Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

more than once in The Bathos', as a proficient in the Art of Sinking; and in his enumeration of the different kinds of poets distinguished for the profound, he reckons Broome among 'the Parrots who repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd tone as makes them seem their own3. I have been told that they were afterwards reconciled; but I am afraid their peace was without friendship".

He afterwards published a Miscellany of Poems, which is 10 inserted, with corrections, in the late compilation.

He never rose to very high dignity in the church. He was 11 some time rector of Sturston in Suffolk, where he married a wealthy widow'; and afterwards, when the King visited Cambridge (1728), became Doctor of Laws'. He was (in August

was employed in translation at all."' The Dunciad, 4to ed. 1729, iii. 327. For the falsity of this statement see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 158. [The change was made in 1736.]

Spence (p. 326) records on the authority of Mr. Blount of Twickenham that Broome asked five hundred, and upon Mr. Pope's saying that was too little, and Broome naming seven; "Well then (says Pope), let's split the difference; there's six hundred for you.'

[ocr errors]

Only once, in ch. vii.

2 Fenton wrote to Broome :-'He has indeed discovered a keen appetite to quarrel with you.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 144. Pope tried to wriggle out of the authorship. Ib. pp. 159, 162.

Broome suffered also with Fenton from Pope's enemies for their share in the Odyssey. Fenton wrote to Broome in 1725:-'We have been but coarsely used this last summer, both in print and conversation.' Ib. p. 103.

3 Ch. vi.

4 Pope wrote to Broome in 1725:'I am going to print your verses in a Miscellany. I wish you altered the strength of that extravagant compliment, what Heav'n created, and what you have wrote."' Mr. Elwin says that 'Pope changed it himself

to:

"What Heav'n created, and what Heav'n inspires."

[blocks in formation]

'So when Luke drew the rudiments of man,

An angel finish'd what the saint began.'

In 1735 he wrote to Pope:-'I think it is about six years since I wrote to you.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 171. Pope replied: 'I sincerely embrace the pleasures of reconciliation.' Ib. p. 173. Broome was timid; otherwise he would never have been reconciled with a man who had used him so ill.

5In Bernard Lintot's Book of Accounts, under the name Broome, is the following entry:-" Feb. 22, 1726-7. Misc. Poems, £35." Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 213.

[ocr errors]

There is no copy of this edition in the British Museum. A second edition appeared in 1739.

Elizabeth Clarke, a widow, on July 22, 1716. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 40; Barlow's Memoir, p. 11I.

''My friends told me,' he wrote, 'they could ask with a better grace for a doctor than a common clergyman.' Ib. p. 147.

12

13

1728) presented by the Crown' to the rectory of Pulham in Norfolk 2, which he held with Oakley Magna in Suffolk, given him by the Lord Cornwallis, to whom he was chaplain, and who added the vicarage of Eye in Suffolk; he then resigned Pulham3, and retained the other two.

Towards the close of his life he grew again poetical, and amused himself in translating Odes of Anacreon, which he published in The Gentleman's Magazine, under the name of Chester *.

He died at Bath, November 16, 17455, and was buried in the Abbey Church.

14 Of Broome, though it cannot be said that he was a great poet, it would be unjust to deny that he was an excellent versifyer; his lines are smooth and sonorous, and his diction is select and elegant. His rhymes are sometimes unsuitable: in his Melancholy he makes breath rhyme to birth in one place, and to earth in another. Those faults occur but seldom; and he had such power of words and numbers as fitted him for translation, but, in his original works, recollection seems to have been his business more than invention. His imitations are so apparent that it is part of his reader's employment to recall the verses of some former poet. Sometimes he copies the most popular writers, for he seems scarcely to endeavour at concealment; and sometimes he picks up fragments in obscure corners. His lines to Fenton:

* Broome flattered Walpole in his Epistle to Mr. Fenton. Eng. Poets, xliv. 170. Fenton wrote to him in 1726:—'I hope you intend to fill up the vacancy where a character of eloquence is intended with Sir T. Hanmer's name. Whatever name is intended, I can never consent to have it begin with a W. Broome thus filled the blank:

'O Compton, when this breath we once resign

My dust shall be as eloquent as thine.'

