terature; as one who greatly contributed to the spreading of good works, (but which his Biographer has ftrangely misplaced and confounded) that the account given by Mr. Ruff head cannot poffibly be altogether true, and is hardly accurate in a fingle particular. "It may be doubted whether the acquaintance between Addison and Pope did not commence as early as 1712. For Steele promised to bring them acquainted in February 1711-12'. And we find Mr. Addison in October 1712", warmly recommending Mr. Pope to the world as a rifing genius; and in the fucceeding month advising his publication of the Temple of Fame w. This acquaintance was probably improved into friendship by Mr. Pope's writing the prologue to Cato, in April 1713. And as in the fame year 1713, the improved edition of the Rape of the Lock was published, Mr. Addison's fuppofed advice, difcouraging the propofed alterations, must therefore have been given in the very infancy and not at the clofe of their friendship. If he gave fuch advice, it was probably his real opinion. He might think it dangerous to tamper with fo beautiful a poem as the original, and had perhaps no conception of the art and ingenuity with which Mr. Pope was able to interweave the machinery, without breaking the unity of defign. It is not fuggefted that Mr. Addifon difliked the improvement when made, or diffuaded him from publishing the poem in fuch its improved ftate; which might have been a reasonable ground of fufpicion. But fo trifling a circumftance as the difference of opinion upon the propriety of the hint when firft started, could never be of itself fufficient to open Mr. Pope's eyes, and mark Mr. Addison's character as a compound of meannefs and jealoufy. "Indeed, it is plain that Mr. Pope at the time thought otherwise, or elfe was himself infincere. He drew his pen in defence of Cato in 1713, by writing a narration of John Dennis's Frenzy, contrary to the wifh of Mr. Addifon (who difapproved of fo illiberal an attack), and published it, though against his confent. And his letters to Mr. Addison in October, November, December, and January following (which must have been written after his eyes are thus faid to have been opened), are full of the ftrongest expreflions of friendship and confidence. He then intrufted to this man (whose jealousy he perceived had been raised by the very mention of the fylphs and the gnomes) his original defign of tranflating and commenting upon Homer. Mr. Addison (who it feems did not think Achilles half fo formidable as Ariel in the hands of his poetical rival) received this defign with great warmth of encouragement, and he was the first whofe advice determined Mr. Pope to undertake that tafk 2. He also preffed him to turn it to the best pecuniary advantage, and for that purpofe to avoid engaging in any party difputes; into which he feared he might be drawn by his intimacy with Dr. Swift, and the attention paid him by many of the Tory Ministry. t Additions to Pope's Works, Vol. 1, p. 112.' u Spectator, No. 523.* Letters to Steele, 16 Nov. 1712.' x Notes on the Lock, ver. 1. w Trumbull's Letter, 6th March, 1713. Dean Berkeley's, 1ft May, 1714.' y Pope to Additon, 30th July, 1713. ditions, Vol. ii. p. 104.' Steele to Lintot, 4th Aug. 1713. ́AdPreface to Pope's Iliad.'. S 4 The good fenfe and good taste in the nation; as one of our moft eafy, The fufpicions, if any, which Mr. Pope entertained of Mr. Addifon's fincerity, from his advice about the Rape of the Lock, had furely by this time fubfided; as indeed they might well do, if nothing happened to confirm them till the publication of Mr. Tickell's Homer; which, instead of being foon, was not till about two years after. "In the mean time a quarrel broke out between Mr. Pope and Ambrofe Phillips; which involved Mr. Addifon in its confequences, and put a period to the cordiality of their friendship. Stung with the reputation which Phillips had acquired as a writer of paitorals, Pope wrote an ironical paper in the Guardian, April 27th, 1713, in ridicule of Phillips. Mr. Addifon immediately perceived the drift of it, and joined with Mr. Pope in the laugh; but Steele understood and published it as a ferious panegyric upon his friend. When the jeft was difcovered, Phillips feems to have been outrageoufly angry, and to have harboured a deep refentment. For in the fpring of 1714, he took occafion to abufe Mr. Pope at Button's Coffeehoufe as a Tory, and one united with Dr. Swift to write against the Whig intereft, and undermine the reputation of himself, Sicele, and Addifon. Addifon upon this came to Pope, and affured him of his disbelief of this idle ftory, and hoped their friendship would ftill continue. Yet he feems to have been fomewhat ftaggered in respect to Mr. Pope's party attachments, against which he had cautioned him more than once in the preceding year; and a coolness certainly enfued, which continued for feveral months. During this eftrangement, the interview mentioned by Mr. Ruff head, is more likely to have happened than at the period in which he places it, the latter end of the year 1715; when