Pope in the Private and Public Spheres:
Annotations in the Second Earl of Oxford's Volume of
Folio Poems, 1731-1736
by
James McLaverty
A volume of separately published folio poems now in the
Bodleian Library, shelfmark M 3.19 Art, provides an
unusual perspective on Pope's publishing activities
between 1731 and 1736 and evidence of the response
of his friend Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford.
Of the twenty-five pieces in the collection,
fourteen are written by Pope himself, three are
attacks on him by opponents, and eight are the work
of supporters or friends. Central are the four
epistles to several persons (or moral essays), An Essay on Man, and The First Satire of the Second Book
of Horace and its consequent attacks and
counter-attacks. Twenty of the poems are annotated
by Harley, fourteen are dated, and five have
detailed commentary. Harley's notes show that he
sided with Pope, even when members of his circle
became entangled in the satire, that he was
fascinated by questions of reference, and that he
attended
to textual variation. His
annotation has special interest because it coincides
with Pope's own first systematic attempts to mediate
between his poems and their public by providing a
commentary. Following Maynard Mack, I shall also
argue that in one of the poems in the collection,
An Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot, Pope has made three changes in his
own hand.
[1]
The early history of the volume leads to the Harleian
library, and then, through the sale of the library
(which peripherally draws in one of its cataloguers,
Samuel Johnson), to one of the Bodleian's greatest
benefactors, Richard Rawlinson. The Harleian
library, built up by Edward and his father, the
statesman Robert Harley, was one of the greatest of
all British libraries, and its manuscripts became
one of the founding collections of the British
Museum.[2] Edward Harley
(1689-1741) was an inveterate collector from his
undergraduate days, when he was already running up
large bills for books. To his father's extensive
collection of genealogy, heraldry, history,
politics, bibles, and prayer books, he added
incunabula, printing on vellum, illuminated
manuscripts, Greek and oriental manuscripts, coins
and medals, and much more. When the library was sold
it amounted to around 50,000 printed books (which
had been kept at the country house, Wimpole) and
7,639 volumes of manuscripts, with 14,236 deeds,
rolls, and charters (which had been stored at the
town house in Dover Street). Harley took a detailed
interest in the library, directing its organization
and furnishing, and dating his purchases; he was
generous to scholars, helping Maittaire, Palmer, and
Hearne among others. His generosity extended to
Pope, who treated the Dover Street house as
something of a London base and found his own uses
for the library.[3]
Pope saw that Harley's interest in books and his great
library had potential value to him, and in the
period immediately preceding the 1730s folios he
involved him in two of his most complicated
publishing operations. When the arrangements for The Dunciad Variorum in 1729
seemed likely to prove dangerous, with the printer
and bookseller liable to prosecution, he asked
Harley for help, suggesting that if a group of peers
were prepared to publish the work, no action could
be taken against them for libel. Harley agreed to
act and consequently Pope sent him instructions
about the distribution of
the
books, down to the most explicit details: 'I beg
your Lordship to send about 20 books to Cambridge,
but by no means to be given to any Bookseller, but
disposed of as by your own Order at 6s. by any
honest Gentleman or Head of a House.'
[4] Subsequently Harley was one of those
(the others were Burlington and Bathurst) who
assigned the copyright of
The
Dunciad to Lawton Gilliver. The second
operation involved Harley's library directly. As
early as September 1729 Pope wrote to Harley with
the request 'That you would suffer some Original
papers & Letters, both of my own and some of my
Friends, to lye in your Library at London' (
Correspondence, III, 54).
Later, with publication in mind, he asked for
permission to say that the originals were in
Harley's library and was told, 'what ever mention
you make of that Library I shall be pleased with'
(
Correspondence, III, 56).
In consequence, Harley's library became the home for
Pope's letters, the place of transcription (Harley
even became involved in checking the transcriptions
himself), and the vital stage on the route to
'involuntary' publication. Other works were
transcribed there, and for some of Pope's shorter
poems Harleian transcriptions provide the most
authoritative witness. There can be little doubt
that during the period Harley was collecting and
annotating the Bodleian folios, he was, through his
library, becoming intimately acquainted with many
aspects of Pope's career.
[5]
When Harley died, the state of his financial affairs
necessitated the sale of the library. The books were
bought by the bookseller Thomas Osborne for
£13,000, and it was probably at the Osborne
sale of the Harleian library that Richard Rawlinson
bought the volume now in the Bodleian.[6] It appears from his correspondence
that Rawlinson had not liked Harley, finding him
'incommunicative' and believing that he helped
scholars in order 'to beg the applause of the
world',[7] and he liked Osborne's
sale, or so he claimed, even less, fearing that the
bookseller would blend in his own stock with
Harley's books. He resolved not to buy, but when he
saw the books, 'a beautiful sight it was', he soon
gave way and started making purchases.[8] His dislike of Osborne
was something he shared with Pope
and Johnson. Osborne's advertisement of subscription
copies of the
Iliad at half
price had led to Pope's installing him as Curll's
rival in the urinating contest in
The Dunciad in 1743,
[9] but Johnson's
attack on the bookseller may have been more
effective. Employed with William Oldys, who had been
Harley's literary secretary, to supervise the
cataloguing of the library, he took offence at
Osborne's treatment of him, as Boswell explains: 'It
has been confidently related, with many
embellishments, that Johnson one day knocked Osborne
down in his shop, with a folio, and put his foot
upon his neck. The simple truth I had from Johnson
himself. "Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat
him. But it was not in his shop: it was in my own
chamber."' But, with characteristic fairness,
Johnson noted that though the sum paid for the
Harleian books would not have covered the cost of
the original binding, 'the slowness of the sale was
such, that there was not much gained by it.'
[10]
Rawlinson died on 6 April 1755, leaving 5,205 volumes of
manuscripts and between 1,800 and 1,900 printed
books to the Bodleian Library. In his Will be
specifically bequeathed to the Bodleian books such
'as shall appear to have therein any manuscript
additions, or explanatory enlightning or
controversial notes, either by myself or any other
person or persons whatsoever'.[11] The volume which is now M 3.19 Art
clearly falls into that category, but it did not
come to the Library with the other volumes in the
bequest that started to arrive from 1756 onwards. It
seems to have arrived there between 1874 and 1880,
the period during which a book by Devèze de
Chabriol that had previously been at M 3.19 Art was
moved to Physics b. 13. The history of the volume in
the intervening period remains at present
unknown.[12]
The folio poems collected by Harley cover the period
following the publication of the Dunciad Variorum in March 1729 and
culminating in the issue of the second volume of Works in April 1735. The
collection was probably given to the binder over a
year after the appearance of Works II; the last poem in the collection,
Bounce to Fop, was
published in May 1736, and the first Pope poem to be
published after that, presumably too late to be
bound
with these, was
Horace his Ode to Venus on 9
March 1737.
[13] Some of Harley's notes,
those on
An Epistle from a
Nobleman (title-page) and
To Arbuthnot (15.9), which are transcribed
with the others at the end of this essay, show
knowledge of the quarto or folio
Works of 1735, but that does not mean all
the notes (even in those poems) were made after that
date, and the most likely pattern is of annotation
shortly after receipt followed by some further notes
around the time of binding. The book is bound quite
plainly, which befits its status as a collection of
folio pamphlets rather than a subscription edition
of Homer or a fine-paper copy of the
Works. The front and back
covers are bound in marbled brown calf, with a gilt
double-rule border; the spine is in smooth calf with
a red gilt-bordered label, gilt-stamped 'EPISTLES BY
M
r. POPE & OTHERS'. On
the top left-hand side of the front cover a strip,
measuring c. 3 x 10 (all measurements are in cms.),
has been torn away. The volume measures 37.2 (high)
x 23 (wide) x 3.6 (deep). The endpapers are marbled
and the inside of the front cover bears the
Rawlinson bookplate based on his diploma as Doctor
of Laws.
