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At the outset o f his biography o f Bolingbroke, Dickinson writes o f ‘the fundamental instability which [he] exhibited throughout his career’, p. 2.

For Bolingbroke’s persona as a faimer-philosopher at Dawley Park, see Bolingbroke to Harcourt, 22 March 1725, Corr., II, 290; see also Pope to Swift on how Bolingbroke had his hall painted with rakes and spades to m ake it more like a farm, 28 June 1728, ibid., U. 503.

See also Brean S. Hammond, p. 38. Dickinson, p. 162.

urges him to ‘pursue your talk undauntedly’, no matter what might be the dangers of reprisal/"^ Such an injunction seems reckless, given the precarious nature o f Pope’s position.

Bolingbroke’s writings for The Craftsman, which he launched with William Pulteney in

1726, can be seen as his greatest achievement,^”^ Bolingbroke’s talents were entirely suited to the noisy new age o f newspaper journalism. It seems likely that his writings for The

Craftsman, which amounted to a fifth o f the 500 articles, won Pope’s admiration.

Bolingbroke seems to have had three main aims in his writings: first, he wrote on issues designed to unite the disparate elements hostile to Walpole; secondly, he tried to destroy the old distinctions between Whig and Tory that kept the opposition divided; thirdly, he tried to create a new party that he presented as a defender of liberties in an attempt to ‘out-Whig the Whigs’."”"

Besides his likely involvement of Pope in writing for The Craftsman, Bolingbroke also

persuaded him to use his poetic talents for the sake of the Patriot Opposition. Bolingbroke’s suggestions had the tone o f commissions. It was his suggestion that Pope embark on his

Imitations o f Horace’, he suggested starting with Satire II. i., published February 1733.

Spence makes the beginnings of Pope’s Horatian imitations appear casual, quoting Pope as saying:

When I had a fever one winter in town that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning it over dipped on the First Satire of the Second Book. He observed how well that would hit my case, if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone, I read it over, translated it in a morning of two, and sent it to the press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my imitating some other of the Satires and Epistles afterwards. ( No. 321a, I, 143).

Stack demonstrates that Pope’s involvement with Horace had deeper roots. The first

Imitation o f Horace ‘began as a defence of the satire o f the Epistles to Burlington and

The Works o f the late Right H onorable H enry S t John, L ord Viscount B olingbroke, London 1754, in, 314.

Erskine-Hill points out that The Craftsm an ‘is still so little known, yet so important in moulding opinion during W alpole’s regim e’. The S ocial M ilieu, p. 269.

Dickinson, p. 185 and p. 199. See also P ocock’s discussion o f what has becom e known as the ‘Country’ ideology: The M achiavellian Moment, Chapters 13, ‘Neo-M achiavellian Political Economy: The Augustan Debate over Land, Trade and Credit’, and 14, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Debate: Virtue, Passion and Commerce’, esp. p. 427, p. 478, p. 482. Isaac Kramnick finds the essence o f Bolingbroke’s political analysis in his pithy summary o f post-Revolutionary developments in his

D issertation upon P arties, published in The Craftsman'. ‘THE POWER OF M ONEY A S THE WORLD IS NOW CONSTITUTED IS REAL POWER’, Bolingbroke, Works, II, 159, B olingbroke a n d his C ircle.The P o litics o f N ostalgia in the A ge o f Walpole (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 78. Rumbold notes that Bolingbroke’s A Dissertation upon P a rties refocused the discourse o f the Patriot opposition so that the threat o f absolutism lay in ‘W alpole’s corruption o f parliament through his control o f places and pensions’. The D unciad in Four Books, p. 297,1. 176n.

