A NARRATIVE

OF THE

EXTRAORDINARY TRANSACTIONS RESPECTING THE PUBLICATION OF

POPE'S LETTERS.

and despatched them to the eager Bibliopolist to print, as Pope's to Miss Blount. He went on increasing his collection; and, skilful in catering for the literary taste of the town, now inflamed their appetite by dignifying it with "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence!"

JOHNSON observes, that "one of the passages of | letters of Voiture to Mademoiselle Rambouillet, POPE's life which seems to deserve some inquiry, was the publication of his letters by CURLL, the rapacious bookseller." Our great literary biographer has expended more research on this occasion than his usual penury of literary history allowed; and yet has only told the close of the strange transaction-the previous parts are more curious, and the whole cannot be separated. Joseph Warton has only transcribed Johnson's narrative. It is a piece of literary history of an uncommon complexion; and it is worth the pains of telling, if Pope, as I consider him to be, was the subtile weaver of a plot, whose texture had been close enough for any political conspiracy. It throws a strong light on the portrait I have touched of him. He conducted all his literary transactions with the arts of a Minister of State; and the genius which he wasted on this literary stratagem, in which he so completely succeeded, might have been perhaps sufficient to have organised rebellion.

It is well known that the origin of Pope's first letters given to the public, arose from the distresses of a cast-off mistress of one of his old friends (H. Cromwell), who had given her the letters of Pope, which she knew to value: these she afterwards sold to Curll, who preserved the originals in his shop, so that no suspicions could arise of their authenticity. This very collection is now deposited among Rawlinson's MSS. at the Bodleian.

This single volume was successful; and when Pope, to do justice to the memory of Wycherley, which had been injured by a posthumous volume, printed some of their letters, Curll, who seemed now to consider that all he could touch was his own property, and that his little volume might serve as a foundation-stone, immediately announced a new edition of it, with Additions, meaning to include the letters of Pope and Wycherley. Curll now became so fond of Pope's Letters, that he advertised for any: no questions to be asked." Curll was willing to be credulous: having proved to the world he had some originals, he imagined these would sanction even spurious ones. A man who, for a particular purpose, sought to be imposed on, easily obtained his wish: they translated

But what were the feelings of Pope during these successive surreptitious editions? He had discovered that his genuine letters were liked; the grand experiment with the public had been made for him, while he was deprived of the profits; yet for he himself to publish his own letters, which I shall prove he had prepared, was a thing unheard of in the nation. All this was vexatious; and to stop the book-jobber and open the market for himself, was a point to be obtained.

While Curll was proceeding, wind and tide in his favour, a new and magnificent prospect burst upon him. A certain person, masked by the initials P. T., understanding Curll was preparing a Life of Pope, offered him "divers Memoirs gratuitously;" hinted that he was well known to Pope; but the poet had lately "treated him as a stranger." P. T. desires an answer from E. C. by the Daily Advertiser, which was complied with. There are passages in this letter which, I think, prove Pope to be the projector of it: his family is here said to be allied to Lord Downe's; his father is called a merchant. Pope could not bear the reproach of Lady Mary's line :

"Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.” He always hinted at noble relatives; but Tyers tells us, from the information of a relative, that "his father turns out, at last, to have been a linendraper in the Strand:" therefore P. T. was at least telling a story which Pope had no objection should be repeated.

The second letter of P. T., for the first was designed only to break the ice, offers Curll "a large Collection of Letters from the early days of Pope to the year 1727." He gives an excellent notion of their value: "They will open very many scenes new to the world, and make the most authentic Life and Memoirs that could be." He desires they may be announced to the world immediately, in Curll's precious style, that be

pretext to publish an authentic edition-the very compulsion; when he could complain that his point to which the whole of this dark and intricate letters were surreptitiously printed, he might plot seems to have been really directed. decently and defensively publish them himself."

Were Pope not concerned in this mysterious transaction, how happened it that the letters which P. T. actually printed were genuine? To account for this, Pope promulgated a new fact. Since the first publication of his letters to his friend Cromwell, wrenched from the distressed female who possessed them, our poet had been advised to collect his letters; and these he had preserved by inserting them in two books; either the originals or the copies. For this purpose an amanuensis or two were employed by Pope when these books were in the country, and by the Earl of Oxford when they were in town. Pope pretended that Curll's letters had been extracted from these two books, but sometimes imperfectly transcribed, and sometimes interpolated. Pope, indeed, offered a reward of twenty pounds to "P. T." and " R. Smith, who passed for a clergyman," if they would come forward, and discover the whole of this affair; or "if they had acted, as it was reported, by the direction of any other person." They never appeared. Lintot, the son of the great rival of Curll, told Dr. Johnson, that his father had been offered the same parcel of printed books, and that Pope knew better than anybody else how Curll obtained the copies.

