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Notes
Grundy, `Verses Address'd to the Imitator of Horace: A Skirmish between Pope and Some Persons of Rank and Fortune', Studies in Bibliography, 30 (1977), 96-119. Further valuable material is to be found in Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy's edition of Lady Mary's Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy (1979); in Professor Grundy's thesis, >The Verse of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: A Critical Edition', (D. Phil., University of Oxford, 1971); in Rosemary Cowler's edition of The Prose Works of Alexander Pope, II (1986), pp. 431-498; in Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (1985), pp. 554-562; and in J. V. Guerinot, Pamphlet Attacks on Alexander Pope (1969), pp. 224-226. David Foxon provides a characteristically thorough account of the editions in English Verse 1701-1750, 2 vols (1975), V39-41, V44, V46.
The octavo volumes, which once belonged to J. W. Croker, are now BL C.116.b.1-4; they do not include either of the attacks on the imitator of Horace. Pope's fly-leaf inscription is quoted by Maynard Mack in Collected in Himself (1982), pp. 395- 396, and by Guerinot, p. li. The attacks range in date from 1711 to May 1733, and some provided material for The Dunciad. It is unclear why the collection stops in 1733. It is certainly possible that the publication of Verses crystallized and realized a long-term project.
Quotations are from the Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, IV, ed. John Butt, 2nd edn (1953).
An account of the four manuscripts and of Hervey's papers is to be found in Professor Grundy's thesis, pp. 513-514. The four manuscripts are BL Add. MS 35335, ff. 53-54 (annotated by Hervey), BL Add. MS 31152, ff. 25-26, Bodley MS Eng. Misc. 399, ff. 76-77, Longleat, Portland MS xix, ff. 149-150. Of these, the first and last generally agree with To the Imitator, the third agrees with the Verses but lacks the couplet added in the revised edition, and the second is intermediate. But none of these manuscripts is an autograph and their authority is uncertain.
See, for a general account of Lady Mary and Lord Hervey in this context, Grundy, `Verses Address'd to the Imitator of Horace'; for Oxford's note, my `Pope in the Private and Public Spheres: Annotations in the Second Earl of Oxford's Volume of Folio Poems, 1731-1735', SB, 48 (1995), 33-59 (49-50 and 55); and, for the Wyndham couplet, Mack, `A Couplet in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot', TLS, 2 September 1939, p. 515. Wyndham is probably referred to as `W—m' in `Letter to a Noble Lord', Prose Works, II, 452.
Habits of equivocation, at least as practised by Pope, seem not generally understood. For example, when Pope says, `I can truly affirm, that, ever since I lost the happiness of your conversation I have not published or written, one syllable of, or to either of you; never hitch'd your names in a Verse, or trifled with your good names in company' (>Letter to a Noble Lord', Prose Works, II, 445), he is exploiting the gap between reference and naming. An attack that does not name its victim but refers to him or her only by a nickname or an attribute is open to various interpretation; it can be denied, and Pope often offers such a denial. Hervey focuses on this issue in his draft preface to To the Imitator. The play is not always on the indeterminacy of reference. When the Advertisement to the Dunciad Variorum says the commentary `was sent me from several hands, and consequently must be unequally written' (1729, 4°, p. 3), I suspect Pope is equivocating on a basis Lady Mary may be using in her letter.
Discussions of authorship based on style are inconclusive. In his The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1956), pp. 141-144, Robert Halsband gives the major role to Lady Mary, but Isobel Grundy's subtle and sophisticated discussion in her thesis, unfortunately unpublished, finds important elements of Hervey's style present ('The Verse of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu', p. 512).
Lawton Gilliver, who played a leading role in the Grubstreet Journal, had inside knowledge of Pope's intrigues in this period, including his authorship of the Essay on Man. John Huggonson, who printed Part I of the Essay, started printing the Journal in October 1733, taking over from Sam Aris, who printed Part III. See my `Lawton Gilliver: Pope's Bookseller', SB, 32 (1979), 101-124.
Professor Grundy made an admirable survey of the advertisements. Without making an exhaustive search, I have noted the following advertisements. Verses: London Evening-Post 8, 10, 13, 15, 20, 22, 27, 29 March 1733, 16, 18, 21, 23 January 1735; Daily Post 8, 9 March 1733; Daily Post-Boy 9 March 1733; St. James's Evening-Post 10, 13 March 1733. To the Imitator: Whitehall Evening Post 8, 13 March; Daily Post 9, 12 March; London Evening-Post 10, 13 March; Daily Post-Boy 9 March; Daily Journal 9, 12 March.
R. W. Rogers seems the first modern writer to say it is a piracy, in The Major Satires of Alexander Pope (1955), p. 143; J. V. Guerinot agrees, pp. 224-226; and so does Rosemary Cowler, Prose Works, II, 465.
