Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/729

 POPE 709 tot the publisher 200 for each volume ; and his total receipts, according to Dr. Johnson, were 5,320, not reckoning the large sums (in- cluding 200 from the king and 100 from the prince of Wales) paid by some of his sub- scribers in addition to the price. The life of Homer prefixed to the work was written by Parnell, and the information for the notes was gathered principally from Eustathius by Broome, Jortin, and another whose name is not mentioned. Almost simultaneously with the publication of the first volume appeared a translation of the first book of the Iliad by Tickell, to which Addison gave the preference. The result was an open quarrel with Addison, whom Pope afterward satirized in a piece first published in 1723, and again in 1727, and finally, with some changes, incorporated with the " Prologue to the Satires." During the progress of the Iliad Pope often visited Lon- don, gamed, drank, had "luxurious lobster nights," grew ashamed of business, railed at poor authors, and frequented the drawing rooms of women of rank and fashion, and the country seats of the nobility, where his charm- ing conversation made him always welcome. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu made a particu- lar impression upon him, and was one of his correspondents. But he soon tired of a life of dissipation, and, the estate at Binfield having been sold, removed with his parents to Chis- wick, where he published a collection of his poems (fol. and 4to, 1717), in which first ap- peared his " Elegy to the Memory of an Un- fortunate Lady," and the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard." Soon after this, his father having died, he purchased the lease of a villa on the Thames at Twickenham. Near this he per- suaded Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to take up her residence on her return to England (Oc- tober, 1718) ; but the ardor of his affection soon cooled; they met seldom, finally quar- relled, and the lady to whom he had addressed the most impassioned love verses became the object of his coarsest satires. No satisfactory explanation of their quarrel has ever been given ; but it is commonly attributed to a declaration of love by the poet under circumstances which provoked the lady into an immoderate fit of laughter. While her influence was on the de- cline he was smitten by the charms of anoth- er lady, "the mild Erinna, blushing in her bays," with the idea of whom he says he be- came so rnad as to steal her portrait and pass whole days in sitting before it. She is now as- certained to have been Judith Cowper, after- ward Mrs. Madan, the aunt of the poet Cow- per. Pope's reputation was now so high that Tonson made him an offer to undertake an edition of Shakespeare. The work was pub- lished in 1725 in 6 vols. 4to, and, though abounding in faults of all kinds, had at least the merit of pointing out the way for some fu- ture correction of the text. His blunders and shortcomings were exposed by Theobald in a treatise called "Shakespeare Restored," and afterward in a formal edition, for which he was suitably rewarded in the "Dunciad." At the same time Pope had "undertaken" for Lintot a translation of the Odyssey, three vol- umes of which appeared in 1725, and the re- maining two in 1726. Though he professed to have had the assistance of two friends (Broome and Fenton), he concealed the amount of this assistance, his own share comprising only 12 books, or one half the whole work. His net profits from the translation amounted to 2,- 885. In 1727-'8 he published in conjunction with Swift three volumes of "Miscellanies," in which appeared his "Treatise of Martinus Scriblerus on the Bathos, or the Art of Sink- ing in Poetry," which gave rise to the " Dun- ciad." The " Treatise " was intended to form part of a larger prose work entitled " Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," in which Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Parnell, Lord Oxford, Atterbury, Congreve, Gay, and others undertook to ridi- cule all the false tastes in learning. The pro- ject was abandoned in 1715, when the mem- bers of the Scriblerus club were dispersed, but to it we owe both the "Dunciad " and " Gul- liver's Travels." The authors attacked in the " Treatise " retaliated in a number of publica- tions, and even threatened Pope with personal violence. Thus provoked he determined to crush the whole host of scribblers, and, guided by the advice of Swift, who contributed large- ly to the prolegomena and notes, produced in 1728 "The Dunciad." The plan was bor- rowed from Dryden's " MacFlecknoe," and the hero at first was Theobald, who in a later edition was dethroned to make room for Col- ley Gibber. The sensation caused by the poem was immense. On the morning of publica- tion the " dunces " besieged the printer's shop in crowds to prevent its sale, and failing in that held weekly clubs to concert hostilities. In 1731 appeared Pope's epistle on "Taste" (afterward entitled "Of False Taste," and finally " Of the Use of Riches "), addressed to Lord Burlington, and in the next year an epis- tle to Lord Bathurst " On the Use of Riches." These are now known as the fourth and third of the "Moral Essays;" the first, to Lord Cobham, " On the Knowledge and Characters of Men," appeared in 1733, and the second, " To a Lady " (Martha Blount), " On the Char- racters of Women," in 1735. The four epis- tles composing the " Essay on Man," a work which he had in mind as early as 1725, were published anonymously in 1732, '3, and '4. The "Moral Essays" and "Essay on Man" were but parts of a great scheme which the author did not live to accomplish. The " Imitations of Horace " were begun while the " Essay on Man" was still in progress, that of the first satire of the second book appearing in 1733. Lord Hervey and Lady Mont;igu, having been satirized in this poem, the former as "Lord Fanny " and the latter as Sappho, replied joint- ly in " Verses to the Imitator of Horace," and Hervey alone in a " Letter from a Nobleman