I have observed, how the first letter of P. T. pretending to be written by one who owed no kindness to Pope, bears the evident impression of his own hand; for it contains matters not exactly true, but exactly what Pope wished should appear in his own life. That he had prepared his letters for publication, appears by the story of the two MS. books-that the printed ones came by water, would look as if they had been sent from his house at Twickenham: and, were it not absurd to pretend to decipher initials, P. T. might be imagined to indicate the name of the owner, as well as his place of abode.

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Worsdale, an indifferent painter, was a man of some humour in personating a character, for he performed Old Lady Scandal in one of his own farces. He was also a literary adventurer, for, according to Mrs. Pilkington's Memoirs, wishing to be a poet as well as a mimic, he got her and her husband to write all the verses which passed with his name; such a man was well adapted to be this clergyman with the lawyer's band, and Worsdale has asserted that he was really employed by his friend Pope on this occasion.

Such is the intricate narrative of this involved

Dr. Johnson, although he appears not to have been aware of the subtle intricacy of this extra-transaction. Pope completely succeeded, by the ordinary plot, has justly drawn this inference : "To make the copies public was the only purpose of Pope, because the numbers offered for sale by the private messengers, showed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression. It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of

most subtile manoeuvres imaginable; the incident which perhaps was not originally expected, of having his letters brought before the examination at the House of Lords most amply gratified his pride, and awakened public curiosity.. "He made the House of Lords," says Curll, "his tools." Greater ingenuity, perplexity, and secrecy, have scarcely been thrown into the conduct of the writer, or writers, of the Letters of Junius.

POPE AND CIBBER;

CONTAINING

A VINDICATION OF THE COMIC WRITER.

Pork attacked CIBBER from personal motives-by dethroning Theobald, in the Dunciad, to substitute CIBBER, he made the satire not apply-CIBBER'S facetious and serious remonstrance-CIBBER'S inimitable good-humour-an apology for what has been called his " effrontery "-perhaps a modest man, and undoubtedly a man of genius-his humorous defence of his deficiency in Tragedy, both in acting and writing-Pope more hurt at being exposed as a ridiculous lover than as a bad man-an account of "The Egotist, or Colley upon Cibber," a kind of supplement to the "Apology for his Life," in which he has drawn his own character with great freedom and spirit.

POPE's quarrel with Cibber may serve to check, ness," as Lord Orford has happily expressed it, the haughtiness of genius; it is a remarkable closed his insults by dethroning Theobald, and instance how good-humour can gently draw a substituting Cibber; but as he would not lose boundary round the arbitrary power, whenever the wantonness of satire would conceal calumny. But this quarrel will become even more interesting, should it throw a new light on the character of one, whose originality of genius seems little suspected. Cibber showed a happy address in a very critical situation; and obtained an honourable triumph over the malice of a great genius, whom, while he complained of he admired, and almost loved the Cynic.

Pope, after several "flirts," as Cibber calls them, from slight personal motives, which Cibber has fully opened *, at length from " 'peevish weak

Johnson says, that though "Pope attacked Cibber with acrimony, the provocation is not easily discoverable." But the statements of Cibber, which have never been contradicted, show sufficient motives to excite the poetic irascibility. It was Cibber's "fling" at the unowned and condemned comedy of the triumvirate of wits, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, "Three Hours after Marriage," when he performed Bayes in the Rehearsal, that incurred the immortal odium. There was no malice on Cibber's side; for it was then the custom to restore the zest of that obsolete dramatic satire, by introducing allusions to any recent theatrical event. The plot of this ridiculous comedy hinging on the deep contrivance of two lovers getting access to the wife of a virtuoso, "one curiously swathed up like an Egyptian mummy, and the other slily

covered in the pasteboard skin of a crocodile," was an incident so extremely natural, that it seemed congenial with the high imagination and the deep plot of a Bayes! Poor Cibber, in the gaiety of his impromptu, made the " fling;" and, unluckily, it was applauded by the audience! The irascibility of Pope too strongly authenticated one of the three authors. "In the swelling of his heart, after the play was over, he came behind the scenes with his lips pale and his voice trembling, to call me to account for the insult; and accordingly fell upon me with all the foul language that a wit out of his senses could be capable of, choked with the foam of his passion." Cibber replied with dignity, insisted on the privilege of the character, and that he would repeat the same jest as long as the public approved of it. Pope would have certainly approved of Cibber's manly conduct, had he not been the author himself. To this circumstance may be added the reception which the town and the court bestowed on Cibber's "Nonjuror," a satire on the politics of the jacobite faction; Pope appears, under the assumed name of Barnevelt, to have published an odd piece of wit, proving that the Nonjuror, in its design, its characters, and almost every scene of it, was a closely-couched jacobite libel against the Government." Cibber says that "this was so shrewdly maintained, that I almost liked the jest myself." Pope seems to have been fond of this new species of irony; for, in the