Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/47

xvi, reviving his resentment, libelled the memory of his departed friend; and, what was still more heinous, made the scandal public." Grievous the accusation! unknown the accuser! the person accused no witness in his own cause; the person, in whose regard accused, dead! But if there be living any one nobleman whose friendship, yea any one gentleman whose subscription Mr. Addison procured to our author; let him stand forth, that truth may appear! Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas. In verity, the whole story of the libel is a lye; witness those persons of integrity, who several years before Mr. Addison's decease, did see and approve of the said verses, in no wise a libel, but a friendly rebuke sent privately in our author's own hand to Mr. Addison himself, and never made public, 'till after their own Journals, and Curl had printed the same. One name alone, which I am here authorised to declare, will sufficiently evince this truth, that of the right honourable the Earl of.

Next is he taxed with a crime (in the opinion of some authors, I doubt, more heinous than any in morality) to wit, Plagiarism, from the inventive and quaint-conceited

"Upon reading the third volume of Pope's Miscellanies, I found five lines which I thought excellent; and happening to praise them, a gentleman produced a modern comedy (the Rival Modes) published last year, where were the same verses to a tittle.

These gentlemen are undoubtedly the first plagiaries, that pretend to make a reputation by stealing from a man's works in his own life-time, and out of a Public print." Let us join to this what is written by the author of the Rival Modes, the said Mr. James-Moore Smith, in a letter to our author himself, who had informed him, a month before that play was acted, Jan. 27, 1724, that "These verses, which he had before given him leave to insert in it, would be known for his, some copies being got abroad. He desires, nevertheless, that, since the lines had been read in his comedy to several, Mr. P. would not deprive it of them," &c. Surely if we add the testimonies of the Lord Bolingbroke, of the Lady to whom the said verses were originally addressed, of Hugh Bethel Esq. and others, who knew them as our author's, long before the said gentleman composed his play; it is hoped, the ingenuous that affect not error, will rectify their opinion by the suffrage of so honourable personages.

And yet followeth another charge, insinuating no less than his enmity both to Church and State, which could come from no other informer than the said