Besides numerous stabs administered to old enemies, Pope opened some
fresh animosities by passages in these poems. Some pointed ridicule was
aimed at Montagu, Earl of Halifax, in the Prologue; for there can be no
doubt that Halifax[26] was pointed out in the character of Bufo. Pope
told a story in later days of an introduction to Halifax, the great
patron of the early years of the century, who wished to hear him read
his Homer. After the reading Halifax suggested that one passage should
be improved. Pope retired rather puzzled by his vague remarks, but, by
Garth's advice, returned some time afterwards, and read the same passage
without alteration. "Ay, now Mr. Pope," said Halifax, "they are
perfectly right; nothing can be better!" This little incident perhaps
suggested to Pope that Halifax was a humbug, and there seems, as already
noticed, to have been some difficulty about the desired dedication of
the Iliad. Though Halifax had been dead for twenty years when the
Prologue appeared, Pope may have been in the right in satirizing the
pompous would-be patron, from whom he had received nothing, and whose
pretences he had seen through. But the bitterness of the attack is
disagreeable when we add that Pope paid Halifax high compliments in the
preface to the Iliad, and boasted of his friendship, shortly after the
satire, in the Epilogue to the Satires. A more disagreeable affair at
the moment was the description, in the Epistle on Taste, of Canons, the
splendid seat of the Duke of Chandos.
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