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| Lives Of The English Poets : Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope
Alexander Pope
by Samuel Johnson
Alexander Pope was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents whose
rank or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they
were of "gentle blood;" that his father was of a family of which the
Earl of Downe was the head, and that his mother was the daughter of
William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one
of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in
the service of Charles the First; the third was made a general
officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations
and forfeitures had left in the family. This, and this only, is
told by Pope, who is more willing, as I have heard observed, to show
what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he
grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was
never discovered till Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs.
Racket, that he was a linendraper in the Strand. Both parents were
Papists.
Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate, but
is said to have shown remarkable gentleness and sweetness of
disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life,
but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His
voice when he was young was so pleasing, that he was called in
fondness "The Little Nightingale."
Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt;
and, when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books.
He first learned to write by imitating printed books, a species of
penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole
life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant. When he was about
eight he was placed in Hampshire, under Taverner, a Romish priest,
who, by a method very rarely practised, taught him the Greek and
Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in
poetry by the perusal of "Ogilby's Homer" and "Sandys' Ovid."
Ogilby's assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys
he declared, in his notes to the "Iliad," that English poetry owed
much of its beauty to his translations. Sandys very rarely
attempted original composition.
From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was
considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford, near
Winchester, and again to another school about Hyde Park Corner, from
which he used sometimes to stroll to the play-hones, and was so
delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play
from "Ogilby's Iliad," with some verses of his own intermixed, which
he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his
master's gardener, who personated Ajax.
At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost
part of what Taverner had taught him, and on his master at Twyford
he had already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those
masters he translated more than a fourth part of the
"Metamorphoses." If he kept the same proportion in his other
exercises, it cannot be thought that his loss was great. He tells
of himself, in his poems, that "he lisped in numbers;" and used to
say that he could not remember the time when he began to make
verses. In the style of fiction, it might have been said of him, as
of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle "the bees swarmed about
his mouth."
About the time of the Revolution his father, who was undoubtedly
disappointed by the sudden blast of Popish prosperity, quitted his
trade, and retired to Binfield, in Windsor Forest, with about twenty
thousand pounds, for which, being conscientiously determined not to
entrust it to the Government, he found no better use than that of
locking it up in a chest, and taking from it what his expenses
required; and his life was long enough to consume a great part of it
before his son came to the inheritance.
To Binfield Pope was called by his father when he was about twelve
years old, and there he had for a few months the assistance of one
Deane, another priest, of whom he learned only to construe a little
of "Tully's Offices." How Mr. Deane could spend with a boy who had
translated so much of "Ovid" some months over a small part of
"Tully's Offices," it is now vain to inquire. Of a youth so
successfully employed, and so conspicuously improved, a minute
account must be naturally desired; but curiosity must be contented
with confused, imperfect, and sometimes improbable intelligence.
Pope, finding little advantage from external help, resolved
thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of
study, which he completed with little other incitement than the
desire of excellence. His primary and principal purpose was to be a
poet, with which his father accidentally concurred by proposing
subjects and obliging him to correct his performances by many
revisals, after which the old gentleman, when he was satisfied,
would say, "These are good rhymes." In his perusal of the English
poets he soon distinguished the versification of Dryden, which he
considered as the model to be studied, and was impressed with such
veneration for his instructor, that he persuaded some friends to
take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented, and pleased
himself with having seen him.
Dryden died May 1, 1701, some days before Pope was twelve; so early
must he therefore have felt the power of harmony, and the zeal of
genius. Who does not wish that Dryden could have known the value of
the homage that was paid him, and foreseen the greatness of his
young admirer?
The earliest of Pope's productions is his "Ode on Solitude," written
before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other
forward boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley's
performance at the same age. His time was now wholly spent in
reading and writing. As he read the classics he amused himself with
translating them, and at fourteen made a version of the first book
of the "Thebais," which, with some revision, he afterwards
published. He must have been at this time, if he had no help, a
considerable proficient in the Latin tongue.
By Dryden's fables, which had then been not long published, and were
much in the hands of poetical readers, he was tempted to try his own
skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable appearance, and put
"January and May" and the "Prologue of the Wife of Bath" into modern
English. He translated likewise the Epistle of "Sappho to Phaon"
from Ovid, to complete the version, which was before imperfect, and
wrote some other small pieces, which he afterwards printed. He
sometimes imitated the English poets, and professed to have written
at fourteen his poem upon "Silence," after Rochester's "Nothing."
He had now formed his versification, and the smoothness of his
numbers surpassed his original; but this is a small part of his
praise; he discovers such acquaintance both with human life and
public affairs as is not easily conceived to have been attainable by
a boy of fourteen in Windsor Forest.
Next year he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of
knowledge, by making himself acquainted with modern languages, and
removed for a time to London, that he might study French and
Italian, which, as he desired nothing more than to read them, were
by diligent application soon despatched. Of Italian learning he
does not appear to have ever made much use in his subsequent
studies. He then returned to Binfield, and delighted himself with
his own poetry. He tried all styles, and many subjects. He wrote a
comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, with panegyrics on all the princes
of Europe; and, as he confesses, "thought himself the greatest
genius that ever was." Self-confidence is the first requisite to
great undertakings. He, indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in
solitude, without knowing the powers of other men, is very liable to
error; but it was the felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real
value. Most of his puerile productions were, by his maturer
judgment, afterwards destroyed. "Alcander," the epic poem, was
burnt by the persuasion of Atterbury. The tragedy was founded on
the legend of St. Genevieve. Of the comedy there is no account.
Concerning his studies, it is related that he translated "Tully on
Old Age," and that, besides his books of poetry and criticisms, he
read "Temple's Essays" and "Locke on Human Understanding." His
reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to have
been sufficiently extensive and multifarious, for his early pieces
show with sufficient evidence his knowledge of books. He that is
pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall please others.
Sir William Trumbull, who had been Ambassador at Constantinople, and
Secretary of State, when he retired from business, fixed his
residence in the neighbourhood of Binfield. Pope, not yet sixteen,
was introduced to the statesman of sixty, and so distinguished
himself that their interviews ended in friendship and
correspondence. Pope was, through his whole life, ambitious of
splendid acquaintance; and he seems to have wanted neither diligence
nor success in attracting the notice of the great, for, from his
first entrance into the world, and his entrance was very early, he
was admitted to familiarity with those whose rank or station made
them most conspicuous.
From the age of sixteen the life of Pope, as an author, may be
properly computed. He now wrote his pastorals, which were shown to
the poets and critics of that time. As they well deserved, they
were read with admiration, and many praises were bestowed upon them
and upon the preface, which is both elegant and learned in a high
degree; they were, however, not published till five years
afterwards.
Cowley, Milton, and Pope are distinguished among the English poets
by the early exertion of their powers, but the works of Cowley alone
were published in his childhood, and, therefore, of him only can it
be certain that his puerile performances received no improvement
from his maturer studies.
At this time began his acquaintance with Wycherley, a man who seems
to have had among his contemporaries his full share of reputation,
to have been esteemed without virtue, and caressed without good
humour. Pope was proud of his notice. Wycherley wrote verses in
his praise, which he was charged by Dennis with writing to himself,
and they agreed for a while to flatter one another. It is pleasant
to remark how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to
treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from
them. But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His
esteem of Pope was such that he submitted some poems to his
revision, and when Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was
sufficiently bold in his criticisms, and liberal in his alterations,
the old scribbler was angry to see his pages defaced, and felt more
pain from the detection than content from the amendment of his
faults. They parted, but Pope always considered him with kindness,
and visited him a little time before he died. Another of his early
correspondents was Mr. Cromwell, of whom I have learned nothing
particular, but that he used to ride a-hunting in a tie-wig. He was
fond, and perhaps vain, of amusing himself with poetry and
criticism, and sometimes sent his performances to Pope, who did not
forbear such remarks as were now and then unwelcome. Pope, in his
turn, put the juvenile version of "Statius" into his hands for
correction. Their correspondence afforded the public its first
knowledge of Pope's epistolary powers, for his letters were given by
Cromwell to one Mrs. Thomas, and she many years afterwards sold them
to Curll, who inserted them in a volume of his "Miscellanies."
Walsh, a name yet preserved among the minor poets, was one of his
first encouragers. His regard was gained by the pastorals, and from
him Pope received the counsel from which he seems to have regulated
his studies. Walsh advised him to correctness, which, as he told
him, the English poets had hitherto neglected, and which, therefore,
was left to him as a basis of fame; and, being delighted with rural
poems, recommended to him to write a pastoral comedy, like those
which are read so eagerly in Italy, a design which Pope probably did
not approve, as he did not follow it.
Pope had now declared himself a poet, and, thinking himself entitled
to poetical conversation, began at seventeen to frequent Will's, a
coffee-house on the north side of Russell Street, in Covent Garden,
where the wits of that time used to assemble, and where Dryden had,
when he lived, been accustomed to preside. During this period of
his life he was indefatigably diligent and insatiably curious,
wanting health for violent and money for expensive pleasures, and
having excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual
eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he read only
to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his
authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an
appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice. In a mind like his,
however, all the faculties were at once involuntarily improving.
Judgment is forced upon us by experience. He that reads many books
must compare one opinion or one style with another; and, when he
compares, must necessarily distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the
account given by himself of his studies was, that from fourteen to
twenty he read only for amusement, from twenty to twenty-seven for
improvement and instruction; that in the first part of his time he
desired only to know, and in the second he endeavoured to judge.
The Pastorals, which had been for some time handed about among poets
and critics, were at last printed (1709) in Tonson's "Miscellany,"
in a volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, and ended
with those of Pope. The same year was written the "Essay on
Criticism," a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such
nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such
knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often
attained by the maturest age and longest experience. It was
published about two years afterwards, and, being praised by Addison
in the Spectator, with sufficient liberality, met with so much
favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself attacked,
without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in his
person instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to
him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune;
and not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner,
with the utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was
done by a little, affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth
at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, good-nature,
humanity, and magnanimity. How the attack was clandestine is not
easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated; but he seems to
have known something of Pope's character, in whom may be discovered
an appetite to talk too frequently of his own virtues. The pamphlet
is such as rage might be expected to dictate. He supposes himself
to be asked two questions; whether the essay will succeed, and who
or what is the author.
Its success he admits to be secured by the false opinions then
prevalent; the author he concludes to be "young and raw."
"First, because he discovers a sufficiency beyond his little
ability, and hath rashly undertaken a task infinitely above his
force. Secondly, while this little author struts and affects the
dictatorian air, he plainly shows that at the same time he is under
the rod: and, while he pretends to give laws to others, is a
pedantic slave to authority and opinion. Thirdly, he hath, like
schoolboys, borrowed both from living and dead. Fourthly, he knows
not his own mind, and frequently contradicts himself. Fifthly, he
is almost perpetually in the wrong."
All these positions he attempts to prove by quotations and remarks;
but his desire to do mischief is greater than his power. He has,
however, justly criticised some passages in these lines:-
"There are whom Heaven has blessed with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it:
For wit and judgment ever are at strife--"
It is apparent that wit has two meanings, and that what is wanted,
though called wit, is truly judgment. So far Dennis is undoubtedly
right: but not content with argument, he will have a little mirth,
and triumphs over the first couplet in terms too elegant to be
forgotten. "By the way, what rare numbers are here! Would not one
swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated muse, who had
sued out a divorce on account of impotence, from some superannuated
sinner; and, having been p--d by her former spouse, has got the gout
in her decrepit age, which makes her hobble so damnably?" This was
the man who would reform a nation sinking into barbarity.
In another place Pope himself allowed that Dennis had detected one
of those blunders which are called "bulls." The first edition had
this line:-
"What is this wit -
Where wanted scorned; and envied where acquired?"
"How," says the critic, "can wit be scorned where it is not? Is not
this a figure frequently employed in Hibernian land! The person
that wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but the scorn shows the
honour which the contemner has for wit." Of this remark Pope made
the proper use, by correcting the passage.
I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis's
criticism; it remains that justice be done to his delicacy. "For
his acquaintance," says Dennis, "he names Mr. Walsh, who had by no
means the qualification which this author reckons absolutely
necessary to a critic, it being very certain that he was, like this
essayer a very indifferent poet; he loved to be well dressed; and I
remember a little young gentleman whom Mr. Walsh used to take into
his company as a double foil to his person and capacity. Inquire
between Sunning Hill and Oakingham, for a young, short, equal,
gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell me whether he
be a proper author to make personal reflections? He may extol the
ancients, but he has reason to thank the gods that he was born a
modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father
consequently had by law had the absolute disposal of him, his life
had been no longer than that of one of his poems, the life of half a
day. Let the person of a gentleman of his parts be never so
contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridiculous; it being
impossible that his outward form, though it be that of downright
monkey, should differ so much from human shape as his unthinking,
immaterial part does from human understanding." Thus began the
hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended
for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have
attacked him wantonly; but though he always professed to despise
him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his
force or his venom.
Of this essay, Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be
quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal
education, could understand it." The gentleman, and the education
of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are
of this. He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression.
Dennis was not his only censurer; the zealous Papists thought the
monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously
praised; but to these objections he had not much regard.
The "Essay," has been translated into French by Hamilton, author of
the "Comte de Grammont," whose version was never printed, by
Robotham, secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel; and
commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and
connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as it is said,
intended by the author.
Almost every poem, consisting of precepts, is so far arbitrary and
immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no
apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon
some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason
why one should precede the other. But for the order in which they
stand, whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason.
"It is possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction, from
any one truth all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous
truths, at least of all truths respecting the same general end, in
whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by
intermediate ideas may be formed, such as, when it is once shown,
shall appear natural; but if this order be reversed, another mode of
connection equally spacious may be found or made. Aristotle is
praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal virtues, as that
without which no other virtue can steadily be practised; but he
might, with equal propriety, have placed prudence and justice before
it; since without prudence fortitude is mad; without justice, it is
mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is
sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity; and where there is no
obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method.
In the Spectator was published the "Messiah," which he first
submitted to the perusal of Steele, and corrected in compliance with
his criticisms. It is reasonable to infer from his "Letters" that
the verses on the "Unfortunate Lady" were written about the time
when his "Essay" was published. The lady's name and adventures I
have sought with fruitless inquiry. I can therefore tell no more
than I have learned from Mr. Ruffhead, who writes with the
confidence of one who could trust his information. She was a woman
of eminent rank and large fortune, the ward of an uncle, who, having
given her a proper education, expected, like other guardians, that
she should make at least an equal match; and such he proposed to
her, but found it rejected in favour of a young gentleman of
inferior condition. Having discovered the correspondence between
the two lovers, and finding the young lady determined to abide by
her own choice, he supposed that separation might do what can rarely
be done by arguments, and sent her into a foreign country, where she
was obliged to converse only with those from whom her uncle had
nothing to fear. Her lover took care to repeat his vows; but his
letters were intercepted and carried to her guardian, who directed
her to be watched with still greater vigilance, till of this
restraint she grow so impatient that she bribed a woman servant to
procure her a sword, which she directed to her heart.
From this account, given with evident intention to raise the lady's
character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise nor
much to compassion. She seems to have been impatient, violent, and
ungovernable. Her uncle's power could not have lasted long; the
hour of liberty and choice would have come in time. But her desires
were too hot for delay, and she liked self-murder better than
suspense. Nor is it discovered that the uncle, whoever he was, is
with much justice delivered to posterity as "a false guardian." He
seems to have done only that for which a guardian is appointed; he
endeavoured to direct his niece till she should be able to direct
herself. Poetry has not often been worse employed than in
dignifying the amorous fiery of a raving girl.
Not long after he wrote the "Rape of the Lock," the most airy, the
most ingenious, and the most delightful off all his compositions,
occasioned by a frolic of gallantry, rather too familiar, in which
Lord Petre cut off a lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair. This,
whether stealth or violence, was so much resented that the commerce
of the two families, before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr.
Caryl, a gentleman who, being secretary to King James's queen, had
followed his mistress into France, and who, being the author of Sir
Solomon Single, a comedy, and some translations, was entitled to the
notice of a wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a reconciliation by a
ludicrous poem which might bring both the parties to a better
temper. In compliance with Caryl's request, though his name was for
a long time marked only by the first and last letter, "C--l," a poem
of two cantos, was written (1711), as is said, in a fortnight, and
sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to show it; and,
with the usual process of literary transactions, the author,
dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it.
The event is said to have been such as was desired, the pacification
and diversion of all to whom it related, except Sir George Brown,
who complained with some bitterness that, in the character of Sir
Plume, he was made to talk nonsense. Whether all this be true I
have some doubt; for at Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs.
Fermor, who presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope's work
with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and
she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family. At
its first appearance at was termed by Addison "merum sal." Pope,
however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, having luckily
contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians, imparted
the scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him
that his work, as it stood, was "a delicious little thing," and gave
him no encouragement to retouch it.
This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's
jealousy, for, as he could not guess the conduct of the new design,
or the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which
there had been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly
persuade the author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear
an attempt which he considered as an unnecessary hazard. Addison's
counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future efflorescence
of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or
industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy was
already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at
his hand to colour and embellish it. His attempt was justified by
its success. The "Rape of the Lock" stands forward, in the classes
of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry.
Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers more truly
poetical than he had shown before with elegance of description and
justness of precepts he had now exhibited boundless fertility of
invention. He always considered the intermixture of the machinery
with the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art.
He, indeed, could never afterwards produce anything of such
unexampled excellence. Those performances, which strike with
wonder, are combinations of skilful genius with happy casualty; and
it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race
of preternatural agents, should happen twice to the same man. Of
this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a
long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis
published some remarks upon it with very little force and with no
effect; for the opinion of the public was already settled, and it
was no longer at the mercy of criticism.
About this time he published the "Temple of Fame," which, as he
tells Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years
before--that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early
time of life for so much learning and so much observation as that
work exhibits. On this poem Dennis afterwards published some
remarks, of which the most reasonable is that some of the lines
represent motion as exhibited by sculpture.
Of the Epistle from "Eloisa to Abelard," I do not know the date.
His first inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind
arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's "Nut-brown
Maid." How much he has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary
to mention, when perhaps it may be said, with justice, that he has
excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of
religious hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to
disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot bestow. The
gloom of a convent strikes the imagination with far greater force
than the solitude of a grove. This piece was, however, not much his
favourite in his later years, though I never heard upon what
principle he slighted it.
In the next year (1713) he published "Windsor Forest," of which part
was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his
Pastorals, and the latter part was added afterwards. Where the
addition begins we are not told. The lines relating to the peace
confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, who was
then in high reputation and influence among the Tories; and it is
said that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison,
both as a poet and a politician. Reports like this are often spread
with boldness very disproportionate to their evidence. Why should
Addison receive any particular disturbance from the last lines of
"Windsor Forest"? If contrariety of opinion could poison a
politician, he could not live a day; and, as a poet, he must have
felt Pope's force of genius much more from many other parts of his
works. The pain that Addison might feel it is not likely that he
would confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his
discontent that Pope now thought himself his favourite, for, having
been consulted in the revisal of "Cato" he introduced it by a
prologue; and, when Dennis published his remarks, undertook, not
indeed to vindicate, but to revenge his friend, by a "Narrative of
the Frenzy of John Dennis."
