"might not appear himself to have set the whole thing a-foot, and afterwards he might plead he had only sent some letters to complete the Collection." He asks nothing, and the originals were offered to be deposited with Curll. Curll, secure of this promised addition, but still craving for more and more, composed a magnificent announcement, which, with P. T.'s entire correspondence, he inclosed in a letter to Pope himself. The letters were now declared to be a "Critical, Philological, and Historical Correspondence."His own letter is no bad specimen of his keen sense; but after what had so often passed, his impudence was equal to the better quality. "Sir, "To convince you of my readiness to oblige you, the inclosed is a demonstration. You have, as he says, disobliged a gentleman, the initial letters of whose name are P. T. I have some other papers in the same hand, relating to your family, which I will show, if you desire a sight of them. Your letters to Mr. Cromwell are out of print; and I intend to print them very beautifully, in an octavo volume. I have more to say than is proper to write; and if you will give me a meeting, I will wait on you with pleasure, and close all differences between you and yours, "E. CURLL." Pope, surprised, as he pretends, at this address, consulted with his friends; everything evil was suggested against Curll. They conceived that his real design was "to get Pope to look over the former edition of his Letters to Cromwell, and then to print it, as revised by Mr. Pope; as he sent an obscene book to a Bishop, and then advertised it as corrected and revised by him;" or perhaps to extort money from Pope for suppressing the MS. of P. T. and then publish it, saying P. T. had kept another copy. Pope thought proper to answer only by this public advertisement : "Whereas A. P. hath received a letter from E. C., bookseller, pretending that a person, the initials of whose name are P. T., hath offered the said E. C. to print a large Collection of Mr. P.'s Letters, to which E. C. required an answer: A. P. having never had, nor intending to have, any private correspondence with the said E. C., gives it him in this manner. That he knows no such person as P. T.; that he believes he hath no such collection; and that he thinks the whole a forgery, and shall not trouble himself at all about it." Curll replied, denying he had endeavoured to correspond with Mr. Pope, and affirms that he had written to him by direction. 1 soon be convinced it was no forgery. Since you would not comply with my proposal to advertise, I have printed them at my own expense." He offers the books to Curll for sale. Curll on this has written a letter, which takes a full view of the entire transaction. He seems to have grown tired of what he calls "such jealous, groundless, and dark negotiations." P. T. now found it necessary to produce something more than a shadow-an agent appears, whom Curll considered to be a clergyman, who assumed the name of R. Smith. The first proposal was, that P. T.'s letters should be returned, that he might feel secure from all possibility of detection; so that P. T. terminates his part in this literary freemasonry as a non-entity. that one evening a man in a clergyman's gown, Here Johnson's account begins." Curll said, sale a number of printed volumes, which he found but with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to to be Pope's Epistolary Correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage." Smith, the clergyman, left him some copies, and promised more. Curll now, in all the elation of possession, rolled his thunder in an advertisement still higher than ever." Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence regularly digested, from 1704 to 1734:" to lords, earls, baronets, doctors, ladies, &c. with their respective answers, and whose names glittered in the advertisement. The original MSS. were also announced to be seen at his house. But at this moment Curll had not received many books, and no MSS. The advertisement produced the effect designed: it roused public notice, and it alarmed several in the House of Lords. Pope doubtless instigated his friends there. The Earl of Jersey moved, that to publish letters of lords was a breach of privilege; and Curll was brought before the House. This was an unexpected incident; and P. T. once more throws his dark shadow across the path of Curll to hearten him, had he wanted courage to face all the lords. P. T. writes to instruct him in his answers to their examination; but to take the utmost care to conceal P. T.; he assures him that the lords could not touch a hair of his head if he behaved firmly; that he should only answer their interrogatories by declaring he received the letters from different persons; that some were given, and some were bought. P. T. reminds one, on this occasion, of Junius's correspondence on a like threat with his publisher. It is now the plot thickens. P. T. suddenly "Curll appeared at the bar," says Johnson, takes umbrage, accuses Curll of having "betrayed" and knowing himself in no great danger, spoke him to Squire Pope,' but you and he both shall of Pope with very little reverence. 