ere
truth. Even of Pope's best friends, some of their severities, if they
ever reached him, must have given the pain he often inflicted. His
friend Atterbury, to whom he was so partial, dropped an expression, in
the heat of conversation, which Pope could never have forgiven; that
our poet had "a crooked mind in a crooked body." There was a rumour,
after Pope's death, that he had left behind him a satirical "Life of
Dean Swift." Let genius, whose faculty detects the foibles of a
brother, remember he is a rival, and be a generous one. In that
extraordinary morsel of literary history, the "Conversations of Ben
Jonson with his friend Drummond of Hawthornden," preserving his
opinions of his contemporaries, if I err not in my recollection, I
believe that he has not spoken favourably of a single individual!

The personal motives of an author, influencing his literary conduct,
have induced him to practise meannesses and subterfuges. One
remarkable instance of this nature is that of Sir John Hawkins, who
indeed had been hardly used by the caustic pleasantries of George
Steevens. Sir John, in his edition of Johnson, with ingenious malice
contrived to suppress the acknowledgment made by Johnson to Steevens
of his diligence and sagacity, at the close of his preface to
Shakspeare. To preserve the panegyric of Steevens mortified Hawkins
beyond endurance; yet, to suppress it openly, his character as an
editor did not permit. In this dilemma he pretended he reprinted the
preface from the edition of 1765; which, as it appeared before
Johnson's acquaintance with Steevens, could not contain the tender
passage. However, this was unluckily discovered to be only a
subterfuge, to get rid of the offensive panegyric. On examination, it
proved not true; Hawkins did not reprint from this early edition, but
from the latest, for all the corrections are inserted in his own. "If
Sir John were to be tried at Hicks's Hall (long the seat of that
justice's glory), he would be found guilty of _clipping_," archly
remarks the periodical critic.

A fierce controversial author may become a dangerous neighbour to
another author: a petulant fellow, who does not write, may be a
pestilent one; but he who prints a book against us may disturb our
life in endless anxieties. There was once a dean who actually teased
to death his bishop, wore him out in journeys to London, and at length
drained all his faculties--by a literary quarrel from personal
motives.

Dr.