There is reason to believe that Addison gave no encouragement to
this disingenuous hostility, for, says Pope, in a letter to him,
"indeed your opinion, that 'tis entirely to be neglected, would be
my own in my own case; but I felt more warmth here than I did when I
first saw his book against myself (though, indeed, in two minutes it
made me heartily merry)." Addison was not a man on whom such cant
of sensibility could make much impression. He left the pamphlet to
itself, having disowned it to Dennis, and perhaps did not think Pope
to have deserved much by his officiousness.
This year was printed in the Guardian the ironical comparison
between the pastorals of Philips and Pope, a composition of
artifice, criticism, and literature, to which nothing equal will
easily be found. The superiority of Pope is so ingeniously
dissembled, and the feeble lines of Philips so skilfully preferred,
that Steele, being deceived, was unwilling to print the paper, lest
Pope should be offended. Addison immediately saw the writer's
design, and, as it seems, had malice enough to conceal his
discovery, and to permit a publication which, by making his friend
Philips ridiculous, made him for ever an enemy to Pope.
It appears that about this time Pope had a strong inclination to
unite the art of painting with that of poetry, and put himself under
the tuition of Jervas. He was near-sighted, and therefore not
formed by nature for a painter; he tried, however, how far he could
advance, and sometimes persuaded his friends to sit. A picture of
Betterton, supposed to be drawn by him, was in the possession of
Lord Mansfield. If this was taken from the life, he must have begun
to paint earlier, for Betterton was now dead. Pope's ambition of
this new art produced some encomiastic verses to Jervas, which
certainly show his power as a poet; but I have been told that they
betray his ignorance of painting. He appears to have regarded
Betterton with kindness and esteem, and after his death published,
under his name, a version into modern English of Chaucer's Prologues
and one of his Tales, which, as was related by Mr. Harte, were
believed to have been the performance of Pope himself by Fenton, who
made him a gay offer of five pounds if he would show them in the
hand of Betterton.
The next year (1713) produced a bolder attempt, by which profit was
sought as well as praise. The poems which he had hitherto written,
however they might have diffused his name, had made very little
addition to his fortune. The allowance which his father made him,
though, proportioned to what he had, it might be liberal, could not
be large; his religion hindered him from the occupation of any civil
employment; and he complained that he wanted even money to buy
books. He therefore resolved to try how far the favour of the
public extended by soliciting a subscription to a version of the
"Iliad," with large notes. To print by subscription was, for some
time, a practice peculiar to the English. The first considerable
work for which this expedient was employed is said to have been
Dryden's "Virgil," and it had been tried again with great success
when the Tatlers were collected into volumes.
There was reason to believe that Pope's attempt would be successful.
He was in the full bloom of reputation and was personally known to
almost all whom dignity of employment or splendour of reputation had
made eminent; he conversed indifferently with both parties, and
never disturbed the public with his political opinions; and it might
be naturally expected, as each faction then boasted its literary
zeal, that the great men, who on other occasions practised all the
violence of opposition, would emulate each other in their
encouragement of a poet who delighted all, and by whom none had been
offended. With these hopes, he offered an English "Iliad" to
subscribers, in six volumes in quarto, for six guineas, a sum
according to the value of money at that time by no means
inconsiderable, and greater than I believe to have been ever asked
before. His proposal, however, was very favourably received, and
the patrons of literature were busy to recommend his undertaking and
promote his interest. Lord Oxford, indeed, lamented that such a
genius should be wasted upon a work not original, but proposed no
means by which he might live without it. Addison recommended
caution and moderation, and advised him not to be content with the
praise of half the nation when he might be universally favoured.
The greatness of the design, the popularity of the author, and the
attention of the literary world, naturally raised such expectations
of the future sale, that the booksellers made their offers with
great eagerness; but the highest bidder was Bernard Lintot, who
became proprietor on condition of supplying, at his own expense, all
the copies which were to be delivered to subscribers, or presented
to friends, and paying two hundred pounds for every volume.
Of the quartos it was, I believe, stipulated that none should be
printed but for the author, that the subscription might not be
depreciated; but Lintot impressed the same pages upon a small folio,
and paper perhaps a little thinner, and sold exactly at half the
price, for half a guinea each volume, books so little inferior to
the quartos that, by fraud of trade, those folios being afterwards
shortened by cutting away the top and bottom, were sold as copies
printed for the subscribers.
Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in folio for two
guineas a volume; of the small folio, having printed seventeen
hundred and fifty copies of the first volume, he reduced the number
in the other volumes to a thousand. It is unpleasant to relate that
the bookseller, after all his hopes and all his liberality, was, by
a very unjust and illegal action, defrauded of his profit. An
edition of the English "Iliad" was printed in Holland in duodecimo,
and imported clandestinely for the gratification of those who were
impatient to read what they could not yet afford to buy. This fraud
could only be counteracted by an edition equally cheap and more
commodious; and Lintot was compelled to contract his folio at once
into a duodecimo, and lose the advantage of an intermediate
gradation. The notes which in the Dutch copies were placed at the
end of each book as they had been in the large volumes, were now
subjoined to the text in the same page, and are therefore more
easily consulted. Of this edition two thousand five hundred were
first printed, and five thousand a few weeks afterwards; but indeed
great numbers were necessary to produce considerable profit.
Pope, having now emitted his proposals, and engaged not only his own
reputation but in some degree that of his friends who patronised his
subscription, began to be frightened at his own undertaking, and
finding himself at first embarrassed with difficulties which
retarded and oppressed him, he was for a time timorous and uneasy,
had his nights disturbed by dreams of long journeys through unknown
ways, and wished, as he said, "that somebody would hang him." This
misery, however, was not of long continuance; he grew by degrees
more acquainted with Homer's images and expressions, and practice
increased his facility of versification. In a short time he
represents himself as despatching regularly fifty verses a day,
which would show him by an easy computation, the termination of his
labour. His own diffidence was not his only vexation. He that asks
a subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not
encourage him defame him. He that wants money would rather be
thought angry than poor; and he that wishes to save his money
conceals his avarice by his malice. Addison had hinted his
suspicion that Pope was too much a Tory; and some of the Tories
suspected his principles because he had contributed to the Guardian,
which was carried on by Steele.
To those who censured his politics were added enemies more
dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his
qualifications for a translator of "Homer." To these he made no
public opposition, but in one of his letters escapes from them as
well as he can. At an age like his, for he was not more than
twenty-five, with an irregular education and a course of life of
which much seems to have passed in conversation, it is not very
likely that he overflowed with Greek. But when he felt himself
deficient he sought assistance, and what man of learning would
refuse to help him? Minute inquiries into the force of words are
less necessary in translating Homer than other poets, because his
positions are general, and his representations natural, with very
little dependence on local or temporary customs, on those changeable
scenes of artificial life, which, by mingling original with
accidental notions and crowding the mind with images which time
effaces, produces ambiguity in dictation and obscurity in books. To
this open display of unadulterated nature it must be ascribed that
Homer has fewer passages of doubtful meaning than any other poet
either in the learned or in modern languages. I have read of a man
who, being by his ignorance of Greek compelled to gratify his
curiosity with the Latin printed on the opposite page, declared that
from the rude simplicity of the lines literally rendered he formed
nobler ideas of the Homeric majesty than from the laboured elegance
of polished versions. Those literal translations were always at
hand, and from them he could easily obtain his author's sense with
sufficient certainty and among the readers of Homer the number is
very small of those who find much in the Greek more than in the
Latin, except the music of the numbers.
If more help was wanting he had the poetical translation of Eobanus
Hessus, an unwearied writer of Latin verses; he had the French
Homers of La Valterie and Dacier, and the English of Chapman,
Hobbes, and Ogilby. With Chapman, whose work, though now totally
neglected, seems to have been popular almost to the end of the last
century, he had very frequent consultations, and perhaps never
translated any passage till he had read his version, which he indeed
has been sometimes suspected of using instead of the original.
Notes were likewise to be provided, for the six volumes would have
been very little more than six pamphlets without them. What the
mere perusal of the text could suggest Pope wanted no assistance to
collect or methodise; but more was necessary. Many pages were to be
filled, and learning must supply materials to wit and judgment.
Something might be gathered from Dacier, but no man loves to be
indebted to his contemporaries, and Dacier was accessible to common
readers. Eustathius was therefore necessarily consulted. To read
Eustathius, of whose work there was then no Latin version, I suspect
Pope if he had been willing not to have been able. Some other was
therefore to be found who had leisure as well as abilities, and he
was doubtless most readily employed who would do much work for
little money.
The history of the notes has never been traced. Broome, an his
preface to his poems, declares himself the commentator "in part upon
the 'Iliad,'" and it appears from Fenton's letter, preserved in the
Museum, that Broome was at first engaged in consulting Eustathius;
but that after a time, whatever was the reason, he desisted.
Another man of Cambridge was then employed, who soon grew weary of
the work, and a third, that was recommended by Thirlby, is now
discovered to have been Jortin, a man since well known to the
learned world, who complained that Pope, having accepted and
approved his performance, never testified any curiosity to see him,
and who professed to have forgotten the terms on which he worked.
The terms which Fenton uses are very mercantile: "I think at first
sight that his performance is very commendable, and have sent word
for him to finish the seventeenth book, and to send it with his
demands for his trouble. I have here enclosed the specimen; if the
rest come before the return, I will keep them till I receive your
order."
Broome then offered his service a second time, which was probably
accepted, as they had afterwards a closer correspondence. Parnell
contributed the "Life of Homer," which Pope found so harsh, that he
took great pains in correcting it; and by his own diligence, with
such help as kindness or money could procure him, in somewhat more
than five years he completed his version of the "Iliad," with the
notes. He began it in 1712, his twenty-fifth year, and concluded it
in 1718, his thirtieth year. When we find him translating fifty
lines a day, it is natural to suppose that he would have brought his
work to a more speedy conclusion. The "Iliad," containing less than
sixteen thousand verses, might have been despatched in less than
three hundred and twenty days by fifty verses in a day. The notes,
compiled with the assistance of his mercenaries, could not be
supposed to require more time than the text. According to this
calculation, the progress of Pope may seem to have been slow; but
the distance is commonly very great between actual performances and
speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as
has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some
difficulty emerges, or some external impediment obstructs.
Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all take their
turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a
thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be
recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was
ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's
mind. He that runs against time has an antagonist not subject to
casualties.
The encouragement given to this translation, though report seems to
have overrated it, was such as the world has not often seen. The
subscribers were five hundred and seventy-five. The copies, for
which subscriptions were given, were six hundred and fifty-four; and
only six hundred and sixty were printed. For these copies Pope had
nothing to pay. He therefore received, including the two hundred
pounds a volume, five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds, four
shillings, without deduction, as the books were supplied by Lintot.
By the success of his subscription Pope was relieved from those
pecuniary distresses with which, notwithstanding his popularity, he
had hitherto struggled. Lord Oxford had often lamented his
disqualification for public employment, but never proposed a
pension. While the translation of "Homer" was in its progress, Mr.
Craggs, then Secretary of State, offered to procure him a pension,
which, at least during his ministry, might be enjoyed with secrecy.
This was not accepted by Pope, who told him, however, that, if he
should be pressed with want of money, he would send to him for
occasional supplies. Craggs was not long in power, and was never
solicited for money by Pope, who disdained to beg what he did not
want.
With the product of this subscription, which he had too much
discretion to squander, he secured his future life from want, by
considerable annuities. The estate of the Duke of Buckingham was
found to have been charged with five hundred pounds a year, payable
to Pope, which doubtless his translation enabled him to purchase.
It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce thus
minutely the history of the English "Iliad." It is certainly the
noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen, and its
publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events
in the annals of learning. To those who have skill to estimate the
excellence and difficulty of this great work, it must be very
desirable to know how it was performed, and by what gradations it
advanced to correctness. Of such an intellectual process the
knowledge has very rarely been attainable; but happily there remains
the original copy of the "Iliad," which, being obtained by
Bolingbroke as a curiosity, descended from him to Mallet, and is
now, by the solicitation of the late Dr. Maty, reposited in the
Museum. Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental
fragments of paper, and the printed edition, there must have been an
intermediate copy, that was perhaps destroyed as it returned from
the press.
From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts, and shall
exhibit first the printed lines; then, in a small print, those of
the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words in the
small print, which are given in italics, are cancelled in the copy,
and the words placed under them adopted in their stead:
The beginning of the first book stands thus:-
The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing,
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.
The stern Pelides' rage, O Goddess, sing,
wrath
Of all the woes of Greece too fatal spring,
Grecian
That screwed with warriors dead the Phrygian plain,
heroes
And peopled the dark with heroes slain:
filled the shady hell with chiefs untimely
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore,
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove;
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.
Whose limbs, unburied on the hostile shore,
Devouring dogs and greedy vultures tore,
Since first Atrides and Achilles strove;
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.
Declare, O Muse, in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the fierce strife from what offended Power?
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,
And heaped the camp with mountains of the dead;
The King of Men his reverend priest defied,
And for the King's offence the people died.
Declare, O Goddess, what offended Power
Enflamed their rage in that ill-omened hour;
anger fatal, hapless
Phoebus himself the dire debate procured,
fierce
To avenge the wrongs his injured priest endured;
For this the god a dire infection spread,
And heaped the camp with millions of the dead:
The King of men the sacred sire defied,
And for the King's offence the people died.
For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the Victor's chain;
Suppliant the venerable father stands,
Apollo's awful ensigns grace his hands,
By these he begs, and, lowly bending down,
Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown.
For Chryses sought by presents to regain
costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the Victor's chain;
Suppliant the venerable father stands,
Apollo's awful ensigns graced his hands.
By these he begs, and, lowly bending down
The golden sceptre and the laurel crown,
Presents the sceptre
For these as ensigns of his god he bare,
The god who sends his golden shaft afar;
Then low on earth the venerable man,
Suppliant before the brother kings began.
He sued to all, but chief implored for grace,
The brother kings of Atreus' royal race;
Ye kings and warriors, may your vows be crowned,
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground;
May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er,
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
To all he sued, but chief implored for grace
The brother kings of Atreus' royal race.
Ye sons of Atreus, may your vows be crowned,
kings and warriors
Your labours, by the gods be all your labours crowned;
So may the gods your arms with conquest bless,
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground;
Till laid
And crown your labours with desired success;
May Jove restore you when your toils are o'er
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
But, oh! relieve a wretched parent's pain,
And give Chryses to these arms again;
If mercy fail, yet let my present move,
And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove.
But, oh! relieve a hapless parent's pain,
And give my daughter to these arms again;
Receive my gifts, if mercy fails, yet let my present move,
And fear the god who deals his darts around,
avenging Phoebus, son of Jove.
The Greeks, in shouts, their joint assent declare,
The priest to reverence, and release the fair:
Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride,
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied.
He said, the Greeks their joint assent declare,
The father said, the generous Greeks relent,
To accept the ransom, and restore the fair:
Revere the priest, and speak their joint assent;
Not so the tyrant; he, with kingly pride,
Atrides,
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied
[Not so the tyrant. DRYDEN.]
Of these lines, and of the whole first book, I am told that there
was yet a former copy, more varied, and more deformed with
interlineations.
The beginning of the second book varies very little from the printed
page, and is therefore set down without any parallel. The few
slight differences do not require to be elaborately displayed.
Now pleasing sleep had sealed each mortal eye:
Stretched in the tents the Grecian leaders lie;
The Immortals slumbered on their thrones above,
All but the ever-wakeful eye of Jove.
To honour Thetis' son he bends his care,
And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war.
Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight,
And thus commands the vision of the night:
directs
Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air,
To Agamemnon's royal tent repair;
Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,
March all his legions to the dusty plain.
Now tell the King 'tis given him to destroy
Declare even now
The lofty walls of wide-extended Troy;
towers
For now no more the gods with fate contend;
At Juno's suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hovers o'er yon devoted wall,
hangs
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.
Invocation to the catalogue of ships.
Say, virgins, seated round the throne divine,
All-knowing goddesses! immortal nine!
Since earth's wide regions, heaven's unmeasured height,
And hell's abyss, hide nothing from your sight
(We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below,
But guess by rumour, and but boast we know),
Oh! say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame,
Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came!
To count them all demands a thousand tongues,
A throat of brass and adamantine lungs.
Now virgin goddesses, immortal nine!
That round Olympus' heavenly summit shine,
Who see through heaven and earth, and hell profound,
And all things know, and all things can resound!
Relate what armies sought the Trojan land,
What nations followed, and what chiefs command;
(For doubtful fame distracts mankind below,
And nothing can we tell, and nothing know)
Without your aid, to count the unnumbered train,
A thousand mouths, a thousand tongues, were vain.
Book V. v. 1.
But Pallas now Tydides' soul inspires,
Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires:
Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise,
And crown her hero with distinguished praise,
High on his helm celestial lightnings play,
His beamy shield emits a living ray;
The unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,
Like the red star that fires the autumnal skies.
But Pallas now Tydides' soul inspires,
Fills with her rage, and warms with all her fires;
force
O'er all the Greeks decrees his fame to raise,
Above the Greeks her warrior's fame to raise,
his deathless
And crown her hero with immortal praise:
distinguished
Bright from his beamy crest the lightnings play,
High on helm
From his broad buckler flashed the living ray;
High on his helm celestial lightnings play,
His beamy shield emits a living ray;
The goddess with her breath the flame supplies,
Bright as the star whose fires in autumn rise;
Her breath divine thick streaming flames supplies,
Bright as the star that fires the autumnal skies:
The unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,
Like the red star that fires the autumnal skies.
When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight,
And bathed in ocean shoots a keener light,
Such glories Pallas on the chief bestowed,
Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flowed;
Onward she drives him, furious to engage,
Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage.
When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight,
And gilds old ocean with a blaze of light,
Bright as the star that fires the autumnal skies,
Fresh from the deep, and gilds the seas and skies:
Such glories Pallas on her chief bestowed,
Such sparkling rays from his bright armour flowed,
Such sparkling rays from his bright armour flowed,
Onward she drives him headlong to engage,
furious
Where the war bleeds, and where the fiercest rage.
fight burns, thickest
The sons of Dares first the combat sought,
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault;
In Vulcan's fane the father's days were led,
The sons to toils of glorious battle bred;
There lived a Trojan--Dares was his name,
The priest of Vulcan, rich, yet void of blame;
The sons of Dares first the combat sought,
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault.
Conclusion of Book VIII. v. 687.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head:
Then shine the vales--the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field;
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umbered arms by fits thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.
As when in stillness of the silent night,
As when the moon in all her lustre bright,
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er Heaven's clear azure sheds her silver light;
pure spreads sacred
As still in air the trembling lustre stood,
And o'er its golden border shoots a flood;
When no loose gale disturbs the deep serene,
not a breath
And no dim cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
not a
Around her silver throne the planets glow,
And stars unnumbered trembling beams bestow;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
Clear gleams of light o'er the dark trees are seen,
o'er the dark trees a yellow sheds
O'er the dark trees a yellower green they shed,
gleam
verdure
And tip with silver all the mountain heads
forest
And tip with silver every mountain's head.
