The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-05 00:00:00

'I'HE PRESS, DECEMBER 5,1857.

fore MSS. had been collated. and family
papers ransacked, the poet's biographers took
a good deal for granted, a good deal upon
hearsay, and constructed a narrative in which
the events of his life were dovetailed into
consistency, and read clearly enough. But
before the rays of critical inquiry the struc-
ture has begun to gape at all its joints and is
fast coining to pieces, without the prospect of
leaving anything so compact in its place. As
has happened in many other branches of
research, knowledge has destroyed certainty.
We know so little because we know so much.
And whatever may result from the promised
revelations of Mr. Croke*•, we must he content
to admit that the labours of three of the most
able and accomplished scholars and critics of
the eighteenth century, and three very earnest
and industrious inquirers of the nineteenth
century, have failed to elucidate any of the
most difficult passages in the poet's ife.
Much of this difficulty is attributable to the
inverted order in which his biographers have
succeeded one another. Had Mr. Carruthers
or the Atheneum critic lived a hundred years
ago, and Johnson or Warton at the present
day, the subject would have fared better. The
laborious and indefatigable antiquary—who
knows the importance of minute facts, and
the value of the faintest allusions, and
traces up a rumour to its source with the saga-
city of an Indian who tracks his enemy for a
hundred miles by the aid of a broken twig or
a ruffled leaf—would have been invaluable at a
time when the scent was warm, when many
unprejudiced contemporaries of the poet were
yet alive, when tradition must have been co-
pious, and a mind habituated to severe- in-
quiry could scarcely have failed to elicit the
truth. On the other hand, Johnson's remarks
on human nature, and Warton's essay upon
poetry, would have been as valuable now as
then, and a hundred years hence as now.
Unfortunately for us—whether fortunately or
not for Pope we cannot tell—the era of elegant
criticism preceded that of industrious in.
quiry; and the banquet to which we now sit
down is as unsatisfactory as an actual dinner
in which the melons and claret should arrive
before the soup and the sherry.
In almost every relation of life Pope is more
or less mysterious. As a friend, as a lover•, as
an upright man, or as an honourable gentle.
man, he is equally difficult to grasp. In the
one virtue, indeed, of filial piety he shines
with a hallowed light that has never been
dimmed by doubt. But his dealings with the
wits and the lords, the beauties and the book-
sellers, which for ever• revolve around his
name, are enveloped in a :mist of perplexity
which bids fair to continue impenetrable.
There is the great Addison controversy, for
instance. After a careful perusal of Mr. Car-
ruther's republication, and a comparison with
Bowles and Roscoe, we do not hesitate to
assert that it has not advanced one step be-
yond the days of Johnson. There is just
enough material to exercise our logic, without
being enough to satisfy our reason. A plau-
sible case may still be made out on either side
by a skilful special pleader ; but that is all.
Whether it was Addison who translated the first
book of the Iliad instead of Tickell, or whether
he paid ten guineas to Gildon to abuse Pope,
are questions for which the pros and cons. are
very evenly balanced. And Mr. Carruthers
does no more than enumerate them, and not
always that distinctly. With regard to an-
other great mystery of his life—the publication
of his correspondence—much fresh evidence
has been accumulated during the last fifty
years; and critics seem generally agreed that
Johnson's surmise was right, and that the so-
called surreptitious edition of Curll was put
forth at Pope's own instigation. Our reason
for disagreeing with this opinion we must
reserve till the remainder of Mr. Car•ruther's
volumes shall make their appearance, and the
correspondence with them. The subject is so
intricate that to thoroughly explain it to our
readers a separate notice would be required.
It may be sufficient to say hero that all the
facts which have transpired seem to us insutfi-
! cient to sustain the superstructure which it is
sought to erect upon them, and that the latest
r annotators in their zeal for accumulating dis-
coveries seem to have overlooked the relation

they might bear to each other, and the general
effect of the whole.

Of the calumnies with which the name of
Martha Blount has been associated, we can
only observe that Mr. Carruthers and the
Athenreunt have succeeded to perfection in un-
ravelling a rope of sand. On this point
Bowles was a monomaniac, and received the
most sensible treatment at the hands of Lord
Byron.
While we are on the subject of Pope's
"lady friends" we may as well insert Mr. Car-
ruther's interesting account of " Eriuna,"
which we understand is really original, and
the result of his own inquiries:—
An episode of a tender nature was interposed amidst the
labours of annotation and translation. In the autumn of
172'i Pope commenced a correspondence with a young lady
whose name has not hitherto transpired. A series of
twelve letters, written in the poet's most complimentary
and admiring strain, was published by I)odsley in 1769,
printed from the originals. The lady to whom they were
addressed appeared to reside in Hertfordshire; she occa.
sionally wrote verses, and was intimate with Mrs. Howard.
She sat for her portrait as one of Jervas's shepherdesses
or Kneller's beauties, and Pope (who had, he said, been
" so mad with the idea of her as to steal the picture and
pass whole days in sitting before it!") was ready with a
poetical offering:—

