equally oppressive; nor could he rest, till, by the interposition of a friend, he prevailed upon the author to burn them.*

To the facts already detailed, and to this disposition in Addison's temper, and to the quick and active suspicions of Pope, irritable, and ambitious of all the sovereignty of poetry, we may easily conceive many others of those obscure motives, and invisible events, which none but Pope, alienated every day more and more from his affections for Addison, too acutely perceived, too profoundly felt, and too unmercifully avenged. These are alluded to when the satirist sings

Damn with faint praise; assent with civil leer;
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike;

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike, &c.

Accusations crowded faster than the pen could write them down. Pope never composed with more warmth. No one can imagine that Atticus was an ideal personage, touched as it is with all the features of an extraordinary individual. In a word, it was recognised instantly by the individual himself; and it was suppressed by Pope for near twenty years, before he suffered it to escape to the public.

It was some time during their avowed rupture, for the exact period has not been given, that their friends promoted a meeting between these two great men. After a mutual lustration, it was imagined they might have expiated their error, and have been restored to their original purity. The interview did take place between the rival wits, and was productive of some very characteristic ebullitions, strongly corroborative of the facts as they have been stated here. This extraordinary interview has been frequently alluded to. There can be no doubt of the genuineness of the narrative; but I know not on what authority it came into the world.†

* From Lord Egmont's MS. Collections.-See the "Addenda to Kippis's Biographia Britannica."

The earliest and most particular narrative of this remarkable interview I have hitherto only traced to "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of A. Pope, Esq., by William Ayre, Esq.," 1745, vol. i. p. 100. This work comes in a very suspicious form; it is a huddled compilation, yet contains some curious matters; and pretends, in the title-page, to be occasionally drawn from "original MSS. and the testimonies of persons of honour." He declares, in the preface, that he and his friends "had means and some helps which were never public." He sometimes appeals to several noble friends of Pope as his authorities. But the mode of its publication, and

The interview between Addison and Pope took place in the presence of Steele and Gay. They met with cold civility. Addison's reserve wore away, as was usual with him, when wine and conversation imparted some warmth to his native phlegm. At a moment the generous Steele deemed auspicious, he requested Addison would perform his promise in renewing his friendship with Pope. Pope expressed his desire he said he was willing to hear his faults, and preferred candour and severity rather than forms of complaisance; but he spoke in a manner as conceiving Addison, and not himself, had been the aggressor. So much like their humblest inferiors do great men act under the influence of common passions: Addison was overcome with anger, which cost him an effort to suppress; but, in the formal speech he made, he reproached Pope with indulging a vanity that far exceeded his merit; that he had not yet attained to the excellence he imagined; and observed, that his verses had a different air when Steele and himself corrected them; and, on this occasion, reminded Pope of a particular line which Steele had improved in the "Messiah."* Addison seems at that moment that of its execution, are not in its favour. These volumes were written within six months of the decease of our poet; have no publisher's name; and yet the author, whoever he was, took out "a patent, under his majesty's royal signet," for securing the copyright. This Ayre is so obscure an author, though a translator of Tasso's "Aminta," that he seems to have escaped even the minor chronicles of literature. At the time of its publication there appeared "Remarks on Squire Ayre's Memoirs of Pope." The writer pretends he has discovered him to be only one of the renowned Edmund Curll's "squires," who, about that time, had created an order of literary squires, ready to tramp at the funeral of every great personage with his life. The "Remarker then addresses Curll, and insinuates he speaks from personal knowledge of the man :-"You have an adversaria of title-pages of your own contrivance, and which your authors are to write books to. Among what you call the occasional, or black list, I have seen Memoirs of Dean Swift, Pope, &c." Curll, indeed, was then sending forth many pseudo squires, with lives of "Congreve," "Mrs. Oldfield," &c.; all which contained some curious particulars, picked up in coffee-houses, conversations, or pamphlets of the day. This William Ayre I accept as "a squire of low degree," but a real personage. As for this interview, Ayre was certainly incompetent to the invention of a single stroke of the conversations detailed: where he obtained all these interesting particulars, I have not discovered. Johnson alludes to this interview, states some of its results, but refers to no other authority than floating rumours.

* The line stood originally, and nearly literally copied from Isaiah"He wipes the tears for ever from our eyes;"

which Steele retouched, as it now stands

"From every face he wipes off every tear."

to have forgotten that he had trusted, for the last line of his own dramatic poem, rather to the inspiration of the poet he was so contemptuously lecturing than to his own.* He proceeded with detailing all the abuse the herd of scribblers had heaped on Pope; and by declaring that his Homer was “an ill-executed thing," and Tickell's had all the spirit. We are told, he concluded " in a low hollow voice of feigned temper," in which he asserted that he had ceased to be solicitous about his own poetical reputation since he had entered into more public affairs; but, from friendship for Pope, desired him to be more humble, if he wished to appear a better man to the world.