The valleys open, and the forests rise,
The vales appear, the rocks in prospect rise,
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
All nature stands revealed before our eyes;
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
The conscious shepherd, joyful at the sight,
Eyes the blue vault, and numbers every light.
The conscious swains rejoicing at the sight,
shepherds gazing with delight
Eye the blue vault, and bless the vivid light.
glorious
useful
So many flames before the navy blaze,
proud Ilion
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays,
Wide o'er the fields to Troy extend the gleams,
And tip the distant spires with fainter beams;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gild the high walls, and tremble on the spires;
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires;
A thousand fires at distant stations bright,
Gild the dark prospect, and dispel the night.
Of these specimens every man who has cultivated poetry, or who
delights to trace the mind from the rudeness of its first
conceptions to the elegance of its last, will naturally desire a
great number; but most other readers are already tired, and I am not
writing only to poets and philosophers.
The "Iliad" was published volume by volume, as the translation
proceeded. The four first books appeared in 1713. The expectation
of this work was undoubtedly high, and every man who had connected
his name with criticism or poetry was desirous of such intelligence
as might enable him to talk upon the popular topic. Halifax, who,
by having been first a poet, and then a patron of poetry, had
acquired the right of being a judge, was willing to hear some books
while they were yet unpublished. Of this rehearsal Pope afterwards
gave the following account:-
"The famous Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste than really
possessed of it. When I had finished the two or three first books
of my translation of the 'Iliad,' that lord desired to have the
pleasure of hearing them read at his house. Addison, Congreve, and
Garth were there at the reading. In four or five places Lord
Halifax stopped me very civilly, and with a speech each time of much
the same kind, 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something
in that passage that does not please me. Be so good as to mark the
place, and consider it a little at your leisure. I am sure you can
give it a little turn.' I returned from Lord Halifax's with Dr.
Garth in his chariot, and as we were going along was saying to the
Doctor that my lord had laid me under a great deal of difficulty by
such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over
the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was
that offended his lordship in either of them. Garth laughed
heartily at my embarrassment: said I had not been long enough
acquainted with Lord Halifax to know his way yet; that I need not
puzzle myself about looking those places over and over when I got
home. 'All you need do,' says he, 'is to leave them just as they
are, call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for
his kind observations on those passages, and then read them to him
as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be
answerable for the event.' I followed his advice, waited on Lord
Halifax some time after; said I hoped he would find his objections
to those passages removed; read them to him exactly as they were at
first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried
out, 'Ay, now they are perfectly right; nothing can be better.'"
It is seldom that the great or the wise suspect that they are
despised or cheated. Halifax, thinking this a lucky opportunity of
securing immortality, made some advances of favour and some
overtures of advantage to Pope, which he seems to have received with
sullen coldness. All our knowledge of this transaction is derived
from a single letter (December 1, 1714), in which Pope says, "I am
obliged to you, both for the favours you have done me and those you
intend me. I distrust neither your will nor your memory when it is
to do good; and if I ever become troublesome or solicitous, it must
not be out of expectation, but out of gratitude. Your lordship may
cause me to live agreeably in the town, or contentedly in the
country, which is really all the difference I set between an easy
fortune and a small one. It is indeed a high strain of generosity
in you to think of making me easy all my life, only because I have
been so happy as to divert you some few hours; but, if I may have
leave to add it is because you think me no enemy to my native
country, there will appear a better reason; for I must of
consequence be very much (as I sincerely am) yours, &c."
These voluntary offers, and this faint acceptance, ended without
effect. The patron was not accustomed to such frigid gratitude; and
the poet fed his own pride with the dignity of independence. They
probably were suspicious of each other. Pope would not dedicate
till he saw at what rate his praise was valued; he would be
"troublesome out of gratitude, not expectation." Halifax thought
himself entitled to confidence, and would give nothing unless he
knew what he should receive. Their commerce had its beginning in
hope of praise on one side and of money on the other, and ended
because Pope was less eager of money than Halifax of praise. It is
not likely that Halifax had any personal benevolence to Pope; it is
evident that Pope looked on Halifax with scorn and hatred.
The reputation of this great work failed of gaining him a patron but
it deprived him of a friend. Addison and he were now at the head of
poetry and criticism, and both in such a state of elevation that,
like the two rivals in the Roman State, one could no longer bear an
equal, nor the other a superior. Of the gradual abatement of
kindness between friends, the beginning is often scarcely
discernible to themselves, and the process is continued by petty
provocations, and incivilities sometimes peevishly returned, and
sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would escape all attention
but that of pride, and drop from any memory but that of resentment.
That the quarrel of these two wits should be minutely deduced is not
to be expected from a writer to whom, as Homer says, "nothing but
rumour has reached, and who has no personal knowledge."
Pope doubtless approached Addison, when the reputation of their wit
first brought them together, with the respect due to a man whose
abilities were acknowledged, and who, having attained that eminence
to which he was himself aspiring, had in his hands the distribution
of literary fame. He paid court with sufficient diligence by his
prologue to "Cato," by his abuse of Dennis, and with praise yet more
direct, by his poem on the "Dialogues on Medals," of which the
immediate publication was then intended. In all this there was no
hypocrisy for he confessed that he found in Addison something more
pleasing than in any other man.
It may be supposed that, as Pope saw himself favoured by the world,
and more frequently compared his own powers with those of others,
his confidence increased, and his submission lessened; and that
Addison felt no delight from the advances of a young wit, who might
soon contend with him for the highest place. Every great man, of
whatever kind be his greatness, has among his friends those who
officiously or insidiously quicken his attention to offences,
heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment. Of such
adherents Addison doubtless had many; and Pope was now too high to
be without them. From the emission and reception of the proposals
for the "Iliad," the kindness of Addison seems to have abated.
Jervas the painter once pleased himself (August 20,1714) with
imagining that he had re-established their friendship, and wrote to
Pope that Addison once suspected him of too close a confederacy with
Swift, but was now satisfied with his conduct. To this Pope
answered, a week after, that his engagements to Swift were such as
his services in regard to the subscription demanded, and that the
Tories never put him under the necessity of asking leave to be
grateful. "But," says he, "as Mr. Addison must be the judge in what
regards himself, and seems to have no very just one in regard to me,
so I must own to you I expect nothing but civility from him." In
the same letter he mentions Philips, as having been busy to kindle
animosity between them; but in a letter to Addison he expresses some
consciousness of behaviour, inattentively deficient in respect.
Of Swift's industry in promoting the subscription there remains the
testimony of Kennet, no friend to either him or Pope.
"November 2, 1713, Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a
bow from everybody but me, who, I confess, could not but despise
him. When I came to the antechamber to wait, before prayers, Dr.
Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as
master of requests. Then he instructed 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 HAVE
THEM ALL SUBSCRIBE: for, says he, the author SHALL NOT begin to
print till I HAVE a thousand guineas for him."
About this time it is likely that Steele, who was, with all his
political fury, good-natured and officious, procured an interview
between these angry rivals, which ended in aggravated malevolence.
On this occasion, if the reports be true, Pope made his complaint
with frankness and spirit, as a man undeservedly neglected or
opposed; and Addison affected a contemptuous unconcern, and in a
calm, even voice reproached Pope with his vanity, and, telling him
of the improvements which his early works had received from his own
remarks and those of Steele, said that he, being now engaged in
public business, had no longer any care for his poetical reputation,
nor had any other desire with regard to Pope than that he should
not, by too much arrogance, alienate the public.
To this Pope is said to have replied with great keenness and
severity, upbraiding Addison with perpetual dependence, and with the
abuse of those qualifications which he had obtained at the public
cost, and charging him with mean endeavours to obstruct the progress
of rising merit. The contest rose so high that they parted at last
without any interchange of civility.
The first volume of "Homer" was (1715) in time published; and a
rival version of the first "Iliad," for rivals the time of their
appearance inevitably made them, was immediately printed, with the
name of Tickell. It was soon perceived that, among the followers of
Addison, Tickell had the preference, and the critics and poets
divided into factions. "I," says Pope, "have the town, that is, the
mob, on my side; but it is not uncommon for the smaller party to
supply by industry what it wants in numbers. I appeal to the people
as my rightful judges, and, while they are not inclined to condemn
me, shall not fear the high-flyers at Button's." This opposition he
immediately imputed to Addison, and complained of it in terms
sufficiently resentful to Craggs, their common friend.
When Addison's opinion was asked, he declared the versions to be
both good, but Tickell's the best that had ever been written; and
sometimes said that they were both good, but that Tickell had more
of "Homer."
Pope was now sufficiently irritated; his reputation and his interest
were at hazard. He once intended to print together the four
versions of Dryden, Maynwaring, Pope, and Tickell, that they might
be readily compared and fairly estimated. This design seems to have
been defeated by the refusal off Tonson, who was the proprietor of
the other three versions.
Pope intended, at another time, a rigorous criticism of Tickell's
translation, and had marked a copy, which I have seen, in all places
that appeared defective. But while he was thus meditating defence
or revenge, his adversary sunk before him without a blow; the voice
of the public was not long divided, and the preference universally
given to Pope's performance. He was convinced, by adding one
circumstance to another, that the other translation was the work of
Addison himself; but, if he knew it in Addison's lifetime, it does
not appear that he told it. He left his illustrious antagonist to
lie punished by what has been considered as the most painful of all
reflections--the remembrance of a crime perpetrated in vain. The
other circumstances of their quarrel were thus related by Pope:-
"Philips seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses
and conversations, and Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley, in
which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord
Warwick himself told me one day that it was in vain for me to
endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would
never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me
of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon
to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they
were published. The next day, while I was heated with what I had
heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to let him know that I was
not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that if I was to speak
severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty
way; that I should rather tell him himself fairly of his faults, and
allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the
following manner. I then adjoined the first sketch of what has
since been called my satire on Addison. Mr Addison used me very
civilly ever after."
The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were
considered by him as the most excellent of Pope's performances; and
the writer was advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to
suffer it to remain unemployed. This year (1715), being by the
subscription enabled to live more by choice, having persuaded his
father to sell their estate at Binfield, he purchased, I think only
for his life, that house at Twickenham to which his residence
afterwards procured so much celebration, and removed thither with
his father and mother. Here he planted the vines and the quincunx
which his verses mention; and being under the necessity of making a
subterraneous passage to a garden on the other side of the road, he
adorned it with fossil bodies, and dignified it with the title of a
grotto; a place of silence and retreat, from which he endeavoured to
persuade his friends and himself that cares and passions could be
excluded.
A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of all Englishmen, who
has more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope's
excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden; and, as some
men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from
an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity
enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious
and speculative, that they are proud of trifles, and that their
amusements seem frivolous and childish. Whether it be that men,
conscious of great reputation, think themselves above the reach of
censure, and safe in the admission of negligent indulgences, or that
mankind expect from elevated genius a uniformity of greatness, and
watch its degradation with malicious wonder, like him who, having
followed with his eye an eagle into the clouds, should lament that
she ever descended to a perch.
While the volumes of his "Homer" were annually published, he
collected his former works (1717) into one quarto volume, to which
he prefixed a preface, written with great sprightliness and
elegance, which was afterwards reprinted, with some passages
subjoined that he at first omitted. Other marginal additions of the
same kind he made in the later editions of his poems. Waller
remarks, that poets lose half their praise, because the reader knows
not what they have blotted. Pope's voracity of fame taught him the
art of obtaining the accumulated honour both of what he had
published, and of what he had suppressed. In this year his father
died suddenly, in his seventy-fifth year, having passed twenty-nine
years in privacy. He is not known but by the character which his
son has given him. If the money with which he retired was all
gotten by himself, he had traded very successfully in times when
sudden riches were rarely attainable.
The publication of the "Iliad" was at last completed in 1720. The
splendour and success of this work raised Pope many enemies that
endeavoured to depreciate his abilities. Burnet, who was afterwards
a judge of no mean reputation, censured him in a piece called
"Homerides" before it was published. Ducket likewise endeavoured to
make him ridiculous. Dennis was the perpetual persecutor of all his
studies. But whoever his critics were, their writings are lost, and
the names, which are preserved are preserved in the "Dunciad."
In this disastrous year (1720) of national infatuation, when more
riches than Peru can boast were expected from the South Sea, when
the contagion of avarice tainted every mind, and even poets panted
after wealth, Pope was seized with the universal passion, and
ventured some of his money. The stock rose in its price, and for a
while he thought himself the lord of thousands. But this dream of
happiness did not last long, and he seems to have waked soon enough
to get clear with the loss of what he once thought himself to have
won, and perhaps not wholly of that.
Next year he published some select poems of his friend Dr. Parnell,
with a very elegant dedication to the Earl of Oxford, who, after all
his struggles and dangers, then lived in retirement, still under the
frown of a victorious faction, who could take no pleasure in hearing
his praise. He gave the same year (1721) an edition of Shakespeare.
His name was now of so much authority that Tonson thought himself
entitled, by annexing it, to demand a subscription of six guineas
for Shakespeare's plays in six quarto volumes. Nor did his
expectation much deceive him, for, of seven hundred and fifty which
he printed, he dispersed a great number at the price proposed. The
reputation of that edition indeed, sunk, afterwards so low, that one
hundred and forty copies were sold at sixteen shillings each. On
this undertaking, to which Pope was induced by a reward of two
hundred and seventeen pounds twelve shillings, he seems never to
have reflected afterwards without vexation; for Theobald a man of
heavy diligence, with very slender powers, first, in a book called
"Shakespeare Restored," and then in a formal edition, detected his
deficiencies with all the insolence of victory; and as he was now
high enough to be feared and hated, Theobald had from others all the
help that could be supplied, by the desire of humbling a haughty
character. From this time Pope became an enemy to editors,
collators, commentators, and verbal critics, and hoped to persuade
the world that he miscarried in this undertaking only by having a
mind too great for such minute employment.
Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many
things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise. He
was the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps
the text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions
negligently, he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface
he expanded with great skill and elegance the character which had
been given of Shakespeare by Dryden; and he drew the public
attention upon his works, which, though often mentioned, had been
little read. Soon after the appearance of the "Iliad," resolving
not to let the general kindness cool, he published proposals for a
translation of the "Odyssey," in five volumes, for five guineas. He
was willing, however, now to have associates in his labour, being
either weary with toiling upon another's thoughts, or having heard,
as Ruffhead relates, that Fenton and Broome had already begun the
work, and liking better to have them confederates than rivals. In
the patent, instead of saying that he had "translated" the
"Odyssey," as he had said of the "Iliad," he says that he had
"undertaken" a translation: and in the proposals, the subscription
is said to be not solely for his own use, but for that of "two of
his friends who have assisted him in his work."
In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared
before the Lords at the memorable trial of Bishop Atterbury, with
whom he had lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspondence.
Atterbury had honestly recommended to him the study of the Popish
controversy, in hope of his conversion; to which Pope answered in a
manner that cannot much recommend his principles or his judgment.
In questions and projects of learning they agree better. He was
called at the trial to give an account of Atterbury's domestic life
and private employment, that it might appear how little time he had
left for plots. Pope had but few words to utter, and in those few
he made several blunders.
His letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, and
gratitude. "Perhaps," says he, "it is not only in this world that I
may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester." At their last
interview in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a Bible.
Of the "Odyssey" Pope translated only twelve books. The rest were
the work of Broome and Fenton: the notes were written wholly by
Broome, who was not over liberally rewarded. The public was
carefully kept ignorant of the several shares; and an account was
subjoined at the conclusion which is now known not to be true. The
first copy of Pope's books, with those of Fenton, are to be seen in
the Museum. The parts of Pope are less interlined than the "Iliad,"
and the latter books of the "Iliad" less than the former. He grew
dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled him to write the next
with more facility. The books of Fenton have very few alterations
by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been found, but Pope
complained, as it is reported, that he had much trouble in
correcting them. His contract with Lintot was the same as for the
"Iliad," except that only one hundred pounds were to be paid him for
each volume. The number of subscribers were five hundred and
seventy-four, and of copies eight hundred and nineteen, so that his
profit, when he had paid his assistants, was still very
considerable. The work was finished in 1723; and from that time he
resolved to make no more translations. The sale did not answer
Lintot's expectation, and he then pretended to discover something of
a fraud in Pope, and commenced or threatened a suit in Chancery.
On the English "Odyssey" a criticism was published by Spence, at
that time Prelector of Poetry at Oxford, a man whose learning was
not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His
criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought
rightly, and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and
candour. In him Pope had the first experience of a critic without
malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display beauties as
expose faults, who censured with respect, and praised with alacrity.
With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the
acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him from that time in
great familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled
memorials of his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him
to the great and powerful, and he obtained very valuable preferments
in the Church. Not long after Pope was returning home from a visit
in a friend's coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into
the water; the window's were closed, and, being unable to force them
open, he was in danger of immediate death, when the postillion
snatched him out by breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut
two of his fingers in such a manner that he lost their use.
Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation.
He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with
so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope
discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the Court, and never
considered him as a man worthy of confidence. He soon afterwards
(1727) joined with Swift, who was then in England, to publish three
volumes of "Miscellanies," in which, amongst other things, he
inserted the "Memoirs of a Parish Clerk," in ridicule of Burnet's
importance in his own history, and a "Debate upon Black and White
Horses," written in all the formalities of a legal process by the
assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards Master of the
Rolls. Before these "Miscellanies" is a preface signed by Swift and
Pope, but apparently written by Pope, in which he makes a ridiculous
and romantic complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by
the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers. He tells in
tragic strains how "the cabinets of the sick and the closets of the
dead have been broken open and ransacked," as if those violences
were often committed for papers of uncertain and accidental value
which are rarely provoked by real treasures--as if epigrams and
essays were in danger where gold and diamonds are safe. A cat
hunted for his musk is, according to Pope's account, but the emblem
of a wit winded by booksellers. His complaint, however, received
some attestation, for the same year the letters written by him to
Mr. Cromwell in his youth were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who
printed them.
In these "Miscellanies" was first published the "Art of Sinking in
Poetry," which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in
literary quarrels, gave in a short time, according to Pope's
account, occasion to the "Dunciad."
In the following year (1728) he began to put Atterbury's advice in
practice, and showed his satirical powers by publishing the
"Dunciad," one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in
which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by whom
he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought unable to
defend themselves. At the head of the "Dunces" he placed poor
Theobald, whom he accused of ingratitude, but whose real crime was
supposed to be that of having revised Shakespeare more happily than
himself. This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting
the characters which it touched. Ralph, who, unnecessarily
interposing in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition,
complained that for a time he was in danger of starving, as the
booksellers had no longer any confidence in his capacity. The
prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow: the plan, if not
wholly new, was little understood by common readers. Many of the
allusions required illustration; the names were often expressed only
by the initial and final letters, and if they had been printed at
length were such as few had known or recollected. The subject
itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to
know that one or another scribbler was a dunce? If, therefore, it
had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain
and their resentment, the "Dunciad" might have made its way very
slowly in the world. This, however, was not to be expected: every
man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion,
to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with all his
pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or
misfortunes, which had never been known unless related by himself,
and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man
sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.
The history of the "Dunciad" is very minutely related by Pope
himself in a dedication which he wrote to Lord Middlesex in the name
of Savage.
