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More Popeana: Items from an Unpublished Correspondence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Helen Sard Hughes
Helen Sard Hughes*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
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Extract

A Lexander Pope as known to his contemporaries is a study in extremes. One group knew him as the satirist, diabolically clever and Papistical, responsible for the Moral Essays and the Dunciad. But another group less frequently commemorated idolized him as the romantic author of the Pastorals, of Windsor Forest, of Eloisa to Abelard and The Dying Christian to his Soul; he satisfied their love of beauty both in external nature and in the soul of man. With something of surprise we see through the eyes of these admirers the figure of the romantic poet usually obscured by that of the satirist of later years. The gradual stages by which the admirers of the younger Pope become the stern judges of his middle age are evidences of changes in the poet himself and not in those romantically-minded readers who turned reluctantly from him to Thomson and Shenstone and Young.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1090 - 1098
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

* For access to unpublished letters in the library of Alnwick Castle I am indebted to the great kindness of the Duke of Northumberland.

Note 1 in page 1090 Works of Alexander Pope, ed. Elwin and Courthope (Lond. 1889), V, 71.

Note 2 in page 1090 Alnwick MS, No. 110, p. 78.

Note 3 in page 1091 Alnwick MS, Percy Family Letters and Papers, XXII, 159. Only a few days earlier Miss Cole had communicated to Lady Hertford an interesting bit of gossip relating to the Caesar family, involving circumstances mentioned also by Lord Oxford in a letter to Pope dated October 9, 1729 (E-C. VIII, 260). Wrote Lord Oxford: “Young Mr. Caesar is married to a very great fortune, and much to the satisfaction of his father and mother.” Of this event Miss Cole writes Lady Hertford: “I want to tell you some news, something odd for me to mention news but this pleases me vastly Young Mr Caesar married a pretty agreeable Girl last fryday with thirty thousand pounds 'T was quite a Love story She rose from Her Guardians Table (who was Mr Freeman,) the moment she had dined and with Collel Creamers Daughter who was the Companion of Her flight Walked near a Mile where Charles was waiting fr Her with a Coach and My Pappa (who he beg'd in friendship to go with Him) and away they wheel'd and was married. They came to Town Saterday Miss Vane and I pay our Complimts to the bride the same evening and Sunday we dined together Here, Anthony was there Saterday and I never saw greater Joy (of the kind) in any one face in My Life.” (Alnwick MS, Percy Family Letters and Papers, XXII, 152.)

Note 4 in page 1092 Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse, of Elizabeth Rowe (London, 1772), I, 107.

Note 6 in page 1092 Friendship in Death: in twenty letters from the Dead to the Living. To which are added, Letters Moral and Entertaining, in Prose and Verse, (New Haven, 1802), Part I, p. 121.

Note 6 in page 1092 Alnwick MS, No. 110, p. 352.

Note 7 in page 1092 Alnwick MS, No. 110, p. 360. Cf. Miscellaneous Works, II, 268, 269.

Note 8 in page 1093 Miscellaneous Works, II, 267; Alnwick MS, No. 110, pp. 356-357.

Note 9 in page 1093 Miscellaneous Works, II, 337-338. In the original Pope wrote (1. 207) “How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,” and (1. 297) “O grace serene.”

Note 10 in page 1093 Alnwick MS, No. 110, p. 357 (Letter 156); cf. Miscellaneous Works, II, 339.

Note 11 in page 1093 Alnwick MS, No. 110, p. 238.

Note 12 in page 1093 This letter was very inaccurately printed in Miscellaneous Works, II, 257.

Note 13 in page 1094 Lord Hertford wrote to Lady Hertford (May 16, 1738): “I have read Mr. Pope's poem 1738 there are some lines that I like but in the whole it does not please me, he more than once in it abuses Ld. Fanny, Ld. Silkirk & Ld Delaware are not forgot.” Percy Family Letters and Papers, XXVI, 133.

