4, 1713), disavowing all complicity, and saying that if
even he noticed Mr. Dennis's criticisms, it should be in such a way as
to give Mr. Dennis no cause of complaint. He added that he had refused
to see the pamphlet when it was offered for his inspection, and had
expressed his disapproval of such a mode of attack. Nothing could be
more becoming; and it does not appear that Addison knew, when writing
this note, that Pope was the author of the anonymous assault. If, as the
biographers say, Addison's action was not kindly to Pope, it was bare
justice to poor Dennis. Pope undoubtedly must have been bitterly vexed
at the implied rebuff, and not the less because it was perfectly just.
He seems always to have regarded men of Dennis's type as outside the
pale of humanity. Their abuse stung him as keenly as if they had been
entitled to speak with authority, and yet he retorted it as though they
were not entitled to common decency. He would, to all appearance, have
regarded an appeal for mercy to a Grub-street author much as Dandie
Dinmont regarded Brown's tenderness to a "brock"--as a proof of
incredible imbecility, or, rather, of want of proper antipathy to
vermin. Dennis, like Philips, was inscribed on the long list of his
hatreds; and was pursued almost to the end of his unfortunate life.
Pope, it is true, took great credit to himself for helping his miserable
enemy when dying in distress, and wrote a prologue to a play acted for
his benefit. Yet even this prologue is a sneer, and one is glad to think
that Dennis was past understanding it. We hardly know whether to pity or
to condemn the unfortunate poet, whose unworthy hatreds made him suffer
far worse torments than those which he could inflict upon their objects.

By this time we may suppose that Pope must have been regarded with
anything but favour in the Addison circle; and, in fact, he was passing
into the opposite camp, and forming a friendship with Swift and Swift's
patrons. No open rupture followed with Addison for the present; but a
quarrel was approaching which is, perhaps, the most celebrated in our
literary history. Unfortunately, the more closely we look, the more
difficult it becomes to give any definite account of it. The statements
upon which accounts have been based have been chiefly those of Pope
himself; and these involve inconsistencies and demonstrably inaccurate
statements. Pope was anxious in later life to show that he had enjoyed
the friendship of a m