"I will relate the war of the 'Dunces' (for so it has been commonly
called), which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730
"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons
specified in the preface to their 'Miscellanies,' to publish such
little pieces of theirs as had occasionally got abroad, there was
added to them the 'Treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in
Poetry.' It happened that in one chapter of this piece the several
species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed
almost all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at
random); but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that
some one or other took every letter to himself. All fell into so
violent a fury, that, for half a year or more, the common newspapers
(in most of which they had some property, as being hired writers)
were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they
could possibly devise, a liberty no way to be wondered at in those
people, and in those papers, that, for many years during the
uncontrolled license of the Press, had aspersed almost all the great
characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and
names being utterly secret and obscure. This gave Mr. Pope the
thought that he had now some opportunity of doing good by detecting
and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind, since, to
invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show what
contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes
that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to
recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account
in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want
courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that
gave birth to the 'Dunciad,' and he thought it a happiness that, by
the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a
peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design.
"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented
to the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by
the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, and some days after the
whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen and
persons of the first distinction.
It is certainly a true observation that no people are so impatient
of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was
wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was
first vended a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties,
advices, threats of law and battery--nay, cries of treason--were all
employed to hinder the coming out of the 'Dunciad.' On the other
side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to procure
it. What could a few poor authors do against so great a majority as
the public? There was no stopping a torrent with a finger, so out
it came.
"Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The 'Dunces' (for by
this name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of
hostilities against the author. One wrote a letter to a great
minister, assuring him Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the
Government had, and another bought his image in clay to execute him
in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a
little comforted. Some false editions of the book, having an owl in
their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in his
stead an ass laden with authors. Then another surreptitious one
being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned
for distinction to the owl again. Hence arose a great contest of
booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements against
advertisements, some recommending the edition of the owl, and others
the edition of the ass, by which names they came to be
distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the
'Dunciad.'"
Pope appears by this narrative to have contemplated his victory over
the "Dunces" with great exultation; and such was his delight in the
tumult which he had raised, that for a while his natural sensibility
was suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without
emotion, considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain
which he rejoiced in having given. It cannot, however, be concealed
that, by his own confession, he was the aggressor, for nobody
believes that the letters in the "Bathos" were placed at random; and
at may be discovered that, when he thinks himself concealed, he
indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those
distinctions which he affected to despise. He is proud that his
book was presented to the king and queen by the Right Honourable Sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is
proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of
the first distinction. The edition of which he speaks was, I
believe, that which, by telling in the text the names, and in the
notes the characters, of those whom he had satirised, was made
intelligible and diverting. The critics had now declared their
approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it
without fear. Those who were strangers to petty literature, and
therefore unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and
persons brought within their view, and delighted in the visible
effects of those shafts of malice which they had hitherto
contemplated as shot into the air.
Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity
which had for a time been appeased by mutual civilities, and
published remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the "Rape
of the Lock." Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their
resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. Ducket,
indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with "pious passion,"
pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time
declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope
appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship,"
and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the
meaning imputed to the first expression. Aaron Hill, who was
represented as diving for the prize, expostulated with Pope in a
manner so much superior to all mean solicitation, that Pope was
reduced to sneak and shuffle, sometimes to deny, and sometimes to
apologies; he first endeavours to wound, and is then afraid to own
that he meant a blow.
The "Dunciad," in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift.
Of the notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot, and an
apologetical letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to
have been written by Pope.
After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged
himself a while in tranquillity, but his subsequent productions
prove that he was not idle. He published (1731) a poem on "Taste,"
in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the
furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of
great wealth and little taste. By Timon he was universally
supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is
addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos, a man
perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind
and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the public in
his favour. A violent outcry was, therefore, raised against the
ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been
indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand
pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the
kindness of his invitation. The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope
publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack on a
character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of
escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by
which no man was satisfied, and he was at last reduced to shelter
his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that
disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote
an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great
magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing
his professions. He said that to have ridiculed his taste, or his
buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man, but that
in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged
between them, it had been less easily excused.
Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his
poem had found, "owns that such critics can intimidate him, nay
almost persuade him, to write no more, which is a compliment this
age deserves." The man who threatens the world is always
ridiculous, for the world can easily go on without him, and in a
short time will cease to miss him. I have heard of an idiot, who
used to revenge his vexatious by lying all night upon the bridge.
"There is nothing," says Juvenal, "that a man will not believe in
his own favour." Pope had been flattered till he thought himself
one of the moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of
laying down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and implored;
and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and
laughed.
The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known
early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any
other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old,
an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit new confidence,
and the will to grow less flexible, and when, therefore, the
departure of an old friend is very acutely felt. In the next year
(1733) he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she had
lasted to the age of ninety-three. But she did not die unlamented.
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary. His parents had the happiness of living till he was at
the summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his
fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of
his respect or tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was
obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle.
Life has, among its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better
to give than such a son.
One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deserve some
inquiry, was a publication of "Letters" between him and many of his
friends, which, falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious
bookseller, of no good fame, were by him printed and sold. This
volume containing some letters from noblemen, Pope incited a
prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of
privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his
friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no
great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. "He has,"
said Curll, "a knack at versifying, but in prose I think myself a
match for him." When the orders of the House were examined, none of
them appeared to have been infringed. Curll went away triumphant,
and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.
Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman's gown,
but with a lawyer's band, brought and offered for sale a number of
printed volumes, which he found to be Pope's epistolary
correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but gave
the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use his
purchase to his own advantage. That Curll gave a true account of
the transaction it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood
was ever detected; and when, some years afterwards, I mentioned it
to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he declared his opinion to be, that
Pope knew better than anybody else how Curll obtained the copies,
because another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for
which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his
resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a
nameless agent. Such care had been taken to make them public, that
they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely
to seize them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might he expected to
give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did
nothing, and Curll did what was expected. That to make them public
was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers
offered to sale by the private messengers showed that the hope of
gain could not have been the motive of the impression. It seems
that Pope, being desirous of printing his "Letters," and not knowing
how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country
been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion, that,
when he could complain that his "Letters" were surreptitiously
published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.
Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation
with the praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the
purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There
were some letters which a very good or a wise man would wish
suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was
impracticable now to retract them. From the perusal of those
letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire of knowing him; and
with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship which he had newly
formed, that, when Pope told his purpose of vindicating his own
property by a genuine edition, he offered to pay the cost. This,
however, Pope did not accept; but in time solicited a subscription
for a quarto volume, which appeared (1737), I believe, with
sufficient profit. In the preface he tells that his letters were
reposited in a friend's library, said to be the Earl of Oxford's,
and that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story
was doubtless received with different degrees of credit. It may be
suspected that the preface to the "Miscellanies" was written to
prepare the public for such an incident; and, to strengthen this
opinion, James Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine
negotiations, but whose voracity was very doubtful, declared that he
was the messenger who carried, by Pope's direction, the books to
Curll. When they were thus published and avowed, as they had
relation to recent facts, and persons either then living or not yet
forgotten, they may be supposed to have found readers; but, as the
facts were minute, and the characters being either private or
literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awaked no
popular kindness or resentment. The book never became much the
subject of conversation. Some read it as a contemporary history,
and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those who
read it did not talk of it. Not much therefore was added by it to
fame or envy, nor do I remember that it produced either public
praise or public censure. It had, however, in some degree, the
recommendation of novelty. Our language had few letters, except
those of statesmen. Howel, indeed, about a century ago, published
his "Letters," which are commended by Morhoff, and which alone, of
his hundred volumes, continue his memory. Loveday's "Letters" were
printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known.
Mrs. Phillips's (Orinda's) are equally neglected. And those of
Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living
mistress or friend. Pope's epistolary excellence had an open field;
he had no English rival, living or dead.
Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other
contemporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the
comparison; but it must be remembered that he had the power of
favouring himself. He might have originally had publication in his
mind, and have written with care, or have afterwards selected those
which he had most happily conceived or most diligently laboured; and
I know not whether there does not appear something more studied and
artificial in his productions than the rest, except one long letter
by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill and industry of a
professed author. It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation
from habit; he that has once studiously formed a style, rarely
writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to write
always with his reputation in his head; Swift, perhaps, like a man
that remembered he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot, like one who
lets thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind. Before
these "Letters" appeared he published the first part of what he
persuaded himself to think a system of Ethics, under the title of an
"Essay on Man," which, if his letter to Swift (of September 14,
1723), be rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years
under his consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the
success with great solicitude. He had now many open, and doubtless
many secret, enemies. The "Dunces" were yet smarting from the war,
and the superiority which he publicly arrogated disposed the world
to wish his humiliation. All this he knew, and against all this he
provided. His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is
inscribed, were in the first editions carefully suppressed; and the
poem being of a new kind was ascribed to one or another as favour
determined or conjecture wandered. It was given, says Warburton, to
every man except him only who could write it. Those who like only
when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name,
condemned it, and those admired it who are willing to scatter praise
at random, which, while it is unappropriated, excites no envy.
Those friends of Pope that were trusted with the secret went about
lavishing honours on the new-born poet, and hinting that Pope was
never so much in danger from any former rival. To those authors
whom he had personally offended, and to those whose opinion the
world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy or
malevolence, he sent his Essay as a present before publication, that
they might defeat their own enemity by praises which they could not
afterwards decently retract. With these precautions, in 1733, was
published the first part of the "Essay on Man." There had been for
some time a report that Pope was busy upon a "System of Morality,"
but this design was not discovered in the new poem, which had a form
and a title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception
was not uniform. Some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not
without good lines. While the author was unknown, some, as will
always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured him
as an intruder, but all thought him above neglect. The sale
increased, and editions were multiplied. The subsequent editions of
the first epistle exhibited two memorable corrections. At first,
the poet and his friend
"Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze OF WALKS WITHOUT A PLAN;"
for which he wrote afterwards,
"A mighty maze, BUT NOT WITHOUT A PLAN;"
for if there was no plan it was in vain to describe or to trace the
maze.
The other alteration was of these lines:-
"And spike of pride, AND IN THY REASON'S SPITE,
One truths is clear, whatever is, is right:
but having afterwards discovered, or been shown, that the "truth"
which subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted
"And spite of pride IN ERRING REASON'S SPITE."
To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.
The second and third epistles were published, and Pope was, I
believe, more and more suspected of writing them. At last, in 1734,
he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet. In
the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged that the doctrine of
the "Essay on Man" was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to
have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as
having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive
the consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his
own. That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme
regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only
transformed from prose to verse, has been reported, but hardly can
be true. The essay plainly appears the fabric of a poet; what
Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles, the order,
illustration, and embellishments, must all be Pope's. These
principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity, dogmatism,
or falsehood, but they were not immediately examined. Philosophy
and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay abounded
in splendid amplifications and sparkling sentences, which were read
and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose. Its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety. Its
reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse. Both
translations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had
the version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards
reprinted Resnel's version, with particular remarks upon every
paragraph.
Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logic, and his "Examen de Pyrrhonisme," and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and perhaps was grown too desirous of
detecting faults, but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure. His incessant vigilance for the
promotion of piety disposed him to look with distrust upon all
metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue and
happiness purely rational; and therefore it was not long before he
was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated for the
most part in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind away
from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality, and it is
undeniable that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover
expressions not very favourable to morals or to liberty.
About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind
fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry,
with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not
oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every
work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile
of original combinations and at once exerted the powers of the
scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too
multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to
be always cautions. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence,
which he disdained to conceal or mollify, and his impatience of
opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such
contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies,
and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the
cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman Emperor's determination,
oderint dum metuant; he used no allurements of gentle language, but
wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without
selection, and forcible without neatness. He took the words that
presented themselves. His diction is coarse and impure, and his
sentences are unmeasured. He had in the early part of his life
pleased himself with the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded
with the enemies of Pope. A letter was produced, when he had
perhaps himself forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I
observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius,
Milton out of pride, and Addison out of modesty." And when Theobald
published Shakespeare, in opposition to Pope, the best notes were
supplied by Warburton. But the time was now come when Warburton was
to change his opinion, and Pope was to find a defender in him who
had contributed so much to the exaltation of his rival.
The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of
offence, and therefore it may be supposed that his union with Pope
was censured as hypocritical inconstancy, but surely to think
differently at different times of poetical merit may be easily
allowed. Such opinions are often admitted, and dismissed without
nice examination. Who is there that has not found reason for
changing his mind about questions of greater importance?
Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation,
to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the
imputation of favouring fatality or rejecting revelation; and from
month to month continued a vindication of the "Essay on Man," in the
literary journal of that time called the "Republic of Letters."
Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was
glad that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know
the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to
mean well. How much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender the
following letter evidently shows:-
"April 11, 1739.
"Sir,--I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your letters.
It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write this; but I
cannot help thanking you in particular for your third letter, which
is so extremely clear, short, and full, that I think Mr. Crousaz
ought never to have another answer, and deserved not so good an one.
I can only say, you do him too much honour, and me too much right,
so odd as the expression seems; for you have made my system as clear
as I ought to have done, and could not. It is indeed the same
system as mine, but illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say
our natural body is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure
I like it better than I did before, and so will every man else. I
know I meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own
meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself;
but you express me better than I could express myself. Pray accept
the sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish these letters were
put together in one book, and intend (with your leave) to procure a
translation of part at least, or of all of them, into French; but I
shall not proceed a step without your consent and opinion," &c.
By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment Pope
testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the
principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not
intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to
make him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found
him now engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth. It is
known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He
once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope,
and was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what
he heard: and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to
desire an explanation, declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.
Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a
little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from which they
parted with mutual aversion. From this time Pope lived in the
closest intimacy with his commentator, and amply rewarded his
kindness and his zeal, for he introduced him to Mr. Murray, by whose
interest he became preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and to Mr. Allen, who
gave him his niece and his estate, and by consequence a bishopric.
When he died, he left him the property of his works, a legacy which
may be reasonably estimated at four thousand pounds.
Pope's fondness for the "Essay on Man" appeared by his desire of its
propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of
Prior's "Solomon," was employed by him to translate it into Latin
verse, and was for that purpose some time at Twickenham; but he left
his work, whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson's
invitation, undertook the longer task of "Paradise Lost." Pope then
desired his friend to find a scholar who should turn his essay into
Latin prose; but no such performance has ever appeared.
Pope lived at this time AMONG THE GREAT, with that reception and
respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not
impaired by any private misconduct or factious partiality. Though
Bolingbroke was his friend, Walpole was not his enemy, but treated
him with so much consideration as, at his request, to solicit and
obtain from the French Minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he
considered himself as obliged to reward, by his exertion of his
interest, for the benefit which he had received from his attendance
in a long illness. It was said, that when the Court was at
Richmond, Queen Caroline had declared her intention to visit him.
This may have been only a careless effusion, thought on no more.
The report of such notice, however, was soon in many mouths; and, if
I do not forget or misapprehend Savage's account, Pope, pretending
to decline what was not yet offered, left his house for a time, not,
I suppose, for any other reason than lest he should be thought to
stay at home in expectation of an honour which would not be
conferred. He was therefore angry at Swift, who represents him as
"refusing the visits of a queen," because he knew that what had
never been offered had never been refused.
Beside the general system of morality, supposed to be contained in
the "Essay on Man," it was his intention to write distinct poems
upon the different duties or conditions of life, one of which is the
"Epistle to Lord Bathurst" (1733) on the "Use of Riches," a piece on
which he declared great labour to have been bestowed. Into this
poem some hints are historically thrown, and some known characters
are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say how far
they are real or fictitious: but the praise of Kryle, the Man of
Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a long and pompous
enumeration of his public works and private charities, is said to
have diffused all those blessings from five hundred a year. Wonders
are willingly told and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrle
was a man of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose
solicitation the wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his
charitable schemes. This influence he obtained by an example of
liberality exerted to the utmost extent of his power, and was thus
enabled to give more than he had. This account Mr. Victor received
from the minister of the place, and I have preserved it, that the
praise of a good man, being made more credible, may be more solid.
Narrations of romantic and impracticable virtue will be read with
wonder, but that which is unattainable is recommended in vain; that
good may be endeavoured it must be shown to be possible. This is
the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his religion,
by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the Pope, and by mentioning
with some indignation the inscription on the Monument.
When this poem was first published, the dialogue having no letters
of direction was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written
with no very distinct idea, for he calls that an "Epistle to
Bathurst," in which Bathurst is introduced as speaking. He
afterwards (1734) inscribed to Lord Cobham his "Characters of Men,"
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish
and exemplify his favourite theory of the RULING PASSION, by which
he means an original direction of desire to some particular object,
an innate affection which gives all action a determinate and
invariable tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life,
either openly, cut more secretly by the intervention of some
accidental or subordinate propension. Of any passion, thus innate
and irresistible, the existence may reasonably be doubted. Human
characters are by no means constant; men change by change of place,
of fortune, of acquaintance. He who is at one time a lover of
pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed, who attain
any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit, for excellence is
not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular species
of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some
early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited
ardour and emulation. It must at least be allowed that this ruling
passion, antecedent to reason and observation, must have an object
independent on human contrivance, for there can be no natural desire
of artificial good. No man, therefore, can be born, in the strict
acceptation, a lover of money, for he may be born where money does
not exist; nor can he be born in a moral sense a lover of his
country, for society politically regulated is a state
contradistinguished from a state of nature, and any attention to
that coalition of interests which makes the happiness of a country
is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have enabled
to comprehend it. This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as
false; its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral
predestination or over-ruling principle which cannot be resisted.
He that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that
caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he
submits only to the lawful dominion of nature in obeying the
resistless authority of his ruling passion.
Pope has formed his theory with so little skill that in the examples
by which he illustrates and confirms it he has confounded passions,
appetites, and habits. To the "Characters of Men" he added soon
after, in an epistle supposed to have been addressed to Martha
Blount, but which the last edition has taken from her, the
"Characters of Women." This poem, which was laboured with great
diligence and in the author's opinion with great success, was
neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes,
because the public was informed by an advertisement that it
contained no character drawn from the life, an assertion which Pope
probably did not expect nor wished to have been believed, and which
he soon gave his readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling
them in a note that the work was imperfect because part of his
subject was vice too high to be yet exposed. The time, however,
soon came in which it was safe to display the Duchess of Marlborough
under the name of Atossa, and her character was inserted with no
great honour to the writer's gratitude.
He published from time to time (between 1730 and 1740) imitations of
different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once, as was
suspected, without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to
own he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to
settle the dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and
perhaps had been long in his hands. This mode of imitation, in
which the ancients are familiarised by adapting their sentiments to
modern topics, by making Horace say of Shakespeare what he
originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his satires on
Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of our own
time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the Second, by
Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no instances more ancient.
It is a kind of middle composition between translation and original
design, which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable,
and the parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite
amusement, for he has carried it farther than any former poet. He
published likewise a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne's
"Satires," which was recommended to him by the Duke of Shrewsbury
and the Earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the
public. Pope seems to have known their imbecility and therefore
suppressed them while he was yet contending to rise in reputation,
but ventured them when he thought their deficiencies more likely to
be imputed to Donne than to himself.