[14] On the first page after
the endpapers, someone has written in pencil in an
open sprawling eighteenth-century hand, 'MSS. Notes
of the hand writing of Lord Oxford'. This
identification is confirmed in an ink annotation by
a librarian. The volume has been bulked out with
blank sheets: eight leaves before item 1, two in
item 2 before p. 5, six before item 15, and eight
more at the end. Item 1 has been repaired by the
Library; item 2 has two readily perceptible
stab-holes. One item in the collection, 12
*, I do not understand. It
consists of two leaves of
An Essay
on Man with a line already present written
out at the foot. I do not think the writing is
Harley's or Pope's.
The poems in the collection fall into three groups,
though there are various interlinkings and Harley's
own arrangement is loosely chronological. First, and
as the heart of the collection, come the poems Pope
planned as part of the opus
magnum which was to be founded on the basis
of the Essay on Man: the Essay itself, represented by
the first edition and revision of the first epistle
and first editions of the other three (1733-34); and
first editions of the supplementary poems, To Burlington (1731), To Bathurst (1732), To Cobham (1733), and To a Lady.[15] Second comes the group associated
with Horatian imitations. Perhaps to help ensure the
anonymity of the Essay on
Man, Pope published his imitation of The First Satire of the Second Book
of Horace in 1733 and followed it with an
imitation of The Second
Satire of the same book. The First Satire rapidly whipped up a
controversy of its own: responses included an attack
from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Hervey, and
William Wyndham, Verses Address'd
to the Imitator . . . of Horace (1733), with
an anonymous riposte, Advice to
Sappho (1733), and an
attack from Hervey alone,
An
Epistle from a Nobleman to a Dr. of Divinity
(1733), with its anonymous riposte,
Tit for Tat (1734). To this
group also belong Pope's
Sober
Advice from Horace (1734) and his reply to
his critics,
An Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot (1735). The final group consists of
poems by friends and protégés. Three
young friends developed themes that were important
to Pope. David Mallet attacked Bentley and Theobald
in
Verbal Criticism: An Epistle to
Mr Pope (1733); Gilbert West praised Lord
Cobham's gardens in
Stowe . . .
Address'd to Mr. Pope (1732); and Walter
Harte contributed
An Essay on
Reason (1735), whose title echoes that of the
prospective first epistle of the second stage of the
opus magnum. Mallet was at
pains to emphasize his independence of Pope: 'this
poem was undertaken and written entirely without the
knowledge of the Gentleman to whom it is addressed',
but we know from a letter of 7 November [1732] that
Pope had seen it before publication, 'The Epistle I
have read over & over, with great & just
Delight; I think it correct throughout, except one
or two small things that savor of Repetition toward
the latter End' (
Correspondence III, 330). Of the four Swift
poems included at the end of the collection,
On Poetry (1733),
An Epistle to a Lady (1734),
The Life and Genuine Character
of Doctor Swift (1733), and
Bounce to Fop (1736), the two last have been
attributed to Pope, and it is quite possible he had
a hand in their revision or publication.
[16]
Harley's collection represents both the new direction
Pope was giving to his career and the publishing
arrangements that went with it. The opus magnum was to be combined
with The Dunciad to make a
new volume of Works. The
plans for the opus magnum are
known to us mainly through the account Pope gave to
Spence in 1730 and through a cancelled leaf in the
fine-paper quarto edition of the complete Essay on Man. This leaf,
containing the 'Index to the Ethic Epistles', is
preserved in a copy in the Cambridge University
Library and shows a division into two books.[17] The first book contains the four
epistles of An Essay on Man;
the second book contains nine projected epistles,
arranged to correspond to the four epistles of An Essay on Man. The plan may
be summarized in modernized typography by giving
Pope's account of the first book and following each
epistle with the parallel material of the second
book in brackets: Of the nature and state of man [Of
the use of things]; Epistle I, With respect to the
universe [Of the limits of human reason; Of the use
of learning; Of the use of wit]; Epistle II, As an
individual [Of the knowledge and characters of men;
Of the particular characters of women];
Epistle III, With respect to society
[Of the principles and use of civil and
ecclesiastical polity; Of the use of education];
Epistle IV, With respect to happiness [A view of the
equality of happiness in the several conditions of
men; Of the use of riches, etc.]. As Miriam
Leranbaum has explained, the project was never
completed, though it continued to haunt Pope's
thinking for the rest of his career.
[18] The four poems Bateson decided to
call 'Epistles to Several Persons' represent, more
or less explicitly, contributions to the grand
design:
To Cobham and
To a Lady correspond to the two
epistles planned for the second section, while
To Bathurst and
To Burlington correspond to
aspects of the final section. Other material seems
to have been used in the fourth book of
The Dunciad, published in 1742.
Pope clearly anticipated that Harte's
Essay on Reason would be taken
as part of the design, and a letter to Mallet in the
summer of 1734 suggests that he welcomed the
prospect:
I fancy the Title of an Essay on Reason is the best,
& am half of opinion, if no Name be set to it,
the public will think it mine especially since in
the Index, (annext to the large paper Edition of
the Essay on Man) the Subject of the next Epistle
is mentioned to be of Human
Reason &c. But whether this may be an
Inducement, or the Contrary, to Mr Harte, I know
not: I like his poem so well (especially since his
last alterations) that it would no way displease
me. (Correspondence, III,
408-409)
The extent of Pope's contribution to
An Essay on Reason is in
doubt, but it appeared anonymously, and was indeed
mistaken for Pope's work.
[19]
It is not clear when Pope decided that he would not
himself be able to complete the opus magnum in time for the 1735 Works or when he decided to
abandon the scheme altogether. David Foxon has
shrewdly suggested that the publication of The Impertinent as a scruffy
quarto on 5 November 1733 may be the first sign of
self-doubt, while the Works
in quarto and folio suggest a certain amount of
dithering.[20] Gilliver's
advertisement leaf in To a
Lady, which appeared a couple of months
before the Works, simply
gives a twofold division, Essay on
Man and 'Epistles to Several Persons'; the
Works themselves hedge
their bet with a division into An
Essay on Man and 'Ethic Epistles, The Second
Book: Epistles to Several Persons', under which
heading To Cobham, To a Lady, To
Bathurst, and To
Burlington fall indifferently with To Addison, To Oxford, and To Arbuthnot. But it is clear
from the organization of the epistles in the series
of octavo Works that followed
the publication of the quarto and folio Works II in 1735 that Pope
still clung to some of his original vision. The
half-titles of the subsequent octavo volumes
(Griffith 388, 389, and 430) revived the opus magnum plan by
implementing a four-part division: 'An Essay on Man,
Being the First Book of Ethic Epistles'; 'Ethic
Epistles, The Second Book'; 'Epistles, The Third
Book. To Several
Persons';
'Satires of Horace Imitated, With the Satires of Dr.
Donne, Versified by the same hand'. This was
accompanied by careful paralleling of the first two
books: both had a 'Contents' section which presented
a schematic account of the epistles, and that
account then shadowed the text in footnotes. This
was the pattern in the first three editions of
octavo
Works II in 1735 and
1736, but in 1739 the pattern changed: the influence
of the original quarto and folio reasserted itself
and the new
Works II
(Griffith 505) divided the epistles into two
sections only,
An Essay on
Man and 'Epistles to Several Persons'; the
'Contents' relating to the four epistles was
dropped; commentary linking the first and second
books (for example, on pp. 19, 24) was omitted; and
commentary suggesting an abandoned plan was added
("The Deduction and Application of the forgoing
Principles, with the
Use or
Abuse of
Civil and
Ecclesiastical
Policy, was intended for the subject of the
third Book', p. 46). This collection, planned in
1738, probably marks the point when Pope finally
abandoned the
opus magnum,
but during the time of Harley's collecting, the
project was still very much alive, and the evidence
of the early
Works II octavos
is that Pope regarded his inability to complete it
by 1735 as setback rather than a defeat.
