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    ?—— . THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE . The Poetical Wcn-l-s of Alexander Pope . Edited by Robert Can-uthers . In Two Volumes . Vol . II . ITew Edition , revised . H . G . Bohn . Mr . Caubtjthbiis ' s edition of Pope wiU do no discredit to the reputation of its editor . It is not only the best popular edition , but , as far as it goes , the best edition of Pope's poetical works ; aud it may be safely said that there is no life of the poet wliich caa be compared , for fulness and for interest , Avith that which precedes these two volumes . Mr .

    Carruthers has gathered together all the latest facts in the poet ' s history , for many of which we are indebted to his own researches , while others are due to the inquiries set on foot by his first edition . The editor appears limself to have hardly anticipated the success which he has met with . His original edition , modestly put forth in a cheap illustrated series—a form in which few would look for careful editorship or industrious research—very soon attracted the attention and won the respect of those who are best versed in the literature and history of the Pope period . This recognition of his

    services appears to have stimulated the editor to a more careful study , a closer criticism ot his materials , and a wider search . The result is an edition of his author which , if not perfect , will certainly not be easily superseded . The lectures of Mr . Thackeray and his novels have contributed in a great degree to bring the public taste back to the writers of the Queen ^ nne period . Addison , Steele , Swift , and Pope are now m fashion , and fill the columns of our reviews

    Concerning Pope , indeed , a controversy has been , for some time ragiug , which bids fair to rival the war of the Rowley or Ireland forgeries , or the famous quarrel between the ancients and the moderns ; and , indeed , independently of our interest in Pope ' s verses , the facts in his life which have been recently brought to light , chiefly by our contemporary the Athenaeum ^ are sufficiently curious to interest all who are curious in literary history . The poet who held himself up as a pattern of moral

    principle—To virtue only , and her friends , a friendthe scourge of Budgell and Gildon , tlie unsparing censor of the vices and follies of mankind , has been shown , beyond possibility of doubt , to liave forged letters from himself to Addison , with the manifest design of injuring his contemporary ' s reputation . Pope ' s letters have long been accepted with a Jcind of doubt . Johnson remarked on the artistic good light in which they placed the writer . The cunning manoeuvres to which Pope resorted for procuring their publication . in his lifetime , and persuading the Tvorld that he had no hand therein , have long ago been completely exposed . There cannot be a doubt that he , by his agents , induced Curll to print them .

    taking money ior the copyright ; that he intermingled with his own letters others from Venture , as a trnp for the unfortunate bookseller , -whose roguery Pope was thus enabled to prove ; tliat he moved the House of Lords to avrest Curll , which they did ; and whined in prefaces and letters about the knavery of booksellers , with no other object than to maintain this fiction , in which he was so completely successful that scarcely one of his contemporaries suspected the trick . Curlltold the whole story , published the lctlers of the sham clergyman , and others of Pope ' s negotiators , and boldly asserted that the poet was at the bottom of

    the whole matter ; but none believed . Pope was in the eyea of his ago a man moro injured by booksellers than ever poet yet was ; but somehow tho injury only enhanced his reputation . Tho knavery of which he complained so bitterly stamped him for ever with that character which , nbove all others , ho most desired . In that wonderful volume , tho little hunchbacked poet nnd humble tradesman's son stands pre-eminent among figures of the highest historical celebrity . Poets , philosophers , and statesman arc only there to do him honour : poets , that ho may show his superiority—philosophers , that ho may outshine them in philosophy—statesmen , that ho may rate them on the vanity of courts , aud reject their proffered bounty . If the Iiumblo

    Gay , the kindly Arbuthnot , are among them , it is but to show the noble generosity and simple affection , of their friend . They are merely artistic groupings in the background of that picture in winch Alexander Pope is all in all . Mr . Thackeray rejoices ever being admitted into that glorious company by merely opening the book . But a breath of doubt , when we think of these facts , must shake all faith . Let forgery and trickery be proved , in any instance , and all the glorious vision melts into thin air . And what then becomes of all the arguments , the scenes , the anecdotes , the traits of character which have been drawn from these letters ? If letters from Pope were forced , so mav the letters

    to him have been . If bis letters to Addison be an imagination , so may the letters from Addison , from Steele , from Wycherley , from Congreve , from Swift , from all the rest , save the very few of which we have the manuscripts , as a portion of the Wycherley correspondence , the originals of which are , we believe , still preserved at Oxford . These were published earlier , and were genuine , and it was probably the good light in which they placed the writer , and their general success , which suggested the subsequent frauds . ^ Readers who have no sympathy with any but the higher school of imaginative poetry , —such as

    flourished in the glorious Elizabethan period , and when the glare of the present shall be subdued , will be acknowledged to liave shed some lustre even on these later days—enthusiasts for Wordsworth , and Shelley , _ and Tennyson , sometimes wonder at all interest in Pope and his contemporaries , and sneer at the patient literary antiquarianism which thinks a long and laborious search well paid by the discovery of the smallest " new fact . " We think their sympathies too narrow . The Satires of Pope must always win the admiration of all who relish keen wit , strong sense , profound knowledge of mankind ,

    and even genuine fancy ; but it must not be forgotten that great part of our interest is in the men themselves . Readers will never cease to take delight in the past . Our novelists know this ; and our playwrights feel the value even of a costume of other times . The name of Binfield or Twickenham takes us back into the days when the Spectator ' s folio half-sheet was taken in at Button's and Will TJrwin ' s , and read by Mr . Dennis , the critic , with his candle in his hand , staring " tremendous with

    a threatening eye , " as we see him in Hogarth ' s picture . So much is swallowed up by time , that it is natural for us to hold by that shadow which is left , and prize it . The friends and acquaintances of Pope and Swift , Gay , Addison , and Steele , are the only figures in that scene which are not ghostly , pale , andundistinguishable . Better men must then have walked about—other maidens besides Vanessa must have died of broken hearts—but we know them not .