The "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," which seems to be derived in its
first design from Boileau's Address a son Esprit, was published in
January, 1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is
inscribed. It is to be regretted that either honour or pleasure
should have been missed by Arbuthnot, a man estimable for his
learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety.
Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his
profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient
literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright
and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit, a
wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble
ardour of religious zeal. In this poem Pope seems to reckon with
the public. He vindicates himself from censures, and with dignity
rather than arrogance enforces his own claims to kindness and
respect. Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had
been before printed, as a fragment, and among them the satirical
lines upon Addison, of which the last couplet has been twice
corrected. It was at first -
"Who would not smile if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?"
Then -
"Who would not grieve if such a man there be?
Who would not laugh if Addison were he?"
At last it is -
"Who but must laugh if such a man there he?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?"
He was at this time at open war with Lord Hervey, who had
distinguished himself as a steady adherent to the ministry, and
being offended with a contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets,
had summoned Pulteney to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first
attack perhaps cannot now be easily known. He had written an
invective against Pope, whom he calls, "Hard as thy heart, and as
thy birth obscure;" and hints that his father was a hatter. To this
Pope wrote a reply in verse and prose. The verses are in this poem,
and the prose, though it was never sent, is printed among his
letters; but to a cool reader of the present time exhibits nothing
but tedious malignity.
His last "Satires" of the general kind, were two Dialogues, named,
from the year in which they were published, "Seventeen hundred and
thirty-eight." In these poems many are praised and many reproached.
Pope was then entangled in the opposition, a follower of the Prince
of Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who
obstructed and censured the conduct of the ministers. His political
partiality was too plainly shown; he forgot the prudence with which
he passed, in his earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through
much more violent conflicts of faction. In the first Dialogue,
having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath, he asked his leave
to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit of his
ancestors, and called him in his verses "low-born Allen." Men are
seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention
of defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his
epithet, which was afterwards softened into "humble Allen." In the
second Dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes among
others; which Fox in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of
repaying, by reproaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who
scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped
the resentment of the Legislature would quickly be discharged.
About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before
the Lords for a poem called "Manners," together with Dodsley, his
publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, skulked and
escaped, but Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance
necessary. He was, however, soon dismissed, and the whole process
was probably intended rather to intimidate Pope than to punish
Whitehead.
Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet,
nor drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts
of reformation is imputed by his commentator to his despair of
prevailing over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to
have been ever of opinion that the dread of his satire would
countervail the love of power or of money; he pleased himself with
being important and formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride,
and sometimes his resentment, till at last he began to think he
should be more safe if he were less busy.
The "Memoirs of Scriblerus," published about this time, extend only
to the first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and
Arbuthnot, who used to meet on the time of Queen Anne, and
denominated themselves the "Scriblerus Club." Their purpose was to
censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatuated
scholar. They were dispersed; the design was never completed, and
Warburton laments its miscarriage as an event very disastrous to
polite letters. If the whole may be estimated by this specimen,
which seems to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches
perhaps by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the
follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised that they
are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned.
He raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away. He
cures diseases that were never felt. For this reason this joint
production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from
mankind. It has been little read, or when read has been forgotten,
as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it.
The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its
general resemblance to "Don Quixote," there will be found in it
particular imitations of the "History of Mr. Ouffle."
Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints
for his "Travels;" and with those the world might have been
contented, though the rest had been suppressed.
Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to
have been explored by many other of the English writers. He had
consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors
whom Boileau endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too
generally neglected. Pope, however, was not ashamed of their
acquaintance, nor ungrateful for the advantages which he might have
derived from it. A small selection from the Italians, who wrote in
Latin, had been published at London, about the latter end of the
last century, by a man who concealed his name, but whom his preface
shows to have been qualified for his undertaking. This collection
Pope amplified by more than half, and (1740) published it in two
volumes, but injuriously omitted his predecessor's preface. To
these books, which had nothing but the mere text, no regard was
paid; the authors were still neglected, and the editor was neither
praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness; he had planned
a work, which he considered as subsequent to his "Essay on Man," of
which he has given this account to Dr. Swift:-
"March 25, 1736.
"If ever I write any more Epistles in verse, one of them shall be
addressed to you. I have long concerted it and begun it; but I
would make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to
be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest. The subject
is large, and will divide into four Epistles, which naturally follow
the 'Essay on Man,' viz: 1. Of the Extent and Limits of Human
Reason and Science. 2. A view of the useful and therefore
attainable, and of the unuseful and therefore unattainable Arts. 3.
Of the Nature, Ends, Application, and Use, of different Capacities.
4. Of the Use of Learning, of the Science, of the World, and of Wit.
It will conclude with a satire against the misapplication of all
these, exemplified by Pictures, Characters, and Examples."
This work in its full extent--being now afflicted with an asthma,
and finding the powers of life gradually declining--he had no longer
courage to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided,
he added, at Warburton's request, another book to the "Dunciad," of
which the design is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless
or useless, as either pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be
attained, is of no use. When this book was printed (1742) the
laurel had been for some time upon the head of Cibber, a man whom it
cannot be supposed that Pope could regard with much kindness or
esteem, though in one of the imitations of Horace he has liberally
enough praised the "Careless Husband." In the "Dunciad," among
other worthless scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber, who, in his
"Apology," complains of the great Poet's unkindness as more
injurious, "because," says he, "I never have offended him."
It might have been expected that Pope should have been in some
degree mollified by this submissive gentleness, but no such
consequence appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber
once, he mentioned him afterwards contemptuously in one of his
satires, and again in his "Epistle to Arbuthnot," and in the fourth
book of the "Dunciad" attacked him with acrimony, to which the
provocation is not easily discoverable. Perhaps he imagined that,
in ridiculing the Laureate, he satirised those by whom the laurel
had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance with which he
affected to insult the great. The severity of this satire left
Cibber no longer any patience. He had confidence enough in his own
powers to believe that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary,
and doubtless did not want instigators, who, without any care about
the victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest.
He therefore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his
resolution from that time never to bear another blow without
returning it, and to tire out his adversary by perseverance if he
cannot conquer him by strength.
The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a
very distant cause. After the Three Hours After Marriage had been
driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile
gave the audience, while the exploded scene was yet fresh in memory,
it happened that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it
had been usual to enliven the part by the mention of any recent
theatrical transactions, he said, that he once thought to have
introduced his lovers disguised in a mummy and a crocodile. "This,"
says he, "was received with loud claps, which indicated contempt for
the play." Pope, who was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left
the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the virulence of a
"wit out of his senses;" to which he replied, "that he would take no
other notice of what was said by so particular a man, than to
declare, that as often as he played that part he would repeat the
same provocation." He shows his opinion to be that Pope was one of
the authors of the play which he so zealously defended, and adds an
idle story of Pope's behaviour at a tavern.
The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or language,
and, if suffered to remain without notice, would have been very soon
forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to
know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his
understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the
world seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of
the higher character. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was
excited. What Pope would say of Cibber nobody inquired, but in hope
that Pope's asperity might betray his pain and lessen his dignity.
He should therefore have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die,
without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shown
as Cibber's antagonist could never be compensated by the victory.
Cibber had nothing to lose. When Pope had exhausted all his
malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of his friends
and his enemies. Silence only could have made him despicable; the
blow which did not appear to be felt would have been struck in vain.
But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole
English world that he was at war with Cibber; and, to show that he
thought him to common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance.
He published a new edition of the "Dunciad," in which he degraded
Theobald from his painful pre-eminence, and enthroned Cibber in his
stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and
Pope was unwilling to lose what he had already written. He has
therefore depraved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the
old pedantry, and the sluggish pertinacity of Theobald.
Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest to make another change,
and introduced Osborne contending for a prize among the booksellers.
Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any
disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that
which raised Pope's resentment, that he should be put into the
"Dunciad;" but he had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to
his prediction, till in time I saw it accomplished. The shafts of
satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne;
being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by
the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his own pain by
his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He
was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule
from one to another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his
own magpie, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture.
Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the "Dunciad" with
another pamphlet, which, Pope said, "would be as good as a dose of
hartshorn to him;" but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I
have heard Mr. Richardson relate that he attended his father the
painter on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the
hands of Pope, who said, "These things are my diversion." They sat
by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with
anguish: and young Richardson said to his father, when they
returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had
been that day the lot of Pope. From this time, finding his diseases
more oppressive, and his vital powers gradually declining, he no
longer strained his faculties with any original composition, nor
proposed any other employment for his remaining life than the
revisal and correction of his former works, in which he received
advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears to have
trusted and honoured in the highest degree. He laid aside his Epic
Poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for his hero was Brutus
the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction, established a
colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the fabulous age;
the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been exhausted, and
attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled,
when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great
imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the nature of
our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by
Ruffhead, by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to
model the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with
the time or country in which he places them. He lingered through
the next year, but perceived himself, as he expresses it, "going
down the hill." He had for at least five years been afflicted with
an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians were unable to
relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr. Thomson, a
man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the common
practice of physic, forced himself up into sudden reputation.
Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of
the water by tincture of jalap, but confessed that his belly did not
subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to
dismiss him.
While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was
one day sitting in the air with Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Marchmont,
he saw his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and
asked Lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not
liking his errand, crossed his legs and sat still; but Lord
Marchmont, who was younger and less captious, waited on the lady,
who, when he came to her, asked, "What, is he not dead yet?" She is
said to have neglected him with shameful unkindness, in the latter
time of his decay; yet, of the little which he had to leave she had
a very great part. Their acquaintance began early; the life of each
was pictured on the other's mind; their conversation therefore was
endearing, for when they met, there was an immediate coalition of
congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her unwillingness to
approach the chamber of sickness as female weakness, or human
frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and
impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet
consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and if he had
suffered his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found
nothing that might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within
himself. It was too late to transfer his confidence or fondness.
In May, 1744, his death was approaching. On the 6th he was all day
delirious, which he mentioned for days afterwards as a sufficient
humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing
things as through a curtain, and in false colours, and one day, its
the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came from the
wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to
think. Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of
helpless decay; and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the
intermission of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind
either of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity
seemed to have survived his understanding, answered, "It has so."
And added, "I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart
for his particular friends, or more general friendship for mankind."
At another time he said, "I have known Pope these thirty years, and
value myself more in his friendship than--" His grief then
suppressed his voice.
Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked
by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his
father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called, he
answered, "I do not think it essential, but it will be very right;
and I thank you for putting me in mind of it." In the morning,
after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he said "There
is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed
friendship itself is only a part of virtue." He died in the evening
of the 30th day of May 1744, so placidly, that the attendants did
not discern the exact time of his expiration. He was buried at
Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument has been
erected to him by his commentator, the Bishop of Gloucester.
He left the care of his papers to his executors; first to Lord
Bolingbroke, and, if he should not be living, to the Earl of
Marchmont, undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and
eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond
his life. After a decent time Dodsley, the bookseller, went to
solicit preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel
had not been yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world
has been disappointed of what was "reserved for the next age." He
lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke by a kind of posthumous
offence. The political pamphlet called "The Patriot King" had been
put into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very
few copies, to be distributed, according to the author's direction,
among his friends, and Pope assured him that no more had been
printed than were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer
brought and resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies,
which Pope had ordered him to print and retain in secret. He kept,
as was observed, his engagement to Pope better than Pope had kept it
to his friend; and nothing was known of the transaction till, upon
the death of his employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the
books to the right owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire
in his yard, and delivered the whole impression to the flames.
Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by
resentment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the
violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger
might have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little
danger from the example. Bolingbroke, however, was not yet
satisfied. His thirst of vengeance excited him to blast the memory
of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he
employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the
public, with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm
with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it
proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate
the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but
to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be
denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the
motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have
induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity
by usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been
shown to a number more than sufficient to preserve the author's
claim; he could not gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his
plunder till Bolingbroke was dead; and even then, if the copy was
left to another, his fraud would be defeated, and if left to himself
would be useless.
Warburton therefore supposes, with great appearance of reason, that
the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for
Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, which
Pope thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's
approbation. To this apology an answer was written in "A letter to
the most impudent man living." He brought some reproach upon his
own memory by the petulant and contemptuous mention made in his will
of Mr. Allen and an affected repayment of his benefactions. Mrs.
Blount, as the known friend and favourite of Pope, had been invited
to the house of Allen, where she comported herself with such
indecent arrogance that she parted from Mrs. Allen in a state of
irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for ever barred against
her. This exclusion she resented with so much bitterness as to
refuse any legacy from Pope unless he left the world with a
disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her
dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist
the violence of her temper, or perhaps, with the prejudice of a
lover, persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he
complied with her demand, and polluted his will with female
resentment. Allen accepted the legacy, which he gave to the
hospital at Bath, observing that Pope was always a bad accountant,
and that if to 150 pounds he had put a cipher more he had come
nearer to the truth.
The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed by the
nicest model. He has, in his account of the "Little Club," compared
himself to a spider, and by another is described as protuberant
behind and before. He is said to have been beautiful in his
infancy, but he was of a constitution originally feeble and weak;
and, as bodies of a tender frame are easily distorted, his deformity
was probably in part the effect of his application. His stature was
so low, that to bring him to a level with common tables, it was
necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and
his eyes were animated and vivid. By natural deformity, or
accidental distortion, his vital functions were so much disordered,
that his life was "a long disease." His most frequent assailant was
the headache, which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of
coffee, which he very frequently required.
Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was
communicated by a female domestic of the Earl of Oxford, who knew
him perhaps after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to
stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of
cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of a very
coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested
in bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarcely able to hold himself
erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat.
One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, that he enlarged
their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were drawn on and
off by the maid, for he was not able to dress or undress himself,
and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness made it
very difficult for him to be clean. His hair had fallen almost all
away, and he used to dine sometimes with Lord Oxford, privately, in
a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig, and
a little sword. The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness
required, had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities
of a valetudinary man. He expected that everything should give way
to his ease or humour, as a child, whose parents will not hear her
cry, has an unresisted dominion in the nursery.
"C'est que l'enfant toujours est homme,
C'est que l'homme est toujours enfant."
When he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company," and once slumbered
at his own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of poetry.
The reputation which his friendship gave procured him many
invitations, but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no
servant, and had so many wants, that a numerous attendance was
scarcely able to supply them. Wherever he was, he left no room for
another, because he exacted the attention, and employed the activity
of the whole family. His errands were so frequent and frivolous,
that the footmen in time avoided and neglected him, and the Earl of
Oxford discharged some of his servants for their resolute refusal of
his messages. The maids, when they had neglected their business,
alleged that they had been employed by Mr. Pope. One of his
constant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the woman that
waited on him in his chamber he was very burthensome. But he was
careful to recompense her want of sleep, and Lord Oxford's servant
declared, that in the house where her business was to answer his
call, she would not ask for wages. He had another fault, easily
incident to those who, suffering much pain, think themselves
entitled to what pleasures they can snatch. He was too indulgent to
his appetite: he loved meat highly seasoned and of strong taste;
and, at the intervals of the table, amused himself with biscuits and
dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes, he would
oppress his stomach with repletion; and though he seemed angry when
a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends,
who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of
luxury, which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of
great men is not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives.
Hannibal, says Juvenal, did not perish by the javelin or the sword,
the slaughters of Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope
was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it
was his delight to eat potted lampreys. That he loved too well to
eat is certain; but that his sensuality shortened his life will not
be hastily concluded, when it is remembered that a conformation so
irregular lasted six-and-fifty years, notwithstanding such
pertinacious diligence of study and meditation. In all his
intercourse with mankind he had great delight in artifice, and
endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected
methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." If at the
house of friends he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to
ask for it in plain terms, but would mention it remotely as
something convenient; though when it was procured, he soon made it
appear for whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teased Lord
Orrery till he obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such
small occasions, that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French
phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages and turnips."
His unjustifiable impression of the "Patriot King," as it can be
attributed to no particular motive, must have proceeded from his
general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught an opportunity of a
sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of outwitting
Bolingbroke. In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not
appear that he excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden,
as being not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It
is remarkable that, so near his time, so much should be known of
what he has written, and so little of what he has said: traditional
memory retains no sallies of raillery, nor sentences of observation:
nothing either pointed or solid, either wise or merry. One
apophthegm only stands upon record. When an objection, raised
against his inscription for Shakespeare, was defended by the
authority of Patrick, he replied, horresco referens, that he "would
allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of a single
word, but not of two words put together."
He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be
capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave Lord Oxford
silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more
letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The
table was indeed infested by Lady Mary Wortley, who was the friend
of Lady Oxford, and who, knowing his peevishness, could by no
entreaties be restrained from contradicting him, till their disputes
were sharpened to such asperity, that one or the other quitted the
house. He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or
inferiors; but by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he
ever seen excited to laughter.
Of his domestic character, frugality was a part eminently
remarkable. Having determined not to be dependent, he determined
not to be in want, and therefore wisely and magnanimously rejected
all temptations to expense unsuitable to his fortune. This general
care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in
petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his
compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining
copy of the "Iliad," by which perhaps in five years five shillings
were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and
scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his
house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and
having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say,
"Gentlemen. I leave you to your wine." Yet he tells his friends
that "he has a heart for all, a house for all, and whatever they may
think, a fortune for all." He sometimes, however, made a splendid
dinner, and is said to have wanted no part of the skill or elegance
which such performances require. That this magnificence should be
often displayed, that obstinate prudence with which he conducted his
affairs would not permit; for his revenue, certain and casual,
amounted only to about eight hundred pounds a year, of which,
however, he declares himself able to assign one hundred to charity.
Of this fortune, which, as it arose from public approbation, was
very honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too
full: it would be hard to find a man so well entitled to notice by
his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In
his Letters and in his poems, his garden and his grotto, his
quincunx and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always to
be found. The great topic of his ridicule is poverty; the crimes
with which he reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their
habitation in the Mint, and their want of a dinner. He seems to be
of an opinion not very uncommon in the world, that to want money is
to want everything. Next to the pleasure of contemplating his
possessions, seems to be that of enumerating the men of high rank
with whom he was acquainted, and whose notice he loudly proclaims
not to have been obtained by any practices of meanness or servility;
a boast which was never denied to be true, and to which very few
poets have ever aspired. Pope never set genius to sale; he never
flattered those whom he did not love, nor praised those whom he did
not esteem. Savage, however, remarked that he began a little to
relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for "his Highness's dog."
His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance
of life. He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his "Iliad"
to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been
complete, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was
chosen for so great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there
is no trace in literary history of any particular intimacy between
them. The name of Congreve appears in the Letters among those of
his other friends, but without any observable distinction or
consequence. To his latter works, however, he took care to annex
names dignified with titles, but was not very happy in his choice;
for, except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as
that a good man would wish to have his intimacy with them known to
posterity; he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham,
Burlington, or Bolingbroke.
Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his Letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a
perpetual and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence, and
particular fondness. There is nothing but liberality, gratitude,
constancy, and tenderness. It has been so long said as to be
commonly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in
their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart
open before him. But the truth is that such were the simple
friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the friendships only of
children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to
themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not
shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, who we hide from
ourselves we do not show to our friend. There is, indeed, no
transaction which offers strange temptations to fallacy and
sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of
conversation the first emotions of the mind often burst out before
they are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion
have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and
deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of
solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his
own character.
Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man
so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose
kindness he desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world
there is less constraint; the author is not confronted with his
reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the different
dispositions of mankind; but a letter is addressed to a single mind,
of which the prejudices and partialities are known; and must
therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppose
them. To charge those favourable representations, which men give of
their own minds, with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would
show more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly believes
himself. Almost every man's thoughts, while they are general, are
right; and most hearts are pure while temptation is away. It is
easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise death when
there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing
to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt; and self-
love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy.
If the Letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they
seem to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write
because there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, and
another to solicit the imagination because ceremony or vanity
requires something to be written. Pope confesses his early Letters
to be vitiated with AFFECTATION AND AMBITION: to know whether he
disentangled himself from these perverters of epistolary integrity,
his book and his life must be set in comparison. One of his
favourite topics is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it had
been real, he would deserve no commendation; and in this he was
certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself was
sufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his
poetry? He writes, he says, when "he has just nothing else to do;"
yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation,
because he "had always some poetical scheme in his head." It was
punctually required that his writing-box should be set upon his bed
before he rose; and Lord Oxford's domestic related that, in the
dreadful winter of Forty, she was called from her bed by him four
times in one night, to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a
thought. He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though
it was observed by all who knew him that every pamphlet disturbed
his quiet, and that his extreme irritability laid him open to
perpetual vexation; but he wished to despise his critics, and
therefore hoped that he did despise them. As he happened to live in
two reigns when the court paid little attention to poetry, he nursed
in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings, and proclaims that "he
never sees courts." Yet a little regard shown him by the Prince of
Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was
asked by his Royal Highness, "How he could love a prince while he
disliked kings?"
He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents
himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as
on emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes
with gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than
pity. These were dispositions apparently counterfeited. How could
he despise those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation
his esteem of himself was superstructed? Why should he hate those
to whose favour he owed his honour and his ease? Of things that
terminate in human life, the world is the proper judge: to despise
its sentence, if it were possible, is not just; and if it were just,
is not possible. Pope was far enough from this unreasonable temper;
he was sufficiently A FOOL TO FAME, and his fault was that he
pretended to neglect it. His levity and his sullenness were only in
his letters; he passed through common life, sometimes vexed, and
sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions of common men. His
scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks
much of that which he despises; and as falsehood is always in danger
of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time that he
lives among them. It is evident that his own importance swells
often in his mind. He is afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the
post-office should know his secrets; he has many enemies; he
considers himself as surrounded by universal jealousy: "After many
deaths, and many dispersions, two or three of us," says he, "may
still be brought together, not to plot, but to divert ourselves, and
the world too, if it pleases;" and they can live together, and "show
what friends wits may be, in spite of all the fools in the world."
All this while it was likely that the clerks did not know his hand;
he certainly had no more enemies than a public character like his
inevitably excites; and with what degree of friendship the wits
might live, very few were so much fools as ever to inquire. Some
part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, and
expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with
him. Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere;
Pope's was the mere mimicry of his friend, a fictitious part which
he began to play before it became him. When he was only twenty-five
years old, he related that "a glut of study and retirement had
thrown him on the world," and that there was danger lest "a glut of
the world should throw him back upon study and retirement." To this
Swift answered with great propriety, that Pope had not yet acted or
suffered enough in the world to have become weary of it. And,
indeed, it must have been some very powerful reason that can drive
back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the pleasures of society.
In the Letters both of Swift and Pope there appears such narrowness
of mind as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some
affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation
to so small a number, that whoever should form his opinion of their
age from their representation, would suppose them to have lived
amidst ignorance and barbarity, unable to find among their
contemporaries either virtue or intelligence, and persecuted by
those that could not understand them.
When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame,
when he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment,
with negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his
habitual and settled resentments, but either wilfully disguises his
own character, or, what is more likely, invests himself with
temporary qualities, and sallies out in the colours of the present
moment. His hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows, acted strongly
upon his mind, and if he differed from others it was not by
carelessness; he was irritable and resentful; his malignity to
Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous and then hated for being
angry continued too long. Of his vain desire to make Bentley
contemptible I never heard any adequate reason. He was sometimes
wanton in his attacks, and before Chandos, Lady Wortley, and Hill,
was mean in his retreat. The virtues which seem to have had most of
his affection were liberality and fidelity of friendship, in which
it does not appear that he was other than he describes himself. His
fortune did not suffer his character to be splendid and conspicuous,
but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred pounds that he might open a
shop, and of the subscription of forty pounds a year that he raised
for Savage twenty were paid by himself. He was accused of loving
money, but his love was eagerness to gain, not solicitude to keep
it. In the duties of friendship he was zealous and constant; his
early maturity of mind commonly united him with men older than
himself, and therefore, without attaining any considerable length of
life, he saw many companions of his youth sink into the grave; but
it does not appear that he lost a single friend by coldness or by
injury; those who loved him once continued their kindness. His
ungrateful mention of Allen in his will was the effect of his
adherence to one whom he had known much longer, and whom he
naturally loved with greater fondness. His violation of the trust
reposed in him by Bolingbroke could have no motive inconsistent with
the warmest affection; he either thought the action so near to
indifferent that he forgot it, or so laudable that he expected his
friend to approve it. It was reported with such confidence as
almost to enforce belief, that in the papers entrusted to his
executors was found a defamatory Life of Swift, which he had
prepared as an instrument of vengeance, to be used if any
provocation should be ever given. About this I inquired of the Earl
of Marchmont, who assured me that no such piece was among his
remains.
The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of
Rome, to which, in his correspondence with Racine, he professes
himself a sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in
some part of his life is known by many idle and indecent
applications of sentences taken from the Scriptures, a mode of
merriment which a good man dreads for its profaneness, and a witty
man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity. But to whatever
levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that his
principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of
revelation. The positions which he transmitted from Bolingbroke he
seems not to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation
that made them orthodox.
A man of such exalted superiority and so little moderation would
naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those
who could not deny that he was excellent would rejoice to find that
he was not perfect. Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness
with which the same man is allowed to possess many advantages, that
his learning has been depreciated. He certainly was in his early
life a man of great literary curiosity, and when he wrote his "Essay
on Criticism," had, for his age, a very wide acquaintance with
books. When he entered into the living world it seems to have
happened to him, as to many others, that he was less attentive to
dead masters; he studied in the academy of Paracelsus, and made the
universe his favourite volume. He gathered his notions fresh from
reality, not from the copies of authors, but the originals of
Nature. Yet there is no reason to believe that literature ever lost
his esteem; he always professed to love reading, and Dobson, who
spent some time at his house translating his "Essay on Man," when I
asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, "More
than I expected." His frequent references to history, his allusions
to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and
nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the
modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing,
excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and
attentive to retain it. From this curiosity arose the desire of
travelling, to which he alludes in his verses to Jervas, and which,
though he never found an opportunity to gratify it, did not leave
him till his life declined.
Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental
principle was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of
consonance and propriety. He saw immediately of his own conceptions
what was to be chosen and what to be rejected, and, in the works of
others, what was to be shunned and what was to be copied. But good
sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its
possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few
materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never
gains supremacy. Pope had likewise genius; a mind active,
ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring;
in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest
flights still wishing to be higher, always imagining some thing
greater than it knows, always endeavouring more than it can do. To
assist these powers he is said to have had great strength and
exactness of memory. That which he had heard or read was not easily
lost, and he had before him not only what his own meditations
suggested, but what he had found in other writers that might be
accommodated to his present purpose. These benefits of Nature he
improved by incessant and unwearied diligence; he had recourse to
every source of intelligence, and lost no opportunity of
information; he consulted the living as well as the dead; he read
his compositions to his friends, and was never content with
mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He considered poetry
as the business of his life, and however he might seem to lament his
occupation he followed it with constancy; to make verses was his
first labour, and to mend them was his last. From his attention to
poetry he was never diverted. If conversation offered anything that
could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or
perhaps an expression, more happy than was common, rose to his mind,
he was careful to write it; an independent distich was preserved for
an opportunity of insertion, and some little fragments have been
found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at
some other time. He was one of those few whose labour is their
pleasure; he was never elevated to negligence nor wearied to
impatience; he never passed a fault unamended by indifference, nor
quitted it by despair. He laboured his works first to gain
reputation, and afterwards to keep it.
Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at once
memory and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen,
form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write
their productions only when, in their own opinion, they have
completed them. It is related of Virgil that his custom was to pour
out a great number of verses in the morning, and pass the day in
retrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The method of
Pope, as may be collected from his translation, was to write his
first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to amplify,
decorate, rectify, and refine them. With such faculties and such
dispositions he excelled every other writer in poetical prudence; he
wrote in such a manner as might expose him to few hazards. He used
almost always the same fabric of verse, and, indeed, by those few
essays which he made of any other, he did not enlarge his
reputation. Of this uniformity the certain consequence was
readiness and dexterity. By perpetual practice language had, in his
mind, a systematical arrangement; having always the same use for
words, he had words so selected and combined as to be ready at his
call. This increase of facility he confessed himself to have
perceived in the progress of his translation. But what was yet of
more importance, his effusions were always voluntary, and his
subjects chosen by himself. His independence secured him from
drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren topic; he never
exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop of condolence or
congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarcely ever temporary.
He suffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a song,
and derived no opportunities from recent events, nor any popularity
from the accidental disposition of his readers. He was never
reduced to the necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a
birthday, of calling the graces and virtues to a wedding, or of
saying what multitudes have said before him. When he could produce
nothing new he was at liberty to be silent.
His publications were for the same reason never hasty. He is said
to have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under
his inspection: it is at least certain that he ventured nothing
without nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to
subside, and the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew
that the mind is always enamoured of its own productions, and did
not trust his first fondness. He consulted his friends, and
listened with great willingness to criticism; and, what was of more
importance, he consulted himself, and let nothing pass against his
own judgment. He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden,
whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his
whole life with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may
receive some illustration if he be compared with his master.
Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not
allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude
of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his
poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and
rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment
that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the
people; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. He spent
no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to
make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he
must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very
little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he
poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when
once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for, when he
had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude.
Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore
always endeavoured to do his best; he did not court the candour, but
dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from
others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with
minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.
For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be
supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might
hasten their publication, were the two satires of "Thirty-eight;" of
which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him by the author,
that they might be fairly copied. "Almost every line," he said,
"was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which
he sent some time afterwards to me for the press, with almost every
line written twice over a second time." His declaration, that his
care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly
true. His parental attention never abandoned them; what he found
amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that
followed. He appears to have revised the "Iliad," and freed it from
some of its imperfections; and the "Essay on Criticism" received
many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be
found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour.
Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly wanted
the diligence of Pope.
In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden,
whose education was more scholastic, and who before he became an
author had been allowed more time for study, with better means of
information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his
images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of
science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in
his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by
comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention.
There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty
in that of Pope. Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both
excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from
his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that
of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden observes the motions of his
own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition.
Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth,
uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into
inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant
vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and
levelled by the roller.
Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without
which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which
collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must,
with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be
inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little,
because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must
give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said that, if he
has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's
performances were always hasty, either excited by some external
occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without
consideration, and published without correction. What his mind
could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he
sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled
him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to
accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If
the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on
the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the
heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses
expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with
frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. This
parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just;
and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some
partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily
condemn me; for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps, show him the
reasonableness of my determination.
The Works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much
with attention to slight faults or petty beauties, as to the general
character and effect of each performance.
It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals,
which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience;
and, exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions,
admit no subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are
not, however, composed but with close thought; they have reference
to the times of the day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of
human life. The last, that which turns the attention upon age and
death, was the author's favourite. To tell of disappointment and
misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity and perplex the
labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of
the poets. His preference was probably just. I wish, however, that
his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the Zephyrs are made
to lament in silence. To charge these pastorals with wane of
invention, is to require what was never intended. The imitations
are so ambitiously frequent, that the writer evidently means rather
to show his literature than his wit. It is surely sufficient for an
author of sixteen, not only to be able to copy the poems of
antiquity with judicious selection, but to have obtained sufficient
power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of
versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has
since had an imitation.
The design of "Windsor Forest" is evidently derived from "Cooper's
Hill," with some attention to Waller's poem on "The Park;" but Pope
cannot be denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and
the art of interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The
objection made by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular
subordination of parts terminating in the principal and original
design. There is this want in most descriptive poems, because as
the scenes, which they must exhibit successively, are all subsisting
at the same time, the order in which they are shown must by
necessity be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last
part than from the first. The attention, therefore, which cannot be
detained by suspense, must be excited by diversity, such as this
poem offers to its reader. But the desire of diversity may be too
much indulged; the parts of "Windsor Forest" which deserve least
praise are those which were added to enliven the stillness of the
scene--the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of
Lodona. Addison had in his "Campaign" derided the rivers that "rise
from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes; and it is therefore
strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural, but
lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with sweetness; but a
new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient; nothing is
easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin, or a
rock an obdurate tyrant.
The "Temple of Fame" has, as Steele warmly declared, a "thousand
beauties." Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of
ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be
much improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery
is properly selected, and learnedly displayed; yet, with all this
comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages,
and its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have
little relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained
much notice, but is turned silently over, and seldom quoted or
mentioned with either praise or blame.
That the "Messiah" excels the "Pollio" is no great praise, if it be
considered from what original the improvements are derived.
The "Verses on the Unfortunate Lady" have drawn much attention by
the illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect; and
they must be allowed to be written in some parts with vigorous
animation, and in others with gentle tenderness; nor has Pope
produced any poem in which the sense predominates more over the
diction. But the tale is not skilfully told; it is not easy to
discover the character of either the lady or her guardian. History
relates that she was about to disparage herself by a marriage with
an inferior; Pope praises her for the dignity of ambition, and yet
condemns the uncle to detestation for his pride; the ambitious love
of a niece may be opposed by the interest, malice, or envy of an
uncle, but never by his pride. On such an occasion a poet may be
allowed to be obscure, but inconsistency never can be right.
The "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" was undertaken at the desire of
Steele: in this the author is generally confessed to have
miscarried, yet he has miscarried only as compared with Dryden; for
he has far outgone other competitors. Dryden's plan is better
chosen; history will always take stronger hold of the attention than
fable: the passions excited by Dryden are the pleasures and pains
of real life, the scene of Pope is laid in imaginary existence; Pope
is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden with turbulent delight; Pope
hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the passes of the mind. Both
the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions,
the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged that
Pindar is said by Horace to have written numeris lege solutis; but
as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning
of that expression cannot be fixed; and perhaps the like return
might properly be made to a modern Pindarist as Mr. Cobb received
from Bentley, who, when he found his criticisms upon a Greek
exercise, which Cobb had presented, refuted one after another by
Pindar's authority, cried out at last, "Pindar was a bold fellow,
but thou art an impudent one."
If Pope's ode be particularly inspected, it will be found that the
first stanza consists of sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds.
The second consists of hyperbolical commonplaces, easily to be
found, and perhaps without much difficulty to be as well expressed.
In the third, however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and
rigour, not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden. Had all been like
this--but every part cannot be the best. The next stanzas place and
detain us in the dark and dismal regions of mythology, where neither
hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow can be found: the poet,
however, faithfully attends us; we have all that can be performed by
elegance of diction or sweetness of versification; but what can form
avail without better matter? The last stanza recurs again to
commonplaces. The conclusion is too evidently modelled by that of
Dryden; and it may be remarked that both end with the same fault;
the comparison of each is literal on one side and metaphorical on
the other. Poets do not always express their own thoughts: Pope,
with all this labour in the praise of music, was ignorant of its
principles and insensible of its effects.
One of his greatest, though of his earliest works, is the "Essay on
Criticism," which, if he had written nothing else, would have placed
him among the first critics and the first poets, as it exhibits
every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactic
composition, selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness
of precept, splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression.
I know not whether it be pleasing to consider that he produced this
piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it: he that delights
himself with observing that such powers may be soon attained, cannot
but grieve to think that life was ever after at a stand.
To mention the particular beauties of the essay would be
unprofitably tedious: but I cannot forbear to observe that the
comparison of a student's progress in the sciences with the journey
of a traveller in the Alps is perhaps the best that English poetry
can show. A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble
the subject; must show it to the understanding in a clearer view,
and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of
these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it. In didactic
poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction, a simile may be
praised which illustrates, though it does not ennoble; in heroics,
that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not illustrate.
That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of
its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short
episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that circumstances
were sometimes added, which, having no parallels, served only to
fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously called
"comparisons with a long tail." In their similes the greatest
writers have sometimes failed; the ship-race, compared with the
chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water
make all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is
likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the
ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer; and a
god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their
advantage by a hare and dog. The simile of the Alps has no useless
parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the
foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster
hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension and elevates the
fancy. Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph
in which it is directed that "the sound should seem an echo to the
sense;" a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any
other English poet.
This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering
frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my
opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can
furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered
singly and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language
has some words framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as
THUMP, RATTLE, GROWL, HISS. These, however, are but few, and the
poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when
sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the
dactylic measures of the learned languages capable of considerable
variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or
duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by
verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the
image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having
little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their
cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely
from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation
between a SOFT line and SOFT couch, or between HEARD syllables and
HARD fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and
yet it may be suspected that in such resemblances the mind often
governs the ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One
of their most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of
Sisyphus:-
"With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground."
Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll
violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:-
"While many a merry tale, and many a song,
Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long.
The rough road, then, returning in a round,
Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground."
We have now surely lost much of the delay and much of the rapidity.
But, to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the
principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to
remark that the poet who tells us that -
"When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;"
when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's
lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon SOUND and TIME,
and produced this memorable triplet:-
"Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine."
Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-
paced majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of
syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of
SWIFTNESS by one time longer than that of TARDINESS. Beauties of
this kind are commonly fancied, and, when real, are technical and
nugatory, not to he rejected and not to be solicited.
To the praises which have been accumulated on the "Rape of the Look"
by readers of every class, from the critic to the waiting-maid, it
is difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally
allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let
it rather be now inquired from what sources the power of pleasing is
derived.
Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked
that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the
purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain
attention; we should have turned away from a contest between Venus
and Diana. The employment of allegorical persons always excites
conviction of its own absurdity; they may produce effects, but
cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion it
dissolves; thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord cannot
conduct a march nor besiege a town. Pope brought in view a new race
of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their
operation. The Sylphs and Gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-
table what more terrific and more powerful phantoms perform on the
stormy ocean or the field of battle: they give their proper help
and do their proper mischief. Pope is said, by an objector, not to
have been the inventor of this petty notion, a charge which might
with more justice have been brought against the author of the
"Iliad," who doubtless adopted the religious system of his country;
for what is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not
invented? Has he not assigned them characters and operations never
heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their first
poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate his
work original, nothing original ever can be written.
