on, and the subject of his aspersions
was in the grave. Addison has never been convicted of an untruthful
word, or a dishonourable act: Pope's career was a labyrinth of deceit,
and he abounded in audacious malignant inventions. These considerations
are sufficient, but there is more direct evidence. "I have had lately,"
wrote Pope to Caryll, Feb. 1713, "the entertainment of reading Mr.
Addison's tragedy of Cato. It drew tears from me in several parts of the
fourth and fifth acts, where the beauty of virtue appears so charming,
that I believe, if it comes upon the theatre, we shall enjoy that which
Plato thought the greatest pleasure an exalted soul could be capable of,
a view of virtue itself dressed in person, colour, and action. The
emotion which the mind will feel from this character, and the sentiments
of humanity which the distress of such a person as Cato will stir up in
us, must necessarily fill an audience with so glorious a disposition and
sovereign a love of virtue, that I question if any play has ever
conduced so immediately to morals as this." Here is Pope prognosticating
that Cato upon the stage will melt, delight, and animate the audience.
He penned the words at the exact period when, according to his later
assertion, he was admonishing Addison that the play was unsuited to the
theatre, and he is self-convicted by the contradiction. One-half of his
story was false, and renders the other half worthless.[15]

In the account which Pope gave to Caryll of the first night of Cato he
said that "all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it a
party play," and complained that "the prologue writer was clapped into a
stanch whig, sore against his will, at almost every two lines."[16] He
might be anxious to persuade his jacobite correspondent that he had not
been abetting a whig manifesto, and might pretend that he was annoyed at
the construction put upon the Prologue, but his verses were chiefly
devoted to enforcing the political doctrine of the play, and he must
deliberately have laid himself out to catch the applause of its friends.
His management advanced his fortunes. Windsor Forest procured him the
acquaintance and patronage of the tory leaders. Swift recommended the
poem to Stella on March 9, 1713, and in November he was heard by Dr.
Kennet "instructing a young nobleman that the best poet in England was
Mr. Pope, a papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English
verse, for which he must hav