnson recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to be contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope"s must have pierced any scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison"s memory. His great figure looks out on us from the past-stainless but for that-pale, calm, and beautiful; it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, like St. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Gay and asked his pardon, as he bade his stepson come and see his death, be sure he had forgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.
Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until two o"clock in the morning over punch and burgundy amidst the fumes of tobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the "pace" of those _viveurs_ of the former age was awful. Peterborough lived into the very jaws of death; G.o.dolphin laboured all day and gambled at night; Bolingbroke,(131) writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, dating his letter at six o"clock in the morning, and rising, as he says, refreshed, serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of his London life; when about that hour he used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure, and jaded with business; his head often full of schemes, and his heart as often full of anxiety. It was too hard, too coa.r.s.e a life for the sensitive, sickly Pope. He was the only wit of the day, a friend writes to me, who wasn"t fat.(132) Swift was fat; Addison was fat; Steele was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat-all that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew in a great measure from this boisterous London company, and being put into an independence by the gallant exertions of Swift(133) and his private friends, and by the enthusiastic national admiration which justly rewarded his great achievement of the _Iliad_, purchased that famous villa of Twickenham which his song and life celebrated; duteously bringing his old parents to live and die there, entertaining his friends there, and making occasional visits to London in his little chariot, in which Atterbury compared him to "Homer in a nutsh.e.l.l".
"Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man," Pope quaintly said to Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous old patriarch of Will"s. With regard to Pope"s own manners, we have the best contemporary authority that they were singularly refined and polished. With his extraordinary sensibility, with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his power and dread of ridicule, Pope could have been no other than what we call a highly-bred person. His closest friends, with the exception of Swift, were among the delights and ornaments of the polished society of their age. Garth,(134) the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was "all beauty", and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without knowing it; Arbuthnot,(135) one of the wisest, wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age; the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The favourite recreation of his leisure hours was the society of painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are letters between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be-Richardson, a celebrated artist of his time, and who painted for him a portrait of his old mother, and for whose picture he asked and thanked Richardson in one of the most delightful letters that ever was penned,(136)-and the wonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than any artist of his day.(137)
It is affecting to note, through Pope"s correspondence, the marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of the time-generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines-all have a kind word, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that they knew how much he loved her, and that they pleased him by thinking of her.
If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of poetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for the young chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translation of the _Iliad_; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and a.s.sailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror; when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was struggling through the crowd of shouting friends and furious detractors to his temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, "My deare,"
says she, "my deare, there"s Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead the same day that Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well; but your brother is sick.
My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear from you, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer; and this with my blessing." The triumph marches by, and the car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred brilliant victories-the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at home, and says, "I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you, my deare".
In our estimate of Pope"s character, let us always take into account that constant tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded and sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction.(138) It accompanied him always: his life seems purified by those artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touching to read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she ill.u.s.trates her love. "I think no man was ever so little fond of money." Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, "I think my brother when he was young read more books than any man in the world"; and she falls to telling stories of his schooldays, and the manner in which his master at Twyford ill-used him. "I don"t think my brother knew what fear was," she continues; and the accounts of Pope"s friends bear out this character for courage. When he had exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and personal a.s.sault were brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instant allowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in his daily walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him company. "I had rather die at once," said the gallant little cripple, "than live in fear of those rascals."
As for his death, it was what the n.o.ble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed for himself-a euthanasia-a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection, serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there was something almost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking up, and with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly pa.s.sed before him.
He said to me, "What"s that?" pointing into the air with a very steady regard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatest softness, ""twas a vision!" He laughed scarcely ever, but his companions describe his countenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile.
"When," said Spence,(139) the kind anecdotist whom Johnson despised, "when I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present or absent friends; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, "It has so,"
and then added, "I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man"s love than--" Here," Spence says, "St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words.
It is the cloak thrown over the father"s face in the famous Greek picture which hides the grief and heightens it.
In Johnson"s _Life of Pope_, you will find described with rather a malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table.(140) He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the b.u.t.t for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him, says, "If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope"s Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A.
P. E." Pope catalogues, at the end of the _Dunciad_, with a rueful precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great critic p.r.o.nounced Mr. Pope was a little a.s.s, a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must be remembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular inst.i.tution in those days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes: and dragged their enemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and a.s.sailed them with garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope"s figure was an easy one for those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles the boorish wag; and many of Pope"s revilers laughed, not so much because they were wicked, as because they knew no better.
Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the poet he was; and through his life, however much he protested that he disregarded their abuse, the coa.r.s.e ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One of Cibber"s pamphlets coming into Pope"s hands, whilst Richardson the painter was with him, Pope turned round and said, "These things are my diversions;" and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel, said he saw his features "writhing with anguish". How little human nature changes! Can"t one see that little figure? Can"t one fancy one is reading Horace? Can"t one fancy one is speaking of to-day?