To Burlington, which is the first
item in the collection, was probably something of a
trial run for the opus magnum
epistles, and it is representative of Pope's new
publishing arrangements. It was printed by John
Wright for Lawton Gilliver and so continued the
pairing that Pope had established to publish the Dunciad Variorum. After
quarrelling with Lintot over the subscription for
the Odyssey, Pope decided to
control the publication of his works himself. He
employed John Wright, who had formerly been manager
of John Barber's printing shop but had now set up on
his own account—or Pope's—on St. Peter's
Hill, and Lawton Gilliver, a bookseller almost out
of his apprenticeship, who had just set up in Fleet
Street at the appropriately named Homer's Head.[21] This combination of experienced
printer and novice bookseller was perfectly suited
to Pope's needs. Heavy demands were to be made on
the printer's skill and patience by complex books
(The Dunciad Variorum) and
extensive revision (everywhere), while copyrights
were to be guarded and profit margins squeezed.
After the publication of To
Burlington, which, because of the furore over
the 'Timon's Villa' episode, must have been a
critical nightmare for Pope but a commercial success
for Gilliver, the poet and bookseller signed an
agreement which was clearly designed to take care of
the completion of the opus
magnum. The basis for the agreement of 1
December 1732 was that Pope intended to 'publish
certain Poems or Epistles', that he might choose to
offer some of them to Gilliver, and that Gilliver
would pay £50 for the privilege of printing
and publishing each one for a year. A subsidiary
interest was entry in the Stationers' Register to
protect the copyright; Gilliver promised to enter
each poem correctly in the Register, to enjoy the
benefit of the entry for one year, and after that to
hold
it in trust for Pope. It was
probably at this same time that Pope made the
declaration that is kept with the agreement in the
British Library. The declaration is undated and it
refers quite formally to the agreement without
giving its date, which suggests it was written on
the same day. The Declaration deals with the
possibility of Pope's death before he has finished
the
opus magnum, ensuring
that Gilliver would be free to publish the existing
epistles in a volume of
Works. Gilliver, as the declaration points
out, owned the
Dunciad
copyright, so there was a joint interest in the
Works, which was finally
entered to Pope and Gilliver in half shares in the
Register.
The agreement and declaration had their impact on the
twenty-five items (fourteen by Pope) in Harley's
collection. Nine are printed by Wright and published
by Gilliver (four have both names in the imprint),
and in addition each was involved in one publication
without the other, Wright printing the fourth
epistle of An Essay on Man
and Gilliver publishing Of Verbal
Criticism. I suspect that only the need for
anonymity deprived them of a full hand of all
fourteen Pope items. Maynard Mack has stressed
Pope's determination to obtain an unprejudiced
critical reception for An Essay on
Man, and this extended to avoiding the by
then well established association with Gilliver and
Wright (Twickenham, III, i,
xv). For the publication of the Essay Pope turned to the printer and
publisher of The Grub Street
Journal, which he seems to have been involved
with, through Gilliver, in the early stages.
Official publication of An Essay
on Man was by John Wilford, a shareholder in
the Journal from 7 September
1732 and subsequently its publisher, and printing
was by Samuel Aris (Epistle III) and John Huggonson
(Epistle I), successively printers of the Journal, with Edward Say
(Epistle II), who, as far as I know, has no other
Pope connection, making up the number.[22]
Sober Advice was also kept
anonymous, but for reasons of decency. The
bookseller was Thomas Boreman and the printer John
Hughs. That completes the account of the Pope poems,
except for Bounce to Fop. The
names of the same printers appear surprisingly often
in an account of the other eleven. On the evidence
of imprints and ornaments, Wright and Gilliver
produced West's Stowe and
Harte's Essay on Reason
('Printed by J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver' in the
latter suggesting an official Pope publication);
Gilliver and Say produced Mallet's Of Verbal Criticism, and Say printed Swift's
The Life and Genuine Character
of Doctor Swift and possibly (from the style
of the ornaments only) Tit for
Tat; Huggonson printed Verses Address'd to the Imitator . . . of
Horace, in its first and fifth editions, and
Swift's On Poetry; and Aris
printed Swift's An Epistle to a
Lady. The printers of Advice to Sappho, Hervey's Epistle to a Nobleman, and Bounce to Fop remain unidentified. This
concentration on a relatively small circle of book
trade figures suggests the
influence of Gilliver as Pope's bookseller. He was
doubtless sought out by Pope's admirers, and those
given Pope's or Swift's anonymous works to print
tended to be otherwise associated with him in his
business.
One of the major interests of Harley's volume is the
annotation of dates of publication and receipt. The
established relationship between Pope and Gilliver
may explain the regularity with which Harley not
only received these poems but was sent
pre-publication copies. However, the single
reference to the topic in Pope's correspondence
suggests otherwise. On 30 December 1734 Pope wrote
to Harley, 'I hoped to have had Interest enough with
my negligent Bookseller [Gilliver] to have procur'd
a Copy of the Epistle to Dr A. to accompany my
Letter. I doubt whether I shall do it yet?' (Correspondence, III, 446). In
this case Harley notes the date of publication,
'Publisht Janu. 2. 1734/5', which coincides with the
date of entry in the Stationer's Register and of
advertisement in the London
Evening Post, but does not make it clear when
he received his copy. Pope's correspondence shows
that he was well aware of the value of providing
pre-publication copies to interested parties and
influential friends. Off-prints of The Rape of the Locke, for example, were
sent to Arabella Fermor, Robert Petre, and John
Caryll in May 1712 (Correspondence, I, 145), and, towards the
end of his life, in a letter to Warburton of 21
February 1744 Pope advised him, 'I would also defer
. . . the publication of the Two Essays [On Criticism and On Man] with your Notes in
Quarto, that (if you thought it would be taken well)
you might make the Compliment to any of your Friends
(& particularly of the Great ones, or of those
whom I find most so) of sending them as Presents
from yourself' (Correspondence, IV, 500). Such
pre-publication copies would be especially valued by
a collector like Harley. He frequently annotated his
volumes with dates of receipt, and he would have
been encouraged in the practice by an unusual letter
from Pope of 16 May 1729, seeking his help in
compiling a case against Burnet, Duckett, and
Dennis, the authors of Pope
Alexander's Supremacy, 'I therfore beg your
Lordship to send a Careful hand to buy the Book of
Lintot, (who must not be known to come from you)
& to enter down the day of the month. . . . Let
the same Man, after he has the book, go to Roberts
the Publisher in Warwick lane and threaten him,
unless he declares the author' (Correspondence, III, 33-34).
Harley's annotation of the date of receipt or publication
is not systematic, only fourteen out of the
twenty-five poems are dated, and it is not easy to
discern a pattern. Inadvertance may have played its
part, but the most likely explanation is that poems
were dated if they were complimentary copies. The
attacks on Pope by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and
Lord Hervey, Tit for Tat, and
three of the Swift poems, for example, were unlikely
to be sent by their authors. And Gilbert West, the
nephew of Lord Cobham, may not have felt himself in
need of powerful friends to the same extent as 'Mr
Mallet. a Scots Gentleman' whose poem was 'Sent by
the Author'. On the other hand, it would be very
surprising if Harley had not
been
sent the revised version of
To
Burlington, To Bathurst, and
To Cobham by Pope himself,
especially since
To Bathurst
contained the lines,
Who copies Yours or OXFORD's better part,
To ease th'oppress'd, and raise the sinking
heart?
It may be that in this and some other cases,
Harley was sent a fine-paper copy that was bound
elsewhere; only the joint satires of the
Satires of the Second Book of
Horace are in fine-paper copy here. It is not
clear either why some poems are annotated with the
date of publication rather than of receipt. The
distinction between the two is clear in the copy of
To a Lady, where the
half-title is annotated with the date of receipt, 6
February 1735, and the title with the date of
publication, 7 February 1735. In another case, that
of the two
Satires of the Second
Book of Horace, the publication date
recorded, quite accurately, as 15 February 1733, is
the date of publication of the first satire, not of
both satires, which did not appear together until 9
July 1734. It seems possible that these dates were
given to Harley by Pope, otherwise he must have
given scrupulous attention to the newspapers and
journals.
[23] The dates of receipt
may usefully be compared with the dates of
publication as given by David Foxon in his
catalogue, which makes good use of Harley's datings.
