POPE CORRECTS WYCHERLEY'S POEMS. 31 stroy the whole frame, and reduce them into single thoughts this in in prose, in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims. This deed di staggered Wycherley, and brought the farce of poet and not critic to an end. The unfortunate manuscripts were recalled, and Pope about the same time wrote to say, that as merely marking the repetitions on the margin would nor rectify the method, connect the matter, or improve the poetry, it was his opinion and desire, that his friend should take the papers out of his hands! There is a dash of petulance in this closing epistle, and Mr. Leigh Hunt's summing up is the correct one : "Of the two, Wycherley appears to have been less in the wrong, but then his experience left him the smaller excuse for not foreseeing the result." The correctness of Pope's judgment was fully verified by the posthumous publication of Wycherley's poems, which were given to the world in 1728, edited by Theobald. The pieces are wholly unworthy the author of the Plain Dealer; but the "Maxims and Moral Reflections" in prose -three hundred and eight in number, and filling sixty-eight pages-bear traces of acute observation and correct thought, and could not all have been reduced from the anile verses. In the poetry, Pope's corrected or contributed lines are easily discernible especially in the first piece on "The Various WYCHERLEY. 1 Mixed Life." He brought the skill of the artist to the observation and wit of the man of the world, who, even in his dotage, was no ordinary thinker. The dramatist lived five years after the close of this correspondence. By the help of common friends a reconciliation was effected, and Pope visited Wycherley in his last illness. Of this serio-comic scene he has given a description in one of his letters to Mr. Edward Blount : "Jan. 21, 1715-16. "I know of nothing that will be so interesting to you at present, as some circumstances of the last act of that eminent comic poet, and our friend, Wycherley. He had often told me, as I doubt not he did all his acquaintance, that he would marry as soon as his life was despaired of. Accordingly, a few days before his death, he underwent the ceremony; and joined together those two sacraments, which, wise men say, should be the last we receive; for, if you observe, matrimony is placed after extreme unction in our catechism, as a kind of hint of the order of time in which they are to be taken. The old man then lay down, satisfied in the conscience of having by this one act paid his just debts, obliged a woman, who (he was told) had merit, and shown an heroic resentment of the ill-usage of his next heir. Some hundred pounds which he had with the lady discharged those debts; a jointure of four hundred a year made her a recompense; and the nephew he left to comfort himself as well as he could, with the miserable remains of a mortgaged estate. I saw our friend twice after this was done, less peevish in his sickness than he used to be in his health; neither much afraid of dying, nor (which in him had been more likely) much ashamed of marrying. The evening before he expired, he called his young wife to the bedside, and earnestly entreated her not to deny him one request, the last he should make. Upon her assurances of consenting to it, he told her, 'My dear, it is only this, that you will never marry an old man again.' I cannot help remarking, that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humour. Mr. Wycherley showed his, even in this last compliment; though I think his request a little hard, for why should he bar her from doubling her jointure on the same easy terms? "So trivial as these circumstances are, I should not be displeased myself to know such trifles, when they concern or characterise any eminent person. The wisest and wittiest of men are seldom wiser or wittier than others in these sober moments. At least, our friend ended much in the character he had lived in: and Horace's rule for a play may as well be applied to him as a play-wright, WALSH. "Servetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.'" ["From his first entrance to the closing scene, 33 Wycherley submitted the Pastorals to Walsh, whose poems are still printed, though very rarely read, in our collections of the English poets. His name then stood high as a scholar and critic; he dressed well, as Dennis has recorded, was knight of the shire in Parliament, and lived in ease at his seat of Abberley, in Worcestershire. From admiration of the pastoral poet, Walsh invited him to the country; and Pope passed part of the summer of 1705 at Abberley. This notice was highly gratifying to him. Walsh's name would not now 66 raise a spirit," but there can be no question that his praise, encouragement, and correspondence, did much at this time for Pope. They discussed the art of poetry and the principles of versification; and Walsh gave him one advice which was too congenial to be ever forgotten. He told him that there was one way left of excelling. "We had several great poets," he said, "but we never had