Bathurst, but [. . .] became much more’: the significance Satire II. i. lies in its being ‘the

beginning of Pope’s quite conscious creation o f a poetic persona, doing what Horace had supremely done before him’.^°^ Bolingbroke’s proposal that Pope write An Essay on Man,

published 1733-34, was less helpful to Pope’s career: Bolingbroke’s Deism led to suggestions that Pope’s poem was evidence that he too was Deist.^°^

An Essay on Man is dedicated to Bolingbroke and contains Pope’s lofty praise: When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,

Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, Shall then this verse to future age pretend

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? (IV, 11. 387-90, T. E. III. i., 165-66)

In his Imitation o f Horace, Satire H. ii., published 1734, Pope plays tribute to Bolingbroke

and Peterborow as ‘ancient friends, (tho’ poor, or out o f play)’ (1. 139, T. E. IV, 65). By his

Imitation o f Horace, Epistle I. i., published January-March 1738, it seems that Bolingbroke’s pointing o f Pope towards satire was one that he might perhaps have regretted. Bolingbroke is the Epistle’s addressee but the poem opens with mock-annoyance at his request for verse: ‘Why will you break the Sabbath o f my days?’ (1. 3) At the close o f the poem. Pope puts an ironic spin on the famous praise from An Essay on Man:

Careless how ill I with myself agree; Kind to my dress, my figure, not to Me. Is this my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend? (11.175-77)

Pope’s complaint to Bolingbroke that he ought to be stricter with him is undercut by the humorous tone. Pope teases him for his over-fastidiousness and yet still regards him as his

Stack, p. 30, p. 57. For further discussion o f Bolingbroke’s suggestion that Horace’s satire ‘hit P ope’s case’, see The Garden an d the City, pp. 177-78.

Mack treats such suggestions dismissiveiy, owing to the contemporary vagueness o f the term, ‘d eism ’, and points out Bolingbroke’s dissatisfaction with Pope’s position, T. E. HI. i., pp. xxiv-xxv. For a discussion o f the differences between Pope’s and Bolingbroke’s philosophy, see John Laird’s P hilosophical Incursions into English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946), pp. 40-42, pp. 50-51. A. D. Nuttall points out Pope’s failure to include in his E ssa y on Man the central Christian ideas o f the Fall, the Incarnation and Redemption and suggests that Pope’s highlighting o f the difficulty o f justifying divine Justice places him, if only indirectly, in the D eist movement. In these matters, Nuttall suggests P ope was influenced by Bolingbroke, pp. 50-51 ; for Nuttall’s further discussion o f deism and An E ssay on Man, see pp. 130-31. For a recent discussion o f the controversy about deistic tendencies in the poem, see M ichael Srigley, The M ighty M aze: A Stucfy o f P o p e 's 'An Essay on M an' (Stockholm: Uppsala University, 1994), pp. 13-20. Concerning the Dunciad, Book IV, 11. 459-92, Rumbold comments that Pope was temperamentally ill at ease with systematic dogma and typically evasive on controversial points’. The D unciad in Four Books, p. 329,11. 459-92n. See also Arthur Friedman, Pope and Deism (The Dunciad, iv. 4 5 9 -9 2 )’, in P ope an d his Contem poraries: E ssays P resen ted to George Sherburn, ed. by J. L. Clifford and L. A. Landa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), pp. 85-95

‘Guide, Philosopher, and Friend’. Pope’s humorous regret suggests that not even Bolingbroke, his greatest friend, will admonish him when he needs it, such correction being something that friends will not perform.

Pope then teases Bolingbroke by mocking his philosophical ideal of the great man. After his description of the wild incoherence of his own mind. Pope complains that Bolingbroke only cares about the minutiae of his appearance, not his character:

This, He who loves me, and who ought to mend? Who ought to make me (what he can, or none,) That Man divine whom Wisdom calls her own. Great without Title, without Fortune bless’d.

Rich ev’n when plundered, honour’d while oppress’d. Lov’d without youth, and follow’d without power. At home tho’ exil’d, free, tho’ in the Tower. In short, that reas’ning, high, immortal Thing, Just less than Jove, and much above a King, Nay half in Heav’n - except (what’s mighty odd) A Fit of Vapours clouds this Demi-god.