'He has,' said Curll, a knack at versifying; but in prose I think myself a match for him.' When the Orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy." The fact, not mentioned by Johnson, is, that though Curll's flourishing advertisement had announced letters written by lords, when the volumes were examined not one written by a lord appeared. The letter Curll wrote on the occasion to one of these dark familiars, the pretended clergyman, marks his spirit and sagacity. It contains a remarkable passage. Some readers will be curious to have the productions of so celebrated a personage, who appears to have exercised considerable talents. "Dear Sir, 15th May, 1735. "I am just again going to the Lords to finish Pope. I desire you to send me the sheets to perfect the first fifty books, and likewise the remaining three hundred books: and pray be at the Standard Tavern this evening, and I will pay you twenty pounds more. My defence is right; I only told the lords I did not know from whence the books came, and that my wife received them. This was strict truth, and prevented all further inquiry. The lords declared they had been made Pope's tools. I put myself on this single point, and insisted, as there was not any Peer's letter in the book, I had not been guilty of any breach of privilege. I depend that the books and the imperfections will be sent; and believe of P. T. what I hope he believes of me. "For the Rev. Mr. Smith." The reader observes that Curll talks of a great number of books not received, and of the few which he has received, as imperfect. The fact is, the whole bubble is on the point of breaking. He, masked in the initial letters, and he, who wore the masquerade dress of a clergyman's gown with a lawyer's band, suddenly picked a quarrel with the duped bibliopolist: they now accuse him of a design he had of betraying them to the Lords! The tantalized and provoked Curll then addressed the following letter to "The Rev. Mr. Smith," which, both as a specimen of this celebrated personage's "prose," in which he thought himself "a match for Pope," and exhibiting some traits of his character, will entertain the curious reader. came from across the water, nor ever named you; all I said was, that the books came by water. 4. When the books were seized, I sent my son to convey a letter to you; and as you told me everybody knew you in Southwark, I bid him make a strict inquiry, as I am sure you would have done in such an exigency. 5. Sir, I have acted justly in this affair, and that is what I shall always think wisely. 6. I will be kept no longer in the dark; P. T. is Will o' the Wisp; all the books I have had are imperfect; the first fifty had no titles nor prefaces; the last five bundles seized by the Lords contained but thirty-eight in each bundle, which amounts to one hundred and ninety, and fifty, is in all but two hundred and forty books. 7. As to the loss of a future copy, I despise it, nor will I be concerned with any more such dark suspicious dealers. But now, sir, I'll tell you what I will do: when I have the books perfected which I have already received, and the rest of the impression, I will pay you for them. But what do you call this usage? First take a note for a month, and then want it to be changed for one of Sir Richard Hoare's. My note is as good, for any sum I give it, as the Bank, and shall be as punctually paid. I always say, gold is better than paper. But if this dark converse goes on, I will instantly reprint the whole book; and, as a supplement to it, all the letters P. T. ever sent me, of which I have exact copies, together with all your originals, and give them in upon oath to my Lord Chancellor. You talk of trust-P. T. has not reposed any in me, for he has my money and notes for imperfect books. Let me see, sir, either P. T. or yourself, or you'll find the Scots proverb verified, Nemo me impune lacessit. "Your abused humble servant, "P.S. Lord I attend this day. LORD DELAWAR I SUP WITH TO-NIGHT. Where Pope has one lord, I have twenty." After this, Curl announced "Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence, with the initial correspondence of P. T. R. S. &c." But the shadowy correspondents now publicly declared that they could give no title whatever to Mr. Pope's letters, with which they had furnished CURLL, and never pretended any; that therefore any bookseller had the same right of printing them: and, in respect to money matters between them, he had given them notes not negotiable, and had never paid them fully for the copies, perfect and imperfect, which he had sold. Thus terminated this dark transaction between Curl and his initial correspondents. He still persisted in printing several editions of the letters of Pope, which furnished the poet with a modest pretext to publish an authentic edition-the very point to which the whole of this dark and intricate plot seems to have been really directed. 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. compulsion; when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously printed, he might decently and defensively publish them himself." 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. 