In a letter dated “Windsor Forest May 20h, O.S. 1739” Lady Hertford writes to Lady Pomfret:

“I feel not only a justifiable Pride but an inexhaustible fund of entertainment from all you write; I cannot say the same of a new Volume of Poems, which Mr Pope has though fit to Publish, there is in it his Sober Advice, his Epistle to Augustus, & in short several things that he had sold singly before; there is also an Epitaph upon the late duke of Buckingham, & two or three Epigrams; as a sample I send you one which is prefac'd with the pompous Title Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, which I gave his Royal Highness

I am his Highness Dog at Kew

Pray tell me Sr whose Dog are you.

does it not remind you of one of a more ancient date, which I believe is repeated in all the Nurserys in England

Bow wow wow wow

Whose dog art thou &c

I do not inferr from hence that Mr Pope finds himself returning into Child-hood & therefore imitates this Venerable Author, in order to Shine amongst the innocent inhabitants of the Apartments, where his Works are the most in Vogue; but I suppose it is to show that he has the same Alacrity in sinking to the Bathos, as of soaring to the Summit of Parnassus.“

This letter as printed in the Correspondence of these ladies (edited by Bingley, 3 vols., London, 1805) contains certain verbal variations from this copy in Lady Hertford's own hand in her manuscript volume, Alnwick MS, No. 112, p. 58.

Note 14 in page 1095 Alnwick MS, Percy Family Letters and Papers, XXV, 17. Lady Mary writing her sister the Countess of War from Twickenham September 6, 1721, says that Bononcini and “Mrs. Robinson and Senesino lodge in this village and sup often with me.” Atterbury writes Pope in 1722, “Mrs. Robr haunts Bononcini, you follow her, and I plague you.”

Note 15 in page 1096 A. L. S. in the library of H. S. H.

Note 16 in page 1096 Letters by Several Eminent Persons Deceased. Including the Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq. By John Duncombe, 2nd Edition, (Lond., 1773), II, 83. Dr. Watts's desire to make poetry the useful handmaid of religion is illustrated in this earlier letter of his to John Duncombe (May 23, 1735) on the death of Duncombe's brother-in-law, John Hughes. Dr. Watts wrote: “My sorrow freshens and renews upon my heart, that such a genius did not live to write more moral and divine odes in advanced years, to be a counterpoise to all the charms of pleasure and youth and beauty which his younger poesy indulg'd. . . . . The Christian scheme has glories and beauties in it which have superior power to touch the soul, beyond all the gods and heroes of the heathen heaven or Elysium. I should have been much pleased to see so fine a pen employing its art in such themes. Mr. Pope's Messiah always charms me.”

Note 17 in page 1096 Gibbons, Thomas, Memoirs of The Rev. Isaac Watts (London, 1780), p. 386.

Note 18 in page 1097 Alnwick, MS, Percy Family Letters and Papers, XXVI, 16.

Note 19 in page 1097 Mrs. Rowe writes Lady Hertford in 1720: “I have been reading my Lord Shaftesbury's Moralist, which has fill'd my head with beauty, and love, and harmony, but all of a divine and mysterious nature. . . . . I wish you would read it, for it would make you the most charming and agreeable enthusiast in the world.” Miscellaneous Works, II, 125.

Note 20 in page 1097 In 1732 Mrs. Rowe thanks Lady Hertford for sending her the Minute Philosopher, saying “your approbation being the greatest authority.” A few days later she writes: “You have given me a real and extensive satisfaction by the book you sent me. I read it with a secret gratitude to the author, as being a benefactor to mankind, in endeavouring to secure their highest interest.” Miscellaneous Works, II, 225.

Note 21 in page 1098 Alnwick MS, Percy Family Letters and Papers, LXXVII, 393-394.

Note 22 in page 1098 Ibid., no page.

Note 23 in page 1098 Ibid.

Note 24 in page 1098 Ibid., XXVIII.