The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1: Poetry - Volume 1Pope, Alexander
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The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1: Poetry - Volume 1
Pope, Alexander
English poetry -- 18th century
for exhibition, and the minutest details had been disposed with a view
to flatter the likeness and increase the effect.
In the conduct of Pope to Bolingbroke there are points of resemblance to
his conduct in the case of the correspondence, which render the evidence
a material supplement to the present inquiry. Bolingbroke allowed him to
get put into type the political letters on "The Spirit of Patriotism,"
on "The Idea of a Patriot King," and on "The State of Parties," under
the promise that the pamphlet should be confined to five or six persons,
who were named by the author. Pope fulfilled his pledge by causing a
separate edition of 1500 copies to be struck off, and enjoined the
printer to lay by the sheets "with great secresy till further
orders."[177] In the dangerous manoeuvre of printing covertly the
original volume of the Swift correspondence which he sent to the Dean,
he may, perhaps, have remained concealed from the inferior agents, and
have conducted the details of the business through the medium of
Worsdale. In the instance of the pamphlet he was not afraid to put
himself into the power of the printer, who, says Bolingbroke, "kept his
word with him better than he kept his with his friend."[178] The poet
not only committed a breach of trust in preparing a work for sale which
he received upon the condition that it should remain strictly private,
but he had the boldness to tamper with the substance of the work, and in
the impression, which was ultimately designed for the public, "he took
upon him to divide the subject, and to alter and omit passages according
to the suggestions of his own fancy."[179] From Warburton we learn that
Pope "frequently told his acquaintance that Lord Bolingbroke would at
his death leave his writings to his disposal,"[180] and the changes he
introduced by anticipation into the single instalment within his power
show the manner in which he designed to discharge his functions, and
strengthen the suspicion that he may have falsified the letters of his
correspondents as well as his own. Johnson, in censuring Lyttelton for
publishing the posthumous edition of Thomson's poem on "Liberty," in an
abridged form, condemns a practice "which, as it has a manifest tendency
to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of
authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be
justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration or kindness of the
friend."[181] The freedom used by Pope was especially reprehensible from
the concealment he practised. The copy of the pamphlet which he sent to
Bolingbroke, and the other privileged persons, did not exhibit the
modified text, and though the occurrence took place several years before
the death of the poet he never, in all that time, whispered one word
upon the subject to the author of the tracts, from which it is clear
that he neither intended him to learn what he had done, nor expected him
to approve the changes he had made.
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