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. Pors attacked CIEBER 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 the haughtiness of genius; it is a remarkable instance how good-humour can gently draw a 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 ness," as Lord Orford has happily expressed it, closed his insults by dethroning Theobald, and substituting Cibber; but as he would not lose 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 child of airy humour to the verge of his ninetieth year, with all the enjoyments of strong animal spirits, and all that innocent egotism which became frequently a source of his own raillery +. He has applied to himself the epithet "Impenetrable," which was probably in the mind of Johnson when he noticed his "impenetrable impudence." A Critic has charged him with "effrontery." what he had already written, this change disturbed in the characters of men, which carried down this the whole decorum of the satiric fiction. Things of opposite natures, joined into one, became the poetical chimera of Horace. The hero of the Dunciad is neither Theobald nor Cibber; Pope forced a dunce to appear as Cibber; but this was not making Cibber a dunce. This error in Pope emboldened Cibber in the contest, for he still insisted that the satire did not apply to him*; and humorously compared the libel "to a purge with a wrong label," and Pope "to an apothecary who did not mind his business." Cibber triumphed in the arduous conflict-though sometimes he felt that, like the Patriarch of old, he was wrestling, not with an equal, but one of celestial race," and the hollow of his thigh was out of joint." Still, however, he triumphed, by that singular felicity of character, that inimitable gaieté de cœur, that honest simplicity of truth, from which flowed so warm an admiration of the genius of his adversary; and that exquisite tact + Armstrong, who was a keen observer of man, has expressed his uncommon delight in the company of Cibber. "Besides his abilities as a writer, (as a writer of Comedies, Armstrong means,) and the singular variety of his powers as an actor, he was to the last one of the most agreeable, cheerful, and best-humoured men you would ever wish to converse with."-Warton's Pope, vol. iv. 160. Cibber was one of those rare beings, whose dispositions Hume describes "as preferable to an inheritance of 10,000. a year.” Dr. Aikin, in his Biographical Dictionary, has Pastorals of Phillips, he showed the same sort of thus written on Cibber: "It cannot be doubted, ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of that, at the time, the contest was more painful to political mystery against his own finest poem; for Pope than to Cibber. But Pope's satire is imhe proved by many "merry inuendoes," that mortal, whereas Cibber's sarcasms are no longer "The Rape of the Lock" was as audacious a libel read. Cibber may therefore be represented to as the pretended Barnevelt had made out the Non-future times with less credit for abilities than he juror to be. really deserves; for he was certainly no dunce, though not, in the higher sense of the word, a man of genius. His effrontery and vanity could not be easily overcharged, even by a foe. Indeed, they are striking features in the portrait drawn by himself." Dr. Aikin's political morality often vented its indignation at the successful injustice of great Power! Why should not the same spirit conduct him in the Literary Republic? With the just sentiments he has given on Cibber, it was the duty of an intrepid Critic to raise a moral feeling against the despotism of genius, and to have protested against the arbitrary power of Pope. It is participating in the injustice to pass it by, without even a regret at its effect. • Cibber did not obtrude himself in this contest. Had he been merely a poor vain creature, he had not preserved so long a silence. His good-temper was without anger, but he remonstrates with no little dignity, when he chooses to be solemn ; though to be playful was more natural to him. "If I have lain so long stoically silent, or unmindful of your satirical favours, it was not so much for want of a proper reply, as that I thought there never needed a public one; for all people of sense would know what truth or falsehood there was in what you said of me, without my wisely pointing it out to them. Nor did I choose to follow your example, of being so much a selftormentor, as to be concerned at whatever opinion of me any published invective might infuse into people unknown to me. Even the malicious, though they may like the libel, don't always believe it." His reason for reply is, that his silence should not be further reproached " as a plain 66 confession of my being a bankrupt in wit, if I don't immediately answer those bills of discredit you have drawn upon me." There is no doubt that Cibber perpetually found instigators to encourage these attacks; and one forcible argument he says was, that a disgrace, from such a pen, would stick upon me to posterity." He seems to be aware, that his acquaintance cheer him to the lists "for their particular amusement." As for Cibber himself, he declares he was not impudent, and I am disposed to take his own word, for he modestly asserts this, in a remark on Pope's expression, "Cibberian forehead," by which I find you modestly mean Cibberian impudence, as a sample of the strongest.-Sir, your humble servant-but pray, Sir, in your 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot' (where, by the way, in hook in a whole hat-full of virtues to your own chayour ample description of a great Poet, you slily racter) have not you this particular line? "And thought a Lie, in verse or prose, the same |