The general pattern is of receipt one or two days
before publication:
Advice to
Sappho, 12 April 1733 (13 April);
Essay on Man III, 4 May 1733 (8
May);
Essay on Man IV, 22
January 1734 (24 January);
Verbal
Criticism 14 April 1733 (16 April);
Sober Advice, 20 December 1734
(21 December);
To a Lady, 6
February 1735 (7 or 8 February);
Essay on Reason, 6 February 1735 (7
February);
The Life and Genuine
Character of Doctor Swift, 12 April 1733 (?20
April). The very early receipt of the last item is
another small grain in the balance towards
establishment of Pope's authorship, while the
presence of Harte's
Essay on
Reason in this list confirms the impression
that Pope was contriving to have this work mistaken
for his own.
Harley's other annotations have special importance
because they coincide with Pope's own growing
interest in the editing and annotation of his work.
When Pope wrote to Jacob Tonson, senior, about the
publication of Bentley's Milton and Theobald's
Shakespeare, I suspect his reference to his own work
was only half in jest: 'I think I should
congratulate your Cosen on the new Trade he is
commencing, of publishing English classicks with
huge Commentaries. Tibbalds will be the Follower of
Bentley, & Bentley of Scriblerus. What a Glory
will it be to the Dunciad, that it was the First
Modern Work publish'd in this manner?' (Correspondence, III, 243-244.)
The Dunciad Variorum itself
seems to have been modelled on Claude Bossette's
edition of Bolieau, published in Geneva in 1716.[24] The typography, especially the
division of the notes into 'Remarks'
and 'Imitations' (though the
Variorum lacks the 'Changemens' found in the
Boileau) seems to derive from that edition, and
Pope's
Variorum could claim
like Boileau's
Oeuvres to be
'Avec Eclaircissemens Historiques, Donnez par
lui-meme'. Although much of the
Dunciad apparatus is comic and parodic, much
of it also is highly informative and justificatory
(most 'Imitations', for example, simply identify
allusions), and the influence of Boileau did not die
with publication of the
Variorum but lived through the preparation
of the
Works. Jonathan
Richardson has explained that he was given the
manuscripts of the
Essay on
Man 'for the pains I took in collating the
whole with the printed editions . . . on my having
proposed to him the making an edition of his works
in the manner of Boileau's'.
[25] The original
plan must have been for
Works
II to appear with annotations to both the
Dunciad and the
opus magnum epistles, as the
'Postscript' to the quarto and folio
Works makes clear:
It was intended in this Edition, to have added
Notes to the Ethic Epistles as well as to
the Dunciad, but the book
swelling to too great a bulk, we are oblig'd to
defer them till another Volume may come out, of
such as the Author may hereafter write, with
several Pieces in Prose relating to the same
subjects.
In the mean time, that nothing contained in the
former Editions may be wanting in this, we have
here collected all the Variations of the separate Impressions, and
the Notes which have been
annexed to them, with the addition of a few more
which have been judg'd the most necessary.
Some notes, therefore, remain at the foot of the page as
they were in the individual editions; others are
placed at the end. The 'Changemens' lacking in the
Dunciad are here provided
as endnotes, though only for An
Essay on Man and To
Arbuthnot, and there are 'Remarques', now
'Notes', on To Bathurst and
To Arbuthnot. The two
octavo editions of Works II
of 1735 and their successors elaborated the notes,
which were placed at the foot of the page, but they
did not include the 'Variations'.[26] By comparing Harley's notes with
those in the quarto, folio, and octavo Works, we can contrast Pope's
implied reader with an actual one, though it is
important to recognise that Pope was constrained by
the laws of libel, as Harley working in his library
was not.
Harley shows no interest in 'Imitations', which is
surprising for a man of keen scholarly interests.
Pope provides literary notes on Oppian at Essay on Man, III, 178, on
Virgil at To Bathurst, 75,
184 (octavo only), on Don
Quixote at To
Burlington, 160 (octavo only), and on
Pitholeon (49, octavo only), Chaucer (72), Horace
(88, octavo only), and Milton (319, octavo only) in
To Arbuthnot. It is
possible that Pope included these notes in the
octavo editions
because they were
for a general, and less educated, public, whereas
the quartos and folios were aimed at the wealthy,
including scholars and collectors like Harley, who,
it might be thought, needed no help in identifying
references and allusions. Certainly the development
of a running explanatory commentary and system of
cross-references in the octavos suggests their
readers are in need of a helping authorial hand. But
in the case of the 'Imitations', it seems more
likely that Pope really was short of time in
preparing the quarto and folio and had to leave some
things out; many purchasers of the quartos and
folios were probably, like Harley, more interested
in personalities than intertextuality.
Where the Works II octavos do seem
to be responsive to Pope's sense of his readership
is in the omission of 'Variations'. The Works I octavos published at
the same time do include them, but those editions
provided Pope's first serious opportunity to
elaborate his early texts. It is clear from the
'Postscript' in the large-format Works that Pope attached the need for
'Variations' to the purchase of expensive editions;
purchasers spending a guinea would want a truly
complete Works, one that
included the readings of individual editions that
their friends told them about. The 'Variations'
would also appeal to another category of reader, the
persistent purchasers of Pope's poems in folio (and
sometimes quarto), who would be interested in having
their attention drawn to novelties in the new book.
In the octavos space was at a premium, and the
difference in format and price removed the sense of
obligation to provide variant readings.
In his attention to textual variation Harley shows a
scholarly enthusiasm lacking in the treatment of
'Imitations'. This is particularly evident in his
comparison of the two versions of the first epistle
of An Essay on Man. In some
ways his annotation is superior to that supplied in
the quarto and folio Works,
presumably by Jonathan Richardson working under
Pope's supervision. Harley compared his copy of the
first edition of the first epistle with the revised
edition Pope published two months later, and marked
the changes in the first edition. On the first page
he notes the change made famous by Johnson, from 'A
mighty Maze! of walks without a Plan' to 'A mighty
Maze! but not without a Plan' (Lives of the Poets, III, 162). Although Mack
in his Twickenham volume points out that both lines
are susceptible of orthodox interpretation, Pope's
failure to include the original line in the Works 'Variations' suggests
that he was not anxious to keep it before his
public. Harley notes further detailed verbal changes
in the early stages of the poem, without providing a
comprehensive collation. Some of the changes may be
recorded because they particularly appealed to his
sensibility. For example, the revision of the word
'spreads' to 'swells' in the line 'Suckles each
herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r' (134) is ignored
by the Works 'Variations' but
recorded by Harley, whereas the complicated revision
of the lines about bliss (93-94) are recorded in the
'Variations' but ignored by Harley. What is
particularly impressive about Harley's collation is
the neat recording of major deletions and shifts by
the use of marginal 'x's. On page 6 at lines 14-15,
for example, he notes that six lines from later in
the poem are inserted
at this
point, and he duly marks the lines with an 'x'
(7.1). On page 10 he marks lines 7-12, two of which
were transferred and four omitted. It must be
conceded that Harley lacked stamina as a collator,
and that towards the end of the poem the 'x's are
used in a general way to note a complex revision of
a whole passage (13.1-2 and 14.18-19), but his notes
suggest an admirably careful and attentive reader,
with an awareness of the sort of distinctions that
became so important in later controversies about
this poem.
Other poems provided few opportunities for collation, but
Harley's notes on To
Arbuthnot show an attentiveness to minor
changes in the representation of Lord Hervey in the
Works text, even though he
ignores some of the omissions and developments
picked up by the Works
'Variations'. The change from 'Damon' to 'Fanny' is
noted at page 8 line 13, and in the margin of the
reference to 'Paris' on page 15 line 9 he writes,
'In a late edition the name is changed to Sporus a
more proper nick name' (see Figure 1). In this
instance a difference in the use of the pen suggests
that Harley has come back to the poem some time
after making the original annotation, which
presumably preceded the 1735 Works. His note draws attention to the
increased harshness of treatment of Hervey in the
Works text, and, of course,
he had no need to record the other variants when the
Works did it for him. Verses to the Imitator of . . .
Horace is a parallel case, and the two stages
of annotation suggest, if rather weakly, that the
first was probably not long after receipt.
