87.

FENTON TO BROOME.

LEICESTER FIELDS, Dec. 17, 1726.

DEAR MR. BROOME,-I received your hare, and an excellent one it was, for which I return you thanks, and had sooner acknowledged the favour of your last letter, but delayed in expectation of some remarks on your verses,' which a friend of ours promised to make on condition that I would not mention his name. Most of them I think you will believe are just. He would have all that paragraph from "Envy, 'tis true,"2 &c., to "From men to trees," quite struck out. For "Me humble joys," &c., he would have " Thee." "Lesser than a saint," he thinks not proper English. What if you make it

He thinks, as I observed before, that Hyde and Plato lay is not English,—at least, to make it so you must put mixed for

1 The epistle which Broome addressed to Fenton. The friend no doubt was Pope, and he may have desired that his name should not be mentioned, from the backwardness which Broome had shown, since the publication of the Odyssey, to accept his assistance.

Envy, I own, with barb'rous rage invades What ev'n fierce lightning spares,-the laurel shades.

Broome followed the advice which
Fenton gives lower down, and omitted

part of the paragraph.

Me humble joys in calm retirement please,

A silent happiness, and learned ease. Broome did not adopt the judicious suggestion, which would have transferred the application of the couplet from himself to Fenton.

Neither this phrase, nor Fenton's proposed substitution, are in the printed lines.

5 Broome accepted the alteration. This couplet Broome retained.

mix in the next verse. I refer all these observations to your own judgment, only, as to the first of them, I think the whole paragraph needs not be left out, but let it end with,

And amidst monsters rises into day.

I am glad you give me hopes of seeing you so soon in town, by which time probably my health may allow me to spend some agreeable hours together. In the meantime, in answer to your query, whether or no we are at liberty to own the books of the Odyssey, &c., upon looking at what your name is set to at the end of the notes, and Mr. Pope's postscript, I think you have absolutely transferred your right at least, if not mine, which he by punctually just seems as positively to have accepted; so that, unless you resolve to break all measures with him, I think the best way for you is to let it rest as it does. And besides you have sung Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, so loudly, that I do not think my own worth owning, which, in truth, was one reason why I was so vexed to have my name mentioned. Adieu, dear Broome. Let me hear soon from you, which, with wishing you many Christmases, according to the old honest compliment, concludes in haste from yours ever.

88.

FENTON TO BROOME.

March 28, 1727.

I HAVE not my old excuse, dear Broome, of invincible laziness to plead for not answering your two letters sooner, but I have been hurried up and down with university and country acquaintance ever since I saw you; but I hope I shall get out of this troublesome town in about a fortnight. In the meantime I divert myself with watching for yonr name in the newspapers, not among the lean poetical advertisements, but in a more significant and substantial paragraph. Prithee do not let your interest sleep. Every day furnishes fresh arguments why you should vigorously pursue your attack. Mr. Tonson and I have talked over the affair of Virgil.' He

1 There seems to have been a design of republishing Dryden's Virgil

with additional notes or dissertations as a companion work to Pope's Homer.

is not for having dissertations, as you and I intended, but would have the notes executed in the same method that you took in the Odyssey.

3

Mr. Pope was with me this morning, and desired me to present his service to you. He told me that he hears little Harte the poet is dead in the country.' I spoke to Jacob' to send you Dr. Arbuthnot's book bound. Why will you not cultivate a correspondence with him? It would be both useful and entertaining to you, and postage will cost nothing to either." Adieu. Give my service to your good spouse, and Mr. Burlington and everybody else whom you know I love or honour. Thine ever.

89.

POPE TO BROOME,

April 26, 1727.

DEAR SIR,-I hoped you would have made good your promise to give me an account of your health after your return to Suffolk, which was but ill in town; but I have inquired of it several times from Mr. Fenton, who is now gone to Cambridge. I came again to London that week on purpose to see you; but you were set out the day before. I desired him to tell you this, and to assure you I was yours at all times. I should be glad to have a few lines from you when you are at leisure, to inform me of anything that pleases or concerns you, to whom I have a true affection, as well as a constant good wish for all you desire or pray for. I have not in form thanked you for your book, but I was very much pleased with almost everything in it. One or two little things I thought too puerile, and remember were written when you were very young. If Lintot had shown them me, I would have advertised you of them; but they are but trifles. Now I mention Lintot, I do not know how he treats you, but he is the greatest scoundrel to me in the earth -I mean in foul language and noisy foolish falsehoods of