in reality there was no rupture between them. Mr. Pope, it is confeffed by his Biographer, conducted himself at this interview with great impetuofity and warmth; and Mr. Addifon, who was of a colder conftitution, and much Mr. Pope's fuperior both in age and station, might poffibly behave with too much hauteur and referve. But that he harboured ne malice against him, appears from his fubfequent conduct. "For the fudden revolution in politics that happened at the death of Queen Anne, and brought Mr. Addison and his friends into power and office, moft certainly gave him an opportunity of mortifying, if not crushing, his competitor, in cafe he had not been mean enough to wish it. On the contrary, from that inftant, he was inclined to forget all animofities, and offered his fervices, nay his intereft at court to Mr. Pope; to which he returned a very waspish and difdainful anfwer: but however, in a few weeks afterwards, Pope foftened his tone, and wrote a more complaifant letter to Mr. Addifon himself, yet mixed with fome diftruft and refentment. Civilities upon this were again renewed between them; infomuch that, in April 1715, we find Mr. Pope going to Mr. Jervas's, on eafy, elegant, and graceful writers; as having been fingularly beautiful purpose to meet Mr. Addifon &; and in the fame year he wrote his panegyrical epifle in verfe, to be prefixed to Mr. Addifon's Dialogues on Medals. "At length the great and inexpiable offence was given by Mr. Addifon to Mr. Pope, by permitting Mr. Tickell, his dependant, and afterwards his under-fecretary, to publish a tranflation of the first Book of the Iliad in the beginning of June 1715, just at the time when the first volume of Mr. Pope's work was delivered to his fubfcribers. Whether this book was tranflated by Mr. Addison himfelf in his younger days, or whether he only revised and corrected Mr. Tickell's performance, cannot be pronounced with certainty; unlefs the public were in poffeffion of thofe odd concurring circumfances which convinced Mr. Pope himself, that it was Mr. Addifon's own tranflation; though he certainly thought otherwife, when he penned the character of Atticus". To apologize for its publication at fo critical a juncture, the following advertisement was prefixed by Mr. Tickell, though that circumftance was induftriously fuppreffed in all Mr. Pope's publications on the fubject: I must inform the Reader, that when I began this first book, I had fome thoughts of tranflating the whole Iliad; but I had the pleasure of being diverted from that defign, by finding the work was fallen into a much abler hand. I would not therefore be thought to have any other view in publishing this fmall fpecimen of Homer's Iliad, than to befpeak (if poffible) the favour of the Public to a tranflation of Homer's Odyfeis, wherein I have already made fome progrefs.' "Whether, on the fuppofition that the fpecimen was Mr. Addifon's own (and it is not unworthy of him), he chofe to indulge the vanity of an author, by fhewing how well he could have performed the whole; or whether (fuppofing it Mr. Tickell's, whom he loved and patronized with all the affection of a father) he really meant to have conferred on him a pecuniary obligation by promoting a fubfcription for his Odyffey, as he had before done for Mr. Pope's Iliad; it must be acknowledged, that in either cafe the publication was indifcreet and ill-timed. It is true, that Mr. Pope's finances could not now be materially affected, had the Public decided in favour of Tickell's tranflation; for his fubfcription was full, and his contract with Lintot was complete. But it certainly bore too much the appearance of rivalfhip and competition; and was, in either light, a weakness below Mr. Addison's flation and character. It is not to be wondered at therefore, that a man of fo irritable a difpofition as Mr. Pope is acknowledged to have been, was hurt beyond mealure by this tranfaction; and it is probable, that the character of Atticus was written in the heat of his refentment on this occasion; as he expreffed the very fame fentiments to Mr. Craggs in his letter of 15th July 1715. But it does not appear (as Mr. Ruffhead alerts) that Gay to Congreve, 7th April, 1715.' h "Who when two Wits on rival themes conteft, there beautiful in his allegorical papers, and admirable for the vein of humour which runs through many of his compofitions.' there was any open breach between Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope upon this occafion; and Pope expressly tells Craggs there was none. Had any fuch happened, and had Mr. Addison then fhewn the temper afcribed to him by Mr. Pope's Biographer, he would hardly, in the Freeholder of May 7, 1716, have bestowed fuch encomiums on Mr, Pope's tranflation of the Iliad. Upon the whole, however Mr. Pope may be excufable for penning fuch a character of his friend in the firft tranfports of poetical indignation, it reflects no great honour on his feelings to have kept it in petto for fix years, till after the death of Mr. Addifon, and then to permit its publication (whether by recital or copy makes no