University of Virginia Library

The Writing and Printing of Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope
by
David Fairer

In January 1755 the publisher Robert Dodsley received from his friend Joseph Warton a printed half-sheet as a specimen of a projected Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope.[1] It was the beginning of a commitment which was not finally fulfilled until 1782, but which brought Warton fame (sweetened by respectable notoriety) and the attention of twentieth-century bibliographers. The Essay has long been of interest because of the strange history of its publication.[2] The first volume, with its challenging dedication to the author of Night Thoughts ('What is there very sublime or very Pathetic in Pope?'), was published by Dodsley in April 1756, but because he was nervous at the book's challenging anonymity he preferred to work behind the scenes, and placed on the title-page the name of his agent Mary Cooper rather than his own. Although two revised editions of this volume were published (1762, 1772) its companion second volume remained unexposed until 1782, when it appeared before the world with the statement that the first two hundred pages had been in print for over twenty years.

However, interest in these volumes is not confined to their publication; for although published from London, it can now be shown that the Essay was actually printed in Oxford, and under the close supervision of Joseph's brother Thomas Warton, the historian of English poetry. Unpublished correspondence between the brothers reveals something of the evolution of the two volumes, of the active role of Thomas, and of Joseph's attitude to a book which he clearly intended should cause something of a stir in the literary world.

Here is a description of the two volumes in their first editions:

The delayed publication of vol. II is clearly expressed in the bibliographical details. The cancels all occur within the first two hundred pages and the press-figures begin at this point: 2C4 is the last cancel and bears the first page (2C4b = p. 200) with a figure. An analysis of the headlines in vol. II is similarly indicative. Throughout pages 1-199 three distinctive skeletons recur, the salient features of each being:

• 1. A break in the bottom curve of the 'O' in 'OF'
• 2. A break in the left bar of the 'N' in 'GENIUS'
• 3. A nick in the right bar of the 'N' in 'GENIUS'

They occur on the rectos of the following leaves:

• 1. D2 F4 H3 N4 P4 Q3 R3 T4 X3 Z1 2C2
• 2. D3 F3 H4 K3 N3 P3 Q4 R4 T2 X2 Z2
• 3. D1 H2 K2 N2 P2 Q1 R1 T1 Z4 2C1

None of these occurs after 2C2a (p. 195). From sheet 2D onwards (pp. 201 to end) the recto headlines vary in length between 55 and 57 mm. (usually 56 mm.); but throughout the earlier part of the book the length is 54-55 mm. (usually 54 mm.), the only exceptions being the eight cancelled leaves, the recto headlines of which are 58 mm. (B2a) and 57 mm. (the remaining seven). Besides illustrating the clear division after page 200, this latter piece of evidence suggests that the cancelling in the early part of the volume was done in 1781-82, while the later part was being printed. (The eight cancels do not bear any of the three skeletons recurrent in the early part).[3]

There is therefore convincing bibliographical support for Joseph Warton's statement that pages 1-200 had been in print for over twenty years. However, such complications were far from his mind when, in January 1755, he sent the first specimen half-sheet from the Oxford press to Robert Dodsley in London.

Dodsley's reaction to Joseph Warton's specimen was generally favourable, but tinged with uneasiness that his friend would write 'in too peremptory a manner'. On 20 Jan. 1755 he remarked to Thomas Warton:

During the final stages of the printing of his Vergil in the autumn of 1752 Joseph had been in London to overlook the edition at close quarters, becoming intimate with Johnson, enjoying Dodsley's hospitality and attending plays.[5] This was obviously a luxury he felt unable to allow himself in 1755, and so the decision to print the Essay in Oxford was an excellent idea: there his brother Thomas Warton, fellow of Trinity and soon to be Poetry Professor, could overlook the presses and handle the proofs, making any last minute corrections or adjustments, a kindred spirit and collaborator who could be trusted to deal with any problems which might arise during the printing. But a more important reason is that while Dodsley was handling the specimen Joseph, though he had all the materials, had not yet written the Essay. The extant correspondence with his brother during the year 1755 gives a picture of Joseph working hard to keep the flow of copy going. Though from the beginning of the year he had the matter and the plan, it is an important consideration for the digressive, annotatory character of the work that it was reaching its final form while the presses were working.

