hey have been stated here. This
extraordinary interview has been frequently alluded to. There can be
no doubt of the genuineness of the narrative but I know not on what
authority it came into the world.[234]

The interview between Addison and Pope took place in the presence of
Steele and Gay. They met with cold civility. Addison's reserve wore
away, as was usual with him, when wine and conversation imparted some
warmth to his native phlegm. At a moment the generous Steele deemed
auspicious, he requested Addison would perform his promise in renewing
his friendship with Pope. Pope expressed his desire: he said he was
willing to hear his faults, and preferred candour and severity rather
than forms of complaisance; but he spoke in a manner as conceiving
Addison, and not himself, had been the aggressor. So much like their
humblest inferiors do great men act under the influence of common
passions: Addison was overcome with anger, which cost him an effort to
suppress; but, in the formal speech he made, he reproached Pope with
indulging a vanity that far exceeded his merit; that he had not yet
attained to the excellence he imagined; and observed, that his verses
had a different air when Steele and himself corrected them; and, on
this occasion, reminded Pope of a particular line which Steele had
improved in the "Messiah."[235] Addison seems at that moment to have
forgotten that he had trusted, for the last line of his own dramatic
poem, rather to the inspiration of the poet he was so contemptuously
lecturing than to his own.[236] He proceeded with detailing all the
abuse the herd of scribblers had heaped on Pope; and by declaring that
his Homer was "an ill-executed thing," and Tickell's had all the
spirit. We are told, he concluded "in a low hollow voice of feigned
temper," in which he asserted that he had ceased to be solicitous
about his own poetical reputation since he had entered into more
public affairs; but, from friendship for Pope, desired him to be more
humble, if he wished to appear a better man to the world.

When Addison had quite finished schooling his little rebel, Gay, mild
and timid (for it seems, with all his love for Pope, his expectations
from the court, from Addison's side, had tethered his gentle heart),
attempted to say something. But Pope, in a tone far more spirited than
all of them, without reserve told Addison that he appealed from his
judgment, and did not esteem him able to correct his verses; upbrai