(11. 175-88,, T. E. IV, 293)

Bolingbroke’s failure to help Pope to live up to his ideal of greatness blurs with Bolingbroke’s own failure himself to do so; the implication is that such an ideal is impossible to achieve. Pope’s list o f noble seeming-contradictions has an oddly deflating effect. The poem ends with an image of failure, which, despite Pope’s leavening of wit, must have been galling for Bolingbroke. As a politician without power, Bolingbroke was essentially a failure.^”’ Swift seems to have shared Pope’s opinion about Bolingbroke’s shortcomings: in 1736 Swift wrote to Pope o f Bolingbroke’s health and fortune, adding that he was ‘so long a Squanderer of both’ {Corr., IV, 45). The significance of Epistle I. i. lies in

Pope’s turning his patron, Bolingbroke, from a would-be commissioner of verse to a consumer, whom the poet dares to tease for taking on so lofty a role as Renaissance patron.

Pope’s determination to position Bolingbroke as his friend rather than his patron is shown in July 1738 when Bolingbroke returned to England to sell Dawley and was his guest at Twickenham until the middle o f April 1739. At this time Bolingbroke was viewed by the

Bolingbroke would have been about sixty at the time E pistle I. i. was written: Dickinson characterizes him as a man ruled by an ambition that did not fade until the late 1740s, when he w as in his mid to late 60s, with the death o f Prince Frederick, p. 290. See also Pope’s warning to Bolingbroke that his high ideals were impractical: Bolingbroke had urged Pope to dedicate him self solely to writing but Pope rejected this unworldly encouragement, 9 April 1724, C orr., II, 227. There is further

Walpole administration as its greatest foe. In his Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue II,

published May-July 1738, Pope links Bolingbroke and Walpole, giving the former tacit praise and the latter ambivalent compliments. In compliance with the times. Pope mockingly agrees to tell lies: ‘St JOHN has ever been a wealthy Fool - /But let me add, Sir ROBERT’S mighty dull/ Has never made a Friend in private life,/ And was, besides, a Tyrant to his wife’ (11. 132-35, T. E. IV 320-21). The last line refers to Walpole’s disregard of his wife’s infidelities. Pope then brings the two together, the former as his friend (whom he has just openly praised as ‘All-accomplish’d ’, 1. 139) and the latter as, at one remove, his enemy in a story about a night when he, Bolingbroke and Bathurst were dining at Twickenham and stones were thrown at his windows:

What? shall each spur-gall’d Hackney of the Day, When Paxton gives him double Pots and Pay, Or each new-pension’d Sycophant, pretend To break my Windows, if I treat a Friend; Then wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt, But ‘twas my Guest at whom they threw the dirt? Sure, if I spare the Minister, no rules

Of Honour bind me, not to maul his Tools; Sure, if they cannot cut, it may be said His Saws are toothless, and his Hatchets Lead. (11. 140-49, T. E. IV, 321)

During his stay with Pope, Bolingbroke was introduced to Frederick, Prince of Wales: the outcome o f the meeting was The Idea o f a Patriot King, written December 1738. Bolingbroke entrusted Pope with a copy of the manuscript, with a commission to print up ten copies for private circulation among close Opposition friends. Like Bolingbroke, Pope aspired to the ideal of a nonparty, national and patriarchal monarchy.^®*

The tensions in Pope’s friendship with Bolingbroke are made clear by two unpleasant episodes which occurred after Pope’s death. H. T. Dickinson writes that Pope had had printed a secret edition o f The Idea o f a Patriot King of about 1500 copies which

Bolingbroke tried to d e s tro y B o lin g b ro k e ’s reluctance to publish was not confined to The

mockery o f An E ssa y on Man in the Epilogue to the Satires, D ialogu e II, where the Friend’s closing advice is for Pope to write no more satires but instead: ‘write next winter more Essays on M an' (I. 255), T. E. IV, 327.

See The D u n cia d in Four Books, p. 295,11. I75-88n. In her introduction, Rumbold comments that, although the attacks on absolutism in B ook IV o f The D unciad allude to Bolingbroke, P ope’s failure to hint at a celebration o f his programme suggests Poi

209

Pope’s thorough disillusion, p. 11

'0 9 r^.

Dickinson, pp. 280-81.