Though sprightly Sappho force our love and praise,
A softer wonder my pleated soul surveys,
The mild Erinna blushing in her bays!
So while the sun's broad beam yet strikes the sight,
All mild appears the moon's more sober light;
Serene in virgin majesty she shines,
And, unobserv'd, the glaring sun declines.
A reference to the death of' the young lady's relative, joined
to the dates and localities mentioned in the correspon-
dence, furnish a clue to the names of the parties, and we
have no doubt that the " great and good man" was the
Lord Chancellor Cowper, who died on the 10th of October,
1723, and that the lady was Lord Cowper's niece, Judith
Cowper (afterwards Mrs. Madan), only daughter of
Spencer Cowper, one of the Judges of the Court of Com-
mon Pleas. Pope's eulogium on the lady's illustrious
kinsman—though all the Cowpers were Whigs—was appro-
priate even from him, when we remember that Lord
Cowper hail generously opposed the banishment of Atter.
bury and the bill fur taxing the Roman Catholics—events
nearly contemporaneous with the date of this correspon-
dence. The poet afterwards, in one of his Imitations of
Horace (Ep. ii., book ii.), alluded in a complimentary
style to Cowper's " manner," or deportment, which was
remarkable for grace and dignity.
Judith Cowper came of a poetical race, and she early
began to write verses. She is mentioned by Hayley as
having " at the age of eighteen discovered a striking talent
for poetry in the praise of her contemporary poets, Pope
and Hughes." This refers to a piece entitled " fhe
Progress of Poetry," in which she characterises Popo in a
strain of unmingied eulogitun :
High on the radiant list see Pope appears,
With all the fire of youth and strength of years.
Where er supreme he points the nervous line,
Nature and art in bright conjunction shine.
How just the turns, how regular the draught,
How smooth the language, how reined the thought!
Secure beneath the shade of early bays,
He dared the thunder of greet Homer's lays;
A sacred heat inform'd his heaving breast.,
And Homer in his genius stands confe,sed
To heights sublime he rais'd the ponderous lyre,
And our cold isle grew warm with Grecian fire.
The fairy tale which Pope had proposed to his fair cor-
respondent was not attempted, as we have seen, in conse-
quence of the death of her uncle. But there was another
sad perhaps a stronger cause for declining the task. The
last letter in the correspondence (misplaced in the printed
arrangement) is dated November 9th, and in less than a
month from this time, on the 7th of December, 1723,
Miss Cowper was married to Martin Madan, afterwards
Colonel Madan, Groom of the Bedchamber to Frederick
Prince of Wales, and M.P. for Wotton Basset. This event
seems to have closed the poetry and poetical correspon-
dence of Judith Cowper. There are no more letters to
or from Pope, but the lady, her husband, and other
members of her family, were among the subscribers to
the " Odyssey." Judith was twenty.one at the period of
her marriage, anti she survived to the age of seventy•nino.
She had many children, including Martin Madan, the fa-
mous preacher and too famous theological writer, whose
" Thelypthora," or defence of polygamy, ocoasioned such
grief and scandal to his poetical cousin, William Cowper.
Another son died Bishop of Peterborough. Mra. Madan
seems to have been a serious person, though not a devotee,
like het daughter, Mrs. Major Cowper, the poet's cor-
respondent. Shortly before her death we find Cowper
writing to John Newton, " Mrs. Madan is happy; she will
be found ripe, fall when she may." She died in Stafford-
row, Westminster, where she had long lived, in December,
1781. One letter of Cowper's to his ' dear aunt" Madan
is in his published correspondence. She knew his melan-
choly story, and must have admired his fine talents, and
gentle, affectionate nature : his first volume was in the
press at the time of her death. She was a connecting link
between two schools of poetry—between the era of Swift
and Pope and that of Cowper and Burns. in a few more
years her nephew was to rival if not dethrone her early
idol, and was to carry the new faith into almost every
English family and English heart.
Mr. Carruthers and the rival Popist of the
if theme/tut are at issue on the question of
Pope's duplicity towards the Duchess of
Marlborough. This fine old lady, who retained
to her death much of that indomitable spirit

