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tion, and with a constant intercourse of good offices. when the translation of the Iliad was on foot, which was begun in 1713, Mr. Addison expressed the highest expectations from it; and, when first published, recommended it to the public, and joined with the Tories in promoting the subscription. Mr. Pope, at the same time, made his friend's interest his own; and when Dennis so brutally attacked the tragedy of Cato, he wrote, under the assumed name of John Norris, the piece entitled "A Narrative of his Madness," published July 30, 1713. [Addison was averse to this publication, as will be seen by Steele's letter (ante, p. 405)].

Mr. Pope, from time to time, communicated to Mr. Addison the progress he made in his translation, and the difficulties which attended it; particularly in a long letter to him, dated January 30, 1714, wherein, among other things, he jocularly complains of the various reports which were propagated to his prejudice. "Some have said I am not a master in the Greek, who are either so themselves, or are not: if they are not, they cannot tell; and if they are, they cannot without having catechised me.'

Not long after these transactions, the unhappy difference broke out between these illustrious friends, which drew from Mr. Pope the following famous lines:

POPE'S SATIRE ON ADDISON.

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires:
Blest with each talent, and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous, eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
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;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged:
Like Cato, gives his little senate laws,
And sits attentive to his own applause:

1 Printed in Roscoe's Pope, vol. viii. p. 204.

While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who could not weep, if Atticus were he?

[Pope regarded Addison with suspicion, for giving him advice, which was no doubt honest, not to introduce supernatural agency into his "Rape of the Lock." He thought Addison was jealous, and his advice insidious, although he had himself acted similarly in dissuading Addison from bringing his Cato on the stage. See the whole subject ably considered in Macaulay, p. 74-81.]

POPE'S ACCOUNT OF HIS QUARREL WITH ADDISON.

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"PHILIPS seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me, in coffee-houses, and conversations; Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley,' in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly.-Lord Warwick2 himself told me one day, that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.' The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know, that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way that I should rather tell him himself fairly of his faults, and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.' I then subjoined the first sketch of what has been since called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after." Spence.

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Dr. Trapp, who was by at the time of this conversation, said that he wondered how so many people came to imagine that Mr. Pope did not write this copy of verses till after Addison's death; since so many people, and he himself for one, had seen it in Addison's life-time. Spence.

A pamphlet containing Wycherley's Life. See note on Dunciad, i. 296. 2. Who was but a weak man himself." M. S. P.

THE EARL OF WARWICK.

"ONE reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play the ignominious part of tale-bearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike of the marriage which was about to take place between his mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable family of the Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any country but ours, would be called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, during some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Holland House may be called a townresidence. But, in the days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from the fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little good, however, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick grew up a rake; and Addison fell in love." Macaulay.

TICKELL'S AND POPE'S RIVAL TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER.

TICKELL published the first book of the Iliad, (June 1715,) as translated by himself, in apparent opposition to Pope's Homer, of which the first part made its appearance at the

same time.

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Addison declared that the rival versions were both good; but that Tickell's was the best that ever was made. Pope did not appear to be much dismayed; for," says he, “I have the town, that is, the mob, on my side." But he remarks, "that it is common for the smaller party to make up in diligence what they want in numbers; he appeals to the people as his proper judges, and, if they are not inclined to condemn him, he is in little care about the high-flyers at Button's."

Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge, for he

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considered him as the writer of Tickell's version. The grounds of this suspicion are thus recorded by Mr. Spence. "There had been a coldness (said Mr. Pope) between Mr. Addison and me for some time; and we had not been in company together for a good while anywhere but in Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day. On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he took me aside, and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern, if I stayed till those people were gone (Budgell and Philips)." He went accordingly; and after dinner Mr. Addison said, “that he had wanted for some time to talk with him; that his friend Tickell had formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad; that he designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over; that he must, therefore, beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because if he did it would have the air of double dealing." "I assured him that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added, that I would not desire him to look over my first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's, but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon. Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr. Addison, a few days after, returned it, with very high commendations. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street, and upon our falling into that subject the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion. This surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against Tickell in relation to this affair, makes it highly probable that there was some underhand dealing in that business; and, indeed, Tickell himself, who is a very fair worthy

man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned it to me." When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which, considering his honour and zeal for his departed friend, was the same as owning it.

THE RIVAL TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER.

Continued.

GAY, in a letter to Pope, says,-" July 8, 1715. I have just set down Sir Samuel Garth at the opera. He bid me tell you that everybody is pleased with your translation (of the Iliad), but a few at Button's, and that Sir Richard Steele told him that the other translation was the best that ever was in any language. He treated me with extreme civility, and out of kindness give me a squeeze by the fore-finger. I am informed that at Button's your character is made very free with as to morals, &c., and Mr. Addison says, that your translation and Tickell's are both very well done, but that the latter has more of Homer. I am, &c." [This kind of gossip must have galled the malignant and splenetic heart of Pope and confirmed his envy and dislike of Addison. See Macaulay, p. 78.]

POPE'S VILLA AT TWICKENHAM.

POPE, in 1715, prevailed on his father to sell the estate at Binfield. He purchased the villa at Twickenham, so much celebrated from his residence in it, and retired thither with his parents.

There he planted the vines and the quincunx which he has recorded in his poems; and being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it with fossil bodies, and rendered it a grotto.1

Mr. Pope's celebrated character of Atticus, which he afterwards ingrafted into his "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,"—and which was designed for Mr. Addison,-—was written at this

The anxiety with which Pope fitted up and continued to decorate this grotto, is shown in a long letter accompanied by a drawing, all in his own hand, addressed to Dr. Chartlett, Oct. 8, 1740, now in the publisher's possession.

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