Literary Authority: An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy

330 Pages·2023·25.885 MB·English

by  Claude Willan

Literary Authority
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L I T E R A R Y
A U T H O R I T Y
An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy
Claude Willan
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2023 by Claude Willan. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the
prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free,
archival-quality paper
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022025214
ISBN: 9781503630864 (cloth), 9781503635272 (ebook)
Cover design: Zoe Norvell
Cover art: Old Wisdom Blinking at the Stars, by James Gillray. Courtesy
of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
IntroductIon
1
chapter 1
Whig Prose Cultures
25
chapter 2
“I love with all my heart”: Jacobite Poetry in Manuscript
63
chapter 3
Dipt in Ink: Pope without “Pope” in His Early Career
107
chapter 4
Pope’s Moderate Ascendancy
147
chapter 5
Samuel Johnson’s Struggle with Pope
193
Coda
233
Notes 241
Bibliography 281
Index 301
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Acknowledgments
Richard Owen Cambridge’s print Dr. Johnson’s Ghost shows the Doctor
surprising Boswell at work on a tapestry of materials, piecing together
The Life of Johnson. The Ghost addresses Boswell with a quotation from
Congreve’s Way of the World: “Thou are a Retailer of Phrases, / And
dost deal in Remnants of Remnants, / Like a Maker of Pincushions.” In
its happiest instances, literary scholarship may aspire to the condition
of a pincushion, and I have had the opportunity to count myself among
those makers during the writing of this book. So many people have been
so generous with their insights that my task has seemed much closer to
the faithful assembly of found fragments than the manufacture of some-
thing out of whole cloth. If the reader feels that this pincushion is poorly
stuffed, or the stitching awry, the fault lies only with the maker, not with
the materials I have been gifted by mentors, teachers, colleagues, friends,
and students. Likewise, whether the reader ultimately finds this study an
ignominious victory or a glorious defeat, the responsibility is mine alone.
This book’s first life was more than ably directed by John Bender and
Blair Hoxby, both of whom gave copiously of their time and advocacy,
marrying scholarship, encouragement, and circumspection with judi-
cious splashes of ice water. Denise Gigante’s attentive work as a reader
had an instrumental effect on the argument at many points. That work
could not have been completed without a Stanford Modern British His-
tories and Cultures grant, an ASECS / Walter Jackson Bate fellowship to
work at the Houghton Library, a fellowship from Yale’s Lewis Walpole
Library, a fellowship from the Firestone Library at Princeton, and a fel-
lowship from the Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies at UCLA to
work in the Clark Library.
The Special Collections librarians at those libraries deserve particular
vii
acknowledgments
mention. The level of care, knowledge, and engagement shown by staff on
every level at the Houghton, the Beinecke, the Lewis Walpole, the Clark,
the Firestone, and the Bodleian was extraordinarily high, consistently, for
many years. This book simply could not exist but for the depth of their
expertise and their profoundly able assistance.
At Stanford, I was lucky enough to benefit from seven years’ worth of
provocations, insight, and good company of Allen Frost, Ryan Heuser,
Long Le-Khac, and Talya Meyers. Dan Edelstein and Nicole Coleman
were unfailingly welcoming, along with the rest of the Mapping the Re-
public of Letters cohort, particularly Melanie Conroy, Chloe Edmundson,
and Maria Teodora Comsa. Judy Candell made the English department
navigable; Mark Algee-Hewitt, Sami Amad, Erik Johnson, Steve Osadetz,
Rebecca Richardson, Jenna Sutton, and James Wood made it livable. My
final year as a graduate student, at Stanford’s Humanities Center on a
Geballe fellowship, was perhaps the most intellectually nutritive I can re-
member, and allowed me to revise this work under ideal conditions. Lucy
Alford, Joseph Boone, and Nate Sloan were fast friends found too late. In
and around Princeton, Jean Bauer, Toni Bowers, Travis Chi Wing Lau,
Paula McDowell, Meredith McGill, Marisa Nicosia, Stuart Sherman,
Nigel Smith, and Kate Thorpe all freely offered their time, and warmth,
and expertise. Pedro Dias and Jack and Laura Lynch provided me with
role models and sustenance. At the University of Houston, I was lucky to
work with Reid Boehm, Ann Christensen, Taylor Davis-Van Atta, Eliza-
beth Irvin Stravoski, Sebastian LeCourt, Santi Thompson, and Emily
Vinson, all of whom improved life in the subtropics.
Eighteenth-century studies has proven to be super-saturated with ex-
ceptional scholars of such warmth and solicitude that to call them mere
colleagues demeans their value. This book is the richer, and I am the
more fortunate, for the companionship, intellectual and otherwise, of
Dave Alvarez, Rebecca Barr, Kevin Berland, Christoph Bode, Tita Chico,
Al Coppola, Helen Deutsch, Chris Donaldson, Emily Friedman, Sören
Hammerschmidt, Stephanie Insley Hershinow, Joe Hone, Collin Jen-
nings, Sarah Kareem, Rachael Scarborough King, Crystal Lake, Kath-
leen Lubey, Jonathan Kramnick, Anton Matytsin, Laura Miller, James
McLaverty, John McTague, Sandra MacPherson, Danny O’Quinn, Ben
viii
acknowledgments
Pauley, Joe Roach, Rebecca Shapiro, Dustin Stewart, James Wooley, and
Gena Zuroski. John Bender, Tasha Eccles, Morgan Frank, Christine Ger-
rard, Dave Mazella, John Richetti, and Elaine Treharne did too much to
list here. Emma Smith, Hugh Gazzard, Helen Spencer, and especially Jeri
Johnson, have it all to answer for.
From conferences and deep into the texture of everyday life, Jacob
Sider Jost, Andrew Bricker, and Seth Rudy have been sane, sanguine,
kind, true friends. Rebecca Munson gave me many years of profound
love and support, as did her parents, Ronald and Miriam. Mike Amherst,
Mike Lesslie, Micha Lazarus, Sage Pearce-Higgins, Meredith Wallis, and
Adam Weymouth endured.
Erica Wetter at the Stanford University Press has proven an immensely
wise and patient editor, whose interventions fundamentally reoriented
this book for the better. I am very fortunate to work with her and with
the team at SUP, particularly Caroline McKusick and Peter Dreyer. Two
anonymous reviewers read this book with imagination and sharp eyes.
Paul, Jeannie, Shelagh, and Roger offered unstinting material and emo-
tional support. Dan, Elena, Otto, Patrick, and Terry were always kind,
no matter how long my absence. Vanda Wilcox deserves special mention
in these regards, and listened to more years of lectures about Pope and
Jacobitism than ought be asked of a military historian. I thank her for
lifting me up, and for tethering me to earth, as appropriate.
In Houston I found for the first time, united in my family, both the
means by which, and the reasons why. And so this book is dedicated to
all my boys.
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