Nevertheless 'he introduced into another part of the Epistle' the following:

'Why flames the star on Walpole's gen'rous breast?

Not that he's highest, but because he's best,

Fond to oblige, in blessing others blest.'

Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope),
viii. 131.

For Compton see post, THOMSON, 9.
Ante, FENTON, 27.

2

3 He died Vicar of Pulham. [See his Will given in Barlow's Memoir, p. 16.]

'Charles Chester, M.D.' Broome was born in Cheshire. Gent. Mag. Nov. 1739 to June, 1740; Eng. Poets, xliv. 292.

5 Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 614.

Dr. Warton had justly described him as 'a mere versifier.' Essay on Pope, Preface, p. 12.

7 "With cries we usher in our birth,

With groans resign our transient

breath.' Eng. Poets, xliv. 160. 'What art thou, gold, but shining earth?

Thou, common fame, but common breath?' Ib. p. 161.

Serene, the sting of pain thy thoughts beguile,
And make afflictions objects of a smile '';

brought to my mind some lines on the death of Queen Mary, written by Barnes, of whom I should not have expected to find an imitator :

But [Yet] thou, O Muse, whose sweet nepenthean tongue
Can charm the pangs of death with deathless song;
Canst [Can] stinging plagues with easy thoughts beguile,
Make pains and tortures [flames and torments] objects of

a smile???

To detect his imitations were tedious and useless. What he 15 takes he seldom makes worse; and he cannot be justly thought a mean man whom Pope chose for an associate, and whose co-operation was considered by Pope's enemies as so important, that he was attacked by Henley with this ludicrous distich :

1

'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say

Broome went before, and kindly swept the way 3.'

Eng. Poets, xli. 253. The author explains in a note that the pain is the gout-a disease of which Fenton died. Ante, FENTON, 18.

[ocr errors]

[Lines on the Untimely Death of the Queen, by Joshua Barnes, then Senior Fellow of Emmanuel, Cambridge; afterwards Professor of Greek at Cambridge. They are among the English poems in Lacrymae Cantabrigienses in obitum Reginae Mariae, Cantab. 1694-5.]

3 'Henley's joke was borrowed. In a copy of verses entitled The Time Poets, preserved in a Miscellany called Choice Drollery, 1656, are these lines:

66 Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say,

[ocr errors]

Broom went before and kindly swept the way.' JAMES BOSWELL, JUN., Johnson's Works, viii. 232.

[Richard Broome, the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson, is the author of several comedies. Randolph in An Answer to Mr. Ben Jonson's Ode, to persuade him not to leave the stage, has the following lines:

And let those things in plush Till they be taught to blush, Like what they will, and more contented be

With what Broome swept from thee.' ISAAC D'ISRAELI, Curiosities of Literature, 1834, ii. 197.]

[blocks in formation]

'A'

POPE'

LEXANDER POPE was born in London, May 22, 1688 2,

of parents whose rank or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they were of 'gentle blood 3'; that his father was of a family of which the Earl of Downe was the head*, and that his mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of Charles the First; the third was made a general officer in Spain 5,

The Life of Pope was the last written of the Lives. On Sept. 18, 1780, Johnson recorded:-'I have Swift and Pope yet to write, Swift is just begun.' John. Misc. i. 94. On April 13, 1781, he recorded:-'Sometime in March I finished the Lives of the Poets. 1b. i. 96. See also ib. ii. 193. Mr. Nichols,' he wrote, 'is entreated to save the proof sheets of Pope, because they are promised to a lady who desires to have them.' John. Letters, ii. 197. The lady was Miss Burney. They are in the possession of Mr. R. B. Adam of Buffalo, who has allowed me to examine them.

On April 14, 1781, Horace Walpole wrote:-'Dr. Johnson's Life of Pope is a most trumpery performance, and stuffed with all his crabbed phrases and vulgarisms, and much trash as anecdotes.' Letters, viii.

