Dec. 15. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



463 



LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1853. 



j^atei. 



POPE 8 LETTERS. 



Your readers have doubtless perused with great 

 interest Mk. Cabruthers' paper upon Pope's 

 letters to the Misses Blount (Vol. xii., p. 377.) ; 

 but perhaps he will excuse my suggesting that 

 the interest and value, to a student of Pope, of 

 the unpublished extracts which he has given us, 

 are considerably diminished by the omission 

 to mention dates. Without these all-important 

 guides they may be entertaining, but they can 

 help us but little to form conclusions upon un- 

 settled points in the poet's life. Recent researches 

 have shown that, in more than one particular, 

 Pope's moral character has suffered unjustly from 

 the gossip and errors of book-makers and com- 

 mentators. An affectation of gallantry, judged 

 by the standard of a later time, has been mag- 

 nified into an importance of which it is pro- 

 bable that he never dreamed. Pope, too, with 

 a wantonness observable in men conscious of the 

 possession of extraordinary powers, made him- 

 self innumerable enemies among a class of writers 

 ever busy in inventing and spreading abroad that 

 kind of calumny, which afforded them in those 

 days tlie best chance of getting bread. It was 

 impossible that his editors should receive no pre- 

 judice from the number and variety of such 

 stories, which the most indolent among them must 

 have met with. In the days of his earlier biogra- 

 phers it was not customary to question facts thsit 

 had been often asserted ; nor was it, indeed, till 

 very lately that any biographer, critic, or editor 

 of Pope brought to the subject that minute re- 

 search and careful judgment, which no man who 

 has an honest sense of the importance and value of 

 truth, or who feels a veneration for the great 

 names of English literature, will think superfluous. 

 Foremost among these cliarges against Pope stood 

 the supposed dishonourable intimacy with the 

 Blounts. The evidence was deemed so conclusive, 

 the authorities were so respectable, that the most 

 indulgent of the poet's critics shrank from de- 

 fending him. The profligacy of genius is a mis- 

 chievous example, and a great scand.d in the 

 moral world. All right minds must rejoice at 

 a result which contributes in any degree to dis- 

 associate great intellectual gifts fiom the ideas 

 of immorality or meanness. The writer in The 

 Atheneenm, with a sympathy with his subject, 

 not deadened by minute and careful investiga- 

 tion, showed, among other things, how little 

 ground existed for the slanderous nonsense which 

 had been written about Pope's friendship with 

 the ladies of Maple Durham. Mr. Carruthers, 

 who has better means of judging on this point 

 No. 320.] 



than any otlier writer, by his recent communica- 

 tion, fully confirms this view. But surely the 

 world has reason to regret the silence of those 

 who have so long held the documents that would 

 have sufficed to dispel these injurious stories. 

 It is now evident that the reputation of their 

 fair and "brown" ancestors has suffered more 

 from that silence, than it could have done had 

 they long since communicated these letters to 

 the public, who are justly interested in the poet 

 and his connexions. The more philosophical habit 

 of modern criticism, of weighing expressions, and 

 viewing facts, in the spirit of the age to which 

 they belong, is the best guarantee that their true 

 significance would be educed. To clear Pope, the 

 supposed sharers in his supposed wickedness must 

 be cleared also. It is to be hoped, therefore, that 

 no future edition of his wcn-ks will be without these 

 important and interesting letters. 



It is to be hopeil, moreover, that succeeding 

 editors of Pope will be enabled to tell us to whom 

 most of the anonymous letters were written, and 

 particularly the mysterious series to an unknown 

 lady, published some years after his death, by 

 Dodsley. With regard to those entitled in the 

 early editions, " Letters to Several Ladies," I 

 have always thought, in opposition to the opinion 

 of some who have taken an interest in the subject, 

 that they are mostly real letters ; though probably 

 in every case altered, more or less, for publication. 

 Several of these, Mb. Carruthers has shown, 

 were addressed to the Misses Blount. The first of 

 the series, it has been said, is a translation of a 

 letter of A'^oiture to Madame de Rambouillet ; and 

 its similarity to the letter referred to is too evident 

 to be accidental ; but it is not like the celebrated 

 four letters — which I have no doubt were sent by 

 Pope himself as a snare for Curll — a mere trans- 

 lation. Pope's early admiration for Voiture is 

 well known. He was willing to allow Cromwell 

 to think that a certain Rondeau was entirely his 

 own, until Cromwell, whose reading lay in the 

 same gallant and amorous direction, recognised it 

 in Voiture's Ou vous sgavez. All readers of Pope 

 know his verses to a lady with the works of Voi- 

 ture; and his correspondence with Cromwell is full 

 of allusions to the French poet. It is not difficult 

 to perceive, in looking over Voiture's elaborate 

 and courtly epistles, that young Mr. Pope's epis- 

 tolary gallantry is a foreign importation. The 

 French writer is now forgotten; but, though a 

 bad model for letter-writing, he was not alto- 

 gether unworthy of the youthful poet's admiration. 

 His ingenious Rondeaus, although rarely free 

 from tiie conceits and licentiousness connnon to 

 his age, show a true fantiy, and possess at times a 

 grace and beauty, which remind an English 

 reader of Sir John Suckling. But he was a bad 

 companion for a youthful poet, not yet escaped 

 from that " obscure sojourn " of imitation, in 