Harley's main interest in annotating the poems is in the
personalities represented. This form of interest
goes back at least as far as The
Dunciad, when he wrote to Pope in a letter of
27 May 1728, 'I see curl has advertised a Key to the
Dunciad, I have been asked for one by several
[Sherburn signifies a gap here] I wish the True one
was come out' (Correspondence, II, 496). It was an interest
Pope encouraged and shared. The question of naming
preoccupied him at this time: it is discussed in the
'Cleland' preface to The Dunciad
Variorum; in Boileau's discourse annexed to
Walter Harte's Essay on Satire,
Particularly on the Dunciad; and in The First Satire of the Second Book
of Horace, To Arbuthnot, and To a Lady. Harley shows no
scruples about naming; he merely wants to know who's
who. Most of the annotations are simple
identifications. The best example is The First Satire of the Second Book
of Horace, where there are five
straightforward identifications, four of which are
accepted as correct by modern editors. A fifth, that
of Dr. Hollings as 'Celsus', is ignored by John Butt
in the Twickenham edition,
perhaps because Hollings has proved impossible to
identify. The five identifications are accompanied
by what I take to be seven queries, represented by
underlinings in red pencil. In a letter which is
unfortunately undated but which Sherburn allots to
1733, Pope writes to Harley from Dover Street, 'I
find here Two red Lead pencils, one of which I
presume is for me, & therfore I have taken it
away (for it writes well)' (Correspondence, III, 359). I assume that
Harley is using another of these pencils for his
underlinings here and elsewhere, though the colour
is now a reddish-brown. The underlinings probably
precede publication of To
Arbuthnot, which would have identified
Budgell, and they show that Harley had some
difficulty in spotting allusions
to members of his own circle.
'Shylock and his Wife', although unidentified by
Butt, are surely Edward and Mary Wortley Montagu,
who appeared under the same name (and as 'Worldly')
in
To Bathurst, though Harley
does not identify them there either.
[27]
Sometimes Harley's identifications are confirmed by Pope
in subsequent editions, as when Gage (To Bathurst, 8.2) is given his
full name in the first Works
II octavo, or when a full note is supplied on Sir
John Blount (To Bathurst 8.7)
in the large-format Works II.
Sometimes confirmation is delayed until Warburton's
edition, as in the case of Arthur Moore (To Arbuthnot 2.13). None of the
identifications has been discredited by modern
scholarship, though Butt suggests that 'Lady
M------' in Sober Advice
(7.20) may be Lady Mary Wortley Montagu rather than
Lady Mohun, and he omits the identification of
Theobald as the butt of 'Three things another's
modest wishes bound, / My Friendship, and a
Prologue, and ten Pound' (To
Arbuthnot 3.16), of the Duke of Argyll as the
man Welsted wishes to be commended to (To Arbuthnot 3.17), and of 'one
Hamilton' as the man offering to 'go snacks' (To Arbuthnot 4.12-13).
Sometimes Harley himself expresses an intelligent
caution. His note on 'Bufo' in To
Arbuthnot (12.8) seems to have been written
in three stages. First he wrote a cautious 'this
character made fit many I think it is cheifly the
right of mr Bubb Doddington'. Then, possibly on
immediately reading what he had written, he added
'but' before the 'I' to admit his daring. Finally he
added in red pencil, possibly after talking to Pope,
'it would also fit the late earl of Halifax'. This
is a shrewd recognition of Pope's practice of double
reference that might serve as guide to modern
editors.[28] Similarly, next to
'Fannia' in To a Lady, he
notes 'It is said this hints at the Countess of
Pembroke, who used to be drawn in these several
attitudes', showing respect for Pope's concern in
his preface that ladies should not be identified. He
has no hesitation, however, in identifying the
addressee of the poem as Martha Blount; in doing so
he shows that contemporaries were willing to accept
the poem as a tribute in a way that Warburton,
possibly out of personal dislike for Martha Blount,
would not, insisting that the addressee is
'imaginary'.[29]
In three cases, Harley provides longer notes. On page 8
of To Bathurst he gives a
very specific anecdote illustrating Lady Mary
Herbert's meanness, which contrasts with the more
general one provided by Pope in the Works. Pope's note deals with
Lady Mary and Gage together:
The two Persons here
mentioned were of Quality, each of whom in the
time of the Missisipi despis'd to realize above
three hundred thousand
pounds: The Gentleman with a view to the
purchase of the Crown of Poland, the Lady on a
Vision of the like Royal nature. They since
retired into Spain, where they are still in search
of Gold in the Mines of the Asturies.
Pope's note lacks some of the tang
of specific social transgression supplied by
Harley's, but it gives a more general picture.
Harley's gift for vivid anecdote also shows in the
Miller's Tale-style story
told of Lady Mohun as a note to
Sober Advice (7.20). This story suits the
bawdy tone of
Sober Advice,
and chimes in perfectly with the annotated couplet,
A Lady's Face is all you see undress'd;
(For none but Lady M-------- shows the
Rest),
The anecdote is entirely apposite, though the
point of the story (does Lord Mohun recognize his
wife's buttocks or not?) is not entirely clear. The
third longer note is on 'Paris' in
To Arbuthnot (15.9; see Figure 1). This is
composed of three parts: a variant reading; a
scholarly account of Sporus's 'Gelding' (an
interesting feature of this and the previous
anecdote is Harley's use of capital letters to
highlight impropriety); and a judgement, 'It so
happens that this is generaly applyed to Lord
Harvey, and as he deserved it of Mr Pope, it is very
proper for him & is very justly Drawn'. It is
significant that Harley is here endorsing Pope's
treatment of an important court figure at a point in
Pope's career when the question of birth and status
had been made important to him. The issues raised by
Verses Address'd to the Imitator
. . . of Horace and Pope's reply in
To Arbuthnot make the response
of an aristocrat like Harley especially
interesting.
Harley is our most important source for the authorship of
the Verses. To the usual
co-authors, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord
Hervey, he adds a third, William Wyndham, 'under
Tutor to the Duke of Cumber-land and married to my
Lady Deloraine'. Maynard Mack ingeniously, and
surely correctly, suggests that this explains an
allusion in To Arbuthnot, one
of those marked in red pencil:
To please a Mistress,
One aspers'd his life;
He lash'd him not, but let her be his Wife.[30]
Isobel Grundy, in her fine article on the
Verses Address'd to the Imitator . .
. of Horace, points out that the marriage did
not take place until April 1734, over a year after
the publication of the poem, and takes this as the
date after which Harley's annotation must have been
made.
[31] But the 'and' of 'and
married to my Lady Deloraine' starts more than an
ordinary space away from 'Cumberland' and a little
lower than the line established by the earlier
writing. It is at least possible that Harley
identified the authors at an early stage (his wife,
as Grundy points out, was a friend of Lady
Deloraine) and added the information about the
marriage when he was looking through later, either
on the publication of
To
Arbuthnot or at the time of binding the
folios together. After all, if Harley himself did
not give the information on the authorship of the
Verses to Pope, somebody
like him must have done so. Harley shows no
hostility to Lady Deloraine or Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu
(another of Lady Oxford's
friends), but he clearly sided with Pope against
Lord Hervey as he gleefully annotated
An Epistle from a Nobleman,
'that is my Lord Harvey alias Lord Fanny, alias
Paris, alias Sporus alias &c &c &c.' and
wrote of the addressee, 'The Dean of Chichester Dr.
Shewin a very great scoundrel'. The relationship
between the
Verses Address'd to
the Imitator . . . of Horace and
To Arbuthnot interested Harley,
as at this stage it interested Pope and his implied
readers. He notes that the 'Fifth Edition Corrected'
of the
Verses is no such
thing and that it was a reprint in response to
To Arbuthnot. On page 19 he
improves on Pope's footnote reference to the
Verses by giving page and line
numbers; in the 'Fifth Edition' of the
Verses he would have found a
reference to page 19 of
To
Arbuthnot. Harley makes no comment on Pope's
account of his parentage. In the light of Johnson's
debunking information that his father was 'a linen
draper in the Strand',
[32] it is easy
to forget that many of the country's leading
figures, Harley, Burlington, Bathurst, Cobham, must
have read this account and believed it; it is not
improbable Pope believed it himself.