which had tamed the first of the Churchills
and enslaved the last of the Stuarts, was un-
feignedly afraid of Pope. It is said that he
read to her himself his character of Atossa,
and pretended it was.the Duehess of Bucking-
ham; but the old woman stopped him before
he was half through it, and bade him not try
to impose on her. It is incredible that Pope,
who knew her well, should have thought it
possible to do so, but it is quite credible that
the Duchess, who had good reasons for think-
ing that all men had their price, should have
offered him 1,0001. to suppress the passage, if
she in any other way became aware of its
existence. The passage was not suppressed,
and people "do say " that Pope took the
money. Among these is Mr. Carruthers. But
we must refer our readers to his own volume
and the columns of the Athenaunt for further
enlightenment on the subject. We may add
our own conviction that the Athenaum is right
and Mr. Carruthers wrong, and that Pope is
guiltless at least of this act of baseness.
The above-mentioned critics have ascer-
tained very satisfactorily who the " unfortu-
nate lady" was not. We subjoin all that is
essential :
_ . .

-----
The letters, described by Pope in the table of contents
as relating to an " Unfortunate Lady," introduce us to a
Mrs. W., niece to a Lady A., and they tell us that in 1712
the lady went on a visit to her aunt, after enduring a series
of hardships and misfortunes, of the nature of which we
are not laureled. We leant also that Mrs. W. had a bro-
ther who exerted himself on her behalf. Thus, if the
initial letters were held to be genuine, the search was re-
stricted to certain Roman Catholic families of that day
having a " Mrs. W.," who had encountered misfurtuue,
who had a brother, and also au aunt, the last answering to
" Lady A." After the lapse of more than a century the
veil has been withdrawn from the mysterious niece and
aunt, and the history of at least one " Unfortunate Lady "
has been traced with clearness anti certainty. We may not
yet have got the heroine of the Elegy, but we have ob•
tinned an explanation of the allusions in the correspon-
&rice, and the knowledge of an interestint, passage in
Pipe's life. The original letters addressed by the poet to
his friend Mr. Carlyll falling into the hands of an acute and
critical inquirer, the following particulars (all supported
by proofs) have been elicited :
" The Mrs. W.' of Pope's letters was Mrs. Weston.
She was Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Joseph Gage (son
of Sir Thomas, of Fide), who inherited Sherburne Castle
in right of his mother, and ultimately the large property of
the I'enruddocks in right of his wife. She was sister to
Thomas, who succeeded as eighth Baronet and was first
Viscount, and to Joseph, mentioned by Pope in the epistle
to Bathurst
- -

The crown of Polani, venal twice an ato,
To just three millions stinted modest Gage—
an allusion to his enormous gains, subsequently lost by
speculations in the Mississippi scheme ; when, as reported,
he offered to buy the crown of Poland and the island of
Sardinia, and to attach the latter to the former as a kitchen
garden—a man whose whole life was a romance, and who
ended his career as a grandee of Spain of the first classl
Her father died in 1700, and left Sir W. Goring, of Burton
in Sussex, executor and guardian of his children. Her
aunt, Catharine Gage, became the second wife of Walter
Lord Aston. Mrs. Elizabeth, the lady in question, mar.
ried John Weston, of Sutton in the county of Surrey.
They lived unhappily, were soon separated, hal only one
child (or only one who survived), a daughter, Melior, who
died unmarried in June, 1782, aged seventy-nine."
The case of Mrs. Weston was taken up warmly by the
poet. At his request Mr. Carlyll interceded on her behalf
with her guardian, Sir William Goring, and also wrote to
her husband and aunt. When Mr. Weston, " the tyrant,"
determined to remove his daughter from her mother, Pope
wrote to Carlyll :—" I wish to God it could be put off by Sir
W. G.'s mediation, for I am heartily afraid 'twill prove of
very ill consequence to her." Of this Sir William Goring
he had a very unfavourable opinion. " God grant," he
exclaims, " he may never be my friend, and guard all my
friends from such a guardian!" This is in the spirit of

the Elegy :
But thou fake guardian of a charge too good•

The quarrel was adjusted, and the lady again returned to
her husband.
Mr. Carruthers steers clear of the question
of Pope's scholarship. Perhaps it is a ques-
tion in which he is not much interested, as
we observe he introduces a quotation from a
Latin poe►n of Bishop Atterbury without com-
menting on the very doubtful, if not abso-
lutely false quantity of which the bishop has
been guilty. The line is—

hae ego lasi
Ad &quanta ripas, Thamesino a ilunnne
The only Latin poet who uses the word
" Sequana" is Lucan, usually allowed to bo a
sound authority, and he makes the first syl-
lable long. However, the question of Pope's
classical knowledge must always remain an
interesting one as long as his Homer con-
tinues to be read. We agree with Mr. Bowles
that the Latin lines addressed to Mr. Bethel' and
usually attributed to Pope could hardly bare