No More Learning

His
resentment was all the more bitter since he fancied that Addison, now at
the height of his power and prosperity in the world of letters and of
politics, had attempted to ruin an enterprise on which the younger man
had set all his hopes of success and independence, for no better reason
than literary jealousy and political estrangement. We know now that Pope
was mistaken, but there was beyond question some reason at the time for
his thinking as he did, and it is to the bitterness which this incident
caused in his mind that we owe the famous satiric portrait of Addison as
Atticus.

The last volume of the 'Iliad' appeared in the spring of 1720, and in it
Pope gave a renewed proof of his independence by dedicating the whole
work, not to some lord who would have rewarded him with a handsome
present, but to his old acquaintance, Congreve, the last survivor of the
brilliant comic dramatists of Dryden's day. And now resting for a time
from his long labors, Pope turned to the adornment and cultivation of
the little house and garden that he had leased at Twickenham.

Pope's father had died in 1717, and the poet, rejecting politely but
firmly the suggestion of his friend, Atterbury, that he might now turn
Protestant, devoted himself with double tenderness to the care of his
aged and infirm mother. He brought her with him to Twickenham, where she
lived till 1733, dying in that year at the great age of ninety-one. It
may have been partly on her account that Pope pitched upon Twickenham as
his abiding place. Beautifully situated on the banks of the Thames, it
was at once a quiet country place and yet of easy access to London, to
Hampton Court, or to Kew. The five acres of land that lay about the
house furnished Pope with inexhaustible entertainment for the rest of
his life. He "twisted and twirled and harmonized" his bit of ground
"till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
beyond one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods. "
Following the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his
lawns with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a
colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel decorated
fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass, which Pope dug
under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state,
and his house and garden was for years the center of the most brilliant
society in England. Here Swift came on his rare visits from Ireland, and
Bolingbroke on his return from exile. Arbuthnot, Pope's beloved
physician, was a frequent visitor, and Peterborough, one of the most
distinguished of English soldiers, condescended to help lay out the
garden.
Congreve came too, at times, and Gay, the laziest and most
good-natured of poets. Nor was the society of women lacking at these
gatherings. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the wittiest woman in England,
was often there, until her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old
Duchess of Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope's last years; and
the Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of
the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from first
to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed, sweet-tempered
Patty Blount, Pope's best and dearest friend.

Not long after the completion of the 'Iliad', Pope undertook to edit
Shakespeare, and completed the work in 1724. The edition is, of course,
quite superseded now, but it has its place in the history of
Shakespearean studies as the first that made an effort, though irregular
and incomplete, to restore the true text by collation and conjecture. It
has its place, too, in the story of Pope's life, since the bitter
criticism which it received, all the more unpleasant to the poet since
it was in the main true, was one of the principal causes of his writing
the 'Dunciad'. Between the publication of his edition of Shakespeare,
however, and the appearance of the 'Dunciad', Pope resolved to complete
his translation of Homer, and with the assistance of a pair of friends,
got out a version of the Odyssey in 1725. Like the 'Iliad', this was
published by subscription, and as in the former case the greatest men in
England were eager to show their appreciation of the poet by filling up
his lists. Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig statesman, took ten
copies, and Harley, the fallen Tory leader, put himself, his wife, and
his daughter down for sixteen. Pope made, it is said, about ? 3700 by
this work.

In 1726, Swift visited Pope and encouraged him to complete a satire
which he seems already to have begun on the dull critics and hack
writers of the day. For one cause or another its publication was
deferred until 1728, when it appeared under the title of the 'Dunciad'.
Here Pope declared open war upon his enemies. All those who had attacked
his works, abused his character, or scoffed at his personal deformities,
were caricatured as ridiculous and sometimes disgusting figures in a
mock epic poem celebrating the accession of a new monarch to the throne
of Dullness.