In Harley, therefore, Pope found a careful and attentive
reader, a collector sharing his own interest in
first editions and textual variation, and an
interpreter with an eye for personal satire but a
willingness to rest in doubts and uncertainties when
they were necessary. What we cannot know is how far
Harley's reading was guided by Pope himself, and
unfortunately Pope's own annotations of To Arbuthnot are far from
having the self-explanatory quality that might help
us. There is even some doubt about where Pope's
contribution starts and Harley's ends, for although
there are two interventions convincingly attributed
to Pope, and I shall go on to propose another, three
more single-letter annotations, cautiously proposed
as Pope's by Maynard Mack, are not, I believe, by
him. The doubtful annotations are not without
importance. On page 15 (Figure 1) someone has
designated speakers of the dialogue: 'P' (Pope)
speaks first; 'Dr' (Arbuthnot)
replies; and the 'P' begins the Sporus portrait.
When Warburton produced his edition of Pope in 1751,
he gave all the speeches in To
Arbuthnot to either 'P' or 'A', and To Bathurst was similarly
divided. If Pope made the changes to Harley's copy,
the probability that Warburton was following Pope's
instructions is increased. Although the difficulties
of distinguishing handwriting on so narrow a base
are self-evident, I think these capitals can be
identified as Harley's. The 'P' has a distinctive
foot, which is also to be found in the margin in
'Paris'. The 'D' is also distinctive, looking a
little like a treble-clef; the vertical line rises
above the bowl of the letter, which curls away
behind it to form a complete circle; a similar 'D'
is found in the margin in 'Drawn'.[33]
The two undisputed Pope interventions are both
substantial. The couplet added on page 12, between
lines 12 and 13, appeared in Pope's manuscript, and
was included in the notes to Warburton's edition as
a 'Variation':
To Bards Reciting he vouchsafd a Nod
And snuff'd their Incence like a gracious
God.[34]
Harley would not have been able to include this
couplet without Pope's help, and the handwriting is
of a quite different quality from Harley's. Even
more significant is the note on 'Atticus' on page
11. Mack correctly identifies this as being in
Pope's handwriting, and in any case the degree of
revision suggests composition not transcription.
Mack thinks the explanation of the presence of this
note is that Harley was sent Pope's own working copy
in which he was preparing the note for the quarto
and folio
Works. That note
certainly presents interesting parallels:
ATTICUS] It was a great Falshood which some of
the Libels reported, that this Character was
written after the Gentleman's death, which see
refuted in the Testimonies prefix'd to the
Dunciad. But the occasion of writing it was such,
as he would not make publick in regard to his
memory; and all that could further be done was to
omit the Name in the Edition of his Works.
The
notes follow a similar structure: they state the
accusation, point to the previously established
defence, deny the reader further information on the
grounds of tenderness to the memory of 'Atticus',
and say that all that can be done is to omit the
name. The handwritten annotation picks up a further
problem, why the character was ever printed, but
denies any knowledge of it. Mack is certainly
correct in seeing a relation between the two, but
there are some difficulties in seeing the folio sent
to Harley as a working copy. For one thing the
implication of Pope's letter of 30 December is that
he had no copies of
To
Arbuthnot but was planning to send one to
Harley as soon as he received it; if the Harley copy
was received on 2 January, which seems likely, that
leaves no time for Pope to establish a working copy.
Of course, Pope may in exasperation have sent Harley
a copy he had had for some time, but that chimes in
ill with the letter. Another problem is that Pope
was unlikely to draft the notes to the
Works on copies of the
individual epistles. The texts sometimes differed
quite substantially, and it would have been reckless
to annotate the wrong text, especially when the
large-format
Works version
represented an earlier text and had probably been
printed off in advance. There is also the question
of the interpolated couplet. There is little sign
that Pope seriously intended to incorporate it into
the poem, nor is the insertion made in Pope's
characteristically professional way. The alternative
to the suggestion that Harley's copy was Pope's
working copy must be that
Pope was
annotating the poem for him, perhaps on the occasion
that Harley entered the second identification of
'Bufo' in the margin. Some signs support that idea:
the footnote is keyed to the text with a dagger,
which would be inappropriate for a draft endnote;
Pope begins by attempting to work within the
measure, avoiding straying into the margin by
breaking the words 'provocation' and 'perpetuate',
and only his revisions make the page untidy. If Pope
was annotating the text some time after Harley
received it but before the appearance of
Works, he would have been
trying to remember a note he had penned only a short
while before.
The further annotation I wish to propose as Pope's is
that of the note on page 16. The note, linked by an
asterisk to 'Or at the Ear of Eve, familiar Toad' is itself unusual:
In
the fourth book of Milton,
the Devil is represented in this Posture. It is
but justice to own, that the Hint of Eve and the Serpent was taken from the Verses on the Imitator of Horace.
Pope
rarely reveals so much of his technique as he does
here. Isobel Grundy has written of the power with
which Pope appropriated and transformed the insults
offered him in the
Verses to the
Imitator of . . . Horace (pp. 117-118), and
in this note he is directing our attention to that
achievement, just as he directs attention to the
insult to his birth on pages 18 to 19. Someone has
added to this note 'shape &' before 'Posture';
the change successfully clarifies the relation
between Pope's line and
Paradise
Lost. I do not believe Harley would have made
this emendation himself (he is a conservative
annotator) and I do not think he could have found it
printed elsewhere. In these circumstances I am
readily persuaded that the writing is Pope's: the
'h' closes to resemble a 'k' as his sometimes does;
the 'p' has a gap between vertical and bowl; the
ampersand is not Harley's usual one. More important,
the movement of the pen seems to have been Pope's
rather than Harley's, with the ink spreading more
widely. Pope was improving a footnote a few pages
after composing or recollecting the 'Atticus'
one.
The creation of a separate note on 'Atticus' had
repercussions on the annotation of this poem in
general. The individually published folio of To Arbuthnot had included a
long note on 'Lyes so oft o'erthrown':
Such as
those in relation to Mr. A------, that Mr. P.
writ his Character after his death, &c. that
he set his Name to Mr. Broom's Verses, that he receiv'd
Subscriptions for Shakespear, &c. which tho' publickly
disprov'd by the Testimonies prefix'd to the Dunciad, were nevertheless
shamelessly repeated in the Libels, and even in
the Paper call'd, The Nobleman's
Epistle.
The provision of a separate note
on Addison for the large-format
Works led to a revision of this note, with
Addison omitted and the Shakespeare charge being
placed before the Broom one. But then, after all
this trouble, in the octavo
Works the 'Atticus' note was omitted
altogether and so was the note on 'Lyes so oft
o'erthrown'. It was not reintroduced until
Warburton's edition of 1751. The note on
Paradise Lost had a rather
different fate. It was omitted from the large-format
Works but resurfaced in the
second octavo of 1735 in
the
truncated form 'See Milton. Book 4'. The attention
this note originally gave to
Verses Address'd to the Imitator of . . .
Horace, and its revision, omission, and final
abbreviation suggest Pope's special interest in the
relation between the two poems. If the
Verses were not only published
by Dodd but, as it appears, printed by Huggonson, it
might be worth investigating the possibility that
Pope had a hand in their publication.
[35]
Differences in annotation between Pope's folios and
quartos on the one hand and his octavos on the other
are difficult to interpret, but they suggest
authorial attention to the needs of different
readerships. As we have seen, the large-format
editions gave 'Variations', provided a
cross-reference to the aristocrats' Verses Address'd to the Imitator of
. . . Horace (in the individual folio), and
defended Pope's conduct with respect to Addison; the
octavos had none of this but they did have more
'Imitations' and a running commentary, as well as a
few more ordinary notes. Purely material questions
of space must have played their part, but Pope
probably knew that readers, like Harley, who moved
in society and collected books would be interested
in variant readings and in contemporary
personalities belonging to their circle; it is Lord
Hervey and Lady Mohun that really interest Harley,
not Budgell and Welsted. Pope cared for the opinion
of these readers and took account of rumours and
accusations that would damage his reputation. For
the wider readership purchasing the octavos,
variants were not necessary, though some guidance in
reading was; if these readers were unaware of the
aristocrats' contempt or the charges about Addison,
the Shakespeare, and Broome, there was little point
in informing them; the task of self-justification
before the jury of peers had already been essayed in
the quartos and folios. Harley's annotations suggest
that at least one member of that jury was
convinced.