In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most
engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and
familiar things are made new. A race of aerial people never heard
of before is presented to us in a manner so clear and easy that the
reader seeks for no further information, but immediately mingles
with his new acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their
pursuits, loves a Sylph, and detests a Gnome. That familiar things
are made new every paragraph will prove. The subject of the poem is
an event below the common incidents of common life; nothing real is
introduced that is not seen so often as to be no longer regarded;
yet the whole detail of a female day is here brought before us,
invested with so much art of decoration that, though nothing is
disguised, everything is striking, and we feel all the appetite of
curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times turned
fastidiously away.
The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at "the little
unguarded follies of the female sex." It is therefore without
justice that Dennis charges the "Rape of the Lock" with the want of
a moral, and for that reason sets it below the "Lutrin," which
exposes the pride and discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope
nor Boileau has made the world much better than he found it; but if
they had both succeeded, it were easy to tell who would have
deserved most from public gratitude. The freaks, and humours, and
spleen, and vanity of women as they embroil families in discord, and
fill houses with disquiet, do more to obstruct the happiness of life
in a year than the ambition of the clergy in many centuries. It has
been well observed that the misery of man proceeds not from any
single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexatious
continually repeated. It is remarked by Dennis, likewise, that the
machinery is superfluous; that, by all the bustle of preternatural
operation, the main event is neither hastened nor retarded. To this
charge an efficacious answer is not easily made. The Sylphs cannot
be said to help or oppose; and it must be allowed to imply some want
of art that their power has not been sufficiently intermingled with
the action. Other parts may likewise be charged with want of
connection--the game at ombre might be spared; but if the lady had
lost her hair while she was intent upon her cards it might have been
inferred that those who are too fond of play will be in danger of
neglecting more important interests. Those, perhaps, are faults,
but what are such faults to so much excellence!
The Epistle of "Eloise to Abelard" is one of the most happy
productions of human wit; the subject is so judiciously chosen that
it would be difficult in turning over the annals of the world to
find another which so many circumstances concur to recommend. We
regularly interest ourselves most in the fortune of those who most
deserve our notice. Abelard and Eloise were conspicuous in their
days for eminence of merit. The heart naturally loves truth. The
adventures and misfortunes of this illustrious pair are known from
undisputed history. Their fate does not leave the mind in hopeless
dejection, for they both found quiet and consolation in retirement
and piety. So new and so affecting is their story that it
supersedes invention, and imagination ranges at full liberty without
straggling into scenes of fable. The story thus skilfully adopted
has been diligently improved. Pope has left nothing behind him
which seems more the effect of studious perseverance and laborious
revisal. Here is particularly observable the curiosa felicitas, a
fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of
sense nor asperity of language. The sources from which sentiments
which have so much vigour and efficacy have been drawn are shown to
be the mystic writers by the learned author of the "Essays on the
Life and Writings of Pope," a book which teaches how the brow of
Criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her
severity, to attract and to delight.
The train of my disquisition has now conducted me to that poetical
wonder, the translation of the "Iliad," a performance which no age
or nation can pretend to equal. To the Greeks translation was
almost unknown; it was totally unknown to the inhabitants of Greece.
They had no recourse to the barbarians for poetical beauties, but
sought for everything in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little
which they might not find. The Italians have been very diligent
translators, but I can hear of no version, unless, perhaps,
Anguillara's "Ovid" may be excepted, which is read with eagerness.
The "Iliad" of Salvini every reader may discover to be punctiliously
exact; but it seems to be the work of a linguist skilfully pedantic;
and his countrymen, the proper judges of its power to please, reject
it with disgust. Their predecessors, the Romans, have left some
specimens of translation behind them, and that employment must have
had some credit in which Tully and Germanicus engaged; but unless we
suppose, what is perhaps true, that the plays of Terence were
versions of Menander, nothing translated seems ever to have risen to
high reputation. The French in the meridian hour of their learning
were very laudably industrious to enrich their own language with the
wisdom of the ancients; but found themselves reduced by whatever
necessity to turn the Greek and Roman poetry into prose. Whoever
could read an author could translate him. From such rivals little
can be feared.
The chief help of Pope in this audacious undertaking was drawn from
the versions of Dryden. Virgil had borrowed much of his imagery
from Homer; and part of the debt was now paid by his translator.
Pope searched the pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroic
diction, but it will not be denied that he added much to what he
found. He cultivated our language with so much diligence and art,
that he has left in his "Homer" a treasure of poetical elegances to
posterity. His version may be said to have tuned the English
tongue; for since its appearance no writer, however deficient in
other powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of lines, so
elaborately corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took possession of
the public ear; the vulgar was enamoured of the poem, and the
learned wondered at the translation. But in the most general
applause discordant voices will always be heard. It has been
objected by some who wish to be numbered among the sons of learning
that Pope's version of Homer is not Homerical; that it exhibits no
resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of the Father
of Poetry, as it wants his artless grandeur, his unaffected majesty.
This cannot be totally denied; but it must be remembered that
necessitas quod cogit defendit; that may be lawfully done which
cannot be forborne. Time and place will always enforce regard. In
estimating this translation, consideration must be had of the nature
of our language, the form of our metre, and, above all, of the
change which two thousand years have made in the modes of life and
the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the same
general fabric with that of Homer, in verses of the same measure,
and in an age nearer to Homer's time by eighteen hundred years; yet
he found even then the state of the world so much altered, and the
demand for elegance so much increased, that mere nature would be
endured no longer; and, perhaps, in the multitude of borrowed
passages, very few can be shown which he has not embellished.
There is a time when nations, emerging from barbarity, and falling
into regular subordination, gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the
shame of ignorance and the craving pain of unsatisfied curiosity.
To this hunger of the mind plain sense is grateful; that which fills
the void removes uneasiness, and to be free from pain for a while is
pleasure; but repletion generates fastidiousness; a saturated
intellect soon becomes luxurious, and knowledge finds no willing
reception till it is recommended by artificial diction. Thus it
will be found, in the progress of learning, that in all nations the
first writers are simple, and that every age improves in elegance.
One refinement always makes way for another; and what was expedient
to Virgil was necessary to Pope. I suppose many readers of the
English "Iliad," when they have been touched with some unexpected
beauty of the lighter kind, have tried to enjoy it in the original,
where, alas! it was not to be found. Homer doubtless owes to his
translator many Ovidian graces not exactly suitable to his
character; but to have added can be no great crime, if nothing be
taken away. Elegance is surely to be desired, if it be not gained
at the expense of dignity. A hero would wish to be loved, as well
as to be reverenced. To a thousand cavils one answer is sufficient;
the purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would
destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside. Pope wrote for
his own age and his own nation: he knew that it was necessary to
colour the images and point the sentiments of his author; he
therefore made him graceful, but lost him some of his sublimity.
The copious notes with which the version is accompanied, and by
which it is recommended to many readers, though they were
undoubtedly written to swell the volumes, ought not to pass without
praise: commentaries which attract the reader by the pleasure of
perusal have not often appeared; the notes of others are read to
clear difficulties; those of Pope to vary entertainment. It has,
however, been objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in the
commentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that
too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so
carefully preserved is sometimes the ease of a trifler. Every art
has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the
gravity of common critics may be tedious, but is less despicable
than childish merriment.
Of the "Odyssey" nothing remains to be observed; the same general
praise may be given to both translations, and a particular
examination of either would require a large volume. The notes were
written by Broome, who endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to imitate
his master.
Of the "Dunciad" the hint is confessedly taken from Dryden's "Mac
Flecknoe;" but the plan is so enlarged and diversified as justly to
claim the praise of an original, and affords the best specimen that
has yet appeared of personal satire ludicrously pompous. That the
design was moral, whatever the author might tell either his readers
or himself, I am not convinced. The first motive was the desire of
revenging the contempt with which Theobald had treated his
Shakspeare, and regaining the honour which he had lost, by crushing
his opponent. Theobald was not of bulk enough to fill a poem, and
therefore it was necessary to find other enemies with other names,
at whose expense he might divert the public.
In this design there was petulance and malignity enough; but I
cannot think it very criminal. An author places himself uncalled
before the tribunal of criticism, and solicits fame at the hazard of
disgrace. Dulness or deformity are not culpable in themselves, but
may be very justly reproached when they pretend to the honour of wit
or the influence of beauty. If bad writers were to pass without
reprehension, what should restrain them? impune diem consumpserit
ingens Telephus; and upon bad writers only will censure have much
effect. The satire which brought Theobald and Moore into contempt
dropped impotent from Bentley, like the javelin of Priam. All truth
is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful
when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the
public taste is a public benefactor. The beauties of this poem are
well known; its chief fault is the grossness of its images. Pope
and Swift had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such
as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every
ear shrinks from the mention. But even this fault, offensive as it
is, may be forgiven for the excellence of other passages; such as
the formation and dissolution of Moore, the account of the
Traveller, the misfortune of the Florist, and the crowded thoughts
and stately numbers which dignify the concluding paragraph. The
alterations which have been made in the "Dunciad," not always for
the better, require that it should be published, as in the present
collection, with all its variations.
The "Essay on Man" was a work of great labour and long
consideration, but certainly not the happiest of Pope's
performances. The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry;
and the poet was not sufficiently master of his subject;
metaphysical morality was to him a new study; he was proud of his
acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great secrets, was in
haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the
first Epistle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may be
deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because infinite
excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings
must be "somewhere;" and that "all the question is, whether man be
in a wrong place." Surely if, according to the poet's Leibnitzian
reasoning, we may infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we
may allow that his place is the right place, because he has it.
Supreme Wisdom is not less infallible in disposing than in creating.
But what is meant by SOMEWHERE, and PLACE, and WRONG PIECE, it had
been in vain to ask Pope, who probably had never asked himself.
Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much
that every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that
we see but little, and that the order of the universe is beyond our
comprehension; an opinion not very uncommon; and that there is a
chain of subordinate beings "from infinite to nothing," of which
himself and his readers are equally ignorant. But he gives us one
comfort, which without his help he supposes unattainable, in the
position "that though we are fools, yet God is wise."
This essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of
genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers
of eloquence. Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity of
sentiment so happily disguised. The reader feels his mind full,
though he learns nothing; and, when he meets it in its new array, no
longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse. When these
wonder-working sounds sink into sense, and the doctrine of the
essay, disrobed of its ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked
excellence, what shall we discover? That we are, in comparison with
our Creator, very weak and ignorant; that we do not uphold the chain
of existence; and that we could not make one another with more skill
than we are made. We may learn yet more that the arts of human life
were copied from the instinctive operations of other animals; that
if the world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for
geese. To these profound principles of natural knowledge are added
some moral instructions equally new; that self-interest, well
understood, will produce social concord; that men are mutual gainers
by mutual benefits; that evil is sometimes balanced by good; that
human advantages are unstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration
and doubtful effect; that our true honour is not to have a great
part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own; and that
happiness is always in our power. Surely a man of no very
comprehensive search may venture to say that he has heard all this
before; but it was never till now recommended by such a blaze of
embellishments, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous
contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others,
the incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes
the softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism,
and oppress judgment by overpowering pleasure. This is true of many
paragraphs; yet, if I had undertaken to exemplify Pope's felicity of
composition before a rigid critic, I should not select the "Essay on
Man;" for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more
harshness of diction, and more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more
levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength, than
will easily be found in all his other works.
The "Characters of Men and Women" are the product of diligent
speculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon
them, and Pope very seldom laboured in vain. That his excellence
may be properly estimated, I recommend a comparison of his
"Characters of Women" with Boileau's Satire; it will then be seen
with how much more perspicacity female nature is investigated, and
female excellence selected; and he surely is no mean writer to whom
Boileau should be found inferior. The "Characters of Men," however,
are written with more, if not with deeper, thought, and exhibit many
passages exquisitely beautiful. The "Gem and the Flower" will not
easily be equalled. In the women's part are some defects; the
character of Atossa is not so neatly finished as that of Clodio, and
some of the female characters may be found, perhaps, more frequently
among men; what is said of Philomede was true of Prior.
In the Epistles to Lord Bathurst and Lord Burlington, Dr. Warburton
has endeavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the
writer's head, and, to support his hypothesis, has printed that
first which was published last. In one the most valuable passage is
perhaps the Elegy on Good Sense, and the other the end of the Duke
of Buckingham.
The Epistle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the "Prologue to
the Satires," is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many
fragments wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered
beauties, contains more striking paragraphs than could probably have
been brought together into an occasional work. As there is no
stronger motive to exertion than self-defence, no part has more
elegance, spirit, or dignity, than the poet's vindication of his own
character. The meanest passage is the satire upon Sporus.
Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which
are called the "Epilogue to the Satires," it was very justly
remarked by Savage that the second was in the whole more strongly
conceived, and more equally supported, but that it had no single
passages equal to the contention in the first for the dignity of
Vice and the celebration of the triumph of Corruption.
The "Imitations of Horace" seem to have been written as relaxations
of his genius. This employment became his favourite by its
facility; the plan was ready to his hand, and nothing was required
but to accommodate as he could the sentiments of an old author to
recent facts or familiar images; but what is easy is seldom
excellent. Such imitations cannot give pleasure to common readers;
the man of learning may be sometimes surprised and delighted by an
unexpected parallel, but the comparison requires knowledge of the
original, which will likewise often detect strained applications.
Between Roman images and English manners there will be an
irreconcilable dissimilitude, and the works will be generally
uncouth and parti-coloured, neither original nor translated, neither
ancient nor modern.
Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the
qualities that constitute genius. He had INTENTION, by which new
trains of events are formed and new scenes of imagery displayed, as
in the "Rape of the Lock," and by which extrinsic and adventitious
embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject,
as in the "Essay on Criticism." He had IMAGINATION, which strongly
impresses on the writer's mind, and enables him to convey to the
reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies
of passion, as in his "Eloisa," "Windsor Forest," and "Ethic
Epistles." He had JUDGMENT, which selects from life or Nature what
the present purpose requires, and by separating the essence of
things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more
powerful than the reality; and he had colours of language always
before him, ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant
expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful
multiplicity of Homer's sentiments and descriptions.
Poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning. "Music,"
says Dryden, "is inarticulate poetry;" among the excellences of
Pope, therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By
perusing the works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabric
of English verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found
the best; in consequence of which restraint his poetry has been
censured as too uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with
unvaried sweetness. I suspect this objection to be the cant of
those who judge by principles rather than perception, and who would
even themselves have less pleasure in his works if he had tried to
relieve attention by studied discords, or affected to break his
lines and vary his pauses. But though he was thus careful of his
versification, he did not oppress his powers with superfluous
rigour. He seems to have thought with Boileau that the practice of
writing might be refined till the difficulty should overbalance the
advantage. The construction of the language is not always strictly
grammatical; with those rhymes which prescription had conjoined he
contented himself, without regard to Swift's remonstrances, though
there was no striking consonance, nor was he very careful to vary
his terminations or to refuse admission, at a small distance, to the
same rhymes. To Swift's edict for the exclusion of alexandrines and
triplets he paid little regard; he admitted them, but, in the
opinion of Fenton, too rarely; he uses them more liberally in his
translation than his poems. He has a few double rhymes, and always,
I think, unsuccessfully, except once in the "Rape of the Lock."
Expletives he very early ejected from his verses, but he now and
then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of
the six first lines of the "Iliad" might lose two syllables with
very little diminution of the meaning, and sometimes, after all his
art and labour, one verse seems to be made for the sake of another.
In his latter productions the diction is sometimes vitiated by
French idioms, with which Bolingbroke had perhaps infected him.
I have been told that the couplet by which he declared his own ear
to be most gratified was this:-
"Lo, where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows
The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows."
But the reason of this preference I cannot discover.
It is remarked by Watts that there is scarcely a happy combination
of words, or a phrase poetically elegant in the English language,
which Pope has not inserted into his version of Homer. How he
obtained possession of so many beauties of speech it were desirable
to know. That he gleaned from authors, obscure as well as eminent,
what he thought brilliant or useful, and preserved it all in a
regular collection, is not unlikely. When, in his last years,
Hall's "Satires" were shown him, he wished that he had seen them
sooner. New sentiments and new images others may produce; but to
attempt any further improvement of versification will be dangerous.
Art and diligence have now done their best, and what shall be added
will be the effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity. After
all this, it is surely superfluous to answer the question that has
once been asked, Whether Pope was a poet, otherwise than by asking
in return, If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To
circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of
the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not
easily be made. Let us look round upon the present time and back
upon the past; let us inquire to whom the voice of mankind has
decreed the wreath of poetry; let their productions be examined, and
their claims stated, and the pretensions of Pope will be no more
disputed. Had he given the world only his version, the name of poet
must have been allowed him: if the writer of the "Iliad" were to
class his successors he would assign a very high place to his
translator, without requiring any other evidence of genius.
The following letter, of which the original is in the hands of Lord
Hardwicke, was communicated to me by the kindness of Mr. Jodrell:-
"To MR. BRIDGES, at the Bishop of London's, at Fulham.
"SIR,--The favour of your letter, with your remarks, can never be
enough acknowledged, and the speed with which you discharged so
troublesome a task doubles the obligation.
"I must own you have pleased me very much by the commendations so
ill bestowed upon me; but I assure you, much more by the frankness
of your censure, which I ought to take the more kindly of the two,
as it is more advantage to a scribbler to be improved in his
judgment than to be smoothed in his vanity. The greater part of
those deviations from the Greek which you have observed I was led
into by Chapman and Hobbes; who are, it seems, as much celebrated
for their knowledge of the original as they are decried for the
badness of their translations. Chapman pretends to have restored
the genuine sense of the author from the mistakes of all former
explainers in several hundred places; and the Cambridge editors of
the large Homer, in Greek and Latin, attributed so much to Hobbes,
that they confess they have corrected the old Latin interpretation
very often by his version. For my part, I generally took the
author's meaning to be as you have explained it; yet their
authority, joined to the knowledge of my own imperfectness in the
language, overruled me. However, sir, you may be confident, I think
you in the right, because you happen to be of my opinion; for men
(let them say what they will) never approve any other's sense but as
it squares with their own. But you have made me much more proud of
and positive in my judgment, since it is strengthened by yours. I
think your criticisms which regard the expression very just, and
shall make my profit of them; to give you some proof that I am in
earnest, I will alter three verses on your bare objection, though I
have Mr. Dryden's example for each of them. And this, I hope, you
will account no small piece of obedience, from one who values the
authority of one true poet above that of twenty critics or
commentators. But, though I speak thus of commentators, I will
continue to read carefully all I can procure, to make up that way
for my own want of critical understanding in the original beauties
of Homer. Though the greatest of them are certainly those of
invention and design, which are not at all confined to the language;
for the distinguishing excellences of Homer are (by the consent of
the best critics of all nations), first in the manners (which
include all the speeches, as being no other than the representations
of each person's manners by his words): and then in that rapture
and fire, which carries you away with him, with that wonderful
force, that no man who has a true poetical spirit is master of
himself while he reads him. Homer makes you interested and
concerned before you are aware, all at once, where Virgil does it by
soft degrees. This, I believe, is what a translator of Homer ought
principally to imitate; and it is very hard for any translator to
come up to it, because the chief reason why all translations fall
short of their originals is, that the very constraint they are
obliged to renders them heavy and dispirited.