Idea o f a Patriot King: his Letters on the Study and Use o f History had been written in 1735

but it was not until 1738 that Pope managed to persuade Bolingbroke to let him have several copies printed from the original manuscript to circulate among Bolingbroke’s intimate friends/'" Bolingbroke’s attitude towards the publication o f his own works contrasts sharply with Pope’s. In January 1749 The London Magazine began a serialisation o f The Idea o f a

Patriot King, which forced Bolingbroke to publish an official version. In his Advertisement

he accused Pope o f a breach o f trust and o f altering the text without permission; his accusations were seen as in poor taste by Spence and William Warburton.^" To make matters worse, entrusted with Pope’s papers, Bolingbroke took offence at Pope’s portrait of ‘Atossa’, believing it to be a malicious and ungrateful attack on his old patroness, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Rumbold comments: ‘It was a cruel irony that Bolingbroke’s assumption, after the poet’s death, that “Atossa” represented a betrayal o f her generosity should have provided so bitter an epilogue to the relationship.’^'^

Bolingbroke’s pique at what he saw as Pope’s duplicity probably betrays a certain rigidity in his view of their relationship; it seems likely that he had expected a loyalty and obedience from Pope that was indistinguishable from the old deference that a poet was expected to show his patron. Where Bolingbroke still, to a large extent, had played the role of patron as commissioner of works. Pope’s relationships with younger patrons demonstrate the shift from patron as commissioner to consumer, from a world governed by dedications and deference to one fashioned by Pope in terms o f exchange and equality.

Burlington, Bathurst and the 2"*' Earl of Oxford played a more dynamic part in Pope’s life and poetic career than the earlier patrons in this survey. None wrote poetry themselves but they encouraged poets. Most importantly, they lacked Bolingbroke’s qualms about the new print culture: all were involved in the publication of Pope’s works and gave vital assistance

Ibid., p. 250. Events proved right Pope’s perception that The Idea o f a P a trio t K in g was Bolingbroke’s most powerful work. Dickinson argues that the success o f the Opposition in bringing about W alpole’s fall came from its appropriation o f Bolingbroke’s archetype o f the Patriot King. Had Bolingbroke acted on P ope’s insight and gone ahead with publication, he might perhaps have achieved som e real success in his political career, pp. 258-264.

' Ibid., pp. 290-94. See Spence, An A pology f o r the Late M r P ope and Warburton, A L etter to the E ditor o f the L etter on the S pirit o f Patriotism , The Idea o f a P a trio t King, a n d The State o f Parties, &c., occa sio n ed b y the E d ito r ’s A dvertisem ent

(1749).

Women's P lace, p. 207. See also A lexander P ope, pp. 746-50.

in his legal and financial affairs; Burlington himself undertook the publishing o f his own works on architecture; Oxford was an obsessive bibliophile and established the greatest collection of books in the country, the Harleian Library.

Edward Harley, 2"** Earl o f Oxford (1689-1741), was the son o f Robert Harley, the former first minister. Like his father, the 2“** Earl of Oxford was a bookish aristocrat; where he differed was in his lack of real political ambition. In 1707 he married Henrietta Cavendish Holies, the only child o f the Duke of Newcastle; a measure o f the brilliance o f the match is the rumour that she was once about to be betrothed to the Electoral Prince o f Hanover, the future George II. The marriage was the result of the 1®‘ Earl’s ambitious match-making. Thanks to his wife’s fortune, the 2"^* Earl of Oxford’s library at Wimpole became one o f the finest in the country, run by his formidable librarian, Humphrey Wanley.^*^

Oxford’s library proved very useful for Pope on several counts: first, as an aid for his publications, secondly, for the specific purpose of protecting his work and thirdly, as an invaluable part o f his strategy for publishing his letters without being accused of vanity On this last count, the first instance was the matter o f Wycherley’s papers. In 1729, Pope persuaded Oxford to allow Wycherley’s papers to be deposited in the Harleian Library and subsequently named him as the publisher of The Posthumous Works o f William Wycherley,

Esq., Vol. II. Pope had written to Oxford about having forseen ‘some dirty Trick in relation

to my Friend Wycherley’s papers which they were publishing’, expressing a desire first to secure the papers and, secondly, to have them published by Oxford in order to do justice to ‘the Memory o f a Man, to whom I had the first obligations of Friendship, almost in my childhood’ (To Oxford, 6 October 1729, Corr., IB, 56). Oxford generously agreed to the