No More Learning

As usual, Pope's account of his work cannot be taken literally. A
comparison of dates shows that the 'Epistle' instead of having been
"written by piecemeal many years" is essentially the work of one
impulse, the desire to vindicate his character, his parents, and his
work from the aspersions cast upon them by Lord Hervey and Lady Mary.
The exceptions to this statement are two, or possibly three, passages
which we know to have been written earlier and worked into the poem with
infinite art.

The first of these is the famous portrait of Addison as Atticus. I have
already spoken of the reasons that led to Pope's breach with Addison
(Introduction, p. xv); and there is good reason to believe that this
portrait sprang directly from Pope's bitter feeling toward the elder
writer for his preference of Tickell's translation. The lines were
certainly written in Addison's lifetime, though we may be permitted to
doubt whether Pope really did send them to him, as he once asserted.
They did not appear in print, however, till four years after Addison's
death, when they were printed apparently without Pope's consent in a
volume of miscellanies. It is interesting to note that in this form the
full name "Addison" appeared in the last line. Some time later Pope
acknowledged the verses and printed them with a few changes in his
'Miscellany' of 1727, substituting the more decorous "A---n" for the
"Addison" of the first text. Finally he worked over the passage again
and inserted it, for a purpose that will be shown later, in the 'Epistle
to Arbuthnot'.

It is not worth while to discuss here the justice or injustice of this
famous portrait. In fact, the question hardly deserves to be raised. The
passage is admittedly a satire, and a satire makes no claim to be a just
and final sentence. Admitting, as we must, that Pope was in the wrong in
his quarrel with Addison, we may well admit that he has not done him
full justice.
But we must equally admit that the picture is drawn with
wonderful skill, that praise and blame are deftly mingled, and that the
satire is all the more severe because of its frank admission of the
great man's merits. And it must also be said that Pope has hit off some
of the faults of Addison's character,--his coldness, his
self-complacency, his quiet sneer, his indulgence of flattering
fools--in a way that none of his biographers have done. That Pope was
not blind to Addison's chief merit as an author is fully shown by a
passage in a later poem, less well known than the portrait of Atticus,
but well worth quotation. After speaking of the licentiousness of
literature in Restoration days, he goes on to say:

In our own (excuse some courtly stains)
No whiter page than Addison's remains,
He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth,
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart.

'Epistle to Augustus, II'. 215-220.

If Pope was unjust to Addison the man, he at least made amends to
Addison the moralist.

The second passage that may have had an independent existence before the
'Epistle' was conceived is the portrait of Bufo, ll. 229-247. There is
reason to believe that this attack was first aimed at Bubb Doddington, a
courtier of Hervey's class, though hardly of so finished a type, to whom
Pope alludes as Bubo in l. 278. When Pope was working on the 'Epistle',
however, he saw an opportunity to vindicate his own independence of
patronage by a satiric portrait of the great Maecenas of his younger
days, Lord Halifax, who had ventured some foolish criticisms on Pope's
translation of the 'Iliad', and seems to have expected that the poet
should dedicate the great work to him in return for an offer of a
pension which he made and Pope declined. There is no reason to believe
that Pope cherished any very bitter resentment toward Halifax. On the
contrary, in a poem published some years after the 'Epistle' he boasted
of his friendship with Halifax, naming him outright, and adding in a
note that the noble lord was no less distinguished by his love of
letters than his abilities in Parliament.

The third passage, a tender reference to his mother's age and weakness,
was written at least as early as 1731,--Mrs. Pope died in 1733,--and was
incorporated in the 'Epistle' to round it off with a picture of the poet
absorbed in his filial duties at the very time that Hervey and Lady Mary
were heaping abuse upon him, as a monster devoid of all good qualities.