to hear my veracity called in question with relation to the share I had in the Odyssey. I have always spoken truth in this point, and assumed to myself no more than eight books of the verse translation. But this, though exactly true, has been ascribed, not to my veracity, but vanity. Yet I have borne this imputation without any public vindication.' My own heart tells me I never stood in need of it, and was therefore too proud, or too good-natured, to use it. But adieu, henceforth, to all pretensions to poetry. I am as willing as any man in England to have it forgot, and indeed the world seems pretty ready to oblige me. However, to be a bad poet is no sin; it may be a folly. If it be a sin, I have heartily repented of it, and whatever the critics may have done, I am sure heaven has forgiven it. I am out of the world, regardless of its praise or censure. Applause offered to me is like holding a nosegay to a dead man; it may be sweet, but he I study to be quiet, and a man that would in obscurity. I sincerely subscribe to the is insensible of it. repose does it best wish of the poet : Sic cum transierint mei suppose you I have not returned any answer to Mr. Curll, I would not advise it. I hope you will excuse this trouble. It proceeds from a good intent, and from the sincere inclination I have, of approving myself, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant." 1 This, among other passages in the correspondence, proves that it was for his own purposes, and in opposi tion to Broome's desire, that Pope had kept up the deception upon their several shares in the translation. 2 Broome's letter to Pope is dated Aug, 4, and in the next letter, dated Aug. 26, we find that Broome's consignment of his poems to oblivion was contemporaneous with his attempt to prevail upon Lintot to publish a new edition of them. Lintot would only undertake the work at Broome's expense, and Broome on Dec. 1 re quested Pope to "bring Lintot to reason," and stated this curious motive for craving the new edition: "I have a desire to print my Miscellany, not out of any degree of vanity, but merely to give them a more solemn interment, and to bury my dead in a more decent monument." Whether Broome was deluded himself, or was only trying to delude others, he could not have advanced a plea so absurdly inconsistent if he had not been a man of weak understanding. 3 Broome has written at the bottom of the page, "To this letter I re 112. LINTOT TO BROOME. FROM MY CHAMBERS OVER THE MIDDLE TEMPLE GATE, WORTHY DR.,-What can be more agreeable to me than the accounts I have of the welfare of my friends in their autumn of life. No cares interrupt your studies, plenty and ease crown your days, a loving wife returns bliss for bliss. Your divinity and verse flow easily from you; no ill-natured satire rimples your affections to your friends. To them you were and are constantly, as the loadstone to the pole,-steady. It is your goodnature-born with you, and will die with you,-sets you in high esteem with all that know you.' May you be universally known. Mr. Holditch was so kind to leave your letter at my son's house. I looked over your volume of poems. They contain sixteen sheets and a half. If you publish a new edition, I suppose they will make more. Every printed sheet—number five hundred-will cost you thirty shillings. Working off the copper-plate and advertisements will add five pounds more to the account. How they will sell I know not. I am again printing for Mr. Pope,-the first volume of his miscellaneous works, with notes, remarks, imitations, &c.,-I know not what. You will hear of me in the papers in November next. Two volumes of Mr. Pope's letters, and letters to Mr. Pope, are printed. There is one letter of Mr. Pope's to Lord Burlington, giving an account of our journey together from Windsor Forest to Oxford,-a merry one. Dear Dr., adieu. ceived the following from Mr. Pope;" and his next draft is headed, "An answer to the foregoing letter of Mr. Pope," but Pope's letter is not now among the Broome papers. His failing was that he mixed with his good nature a desire to please which was sometimes too strong for his integrity. His undue complaisance was partly, perhaps, the reaction from conscious awkwardness, for he had been a mere student at college, "unskilled in conversation," and it was not till he got into the world, that "he cleared himself," as Ford told Johnson, "from scholastic rust." 2 Lintot speaks of the small octavo edition of Pope's works, which was the property of different booksellers. The first volume was the copyright of Lintot, and was not published till January 1736. The P. T. edition which Pope charged upon Curll. 113. BROOME TO POPE. PULHAM, Sept. 22, 1735. DEAR SIR,-I find by experience that love and friendship are nearly allied. They kindle a divine flame in the heart which, like that of the Jewish altar, is never extinguished, though it may not always burn with equal warmth and brightness. In both those passions it is almost worth a little quarrelling, for the pleasure of the reconciliation. I think it is about six years since I wrote to you. I confess I looked upon you as a departed friend, and mourned for you as such. I was silent, but it was the silence of Dido, occasioned by a supposed hardship from a person I loved. It was not owing to any inconstancy or credulity, but to ocular demonstration. I desire you to believe this upon my own testimony. I know I speak in riddles, but to explain them now would be cowardice, perhaps dishonesty, though it be as easy for me to prove what I hint at, as to speak it.' Adieu to all animosities. Let them sleep for ever. I am sure they shall never be awakened by me. With regard to myself