Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Isaac D’Israeli to Samuel Rogers, [February, 1832]
‘Athenæum: Monday [February, 1832].
‘My dear Sir,—Accept a fugitive thing on a
permanent topic in my “Reply” to Lord
Nugent. Should you have patience and forbearance, you will pick
up, I think, some amusement in the fifty pages.
‘But what you will find on the back of the last flyleaf
interests me more while I am addressing you. I ![]()
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imagine
that you know how I formerly fully avenged the cause of Pope in
the “Quarterly”
against our amiable editor, Bowles.
“Modes,” that is myself, triumphed, and stroked his ears with much
self-complacency, for he did hear his own words resound in the House of Lords,
and more than one edition of Pope followed; and
Pope was righted. He has of late again been wronged in the recent
“Edinburgh
Review.”
‘I recollect that you have many of the first editions of
Pope. I have some, particularly the
“Essay on
Man,” in four parts, as they were published. I never could find,
as the anecdote runs, the false claim which Pope expressly
made to keep the world in doubt whether he were the writer.
‘Should anything occur to you on the subject of
Pope, your communication will delight
an old acquaintance of yours, who never imagined he should have written so much
poetry and such little verse. My intention is to enter at large into the
literary period of Pope, to mark out its influence on him,
and trace the consequences in his writings. His friends and his enemies are
well known to me, and it is an active era in our literature.
‘My visits to the metropolis are rare and short, and
should you have occasion to address me it must be at Bradenham House, High
Wycombe, where, should [you] ever stray, the sun will shine on us that day. It
is four miles from High Wycombe.
‘Believe me, with great regard, dear Sir,
‘Faithfully yours,
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)
English poet and critic; author of
Fourteen Sonnets, elegiac and
descriptive, written during a Tour (1789), editor of the
Works
of Alexander Pope, 10 vols (1806), and writer of pamphlets contributing to the
subsequent Pope controversy.
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
George Nugent Grenville, second baron Nugent (1788-1850)
Son of George Nugent Grenville, first marquess of Buckingham; he was MP, lord of the
Treasury, and author of
Portugal, a Poem, in Two Parts (1812) and
Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party and his Times (1831).
He was remarkable for his corpulence.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