material difference); and at length, at the distance of 18 years, hand it down to pofterity ingrafted into one of his capital productions. Nothing furely could justify fo long and fo deep a refentment, uhlefs the flory be true of the commerce between Addifon and Gildon; which will require to be very fully proved, before it can be believed of a gentleman who was fo amiable in his moral character, and who (in his own cafe) had two years before exprefsly difapproved of a perfonal abufe upon Mr. Dennis. The perfon indeed from whom Mr. Pope is faid to have received this anecdote, about the time of his writing the character (viz. about July 1715), was no other than the Earl of Warwick, fon-in-law to Mr. Addifon himself. And the Something about Wycherley, (in which the story fuppofes that Addifon hired Gildon to abufe Pope and his family) is explained by a note on the Dunciad, I. 296, to mean a pamphlet containing Mr. Wycherley's Life. Now it happens that, in July 1715, the Earl of Warwick (who died at the age of twenty-three in Auguft 1721) was only a boy of feventeen, and not likely to be entruffed with fuch a fecret by a statesman between forty and fifty, with whom it does not appear he was any-way connected or acquainted. For Mr. Addifon was not married to his mother the Countess of Warwick till the following year 1716. Nor could Gildon have been employed in July 1715 to write Mr. Wycherley's Life, who lived till the December following. As therefore fo many inconfiftencies are evident in the story itself, which never found its way into print till near fixty years after it is faid to have happened, it will be no breach of charity to fuppofe that the whole of it was founded on fome mifapprehenfion in either Mr. Pope or the Earl; and unless better proof can be given, we shall readily acquit Mr. Addison of this the most odious part of the charge. As a poet.] For a time he was highly extolled in this respect; but of late his reputation hath been much upon the decline. The ingenious Dr. Warton, however, places him in the fecond class of our poetical authors; Spenfer, Shakespear, and Milton conftituting the first; and joins him with Dryden, Prior, Cowley, Waller, Garth, Fenton, Gay, Denham, and Parnell'. But other writers feem difk Bishop Atterbury's Letter, 26 Feb. 1721-2.' 3 Warton on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Dedication, p. 11, 12.' pofed pofed to affign a much lower rank to Mr. Addifon. The late Mr. Gilbert Cooper, in his Letters concerning Tafte, hath afferted, that he was a very indifferent critic and a worse poet. He allows that Mr. Addison, "tranflated the poetical defcriptions of Ovid very elegantly and faithfully into his own language," but then he adds, that he fell infinitely fhort of them in his original compofitions, for want of that unconstrained fire of imagination, which conflitutes a true Poet. Hence, he fays, we may be enabled to account for the peculiar fatality which attends Mr. Addifon's poetical writings, that his tranflations feem originals, while his own compofitions have the confined air of tranflations "." In vindication of thefe remarks, Mr. Cooper afterwards analyses two of Mr. Addison's fimiles, that of the Angel in the Campaign, and another at the conclufion of the firk act of Cato. With regard to these fimiles, he obferves, "that both betray a great poverty of imagination, by an infipid repetition of one thought in different expreffions. To begin then with the celebrated fimile of the Campaign, which, for half a century, has been undistinguitingly admired, So when an Angel, by divine command, And, pleas'd th' ALMIGHTY's orders to perform, Now take the second line of each couplet, and examine whether the thought is varied. Is not fhaking a guilty land with the rifing tempet, and directing the ftorm, and guiding the furious blaft, the fame action? Is not acting by divine command, in the first verle, and performing the Almighty's orders in the fifth, the fame thought likewife? Marcia's fimile in Cato abounds ftill more with this tirefome tautology: So the pure limpid ftream, when foul with stains, Of rushing torrents, and defcending rains, Works itfelf clear, and as it runs refines. "Of rushing torrents, and defcending rains, works itself clear, and as it runs refines "!" Not to enter minutely into this criticism, we shall content ourfelves with remarking, that the repetitions complained of, do not deftroy the general merit of the comparisons. Both of the fimiles are beautiful; and that of the Angel is fublime in the conception, whatever inaccuracy there may be in the expreffion. It must be allowed, that Mr. Addifon is fometimes tautological in his language; and Dr. Campbell hath juftly pointed out another inftance of it, in the two first lines of the tragedy of Cato. But to conclude, as Mr. Cooper hath done, that Mr. Addifon had no right to a pretenfion of being a good poet P, is carrying the matter farther than good fenfe and found criticifm will warrant.' Letters concerning Tafte, p. 28, 29. Fourth Edition.' P Cooper, ubi fupra, p. 34.' n Ib. p. 32. 34.' The |