571 572 . 573 XXIX. From Mr. Pitt, the translator of Virgil, to Mr. Spence. Concerning the publica- PREFACE TO THE FIRST GENUINE EDITION IN QUARTO, 1737. IF what is here offered to the reader should happen in any degree to please him, the thanks are not due to the author, but partly to his friends, and partly to his enemies; it was wholly owing to the affection of the former, that so many Letters, of which he never kept copies, were preserved; and to the malice of the latter, that they were produced in this manner. He had been very disagreeably used, in the publication of some letters written in his youth, which fell into the hands of a woman who printed them, without his, or his correspondent's consent, in 1727. This treatment, and the apprehension of more of the same kind, put him upon recalling as many as he could from those who he imagined had kept any. He was sorry to find the number so great, but immediately lessened it by burning three parts in four of them: the rest he spared, not in any preference of their style or writing, but merely as they preserved the memory of some friendships which will ever be dear to him, or set in a true light some matters of fact, from which the scribblers of the times had taken occasion to asperse either his friends or himself. He therefore laid by the originals, together with those of his correspondents, and caused a copy to be taken to deposit in the library of a noble friend; that in case either of the revival of slanders, or the publication of surreptitious letters, during his life or after, a proper use might be made of them. The next year, the posthumous works of Mr. Wycherley were printed, in a way disreputable enough to his memory. It was thought a justice due to him, to shew the world his better judgment; and that it was his last resolution to have suppressed those poems. As some of the letters which had passed between him and our author cleared that point, they were published in 1729, with a few marginal notes added by a friend. If in these Letters, and in those which were printed without his consent, there appear too much of a juvenile ambition of wit, or affectation of gaiety, he may reasonably hope it will be considered to whom, and at what age, he was guilty of it, as well as how soon it was over. The rest, every judge of writing will see, were by no means efforts of the genius, but emanations of the heart; and this alone may induce any candid reader to believe their publication an act of necessity, rather than of vanity. ! It is notorious, how many volumes have been published under the title of his correspondence, with promises still of more, and open and repeated offers of encouragement to all persons who should send any letters of his for the press. It is as notorious what methods were taken to procure them, even from the publisher's own accounts in his prefaces, viz. by transacting with people in necessities,* or of abandoned characters,† or such as dealt without names in the dark. Upon a quarrel with one of these last, he betrayed himself so far, as to appeal to the public in Narratives and Advertisements: like that Irish highwayman a few years before, who preferred a bill against his companion, for not sharing equally in the money, rings, and watches, they had traded for in partnership upon Hounslow-heath. Several have been printed in his name which he never writ, and addressed to persons to whom they never were written:§ counterfeited as from Bishop Atterbury to him, which neither that bishop nor he ever saw; and advertised even after that pe * See the Preface to Vol. I. of a Book called Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence. (The surreptitious edition published by E. Curll in 1735.) ↑ Postscript to the Preface to Vol. IV. (of the same edition.) Narrative and Anecdotes before Vol. II. (of the same edition.) § In Vol. III. Letters from Mr. Pope to Mrs. Blount, &c. || Vol. II. of the same, 8vo. p. 20, and at the end of the Edition of his Letters in 12mo. by the booksellers of London and Westminster; and of the last Edition in 12mo. printed for T. Cooper, 1725. |