26.

'Johnson's Life of Pope is a very important piece of criticism. Since Sam. Johnson we have been knocked about by critics of more brilliancy than authority, and I feel the want of an authority.' W. CORY, Letters, &c., p. 547.

* Spence records, on Pope's authority, that he was born in Lombard Street on May 21, 1688. Spence's Anec. pp. 203, 259. According to

Curll he was born on June 8. Pope, in reproducing this statement, does not correct it. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vi. 440.

3 'Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause

4

While yet in Britain honour had applause)

Each parent sprung.'

Prol. Sat. 1. 388. Pope states this in a note on these lines. See also T. Birch's Heads of Illustrious Persons, 1747, ii. 55. One of his relations, 'a great genealogist, who was always talking of her family, never mentioned this descent.' WARTON, Essay on Pope, ii. 326. Mr. Courthope thinks it fabulous. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 4.

5 Johnson here also follows Pope's note. In the notice of the death of his mother in Gent. Mag. 1733, p. 326, probably written by him, it is stated that two of the sons 'died in the King's service in the Civil War'

'The Turners were small landowners in Yorkshire. William Turner married Thomasine Newton, a member of a good family at Thorpe, in Yorkshire.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 5. One of their daughters married Samuel Cooper, the painter. Ante, BUTLER, 5.

from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left in the family.

This, and this only, is told by Pope; who is more willing, as 2 I have heard observed, to shew what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was never discovered, till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linen-draper in the Strand'. Both parents were papists".

Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate; 3 but is said to have shewn remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition 3. The weakness of his body continued through his life, but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His voice, when he was young, was so pleasing that he was called in fondness the 'little Nightingale 5.'

6

Being not sent early to school he was taught to read by an 4 aunt, and when he was seven or eight years old became a lover

In the first edition the sentence ends at 'discovered.' Pope, in his will, described Mrs. Magdalen Racket as my sister-in-law." Warton's Pope's Works, ed. 1822, ix. 417. She was his father's daughter by his first wife. In the register of St. Benet Fink is the following:-'1679. 12 Aug. Buried Magdalen, the wife of Allixander Pope.' He was then living in Broad Street. N. & Q. 2 S. iii. 461, iv. 381, 406. The poet was born in Lombard Street. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 6.

For Thomas Tyers see Boswell's Johnson, iii. 308; John. Misc. ii. 335.

[ocr errors]

* Mrs. Pope described her husband as an honest merchant, who dealt in Hollands wholesale.' Spence's Anec. p. 8. According to a note in Warton, iv. 51, Pope's grandfather was a clergyman in Hampshire. He placed his son with a merchant at Lisbon, where he became a convert to Popery.' This clergyman was 'not improbably Alexander Pope, Rector of Thruxton, in Hampshire, who died in 1645.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 5.

3 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 10; Spence's Anec. p. 26.

4 This weakness was so great that he wore stays, as I have been assured

by a waterman at Twickenham, who, in lifting him into his boat, had often felt them. He had a sedan-chair in the boat, in which he sat with the glasses down.' HAWKINS, Johnson's Works, 1787, iv. 2; post, POPE,

257%

5His voice was so musical that I remember honest Tom Southerne used always to call him "the little nightingale." ORRERY, Remarks, &c., p. 207. Thomson, speaking of him, calls the nightingale his sister of the copses green.' Post, POPE, 255 n. 'Some called Pope little nightingale-all sound and no sense.' LADY M. W. MONTAGU, Letters, Preface, p. 41.

"Johnson's authorities for Pope's school-days are Birch's Heads, &c., ii. 55, Warburton's Pope's Works, ed. 1757, iv. 205, and Spence's Anec. pp. 192, 206, 259, 276, 283, who do not always agree. Warburton (Preface, p. 7) said that he intended to write Pope's Life. Not much has been lost by his neglect. In the note in which he gives his account of Pope's education he writes:"Though much more would be too trifling to enter into a just volume of his life, it may do no dishonour to one of these cursory notes.'

« ZurückWeiter »