The printing was under way by 28 February, when in a postscript to an incomplete letter Joseph complained: 'ed in the participles remained is not preserved by the printers'.[6] The next surviving letter is from Thomas on 19 April, when his brief reference to the state of the printing gives an interesting glimpse of the 'hand to mouth' progress of the work: 'As soon as possible send us just copy enough for the remains of this half sheet, that what is now composed may be worked off.'[7] The Essay on Pope would seem to be an excellent example of how piecemeal supply of copy necessitated half-sheet imposition on a 'work and turn' basis.[8] By this method only eight pages of text needed to stand in type at any one time, the sheet being

worked on one side, turned, then worked on the reverse to produce when halved two completed half-sheets. Evidently the delays in arrival of copy could mean that a half-sheet was left partially composed, waiting for a few further pages of manuscript to arrive.

Some idea of the proof-reading methods is given in Joseph's letter of 28 April:

It is tempting to believe that Joseph was asking for the return of copy to check the proofs, but his words, though confused, will not bear this interpretation. Apparently Thomas had sent for Joseph's inspection a proof bearing a couple of marginal queries (there would seem to be no doubt that one printing was correct and the other an error). Joseph himself was not reading proof; he therefore assumed that his brother had made the necessary alteration and did not want the half-sheet to be returned. The 'peice of copy' was probably the remainder of his previous delivery of copy, still uncomposed, which Joseph wished to check over and return with his next instalment.

During May Joseph was much occupied by a troublesome change of house: the family had to move two miles from Winslade, Hants., to the Rectory at Tunworth, to which Joseph was instituted on 17 July (apparently there were workmen to be 'looked to'). These preoccupations seem to have interfered with Joseph's work, as his brother wrote on 9 May:

And on the 16th Joseph confessed: 'I now speak in time, and greatly fear that I shall not have much copy by the 15th of June';[11] however on 20 May he was assuring Thomas he was 'not idle with respect to Pope'.[12]

By October matters had progressed and Joseph was faced with a decision as to what form the publication should take. The first intention seems to have been a single volume, but writing to Thomas on 18 Oct. he put forward another suggestion:

As the beginning of the letter is missing, it is not possible to establish Joseph's considerations, but it is likely that they were financial ones. Clearly, this is the moment at which he decided on the separate publication of a first volume, the elasticity of his intentions being shown by the statement that he was 'sure of Matter enough for a Second'. The plan of the whole work had not even at this stage distinctly formed in his mind, although his materials (quite possibly in the shape of a heavily-annotated edition of Pope)[15] were to hand.

By early November Joseph had received a letter from his friend Edward Young accepting the dedication of the volume,[16] and soon afterwards he wrote to Thomas with more copy: 'This is all I can send, but surely will be full enough—print it all—I think you'l like it very well—'.[17] Joseph was now becoming concerned about the delay and was eager to calculate how much more copy was needed to make up a volume: 'It must be printed off before Xmas—if you have not time, leave the Index . . . — You had seven sheets only to make 312 pages to print off when you wrote —'.[18] Although Joseph Warton has been accused of a certain pusillanimity in his unwillingness to publish his second volume, his attitude to the first shows that he was fully aware of the challenging nature of the Essay and wished if possible to capitalize on it. In the same letter he asked his brother the significant question: 'Shall I produce my Scale of poets in the Dedication to make Stare or not—'. Thomas apparently agreed, for the dedication as it finally stood was certainly provocative enough to 'make stare', with its inclusion of Otway and Lee ('at proper intervals') among the 'sublime and pathetic' writers in the first class, above the station of Dryden and (as readers would have predicted) Pope himself.[19]

Joseph Warton relied considerably upon his brother's judgment and

initiative, and he expected that Thomas would sometimes take matters into his own hands: To accord The Rape of the Lock a section of its own[21] is an excellent though obvious idea: Joseph, it seems, had rather lost sight of such questions as the shape of the Essay and was sending Thomas a series of notes on passages of Pope as he wrote them. Rather like his brother's Observations on the Faerie Queene published the previous year, Joseph's Essay was tending to become 'materials for an edition' of Pope. Reviewing the second volume, Edmund Cartwright complained of the author's 'rambling, desultory manner';[22] his method of writing for the press can only have encouraged this.