    No writer brings his reader more immediately into the age iii which he lived than Pope . In the " Rape of the Lock , " the artificial life of the days of red-heeled shoes , and swords , and wigs , and natohes , is painted in the brightest colours , and heightened by all that fancy can bring . In the " Satires" and " Moral Essays , " the pictures of manners are no less real than the condescending patronage of the country is characteristic of the time . The uotcs are filled with names and anecdotes of living men which the editors—Mr . Curruthers more than nny of them—have wisely dwelt on . The gossip about men in the Notes to the Dunciad and other poems is endless . No tenant of an attic iu Grub-street or the Mint is without a mention in

    the Index . The spite and malice of the poet and his self-glorification at their expense arc now softened down by time , and we feel an interest in their stories , and a sympathy with their misfortunes , their ill-paid drudgery , their hungry dedications , their lofty disavowals of " venal praise . " Pope had no mercy towards thorn , and no arguments of his admirers can clear him of the charge of injustice . By a lucky speculation in verse-making—few men in this age will award a much better term to his Homer —by a system of subscriptions , which was but the old dependence ingeniously disguised , Pope made what \ yas to his prudent mind a fortune , and , secured from want , sneered wantonly at ull who were not as fortunate as himself . Johnson had been too

    recently a weaver of broken shoes not to feel this when he came to writo his Memoir of Pope . All poor men and booksellers' hacks were not necessarily immoral in that age any more than in this . Many of those painted so darklv in the Dunciad arc now known to have been worthy pcrsous . Even Curll

    was perhaps not quite so great a rascal as Pops , made him , and Mir . Dickens acted him in Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton ' s comedy . Not a few of them , good . and bad , died miserably enough . Corinna , the object of some of Pope ' s early gallantry , lay in the Meet for years , and came out to die in a wretehe d garret . Arnall poisoned himself at six-and-twenty . Gildon shot himself . Motteux perished in a drunken debauch , not without suspicion of having been murdered . Dennis died , as Pope said ,

    Secure in dulness , madness , -want , and age . Poor Stephen Duck hung himself . Eustace Budgell filled his pockets with stones , and sprang from a > Thames wherry , as it was " shooting" old Londonbridge . Disraeli has not by any means exhausted the subject of Pope ' s quarrels . We feel a melancholy interest and curiosity concerning the heroes of the Dunciad , and could well have spared some of the critical notes for a little more space for their history . Mr . Carruthers ' s information , like that of other editors , is not always correct . Pope ' s Duckett was not tie " Colonel William Duckett , M . P . for Calne , who

    died 'in 1749 " but George Duckett , who died October , 1732 . He was a Commissioner of Excise , and therefore , according to Johnson , one of " the lowest of human beings . " Duckett , nevertheless , was a respectable man , and a friend of Johnson ' s" worthy , " Gilbert Walmsley ^ How comes it , hy the way , that this note on Duckett , and others on the Dunciad , refer to . 'line ' s ... and books of the poem at which no mention of the persons referred to can be found ? The editor sliould look to this . Mr . Carruthers has added a number of poems , from the Grub-street Journals to the short pieces contained , in other editions . Some are piquant , and certainly very like Pope . To the verses on Swift ' s-Gulliver ' s Travels he also adds one more , we know not from what source . That they were written by Pope we do not doubty and by accident we have in our possession a , " postscript , " . undoubtedly in Pope ' s handwriting , and which has not , we believe , been published . As a specimen of Pope ' s nonsense verses , our readers and Mr . Carruthers may be glad to have a copy . They are as follows : — POSTSCRIPT TO Y ULLIPUTIAW ODE . Now / would John Dennis frown , Fret and swear , Should he hear Of this Ode Ala mode ; But in vain " Would he strain , By the rules Of the Schools , Down to tye , Or to try Terse of such a Bard as I . 2 . ¦¦ - . ¦ ¦ Or if E Curll should see What I ' ve wrote , He would not Be at rest Till ' twere dreafc Out in print From his mint : Tho' God knows there ' s nothing in't . The expensive edition of Pope ' s poems , winch . i » understood to have been prepared b y the late Mr . Crokcr , and to be about to be published by Mr . Murray , will find in these two cheap volumes a formidable rival . With the additional volume containing the Life , they really contain as much concerning Pope and his contemporaries as most readers desire to know , while the Poems are accompanied by as large a quantity of original annotation as they would well bear .

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    NEW BOOKS ON INDIA . Notes on the Revolt in the North- Western Province * iff India . By Charles Raikes , Judge of tho Sudder Court " at Agra . Longman and Co . The Crisis in the P % tnjavb , from the 10 th of May until the Fall of Delfii . By Frederic Cooper , Esq ., C . S ., Deputy Commissioner of Umritsur . Smith , Elder , and Co . Hkris are two more authoritative publications on particular phases of the great Indian rebellion . In both instances the matter is better than tho manner . Mr . Ituikcs ' s volume chiefly consists of notes hurriedly joatlod together ; whilst that of Mr . Cooper . is deformed by very fine writing indeed . The former would have , perhaps , bcou the better for a HUlo

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    —?—Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .

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    No . 435 , July 24 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER , 715

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 24, 1858, page 715, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2252/page/19/