Note 226 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

Dennis asserts in one of his pamphlets that Pope, fermenting with envy at the success of Addison’s Cato, went to Lintot, and persuaded him to engage this redoubted critic to write the remarks on Cato—that Pope’s gratitude to Dennis for having complied with his request was the well-known narrative of Dennis “being placed as a lunatic in the hands of Dr. Norris, a curer of mad people, at his house in Hatton-garden, though at the same time I appeared publicly every day, both in the park and in the town.” Can we suppose that Dennis tells a falsehood respecting Pope’s desiring Lintot to engage Dennis to write down Cato? If true, did Pope wish to see Addison degraded, and at the same time take an opportunity of ridiculing the critic, without, however, answering his arguments? The secret history of literature is like that of politics?

[Dennis took a strong dislike to Addison’s Cato, and his style of criticism is thus alluded to in the humorous account of his frenzy written by Pope: “On all sides of his room were pinned a great many sheets of a tragedy called Cato, with notes on the margin by his own hand. The words absurd, monstrous, execrable, were everywhere written in such large characters, that I could read them without my spectacles.” Warton says that “Addison highly disapproved of this bitter satire on Dennis, and Pope was not a little chagrined at this disapprobation; for the narrative was intended to court the favour of Addison, by defending his Cato: in which seeming defence Addison was far from thinking our author sincere.”]