A Transcription of Annotations in Bodley M 3.19 Art
(published by kind permission of the Bodleian
Library)
The poems are by Pope unless the contrary is indicated.
Titles and imprints are simplified and abbreviated,
and title-page dates are in arabic. Reference
numbers are given to D. F. Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750. I have based my
transcription on the system advocated by Fredson
Bowers in 'Transcription of Manuscripts: The Record
of Variants', Studies in
Bibliography 29 (1976): 212-264, and adapted
by David Vander Meulen in Pope's
Dunciad of 1728: a History and Facsimile
(Charlottesville and London, 1991), 166-169. Each
entry gives the page number (or 'title-page'), the
line number on that page, the line in the Twickenham
Edition ('∧' indicates that the relevant line
does not appear there), a lemma or location on the
page ('head' or 'foot'), and a transcription of the
annotation. Italic comments in brackets
apply to the whole annotation, or
all following the last bracket, or all following the
last asterisk (single asterisks and their brackets
enclose double asterisks and their brackets). The
following abbreviations are used: del[eted],
interl[ined], marg[in], underl[ined]. Because there
is no accompanying text, I have given some small
preference to intelligibility over brevity in
lemmata and comment. I have not followed the
original lineation. Superscripts are retained except
in dates, which are levelled. Marks in grey pencil,
which I take to be the work of librarians, are not
transcribed.
- 1. An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard
Earl of Burlington. Printed for L. Gilliver. 1731.
(Foxon P908)
- title-page head 'Called
TASTE'; 'The True Title is False Taste'; 'first
edition was publisht Dec. 13. 1731 [final '1' over '2']'
- 2. Of False Taste. An Epistle to the Right
Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington. The Third
Edition. Printed for L. Gilliver. 1731. (Foxon
P912, with intervening sheet before p. 5.)
- 3. Of the Use of Riches, An Epistle to the
Right Honorable Allen Lord Bathurst. Printed by J.
Wright, for Lawton Gilliver. 1732. (Foxon P923,
with corrected reading on p. 13)
- 8.2 (130) -------] r.
marg. 'Gage'; l. marg.
'Gage esq3 Brother to my Lord
Gage'
- 8.3 (131) Maria's] preceded
by 'x'; l. marg. 'Lady Mary Herbert'; foot 'Lady Mary Herbert in the
Mississipi time borrowed of Her servant 10
Luidores for necessary expences because she said
she would not Break a million never paid the
servant.'
- 8.7 (135) Bl-------t] l.
marg. 'Sr John
Blount'
- 4. An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard
Lord Visct. Cobham. Printed
for Lawton Gilliver. 1733. (Foxon P920)
- 5. The First Satire of the Second Book of
Horace, Imitated in Dialogue Between Alexander
Pope of Twickenham, in Com' Mid' Esq; and his
Learned Council. To Which is Added, The Second
Satire of the Same Book. Printed for L. G. 1734.
(Foxon P895, with engraving on p. 36)
- title-page head
'Publisht Feb. 15. 1732/3'
- 3.3 (3) Peter] underl.; r.
marg. 'Peter] Walter'
- 3.6 (6) Fanny] underl.; r.
marg. 'Lord *Harvey [overwrites illegible]'
- 5.9 (19) Celsus] both
occurrences underl.; r. marg. 'Dr Hollings'
- 5.13 (23) Richard] underl.;
r. marg. 'Blackmore'
- 5.17 (27) Budgell's] underl.
in red pencil
- 7.12 (44) Bond] r.
marg. 'Bond] Dennis Bond'
- 13.4 (100) Lee] underl. in
red pencil
- B**ll] underl. in red
pencil
- 13.7 (103) Plums] underl. in
red pencil
- Directors] underl. in red
pencil
- Shylock] underl. in red
pencil
- Wife] underl. in red
pencil
- 6. [See attribution below], Verses Address'd
to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second
Book of Horace. By a Lady. Printed for A. Dodd.
(Foxon V39)
- title-page By a LADY.]
above 'The Authors of this
poem are Lady Mary Wortley Lord Harvey & Mr
Windham under Tutor to the Duke of Cumberland *and
married to my Lady Deloraine [spacing suggests a later addition]'
- 7. [Unknown], Advice to Sappho. Occasioned by
Her Verses on the Imitator of the First Satire of
the Second Book of Horace. By a Gentlewoman.
Printed for the Authoress; and sold by J. Roberts.
1733. (Foxon A86)
- title-page head 'R.
April. 12. 1733'
- 6.12 hope] 'p' del.; l.
marg. 'm/' [prepublication
correction]
- 8. An Essay on Man. . . . Part I. Printed for
J. Wilford. (Foxon P822)
- title-page head
'February' [over 'March']
1732/3'
- 5.6 (6) of walks] underl.;
r. marg. 'But Not'
- 6.14-15 (22/29) l.
margin. 'six lines *from [over illegible] x'
- 6.15 (29) Of] del.
- vast] del.
-
l. marg. 'But'
- 6.17 (31) And Centres] del.;
l. marg. 'Gradations'
- 7.1 (23) l. marg.
'x'
- 7.6 (∧) has] del.
- us as we are] del.
-
r. marg. 'all things as
they are'
- 10.6-7 (98/73) l. marg.
'x' underl.
- 10.13 (99) l. marg.
'x'
- 11.2-3 (108/∧) r.
marg. 'x'
- 11.6-7 (∧/110) l.
marg. 'x'
-
r. marg.
'------'
- 12.10 (134) spreads] del.;
l. marg. 'swells'
- 13.1-2 (∧) l.
marg. 'x'
- 14.18-19 (184/∧) l.
marg. 'x'
- 9. An Essay on Man. . . . Epistle I. Corrected
by the Author. Printed for J. Wilford. (Foxon
P827)
- title-page head
'Publisht April. 23. 1733.'
- 10. An Essay on Man. . . . Epistle II. Printed
for J. Wilford. (Foxon P833)
- title-page head
'Publisht April. 23. 1733.'
- 11. An Essay on Man. . . . Epistle III.
Printed for J. Wilford. (Foxon P840)
- title-page head 'R. May
4. 1733'
- 12. An Essay on Man. . . . Epistle IV. Printed
for J. Wilford. (Foxon P845)
- title-page head 'R.
Janu. 22. 1733/4'
- 12*. Two leaves of An Essay on Man. . . .
Epistle IV, pp. 17-18 and advert leaf.
- 17. foot 'Come then, my
friend! my Genius come along'
- 13. [Mallet, David], Of Verbal Criticism: An
Epistle to Mr Pope. Printed for Lawton Gilliver.
1733. (Foxon M51)
- title-page head 'Sent
by the Author April. 14. 1733.'
- Mr. Pope.] r. marg. 'By
Mr Mallet. a Scots Gentleman'
- 14. Sober Advice from Horace, to the Young
Gentlemen about Town. (Foxon P968)
- title-page head 'R.
.Dec. 20: 1734'
- 6.4 (92) Lady or Lord Fanny] r. marg. 'Lord
and Lady Harvey'
- 7.16 (121) Ty-------y]
r. marg. 'Lady Tyrawley
very near sighted'
- 7.20 (125) Lady M-------] r.
marg. and foot 'Lady Mohun there is a famous
story of her she was in a Hackney coach with some
fellows and my Lord came up & would know who
was there, she did not care to be found out at
last she said that she would show her Bare Arse to
him if that would satisfy him, he agreed & she
put her Arse out at the Window to him, and he went
away'
- 8.8 (133) N-------dh-------m's] 'Mother Needham a
famous Bawd'
- 9.4 (150) Bedford-head]
underl. in red
pencil
- 9.12 (158) B-------t]
r. marg. 'Lord
Bathurst'
- 9.14 (160) nor pay too dear] underl. in red pencil
- 9.20 (166) M-------ue]
r. marg. 'Mountague'
- 10.10 (176) B-------ck]
r. marg. 'Buck'
- 10.12 (178) L-------l,
J-------ys, O-------w] foot 'L-------l Mr Richard Lyddel J-------ys Mr Jefferies O-------w Ld Onslow'
- 15. [Hervey, John], An Epistle from a Nobleman
to a Doctor of Divinity. Printed for J. Roberts.