By the beginning of March 1756 enough of the Essay had been printed to form a first volume. On 11 March Dodsley wrote to Thomas Warton:

And so in April 1756 the book appeared, at 5s. bound, to a generally favourable reception and a polite review by Dr Johnson.[24]

Dodsley's willingness to leave the price decision to Fletcher suggests that the latter had some deeper responsibility for the volume than that of being its Oxford bookseller; but there is no direct evidence to prove that he was a partner with Dodsley over this. It is interesting, however, to discover that in 1759 it was to James Fletcher that Joseph proposed a scheme for a volume of Voltaire, once again to be printed at Oxford with brother Thomas overlooking the presses. This venture was not carried through, but Joseph presented his plan to Fletcher as follows:

Obviously Joseph considered that the printing arrangements for the Essay on Pope had been successful and was willing to repeat the procedure.

The role of Mary Cooper is less ill-defined. Ralph Straus sums up Dodsley's relationship with her at this time:

Being essentially a retail bookseller Dodsley was unable to supply the 'trade' from his Pall Mall shop, and so Mary Cooper, who had a flourishing trade with the country booksellers, was obviously a valuable agent.[27] Informing Joseph Warton of the publication Dodsley added: But there was a more prudential reason for his anonymity: had Dodsley put his name to the volume he would have been exposed to demands for the author's identity from the gentry and literati who were his clients, and he would have risked offending them by a refusal to reveal the name. Dodsley's agent Mary Cooper would in any case have taken a large stock of the book, and placing her name on the title-page can have had no adverse effect on the book's circulation.

In an Advertisement to the second volume of the Essay (1782), Joseph Warton stated that 'this volume was printed, as far as the 201st page, above twenty years ago'. It would appear that in 1756 he did not immediately

forge ahead with the continuation but delayed until 1759. On 19 April of that year Robert Lowth wrote to him: It would seem that since the publication of the first volume Joseph had been having doubts as to the propriety of a respected schoolmaster's engaging in literary controversy ('the place from whence it comes' can only mean Winchester School, of which Joseph had become second master in 1755). This reassurance from Lowth, then Archdeacon of Winchester, must have encouraged him to continue, for printing was again under way early the following year. On 8 Feb. 1760 Joseph wrote to Thomas: Evidently the printing arrangements were those for the first volume. Joseph received the proofs not for proof-reading, but merely to keep him in touch with the work's progress: he does not mention them, and the Hume 'blunder' remained in the printed version (which suggests the half-sheet had been printed off when Thomas received Joseph's letter).

Although the second volume of the Essay was now making progress and Joseph Warton was in sight of the end, all work stopped after the printing of p. 200 (this must have happened later in 1760); and when a second edition of the Essay appeared in 1762, it was unaccompanied by the concluding volume. Joseph did not withhold the final part from the press, because none existed. He simply stopped writing it. His pen was not taken up to complete the work until 1781, when he was almost certainly fired into action by Johnson's 'Life of Pope'.[32]

It is impossible to be certain of the 'motives of a most delicate and laudable nature'[33] which caused him to cease writing, but the answer could be the simple one already suggested. The date of his proposal to Fletcher (twelve days before Lowth's letter) is perhaps significant: Joseph may at that moment have been considering abandoning the Essay in favour of the Voltaire scheme as one more befitting his position. It must be admitted, however, that the first volume had not aroused any general controversy (it was rather a case of traditional scholarship leading to an original conclusion) and it may be that Joseph's scruples were caused by a particularly influential individual who had been displeased with his adjustment of Pope's reputation. There is no solid evidence to identify this person, but the fact that Joseph probably ceased writing in the Spring or Summer of 1760 gives some support to Dr Pittock's suggestion that he was unwilling to offend his patron Lord Lyttelton, whose Dialogues of the Dead appeared in April-May 1760.[34]

Notes