"The great beauty of Homer's language, as I take it, consists in
that noble simplicity which runs through all his works (and yet his
diction, contrary to what one would imagine consistent with
simplicity, is at the same time very copious). I don't know how I
have run into this pedantry in a letter, but I find I have said too
much, as well as spoken too inconsiderately; what farther thoughts I
have upon this subject I shall be glad to communicate to you (for my
own improvement) when we meet, which is a happiness I very earnestly
desire, as I do likewise some opportunity of proving how much I
think myself obliged to your friendship, and how truly I am, sir,
"Your most faithful humble servant,
"A. POPE."
The criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs, which was printed in "The
Universal Visitor," is placed here, being too minute and particular
to be inserted in the Life.
Every art is best taught by example. Nothing contributes more to
the cultivation of propriety than remarks on the works of those who
have most excelled. I shall therefore endeavour at this VISIT to
entertain the young students in poetry with an examination of Pope's
Epitaphs.
To define an epitaph is useless; every one knows that it is an
inscription on a tomb. An epitaph, therefore, implies no particular
character of writing, but may be composed in verse or prose. It is,
indeed, commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished
with a stone but by our friends; but it has no rule to restrain or
mollify it except this, that it ought not to be longer than common
beholders may be expected to have leisure and patience to peruse.
On CHARLES Earl of DORSET, in the church of Wythyham in Sussex.
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.
The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state;
Yet soft in nature, though severe his lay,
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Blest satirist! who touched the means so true,
As showed Vice had his hate and pity too.
Blest courtier! who could king and country please,
Yet sacred kept his friendship and his ease.
Blest peer! his great forefathers' every grace
Reflecting, and reflected on his race;
Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And patriots still, or pests, deck the line.
The first distich of this epitaph contains a kind of information
which few would want, that the man for whom the tomb was erected
DIED. There are indeed some qualities worthy of the praise ascribed
to the dead, but none that were likely to exempt him from the lot of
man, or incline us much to wonder that he should die. What is meant
by "judge of nature" is not easy to say. Nature is not the object
of human judgment; for it is in vain to judge where we cannot alter.
If by nature is meant what is commonly called NATURE by the critics,
a just representation of things really existing, and actions really
performed, nature cannot be properly opposed to ART; nature being,
in this sense, only the best effect of ART.
The scourge of pride -
Of this couplet the second line is not what is intended, an
illustration of the former. PRIDE in the GREAT, is indeed well
enough connected with knaves in state, though KNAVES is a word
rather too ludicrous and light; but the mention of SANCTIFIED pride
will not lead the thoughts to FOPS IN LEARNING, but rather to some
species of tyranny or oppression, something more gloomy and more
formidable than foppery.
Yet soft his nature -
This is a high compliment, but was not first bestowed on Dorset by
Pope. The next verse is extremely beautiful.
Blest satirist! -
In this distich is another line of which Pope was not the author. I
do not mean to blame these imitations with much harshness; in long
performances they are scarcely to be avoided, and in shorter they
may be indulged, because the train of the composition may naturally
involve them, or the scantiness of the subject allow little choice.
However, what is borrowed is not to be enjoyed as our own, and it is
the business of critical justice to give every bird of the Muses his
proper feather.
Blest courtier! -
Whether a courtier can properly be commended for keeping his EASE
SACRED, may perhaps be disputable. To please king and country
without sacrificing friendship to any change of times was a very
uncommon instance of prudence or felicity, and deserved to be kept
separate from so poor a commendation as care of his ease. I wish
our poets would attend a little more accurately to the use of the
word SACRED, which surely should never be applied in a serious
composition, but where some reference may be made to a higher Being,
or where some duty is exacted or implied. A man may keep his
friendship sacred, because promises of friendship are very awful
ties; but methinks he cannot, but in a burlesque sense, be said to
keep his ease SACRED.
Blest peer! -
The blessing ascribed to the PEER has no connection with his
peerage; they might happen to any other man whose posterity were
likely to be regarded.
I know not whether this epitaph be worthy either of the writer or
the man entombed.
II.
On Sir WILLIAM TRUMBULL, one of the principal Secretaries of State
to King WILLIAM III., who, having resigned his place, died in his
retirement at Easthamstead, in Berkshire, 1716.
A pleasing form, a firm, yet cautious mind,
Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resigned;
Honour unchanged, a principle profest.
Fixed to one side, but moderate to the rest;
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too,
Just to his prince, and to his country true;
Filled with the sense of age, the fire of youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;
A generous faith, from superstition free;
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny;
Such this man was; who new from earth removed
At length enjoys that liberty he loved.
In this epitaph, as in many others, there appears at the first view
a fault which I think scarcely any beauty can compensate. The name
is omitted. The end of an epitaph is to convey some account of the
dead; and to what purpose is anything told of him whose name is
concealed? An epitaph, and a history of a nameless hero, are
equally absurd, since the virtues and qualities so recounted in
either are scattered at the mercy of fortune to be appropriated by
guess. The name, it is true, may be read upon the stone; but what
obligation has it to the poet, whose verses wander over the earth
and leave their subject behind them, and who is forced, like an
unskilful painter, to make his purpose known by adventitious help?
This epitaph is wholly without elevation, and contains nothing
striking or particular; but the poet is not to be blamed for the
defect of his subject. He said perhaps the best that could be said.
There are, however, some defects which were not made necessary by
the character in which he was employed. There is no opposition
between an HONEST COURTIER and a PATRIOT; for an HONEST, COURTIER
cannot but be a PATRIOT. It was unsuitable to the nicety required
in short compositions to close his verse with the word TOO; every
rhyme should be a word of emphasis: nor can this rule be safely
neglected, except where the length of the poem makes slight
inaccuracies excusable, or allows room for beauties sufficient to
overpower the effects of petty faults.
At the beginning of the seventh line the word FILLED is weak and
prosaic, having no particular adaptation to any of the words that
follow it. The thought in the last line is impertinent, having no
connection with the foregoing character, nor with the condition of
the man described. Had the epitaph been written on the poor
conspirator who died lately in prison, after a confinement of more
than forty years, without any crime proved against him, the
sentiment had been just and pathetical; but why should Trumbull be
congratulated upon his liberty who had never known restraint?
III.
On the Hon. SIMON HARCOURT, only son of the Lord Chancellor
HARCOURT, at the Church of Stanton-Harcourt in Oxfordshire, 1720.
To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near,
Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear;
Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.
How vain is reason, eloquence how weak!
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak.
Oh let thy once-loved friend inscribe thy stone,
And with a father's sorrows mix his own!
This epitaph is principally remarkable for the artful introduction
of the name, which is inserted with a peculiar felicity, to which
chance must concur with genius, which no man can hope to attain
twice, and which cannot be copied but with servile imitation. I
cannot but wish that, of this inscription, the two last lines had
been omitted, as they take away from the energy what they do not add
to the sense.
IV.
On JAMES CRAGGS, Esq., in Westminster Abbey.
JACOBVS CRAGS,
REGI MAGNAE BRITANNIAE A SECRETIS
ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBVS,
PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPVLI AMOR ET DELICIAE:
VIXIT TITLIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR
ANNOS HEV PAVCOS, XXXV.
OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.
Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear!
Who broke no premise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approved,
Praised, wept, and honoured by the Muse he loved.
The lines on Craggs were not originally intended for an epitaph; and
therefore some faults are to be imputed to the violence with which
they are torn from the poems that first contained them. We may,
however, observe some defects. There is a redundancy of words in
the first couplet: it is superfluous to tell of him, who was
SINCERE, TRUE, and FAITHFUL, that he was IN HONOUR CLEAR. There
seems to be an opposition intended in the fourth line, which is not
very obvious: where is the relation between the two positions, that
he GAINED NO TITLE and LEST NO FRIEND?
It may be proper here to remark the absurdity of joining in the same
inscription Latin and English or verse and prose. If either
language be preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no
reason can be given why part of the information should be given in
one tongue, and part in another on a tomb, more than in any other
place, or any other occasion; and to tell all that can be
conveniently told in verse, and then to call in the help of prose,
has always the appearance of a very artless expedient, or of an
attempt unaccomplished. Such an epitaph resembles the conversation
of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by words, and conveys
part by signs.
V.
Intended for Mr. ROWE, in Westminster Abbey.
Thy reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred, place by Dryden's awful dust;
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blest in thy genius, in thy love too blest;
One grateful women to thy fame supplies
What a whole thankless land to his denies.
Of this inscription the chief fault is that it belongs less to Rowe,
for whom it was written, than to Dryden, who was buried near him;
and indeed gives very little information concerning either.
To wish PEACE TO THY SHADE is too mythological to be admitted into a
Christian temple: the ancient worship has infected almost all our
other compositions, and might therefore be contented to spare our
epitaphs. Let fiction, at least, cease with life, and let us be
serious over the grave.
VI.
On Mrs. CORBET, who died of a Cancer in her Breast.
Here rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason, and with sober sense;
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired;
No arts essayed, but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that Virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustained it, but the woman died.
I have always considered this as the most valuable of all Pope's
epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any
shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes,
though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every
wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the
languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and
disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile, and the vain. Of
such a character, which the dull overlook and the gay despise, it
was fit that the value should be made known and the dignity
established. Domestic virtue, as it is exerted without great
occasions, or conspicuous consequences, in an even unnoted tenor,
required the genius of Pope to display it in such a manner as might
attract regard and enforce reverence. Who can forbear to lament
that this amiable woman has no name in the verses? If the
particular lines of this inscription be examined, it will appear
less faulty than the rest. There is scarce one line taken from
commonplaces, unless it be that in which ONLY VIRTUE is said to be
OUR OWN. I once heard a lady of great beauty and excellence object
to the fourth line that it contained an unnatural and incredible
panegyric. Of this let the ladies judge.
VII.
On the Monument of the Hon. ROBERT DIGBY, and of his Sister MARY,
erected by their Father the Lord DIGBY in the church of Sherborne in
Dorsetshire, 1727
Go! fair example of untainted youth,
Of modest wisdom, and pacific truth:
Composed in sufferings, and in joy sedate,
Good without noise, without pretension great
Just of thy word, in every thought sincere,
Who knew no wish but what the world might hear:
Of softest manners, unaffected mind,
Lover of peace, and friend of human kind:
Go, live! for heaven's eternal year is thine,
Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine.
And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom.
Pensive hast followed to the silent tomb,
Steered the same course to the same quiet shore,
Not parted long, and now to part no more!
Go, then, where only bliss sincere is known!
Go, where to love and to enjoy are one!
Yet take these tears, Mortality's relief,
And, till we share your joys, forgive our grief:
These little rites a stone, a verse receive.
'Tis all a father, all a friend can give!
This epitaph contains of the brother only a general indiscriminate
character, and of the sister tells nothing but that she died. The
difficulty in writing epitaphs is to give a particular and
appropriate praise. This, however, is not always to be performed,
whatever be the diligence or ability of the writer; for the greater
part of mankind HAVE NO CHARACTER AT ALL, have little that
distinguishes them from others, equally good or bad, and therefore
nothing can be said of them which may not be applied with equal
propriety to a thousand more. It is indeed no great panegyric that
there is enclosed in this tomb one who was born in one year, and
died in another; yet many useful and amiable lives have been spent
which yet leave little materials for any other memorial. These are
however not the proper subjects of poetry; and whenever friendship,
or any other motive, obliges a poet to write on such subjects, he
must be forgiven if he sometimes wanders in generalities, and utters
the same praises over different tombs.
The scantiness of human praises can scarcely be made more apparent
than by remarking how often Pope has, in the few epitaphs which he
composed, found it necessary to borrow from himself. The fourteen
epitaphs which he has written comprise about a hundred and forty
lines, in which there are more repetitions than will easily be found
in all the rest of his works. In the eight lines which make the
character of Digby there is scarce any thought or word which may not
be found in the other epitaphs. The ninth line, which is far the
strongest and most elegant, is borrowed from Dryden. The conclusion
is the same with that on Harcourt, but is here more elegant and
better connected.
VIII.
On Sir GODFREY KNELLER, in Westminster Abbey, 1723.
Kneller, by Heaven, and not a master, taught,
Whose art was Nature, and whose pictures thought;
Now for two ages, having snatched from fate
Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great,
Lies crowned with Princes, honours, Poets, lays,
Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise.
Living, great Nature feared he might outvie
Her works; and dying, fears herself may die.
Of this epitaph the first couplet is good, the second not bad, the
third is deformed with a broken metaphor, the word crowned not being
applicable to the honours or the lays, and the fourth is not only
borrowed from the epitaph on Raphael, but of a very harsh
construction.
IX.
On General HENRY WITHERS, in Westminster Abbey, 1729.
Here, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind,
Thy country's friend, but more of human kind.
O born to arms! O worth in youth approved!
O soft humanity in age beloved!
For thee the hardy veteran drops a tear,
And the gay courtier feels the sigh sincere
Withers, adieu! yet not will thee remove
Thy martial spirit, or thy social love!
Amidst corruption, luxury, and rage,
Still leave some ancient virtues to our age:
Nor let us say (those English glories gone)
The last true Briton lies beneath this stone.
The epitaph on Withers affords another instance of commonplaces,
though somewhat diversified by mingled qualities, and the
peculiarity of a profession. The second couplet is abrupt, general,
and unpleasing; exclamation seldom succeeds in our language; and, I
think, it may be observed that the particle O! used at the beginning
of a sentence, always offends. The third couplet is more happy; the
value expressed for him, by different sorts of men, raises him to
esteem; there is yet something of the common cant of superficial
satirists, who suppose that the insincerity of a courtier destroys
all his sensations, and that he is equally a dissembler to the
living and the dead. At the third couplet I should wish the epitaph
to close, but that I should be unwilling to lose the two next lines,
which yet are dearly bought if they cannot be retained without the
four that follow them.
X.
On Mr. ELIJAH FENTON, at Easthamstead in Berkshire, 1730.
This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
May truly say, Here lies an honest man:
A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate,
Whom Heaven kept sacred from the Proud and Great:
Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease,
Content with science in the vale of peace.
Calmly he looked on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret or there to fear;
From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfied,
Thanked Heaven that he lived, and that he died.
The first couplet of this epitaph is borrowed from Crashaw. The
four next lines contain a species of praise peculiar, original, and
just. Here, therefore, the inscription should have ended, the
latter part containing nothing but what is common to every man who
is wise and good. The character of Fenton was so amiable, that I
cannot forbear to wish for some poet or biographer to display it
more fully for the advantage of posterity. If he did not stand in
the first rank of genius, he may claim a place in the second; and,
whatever criticism may object to his writings, censure could find
very little to blame in his life.
XI.
On Mr. GAY, in Westminster Abbey, 1732.
Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit, a muse; simplicity, a child:
With native humour tempering virtuous rage,
Formed to delight at once and lash the age:
Above temptation, in a low estate,
And uncorrupted, ev'n among the Great:
A safe companion and an easy friend,
Unbiased through life, lamented in thy end,
These are thy honours! not that here thy bust
Is mixed with heroes, or with kings thy dust;
But that the worthy and the Good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms--Here lies GAY.
As Gay was the favourite of our author this epitaph was probably
written with an uncommon degree of attention, yet it is not more
successfully executed than the rest, for it will not always happen
that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labour. The same
observation may be extended to all works of imagination, which are
often influenced by causes wholly out of the performer's power, by
hints of which he perceives not the origin, by sudden elevations of
mind which he cannot produce in himself, and which sometimes rise
when he expects them least. The two parts of the first line are
only echoes of each other; GENTLE MANNERS and MILD AFFECTIONS, if
they mean anything, must mean the same.
That Gay was a MAN IN WIT is a very frigid commendation; to have the
wit of a man is not much for a poet. The WIT OF MAN and the
SIMPLICITY OF A CHILD make a poor and vulgar contrast, and raise no
ideas of excellence, either intellectual or moral.
In the next couplet RAGE is less properly introduced after the
mention of MILDNESS and GENTLENESS, which are made the constituents
of his character; for a man so MILD and GENTLE to TEMPER his RAGE
was not difficult. The next line is inharmonious in its sound, and
mean in its conception; the opposition is obvious, and the word LASH
used absolutely, and without any modification, is gross and
improper. To be ABOVE TEMPTATION in poverty and FREE FROM
CORRUPTION AMONG THE GREAT is indeed such a peculiarity as deserved
notice. But to be a SAFE COMPANION is a praise merely negative,
arising not from possession of virtue but the absence of vice, and
that one of the most odious.
As little can be added to his character by asserting that he was
LAMENTED IN HIS END. Every man that dies is, at least by the writer
of his epitaph, supposed to be lamented, and therefore this general
lamentation does no honour to Gay.
The first eight lines have no grammar; the adjectives are without
any substantive, and the epithets without a subject. The thought in
the last line, that Gay is buried in the bosoms of the WORTHY and
GOOD, who are distinguished only to lengthen the line, is so dark
that few understand it, and so harsh, when it is explained, that
still fewer approve.
XII.
Intended for Sir ISAAC NEWTON, in Westminster Abbey.
ISAACUS NEWTONIUS:
Quem Immortalem
Testantur, Tempus, Natura, Coelum:
Mortalem hoc marmor fatetur.
Nature, and Nature's laws, lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.
On this epitaph, short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few.
Why part should be Latin and part English it is not easy to
discover. In the Latin the opposition of IMMORTALIS and MORTALIS is
a mere sound, or a mere quibble; he is not IMMORTAL in any sense
contrary to that in which he is MORTAL. In the verses the thought
is obvious, and the words NIGHT and LIGHT are too nearly allied.
XIII.
On EDMUND Duke of BUCKINGHAM, who died in the 19th Year of his Age,
1735.
If modest youth, with cool reflection crowned,
And every opening virtue blooming round,
Could save a parent's justest pride from fate,
Or add one patriot to a sinking state;
This weeping marble had not asked thy tear,
Or sadly told how many hopes lie here!
The living virtue now had shone approved,
The senate heard him, and his country loved.
Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame,
Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham:
In whom a race, for courage famed and art,
Ends in the milder merit of the heart;
And, chiefs or sages long to Britain given,
Pays the last tribute of a saint to heaven.
This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the rest, but I know not for
what reason. To CROWN with REFLECTION is surely a mode of speech
approaching to nonsense. OPENING VIRTUES BLOOMING ROUND is
something like tautology; the six following lines are poor and
prosaic. ART is in another couplet used for ARTS, that a rhyme may
be had to HEART. The six last lines are the best, but not
excellent.
The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of
criticism. The contemptible dialogue between He and She should have
been suppressed for the author's sake.
In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular
upon one of the few things that make wise men serious, he confounds
the living man with the dead:
"Under this stone, or under this sill,
Or under this turf, &c."
When a man is once buried, the question, under what he is buried, is
easily decided. He forgot that though he wrote the epitaph in a
state of uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over him till his
grave was made. Such is the folly of wit when it is ill employed.
The world has but little new, even this wretchedness seems to have
been borrowed from the following tuneless lines:-
"Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa
Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu
Sub quicquid voluit benignus haeres
Siv haerede benignior comes, seu
Opportunius incidens Viator:
Nam scire haud potuit futura, sed nec
Tanti erat vacuum sibi cadaver
Ut utnam cuperet parere vivens,
Vivens ista tamen sibi paravit.
Quae inscribi voluit suo sepulchro
Olim siquod haberetis sepulchrum."
Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have
ever had such an illustrious imitator.
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