A good example of such costs is James Watson's piracy of Pope's letters. Maynard Mack includes much information in his transcription of documents from the legal case, but the clearest figures are the 9d. that Watson thinks represents his cost per book, and the cost of paper for 1600 copies, ,30 12 0, which amounts to 4.59d. per book (Collected in Himself [1982], pp. 498 [letter 17] and 497 [letter 13]). In a survey of unauthorized printings of the Dunciad, David L. Vander Meulen demonstrates a general concern to publish cheaply, often in smaller formats, but some willingness to spend money on paper and illustrations in order to produce competitive products; see `Unauthorized Editions of Pope's Dunciad, 1728-1751', in Writers, Books, and Trade, ed. O M Brack (1994), pp. 221-242.
Though Halsband, who records the information about Hervey's copy of the Epistle, would disagree (Lord Hervey [1973], p. 163). Professor Grundy gives transcriptions of Hervey's preface and title-page in her thesis, "The Verse of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu", pp. 514-516.
His name may have been John Bateman. See Stationers' Company Apprentices 1701-1800, ed. D. F. McKenzie, Oxford Bibliographical Society, n.s. 19 (1978), p. 387, for his binding on 5 December 1732. In representing his work I have exaggerated the deficiencies by completely closing spaces that are inadequate in the printed text.
The examination of the type would have been facilitated by use of a Hinman collator, but the Bodleian Library's Hinman collator is no longer available and my eyesight is inadequate to the British Library collator.
In `Pope in the Private and Public Spheres', p. 41, I mistakenly identified the printer as John Huggonson, a printer who was, like Henry Woodfall, closely associated with Pope in the 1730s. The ornaments identified by Richard J. Goulden, The Ornament Stock of Henry Woodfall 1719-1747, Occasional Papers of the Bibliographical Society No. 3 (1988) are, in the order they appear in the Verses: Foxon V39: 229, 5, 379 [the tailpiece on p. 8 not in Goulden]; V40: 229, 5, 381(1), 218; V41: 229, 5, 381(1), 218; V44: 298, 5, 379, 219.
See his edition of The Dunciad in The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, V, 438.
A Collection of Poems, 4 vols (1755), IV, 75-78. Professor Grundy takes the view that the poem is another collaboration (>The Verse of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu', pp. 528-531).
I have not been able to identify the `fruit basket' printer. He also printed George Lyttelton's Blenheim (a tribute to the house) in 1728, The Freeholder's Alarm to His Brethren in 1734, and some of both the eighth and tenth edition of L. Desprez's edition of Horace. This is a quality printer, and I have wondered whether he might be Roberts himself. The five publications contain ornaments: 7 headpieces; 4 tailpieces; 4 factotums; and one initial. They are well-cut ornaments, many of them designed by Francis Hoffman.
See Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, p. 142, and The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols (1965-67), II, 114. The Nonsense of Common Sense was printed by Charles Ackers on the evidence of the factotum, no. 165 in J. C. Ross, Charles Ackers' Ornament Usage, Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication 21 (1990). Ackers or, more probably, Samuel Palmer helped print the Desprez Horace, eighth edition, but I do not think Ackers is the fruit-basket printer.
Another bookseller who used Woodfall for his printing was R. Montagu at the General Post Office in Great Queen's Street. I have not been able to relate him to Lady Mary's Montagus, and I suspect bookselling (even of curious books from a warehouse) by a member of the family would not have been regarded as respectable or worthy of encouragement.
Works, ed. by Warburton (1751), VIII, 258; the `Letter' does not figure in the Contents of Warburton's edition and seems to be an afterthought. Hervey claimed, `Pope has not written one word but a manuscript in prose never printed, which he has shown to several of his friends, but which I have never seen', Earl of Ilchester, Lord Hervey and His Friends 1726-38 (1950), p. 189 (cited by Cowler, p. 440). What Hervey had not seen was probably the printed >Letter'. For Pope's relations with Wright, see my John Wright, Pope's Printer, Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication 11 (1977).
The year is supplied by Sherburn (Correspondence, III, 52-53), but there is little doubt that Pope thought Lady Mary was libelling him and his friends in 1729 and 1730.
The redirection of the satire from Grub Street to the failings of the aristocracy had already begun with the Epistles to Burlington and Bathurst. Maynard Mack gives a detailed and telling account of The Impertinent in his Life, pp. 603-607.
`The Dunciad in Four Books and the Bibliography of Pope', Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 83 (1989), 293-310 (304-306).
Griffith, Alexander Pope: A Bibliography, books 336 and 342. See David Foxon, Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade (1991), pp. 94-95 for an illustration of Pope's advertisement for the Odyssey.
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