one great poet that was correct; and he advised me to make that my study and aim." Walsh could not mean that Milton was not a correct poet. Shakspeare he probably set down as a wild, irregular genius, not reducible to rule. Even Addison, in his account of the greatest English poets, written in 1694, wholly omits Shakspeare, and passes from Spenser to Cowley. It was the fashion of the critics of that dayin some measure sanctioned by the example of Drydento restrict their notions of correctness to the dramatic unities, and to mere rhymes and expressions. The true and great correctness which allies fiction to truth, and makes poetry the exponent of nature, was disregarded. Pope was formed and fashioned to become a moral, a reasoning, and satirical poet; but it would have been wiser in Walsh to have counselled him to enlarge his views, and to seek for subjects of permanent and universal interest-to launch out into invention-to delineate passions instead of painting manners and ridiculing follies; and thus, by touching our higher feelings, and ministering to the nobler wants of our intellectual and spiritual nature, "rule over the wilderness D of free minds." Such an elevation was unattainable by Pope; but if a high standard of excellence and originality WALSH. had been ever before him, we might have had more poetry of the stamp of the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady and the Epistle of Eloisa, and less satire of the Curlls, Theobalds, and Cibbers. Among the other early and distinguished friends of the poet were Garth, Lansdowne, and Congreve. The youngest of these was eighteen years his senior; all had accomplished the works on which their fame rests, and all were men of mark and consideration in society. Their acquaintance was an honour to Pope, but it conferred no real advantage. He had nothing to learn from them in poetry. He already excelled them all in versification, and the dramatic art and witty dialogue of Congreve were not within the sphere of his ambition. Garth was a good, easy man, social and generous. He was a Christian without knowing it, said Pope; and in his last illness he is reported to have sent to Addison to know if the Christian religion was true. He got tired of life-tired, he said, of having his shoes pulled off and on every day! At this time, however, he had not sunk into the careless and jaded voluptuary. He was a zealous Whig and member of the Kit-cat Club, a bustling and benevolent man, whose encouragement of Pope was active and disinterested. His Dispensary is one of the best poems of the day; the th canto exhibits considerable power as well as fancy, and LANSDOWNE, CONGREVE, AND HENRY CROMWELL. 35 passages in Pope's Dunciad attest his study of the work of the friendly and accomplished physician. Granville—he had not then received the dignity of Baron Lansdowne of Bideford -was of the opposite faction in politics. He was wealthy, pre-eminently "polite," magnificent and profuse in his tastes and expenditure, a favourite with the Queen and the public. His plays are dull performances, and his verses, even when dedicated to the charms of his Mira, are feeble and inelegant. Congreve, of course, stood on far higher ground. He was a man of genuine wit and brilliancy; his laurels were early acquired, and, rich with four good sinecure appointments, he reposed on his fame, with no enemy but the gout. Had he been poorer and less caressed by the great, he would probably have written more and better, for his comedies are the work of a full mind, a fertile imagination, and finely cultivated intellect. The weakness imputed to him of wishing to be considered, not as an author, but simply as a gentleman, rests upon one reported conversation with Voltaire, but Congreve, like Pope, may have suspected that his visitor was a spy, besides being somewhat lax in morals and manners. At all events, we see nothing of such super-refined gentility in Congreve's intercourse with Pope, Swift, and his other contemporaries. He was the most delightful as he was the most witty of companions. Another of Pope's associates before the grand era of his appearing in print was Mr. Henry Cromwell, a gentleman of fortune, one of the numerous cousinry of the Protector's family, the common ancestor of both being Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchingbrook, Huntingdonshire, the "Golden Knight" of Queen Elizabeth's days. Pope's friend was the son of Henry Cromwell of Ramsey, and was born on the 15th of January, 1658-9. He succeeded to the patrimonial lands, but at this time he seems to have only possessed the estate of Beesby, in Lincolnshire. He was a bachelor, and spent most of his time in London, being ambitious of the character of a man of gallantry and taste. He had some pretensions to scholarship and literature, having translated several of Ovid's Elegies for Tonson's Miscellany, and revised Pope's translation of Statius. He could also track Pope into the light literature of France, when the young poet poached upon the manor of Voiture. With Wycherley, Gay, Dennis, |