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Pope, Theobald, and Wycherley's Posthumous Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The Posthumous Works of William Wycherley, Esq; in Prose and Verse. Vol. II (1729), is an important and neglected document for the study of the canon and the poetical abilities not only of its author but also of its editor, Alexander Pope. It consists of a preface, a carefully annotated reprint of the table of contents to the first volume, a collection of letters between Pope and Wycherley, and a series of poems or parts of poems by the two men. It is extremely rare—the Bodleian copy seems to be the only one in an institutional library—and while large portions have been separately reproduced, no one has pointed out the significant relationships between them and the rest of the volume.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953
References
1 Charles Perromat listed his own copy in his William Wycherley—Sa Vie Son Œuvre (Paris, 1921), p. 446; Alexander Chorney called my attention to the copy now owned by Robert Eddison (Peter Murray Hill, Ltd., Catalogue Twenty [1947], p. 72, item 668).
2 Photographs of the Bodleian copy of The Posthumous Works… . Vol. II (in the possession of Professor George Sherburn) compared with the Harvard copy of the first edition, second issue, of the Letters (Reginald Harvey Griffith, Alexander Pope: A Bibliography, Austin, Texas, 1922-27, i, ii, 294-296, Book 375) show that sheets B-G are the same in both. That the first edition of the Letters consisted of 600 copies appears from the P. T-Curll correspondence (Alexander Pope, Works, ed. Whitwell Elwin and William John Courthope, 1871-89, vi, 426, n. 1). Summers reprinted the letters (William Wycherley, Complete Works, 1924, ii, 221-241) as well as the poems (ibid., iv, 63-72, 253-256).
3 Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men, ed. Samuel Weller Singer (1820), p. 151.
4 Elwin-Courthope, viii, 256-263; the quotations are on pp. 259 and 261.
5 Wycherley, Posthumous Works, ii, A2r-A3v, romans and italics reversed.
6 The note appears to be just, but the style of the “Introduction” is the same as that of the “Essay Against Pride and Ambition” (Summers, iv, 143-146), which Pope does not reject.
7 Compare Sir Charles Sedley, Poetical and Dramatic Works, ed. V. de Sola Pinto (1928), i, 22, and Summers, iv, 213-214.
8 Spence, p. 198.
9 Elwin-Courthope, viii, 258.
10 Ibid., viii, 311; there is no record of Pope's having returned the originals to Lord Oxford's care, and they have not been discovered in the collections into which the Harleian library was subsequently divided. Elwin's diatribe (i, xxxv) is based on a misquotation of the letter of 16 Oct. 1729 and is contradicted by his statement at the foot of p. cxxvii.
11 Ibid., i, cxxviii, n. 1; for Elwin's analysis of Pope's editing of the correspondence see pp. cxxvii-cxxxiv.
12 Ibid., i, cxxxvi.
13 Ibid., v, 74, 407, n. 1.
14 Compare Elwin-Courthope, v, 398 (or Summers, ii, 214), with Summers, ii, 235.
15 Pope may have omitted Wycherley's letter of 6 Dec. 1707 (Elwin-Courthope, v, 390-391), which replies to Pope's of 29 Nov. (vi, 34-35), because he had so altered his own letter that Wycherley's references to it no longer fit (see below). He probably omitted the letter of 14 Feb. 1710 as less satisfactory than that of 1 April 1710, which treats of the same subject (v, 402-405).
16 Elwin-Courthope, vi, 34-35, 47-48.
17 The letter of 29 Nov. 1707 may be an amalgam of two genuine letters under the date of the first (the division coming after the first paragraph); the letter of 2 May 1710 may be only misdated, like the letter of 19 Feb. “1706/7.” Other letters might also be suspected (see, e.g., Elwin-Courthope, vi, 18, n. 3), but the coincidences and inconsistencies in them may be plausibly explained.
18 Summers, ii, 227, 229-230, 238-239. Although Summers normally reprints literatim, the quotations below have been taken directly from the Posthumous Works.
19 On 22 March 1705/6 (Summers, ii, 227) Wycherley wrote to ask that Pope “pick out (if possible)” from the 1704 volume of the Miscellany Poems “some that may be so alter'd that they may yet appear in Print again,” which may argue against the supposition that the new publication outlined in 1706 was to be a continuation, but the request is a peculiar one even if we suppose that Wycherley wished to issue the poems under a new title.
20 Summers, ii, 230-231; Summers prints “Cause” for “cause” at the end of the third sentence. For other partial accounts of Pope's activities, see pp. 226-228, 232 and n., and 238-241.
21 Ibid., iv, 152-153.
22 Ibid., ii, 232.
23 Ibid., iv, 70-71; cf. line 8 on iv, 70. Pope's authorship of the “Epigram” was first pointed out by Norman Ault, New Light on Pope (1949), pp. 129-130.
24 Summers, iv, 71; Summers omits “By … printed.”
25 Ibid., iv, 69; the division comes after l. 6.
26 Ibid., iv, 69-70.
27 Ibid., iv, 150-151 (Posthumous Works, 1st vol.), 72 (2nd vol.). Summers prints “Fools” for “Tools” in l. 12 of Pope's version, thus destroying Pope's correction of a printer's error in the first volume.
28 Ibid., ii, 239, 240.
29 This practice appears from his letter of 29 Nov. 1707, with its footnote, “Some Broüillons. of these [poems mentioned in the letter], transcrib'd and very much blotted by Mr. Pope, are extant in the Harley Library” (Summers, ii, 233). The letter is suspect, of course, and the deposited MSS. may have been faked, but the method seems a normal one.
30 Summers, iv, 155-160 (Posthumous Works, 1st vol.), 63-69 (2nd vol.).
31 Summers, ii, 226.
32 Ibid., iv, 159; the corresponding passage in the second volume, quoted below, is on iv, 68. The opening lines of the two versions are also worth comparing; note that the omission of lines here forced Pope to alter the rhymes. For lines 40, 106, and 148 cited below, compare Summers, iv, 156: 4 with 64:23, 157:29 with 66:13, and 158:29 with 67:21.
33 Ibid., iv, 253; italics and romans reversed here from the original. Summers did not reprint the poem as found in the Posthumous Works, but he collated it, and the nature of its text can easily be seen from his notes, although they are neither so complete nor so accurate as one would like.
34 Summers, iv, 253. The remarks quoted below are from the same page.
35 Elwin-Courthope, v, 283; Griffith, i, i, 174.
36 Pope's Own Miscellany, being a reprint of “Poems on Several Occasions,” 1717, ed. Norman Ault (1935), pp. 3-7.