swering questions, in solving difficulties, in revising proofs, and
in communicating, without reserve, his stores of information. He was
then suffering from a long and painful illness, and he died when only
the first volume of correspondence was printed, or I should have had his
generous and invaluable aid to the end.

Mr. Bowles remarked in the course of the skirmish of pamphlets he
provoked, that the editorship of Pope's works had been to no one a bed
of roses. For the larger part of the discomforts his commentators may
have endured, Pope himself was responsible. His mysteries, his
double-dealings, his falsifications, and his quarrels have rendered half
the acts of his life a fertile theme for debate. None of the angry
controversialists who mingled fifty years ago in the fray had prepared
properly for the contest, and the insolence and assumption, the
virulence and the dogmatism, were commonly greatest with the persons
whose acquaintance with the subject was the least. The intemperate, and
usually ignorant warfare, left nearly all the vexed questions in
confusion, and it is only in recent years that a new generation of
dispassionate students have begun to replace the blunders of sciolism by
facts. In the many battles yet to be fought over Pope there will be this
advantage which will be certain to produce solid results, that the
critic will be in possession of the materials for judgment, and will not
have to write without knowledge of his cause.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, Vol. iii. p.
368.]

[Footnote 2: Marchmont Papers, Vol. ii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 3: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. ii. p. 165.]

[Footnote 4: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, Vol. iii. p. 72.]

[Footnote 5: Prior's Life of Malone, p. 385.]

[Footnote 6: Prior's Malone, p. 370.]

[Footnote 7: Hurd said of Warburton's Pope, that "it was the best
edition that was ever given of any classic."]

[Footnote 8: Imit. Bk. i. Epist. vi. ver. 87.]

[Footnote 9: This last sentence was added by Warburton in the later
editions of his Pope.]

[Footnote 10: Nichols, Lit. Anec. Vol. IV. p. 429-437.]

[Footnote 11: Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, Vol. vi. p.
422.]

[Footnote 12: De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863. Vol. xv. p. 137. He usually
maintained the opposite view, and sided altogether with the "they who
could see nothing in Pope but 'dust a little gilt.'" "There is nothing,"
he says, "Pope would not have sa