they have been dead many years, and I shall not raise the ghost of a departed contest, to my own disturbance, or my neighbour's. As for all idle reports, they never found credit with me. They are to our advantage or disadvantage just as peevish persons happen to be out or in humour. Such men will ever be buzzing about their nothings, always indeed, Pope, in his reply, admitted Broome's accusation by not denying it. A short time before their intercourse ceased, Pope, as we have seen, wrote to Broome, Dec. 14, 1730, "Mr. Fenton's brothers have claimed his effects, papers, etc., and Mr. Trumbull has delivered them." From his intimacy with Fenton, it would be natural that Broome should enquire of the brothers about the papers, and it is not improbable that among Pope's letters to Fenton there may have been one or more in which he spoke freely of their associate in the Homer, and which, influenced by Fenton's own opinion of Pope, the brothers may have communicated to Broome. Not having received the permission of Fenton to use the letters, Broome may have considered that he was precluded from specifying the source of his "ocular demonstration." Whatever may have been meant, Broome's phrase must refer to some document in the handwriting of Pope. like the fly, impertinently, but at worst more troublesomely than hurtfully. It is impossible to live without some slander in a world that delights to tell and hear it. Our care should be, not to deserve it. Of this nature was a falsehood I met, when last at Norwich. It was publicly affirmed that you had claimed the notes upon the Odyssey-at least of twelve books, in a late advertisement before your Epistles. I have read those Epistles, but it was in the pirated edition, which has no such advertisement. I assured the company that you had too much honour and justice to assert such a falsehood; that you had large and fair flocks of your own, and were incapable of robbing me of my little ewe-lamb. No, I know you had rather enlarge than diminish my intellectual possessions. Such falsehoods rather create mirth than spleen. But it is a degree of weakness to repeat such weak stories. I am now retired to my cell in Pulham for the winter, and like the bee, or rather the drone, shall take no more flights from it till the spring. If any disquiet comes abroad, I am well hid, and it will not easily find me. Yet, though I love quiet, I would not owe it to a lethargy. I must be a little active, though my activity prove no better than that of a child about bubbles and butterflies. You, I perceive, are of a stock to bear the gay blossoms of poetry in the decline of life. I am not of so vigorous a kind, and the little fruit I bear is like that of our gardens in this unseasonable autumn, not worth the gathering. You were my poetical sun, and since your influence has been intercepted by the interposition of some dark body, I have never thought the soil worth cultivating, but resigned it up to sterility. I have indeed, seen a tree bear as many crabs as an appletree, apples; but I am not ambitious to produce trash plentifully, only to be the more distasteful. But I have hunted down the allegory, and it is time to release you, to pursue nobler game of your own starting. I will only add, that I am ready to 1 Pope said in the advertisement that "the translation of twelve books of the Odyssey, with the postscript, not the notes," were his. This was perversely understood by some per sons as only excepting the notes to the twelve books he himself translated, and as a claim, by implication, to the remainder. do you justice with regard to the Odyssey, and that I am, sincerely, your faithful and affectionate servant. 114. POPE TO BROOME. TWITENHAM, Oct. 2, 1735. DEAR SIR,-Your two very kind letters came not to hand till I returned hither, three days since, from a long journey to Southampton,' and thence to Buckinghamshire. I would not else have delayed to renew assurances of my real goodwill and friendship for you, which have never been extinct in my breast, though cooled by accidents, or perhaps mistakes, joined with ill offices which too many people are ready to do to those they envy, or would displace from our affections. I sincerely embrace the pleasures of reconciliation. To forgive and be forgiven is the tenderest part of love or friendship; for none of us are without faults, none without misconstructions. What you were told about the notes to the Odyssey is utterly untrue. I expressly there claimed only twelve books of the poem, "and not the notes." Those are the words, as you will see in my own edition, which I have a desire to send you, if you will tell me by what carrier or to whose house. It is in quarto, to match the first volume of my works, which you already have. Be not uneasy. Indiscretion and credulity are the worst faults we have, and both proceed from open undesigning minds. As to the justice you propose to do me, after so many public scandals on that account, in relation to my conduct toward you about the Odyssey, I think it will be sufficient to appeal to your own memory; and I desire no more than that you will put down in a line to me that there was no contract made about it, but that you trusted my friendship, and I made it good. Recollect your circumstances and mine at that time as 1 Pope visited Southampton to take leave of Lord Peterborough. 2 Curll said in his letter to Broome, "A friend of yours last week acquainted me how Mr. Pope evaded nis contract made with you and Mr. Fenton about the Odyssey," and Pope, in his missing letter, had no doubt demanded that Broome should contradict the misrepresentation. Broome replied, "I am ready to do you justice with regard to the Odyssey," and |