1 A false report. He survived till 1774.

2 Jacob Tonson.

3 His Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures.

4 As both had friends who would frank their letters. The point of sympathy between men, who had little else in common, was their taste for classical learning.

many sorts, the worst of which I reckon his endeavours to set people at variance by mere lies, as he has done to several of the subscribers to Homer, and I am convinced it was wholly from thence that those rumours so prejudicial both to you and me proceeded, which, had I not known your natural integrity and sincere good-nature, must have made me think of you in a manner very different from what I really do.' The fellow had the impudence the other day to affirm that I never told him you had hand in the work till after his agreement was signed, than which you know nothing can be a more flagrant lie. I think you had a letter from him before expressly about your share in the work; I wish you had it by you; and I desire you to write me whatever you remember to the contrary of this falsehood, that it may help to undeceive anybody to whom he tells it. You are sensible this is a piece of downright justice to me as an honest man.'

any

I wish your health confirmed. Mine I fear never will be better; but if I cannot live long in myself, I would in my friends. I think Fenton more lively and more in vigour than ever I knew him. Sir Clement Cottrell is not so. He is

1 One rumour was that Pope had translated less of the Odyssey than he pretended in his postscript; a second that he "employed some underlings to perform what, according to his proposals, should have come from his own hands;" a third that no part of the translation was by himself, which was the form of accusation adopted a little later by Ralph, in his miserable poem, Sawney, 1728, where Pope, addressing his confederates, says,

To you the labour wholly I resign,

And but one half of the reward be mine;
And sure that's due for my protecting

name,

Source of the toil, and builders of its fame.
The rest be yours, so ev'ry muse shall find
It praise and profit both to cheat mankind.

Some of the reports were true, others
were deliberate misrepresentations,
and it might have occurred to Pope
that he and his libellers were equally
blameable. They asserted that he

had translated none of the Odyssey, and he protested, with the preface "to be punctually just," that he had translated seven books he did not translate. Pope's mode of absolving Broome from having originated the rumours indicates a lurking suspicion that he had been concerned in them.

2 This is a repetition of Pope's onesided morality. He thought it essential to his character "as an honest man" that he should not have concealed from Lintot that Broome had a "hand in the work," and it was no dishonesty to have pledged his word that Broome's portion of the translation was less than half his real share. It was a (6 'flagrant lie," again for Lintot to declare that he had not been told that Broome was to help in the translation, and no lie in Pope to vouch that he himself had translated five books which were the work of Broome.

expected here in a few days for the whole summer. As you have made one journey purely to the town without seeing this place, I expect you should make another to this place in particular, where you will find the worthy gentleman I mentioned, and one, who, I faithfully assure you, is in heart and with truth very affectionately yours.

My mother is your hearty servant.

90.

FENTON TO BROOME.

TRINITY HALL, May 3, 1727.

1

DEAR MR. BROOME,-I have been at Cambridge about a week or ten days. I found your old college in a terrible fracas on the death of good Dr. Jenkin. You have seen by the news how his preferments are disposed of. I am afraid that our friend' has raised abundance of enemies; but whether or no his conduct in the competition has given any just provocation, nec scio, nec, si sciam, dicere vellem.

Jacob Tonson told me he had heard from you before I left London, and I gave him a note of such books as occurred to my memory that might be serviceable to you in executing your design on Virgil. I like the additional verses you sent me. What a pity it is that you printed that poem in your Miscellany! Mutatis mutandis, if it had been published on the siege of Gibraltar,' it would have gained you a great deal of reputation.

I hope you will hold your resolution of seeing Cambridge this summer, though I will not desire that happiness before

1 Master of St. John's College. 2 Dr. Newcome. He and Dr. Baker were among the candidates for the mastership. Baker tried to make terms with him, and alleged that Newcome promised to vote for him, and did not keep his word. They were both defeated by Dr. Lambert, whom Newcome succeeded in Feb. 1735. Cole says of Newcome that he was "time-serving, ambi

tious, and deceitful."

3 Gibraltar was besieged to no purpose by the Spaniards in February 1727. Fenton refers to Broome's verses On the seat of war in Flanders, chiefly with relation to the Sieges. The poem first saw the light some twenty years after the events it commemorated, and having no intrinsic merit, was obsolete before it was published.