When Addison had quite finished schooling his little rebel, Gay, mild and timid (for it seems, with all his love for Pope, his expectations from the court, from Addison's side, had tethered his gentle heart), attempted to say something. But Pope, in a tone far more spirited than all of them, without reserve told Addison that he appealed from his judgment, and did not esteem him able to correct his verses; upbraided him as a pensioner from early youth, directing the learning which had been obtained by the public money to his own selfish desire of power, and that he had always endeavoured to cut down new-fledged merit." The conversation now became a contest, and was broken up without ceremony. Such was the notable interview between two rival wits, which only ended in strengthening their literary quarrel; and sent back the enraged satirist to his inkstand, where he composed a portrait, for which Addison was made to sit, with the fine chiar' oscuro of Horace, and with as awful and vindictive features as the sombre hand of Juvenal could have designed.

Dr. Warton prefers the rejected verse. The latter, he thinks, has too much of modern quaintness. The difficulty of choice lies between that naked simplicity which scarcely affects, and those strokes of art which are too apparent.

*The last line of Addison's tragedy read originally

"And oh ! 'twas this that ended Cato's life."

A very weak line, which was altered at the suggestion of Pope as it stands at present :

"And robs the guilty world of Cato's life."-ED.

BOLINGBROKE AND MALLET'S POSTHUMOUS

QUARREL WITH POPE.

Lord BOLINGBROKE affects violent resentment for Pope's pretended breach of confidence in having printed his "Patriot King"-WARBURTON'S apology for POPE's disinterested intentions-BOLINGBROKE instigates MALLET to libel POPE, after the poet's death-The real motive for libelling POPE was BOLINGBROKE's personal hatred of WARBURTON, for the ascendancy the latter had obtained over the poet-Some account of their rival conflicts-BOLINGBROKE had unsettled POPE's religious opinions, and WARBURTON had confirmed his faith-POPE, however, refuses to abjure the Catholic religion-Anecdote of POPE's anxiety respecting a future state-MALLET's intercourse with POPE: anecdote of "The Apollo Vision," where MALLET mistook a sarcasm for a compliment MALLET's character-Why LEONIDAS GLOVER declined writing the Life of Marlborough-BOLINGBROKE's character hit off-WARBURTON, the concealed object of this posthumous quarrel with POPE.

On the death of POPE, 1500 copies of one of Lord BOLINGBROKE's works, "The Patriot King," were discovered to have been secretly printed by Pope, but never published. The honest printer presented the whole to his lordship, who burned the edition in his gardens at Battersea. The MS. had been delivered to our poet by his lordship, with a request to print a few copies for its better preservation, and for the use of a few friends.

Bolingbroke affected to feel the most lively resentment for what he chose to stigmatise as a breach of confidence." "His thirst of vengeance," said Johnson, "incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation," apologised for Pope. The irregular conduct which Bolingbroke stigmatised as a breach of trust, was attributed to a desire of perpetuating the work of his friend, who might have capriciously destroyed it. Our poet could have no selfish motive; he could not gratify his vanity by publishing the work as his own, nor his avarice by

its sale, which could never have taken place till the death of its author; a circumstance not likely to occur during Pope's lifetime.*

The vindictive rage of Bolingbroke; the bitter invective he permitted MALLET to publish, as the editor of his works; and the two anonymous pamphlets of the latter, which I have noticed in the article of WARBURTON; are effects much too disproportionate to the cause which is usually assigned. JOHNSON does not develope the secret motives of what he has energetically termed "Bolingbroke's thirst of vengeance." He and Mallet carried their secret revenge beyond all bounds: the lordly stoic and the irritated bardling, under the cloak of anonymous calumny, have but ill-concealed the malignity of their passions. Let anonymous calumniators recollect, in the midst of their dark work, that if they escape the detection of their contemporaries, their reputation, if they have any to lose, will not probably elude the researches of the historian ;- -a fatal witness against them at the tribunal of

posterity.

The preface of Mallet to the "Patriot King" of Bolingbroke, produced a literary quarrel; and more pamphlets than perhaps I have discovered were published on this occasion.

Every lover of literature was indignant to observe that the vain and petulant Mallet, under the protection of Pope's

Guide, philosopher, and friend!

should have been permitted to have aspersed Pope with the most degrading language. Pope is here always designated as "This Man." Thus This Man was no sooner dead than Lord Bolingbroke received information that an entire edition of 1500 copies of these papers had been printed; that this very Man had corrected the press, &c." Could one imagine that this was the Tully of England, describing our Virgil ? For Mallet was but the mouthpiece of Bolingbroke.

After a careful detection of many facts concerning the parties now before us, I must attribute the concealed motive

* At the time, to season the tale for the babble of Literary Tattlers, it was propagated that POPE intended, on the death of BOLINGBROKE, to sell this eighteenpenny pamphlet at a guinea a copy; which would have produced an addition of as many hundreds to the thousands which the poet had honourably reaped from his Homer. This was the ridiculous lie of the day, which lasted long enough to obtain its purpose, and to cast an odium on the shade of Pope. Pope must have been a miserable calculator of survivorships, if ever he had reckoned on this.