own fame as a poet; that he had quitted the Museg to enter into the business of the public, and that all he spoke was through friendship to Mr. Pope, whom he advised to have a less exalted sense of his own merit. Mr. Pope could not well bear such repeated reproaches, but boldly told Mr. Addison, that he ap pealed from his judgment to the public, and that he had long known him too well to expect any friendship from him; upbraided him with being a pensioner from his youth, sacrificing the very learning purchased by the public money to a mean thirst of power; that he was sent abroad to encourage litera. ture, in place of which he had always endeavoured to suppress merit. At last the contest grew so warm that they parted without any ceremony, and Mr. Pope, upon this, wrote the foregoing verses, which are esteemed too true a picture of Mr. Addison. In this account, and indeed in all other accounts which have been given concerning this quarrel, it does not appear that Mr. Pope was the aggressor. If Mr. Addison entertained suspicions of Mr. Pope's being carried too far among the enemy, the danger was certainly Mr. Pope's, and not Mr. Addison's. It was his misfortune, and not his crime. If Mr. Addison should think himself capable of becoming a rival to Mr. Pope, and, in consequence of this opinion, publish a translation of part of Homer at the same time with Mr. Pope's, and if the public should decide in favour of the latter, by reading his translation, and neglecting the other, can any fault be imputed to Mr. Pope? could he be blamed for exerting all his abilities in so arduous a province? And was it his fault that Mr. Addison (for the first Book of Homer was undoubtedly his) could not translate to please the public? Besides, was it not somewhat presumptuous to insinuate to Mr. Pope that his verses bore another face when he corrected them, while, at the same time, the translation of Homer, which he had never seen in manuscript, bore away the palm from that very translation which he himself asserted was done in the true spirit of Homer? In matters of genius the public judgment seldom errs, and in this case posterity has confirmed the sentence of that age which gave the preference to Mr. Pope; for his translation is in the hands of all readers of taste, while the other is seldom regarded but as a foil to Pope's. It would appear as if Mr. Addison were himself so immersed in party business as to contract his benevolence to the limits of a faction, which was infinitely beneath the views of a philosopher, and the rules which that excellent writer himself established. If this was the failing of Mr. Addison, it was not the error of Pope, for he kept the strictest correspondence with some persons whose affection to the Whig interest was suspected, yet was his name never called in question. While he was in favour with the Duke of Buckingham, the Lords Bolingbroke, Oxford, and Harcourt, Dr. Swift, and Mr. Prior, he did not drop his correspondence with the Lord Halifax, Mr. Craggs, and most of those who were at the head of the Whig interest. A professed Jacobite one day remonstrated to Mr. Pope, that the people of his party took it ill that he should write with Mr. Steele upon ever so indifferent a subject; at which he could not help smiling, and observed, that he hated narrowness of soul in any party; and that if he renounced his reason in religious matters, he should hardly do it on any other; and that he could pray not only for opposite parties, but even for opposite religions. Mr. Pope considered himself as a citizen of the world, and was therefore obliged to pray for the prosperity of mankind in general. As a son of Britain, he wished those councils might be suffered by Providence to prevail which were most for the interest of rry enough might mean well. 059 Connery, so oug party, and Mr. Pop Wave upon terms of t every man of parts, to " ing. Mr. Pope's uprat wards contending politicians. independent of either place, and had too high a Demoner. Many efforts, however, were tae his sentiments, notwithstandin from the Romish communio his native country; but as politics was not his study, he could not always determine, at least with any degree of certainty, whose councils were best and had charity enough to believe that contending parties might mean well. As taste and science are confined to no country, so ought they not to be excluded from any party, and Mr. Pope had an unexceptionable right to live upon terms of the strictest friendship with every man of parts, to which party soever he might belong. Mr. Pope's uprightness in his conduct towards contending politicians, is demonstrated by his living independent of either faction: he accepted no place, and had too high a spirit to become a pensioner. Many efforts, however, were made to proselyte him from the popish faith, which all proved ineffectual. His friends conceived hopes, from the moderation which he on all occasions expressed, that he was really a Protestant in his heart, and that upon the death of his mother he would not scruple to declare his sentiments, notwithstanding the reproaches he might incur from the popish party, and the public observation it would draw upon him. The Bishop of Rochester strongly advised him to read the controverted points between the Protestant and the Catholic church, to suffer his unprejudiced reason to determine for him, and he made no doubt but a separation from the Romish communion would soon ensue. To this Mr. Pope very candidly answered, "Whether the change would be to my spiritual advantage God only knows; this I know, that I mean as well in the religion I now profess, as ever I can do in any other. Can a man who thinks so, justify a change, even if he thought both equally good? to such an one the part of joining with any one body of Christians might perhaps be easy, but I think it would not be so to renounce the other. "Your Lordship has formerly advised me to read the best controversies between the churches. Shall I tell you a secret? I did so at fourteen years old, for I loved reading, and my father had no other books. There was a collection of all that had been written on both sides in the reign of King James II. I warmed my head with them, and the consequence was, I found myself a Papist or Protestant by turns, according to the last book I read. I am afraid most seekers are in the same case, and when they stop, they are not so properly converted as outwitted. You see how little glory you would gain by my conversion; and, after all, I verily believe your Lordship and I are both of the same religion, if we were thoroughly understood by one another, and that all honest and reasonable Christians would be so, if they did but talk enough together every day, and had nothing to do together but to serve God and live in peace with their neighbours. "As to the temporal side of the question, I can have no dispute with you; it is certain all the beneficial circumstances of life, and all the shining ones, lie on the part you would invite me to: but if I could bring myself to fancy, what I think you do but fancy, that I have any talents for active life, I want health for it; and besides it is a real truth, I have, if possi ble, less inclination than ability. Contemplative life is not only my scene, but is my habit too. I began my life where most people end theirs, with a disgust of all that the world calls ambition. I don't know why it is called so: for, to me, it always seemed to be rather stooping than climbing. I'll tell you my political and religious sentiments in a few words; in my politics, I think no farther than how to preserve my peace of life in any government under which I live; nor in my religion, than to preserve the peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. I hope all churches and all governments are so far of God as they are rightly understood and rightly ad ministered; and where they are or may be wrong, I leave it to God alone to mend or reform them; which, whenever he does, it must be by greater instruments than I am. I am not a Papist, for I renounce the temporal invasions of the papal power, and detest their arrogated authority over princes and states; I am a Catholic in the strictest sense of the word. If I was born under an absolute prince I would be a quiet subject; but thank God I was not. I have a due sense of the excellence of the British constitution. In a word, the things I have always wished to see are not a Roman Catholic, or a French Catholic, or a Spanish Catholic, but a true Catholic; and not a king of Whigs, or a king of Tories, but a king of England." These are the peaceful maxims upon which we find Mr. Pope conducted his life; and if they cannot in some respects be justified, yet it must be owned that his religion and his politics were well enough adapted for a poet, which entitled him to a kind of universal patronage, and to make every good man his friend. Dean Swift sometimes wrote to Mr. Pope on the topic of changing his religion, and once humorously offered him twenty pounds for that purpose. Mr. Pope's answer to this, Lord Orrery has obliged the world with by preserving it in the life of Swift. It is a perfect master-piece of wit and pleasantry. We have already taken notice that Mr. Pope was called upon by the public voice to translate the Iliad, which he performed with so much applause, and, at the same time, with so much profit to himself, that he was envied by many writers, whose vanity perhaps induced them to believe themselves equal to so great a design. A combination of inferior wits were employed to write the Popiad, in which his translation is characterized as unjust to the original, without beauty of language, or variety of numbers. Instead |