1733 (Foxon H157)
- title-page Nobleman] above
interlined 'that is my Lord Harvey ['v' over 'l'], alias Lord Fanny,
alias Paris, alias
Sporus alias
&c &c &c.'
- Doctor of Divinity] r.
margin. 'The Dean of Chichester Dr. Sherwin a
very great scoundrel.'
- H-------n C-------t] below
interlined 'ampto' 'our'
- 16. [Unknown], Tit for Tat. Or an Answer to
the Epistle to a Nobleman. Printed for T. Cooper.
1734. (Foxon T322)
- 17. An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr.
Arbuthnot. Printed by J. Wright for Lawton
Gilliver. 1734. (Foxon P802)
- title-page head
'Publisht Janu. 2. 1734/5.'
- 2.10 (20) Charcoal] underl.
in red pencil
- 2.13 (23) Arthur] l.
marg. 'Arthur Moore'
- whose giddy son] underl. in
red pencil
- 2.19 (29) Drop] preceded by 'x'; l. marg. 'Wards
famous Drop' Nostrum] underl. in red pencil
- 3.16 (48) My] preceded
by 'x'
- Friendship] underl. in red
pencil
- Prologue] underl. in red
pencil
- ten Pound.] underl. in red
pencil
-
r. marg. 'xTibbald'
- 3.17 (49) Pitholeon]
underl. in red pencil; preceded
by 'x'; r. marg. 'x Welstead'
-
Grace]; preceded by 'x'; r. marg. 'x the
Duke of Argile'
- 3.22 (54) Journal] underl. in red pencil
- 4.12-13 (66-67) l.
marg. 'one Hamilton'
- 6.4 (100) Bishop] underl. in
red pencil
- 6.5 (101) nay see you] underl.; l. marg. 'the Drs common
phrase'
- 6.17 (113) Letters] underl.
in red pencil
- 8.4 (140) nod the head,] underl. in red pencil
- 8.13 (149) Damon] del.; l. marg. 'Fanny'
- 11.14 (214) Atticus]
preceded by 'τ'; foot
'The assertion of some anonymous authors that Mr P. writ this Character after
the Gentlemans death, was utterly untrue; it
having been sent him several years before; [followed by del. 'on a
Provocation of that nature, wch *he had too much
regard to his memory to' [above
del. '(unless obliged to it) we wd not
perpetuate':]] and then shown to Mr Secretary Crags, & ye present Earl of Burlington; who approvd
our author's Conduct on an Occasion, wch *he has
to much regard to that Gentlemans memory willingly
to make publick [interl. with
caret above del. 'out of Regard to his Memory
to perpetuate']. By what accident it
came into print, he never could
learn, but [interl.] All he
can now do is to omit the Name.'
- 12.8 (230) Bufo] l. marg. 'Bufo] this *character
[over illegible] made fit
many *but [later
insertion?] I think it is cheifly the right
of Mr Bubb Doddington*, it would also fit the late
earl of Halifax [in red
pencil]'
- 12.12-13 (234-235) interlined with caret 'To Bards reciting he
vouchsafd a Nod And snuff'd their Incence like a
gracious God.'
- 13.13 (260) QUEENSB'RY] r.
marg. 'Gay] he was neglected by the court
& had no place though often promised, He lived
with the Duke of Queensberry & died at his
House Dec. 4. 1732. He was buried at the Duks
expence and will set up a monument for him'
- 14.8 (280) Sir Will.]
l. marg. 'Sr Will, Sr William
Young, a great scribler of Libels &
Lampoons.'
- 14.8 (280) Bubo] l. marg. 'Bubo, Bubb Dorington
of the same stamp.'
- 15.4 (300) Cannons]
'Cannons, the seat of his Grace the duke of
Chandos [final 's' over ? 'e']'
- 15.9 (305) Let Paris]
preceded by 'P' ; r. marg. 'Paris] It so
happens that this is generaly applyed to Lord
Harvey, and as he deserved it of Mr Pope, it is
very proper for him & is very justly Drawn *In
a late edition the name is changed to Sporus a
more proper **nick [interlined
with caret] name Sporus was a youth whom Nero
had a mind to make a woman of by Gelding him. [ink suggests later
addition]'
- 15.9 (305) 'What] preceded
above by 'Dr'
- 15.13 (309) Yet] preceded
by 'P'
- 16.n (319n) Posture] preceded by 'shape &' above with caret
- 18.9 (376) To please a Mistress] underl. in red pencil
- 18.10 (377) but let her be his Wife:] underl. in red pencil
- 18.12 (379) except his Will;] underl. in red
pencil
- 19.4 (385) M*] 'oore'
over the asterisk
- 19.10 (391) Bestia] underl. in red pencil
- 19.12 (393) Noble Wife,] underl. in red pencil
- 19.n (381n) Verses to the
Imitator of Horace] r.
marg. 'p. 4 Line 10'
- 18. [See attribution of item 6], Verses
Address'd to the Imitator of the First Satire of
the Second Book of Horace. By a Lady. . . . The
Fifth Edition Corrected. Printed for A. Dodd.
(Foxon V44)
- title-page Fifth Edition] r.
marg. 'This wch is called the fifth edition
is not true but a sham of the booksellers upon Mr
Popes printing his Epistle ['pis' over illegible]
to Dr. Arbuthnot where these verses are
mentiond they supposed that some copies would be
called for.'
- 19. Of the Characters of Women: An Epistle to
a Lady. Printed by J. Wright, for Lawton Gilliver.
1735. (Foxon P917)
- half-title head 'R Feb.
6. 1734/5.'
- title-page head
'Publisht. ['P' over 'B']
Feb. 7. 1734/5.
- 5.5 To a LADY] r. marg. 'Mrs Martha Blount'
- 6.3 (9) Fannia] underl.; l. marg. 'It is said
this hints at the Countess of Pembroke, who used
to be drawn in these *several ['a' interlined with caret]
attitudes'
- 9.5 (63) Now] preceded
by 'x'
- 9.6 (64) Grace] 'e' below 'x'; r. marg.
'The Duke of Wharton'
- Ch**] r. marg. 'Coll
Charters'; 'see
miscellanies vol. 3. p. 137.'
- 20. [West, Gilbert], Stowe, the Gardens of the
Right Honourable Richard Lord Viscount Cobham.
Address'd to Mr. Pope. Printed for L. Gilliver.
1732. (Foxon W360)
- title-page Address'd to Mr. POPE.] r. marg. 'By
Mr West Nephew to My Lord Cobham'
- 7.20 Dy'd for the Laws he] underl. in red pencil
- 21. [Swift, Jonathan], On Poetry: A Rapsody.
Printed at Dublin, and reprinted at London: And
sold by J. Huggonson. 1733. (Foxon S888)
- 22. [Swift, Jonathan], An Epistle to a Lady,
Who Desired the Author to Make Verses on Her, in
the Heroick Stile. Also a Poem, Occasion'd by
Reading Dr. Young's Satires, Called, The Universal
Passion. Dublin printed: and reprinted at London
for J. Wilford. 1734. (Foxon S841)
- 23. [Harte, Walter], An Essay on Reason.
Printed by J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver. 1735.
(Foxon H93)
- title-page head 'R.
Feb: 6. 1734/35'
- 24. Swift, Jonathan, The Life and Genuine
Character of Doctor Swift. Written by Himself.
Printed for J. Roberts. (Foxon S884)
- title-page head 'R.
April. 12 1733'
- 25. [Pope, Alexander, and Swift, Jonathan],
Bounce to Fop. An Heroick Epistle from a Dog at
Twickenham to a Dog at Court. By Dr. S-------T.
Dublin printed, London reprinted for T. Cooper.
1736. (Foxon B326)
- title-page By Dr. S-------T.] followed
by 'much altered by Mr Pope.'
Notes