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THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE - VOL. 1
THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE - VOL. 1 ALEXANDER POPE ET AL THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE
VOL. I.
With Memoir Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes
by THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN
M.DCCC.LVI.
LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE
Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street London on the 21st of May
1688--the year of the Revolution. His father was a linen-merchant in
thriving circumstances and said to have noble blood in his veins. His
mother was Edith or Editha Turner daughter of William Turner Esq. of
York. Mr Carruthers in his excellent Life of the Poet mentions that
there was an Alexander Pope a clergyman in the remote parish of Reay
in Caithness who rode all the way to Twickenham to pay his great
namesake a visit and was presented by him with a copy of the
subscription edition of the "Odyssey" in five volumes quarto which is
still preserved by his descendants. Pope's father had made about L10000
by trade; but being a Roman Catholic and fond of a country life he
retired from business shortly after the Revolution at the early age of
forty-six. He resided first at Kensington and then in Binfield in the
neighbourhood of Windsor Forest. He is said to have put his money in a
strong box and to have lived on the principal. His great delight was in
his garden; and both he and his wife seem to have cherished the warmest
interest in their son who was very delicate in health and their only
child. Pope's study is still preserved in Binfield; and on the lawn a
cypress-tree which he is said to have planted is pointed out.
Pope was a premature and precocious child. His figure was deformed--his
back humped--his stature short (four feet)--his legs and arms
disproportionably long. He was sometimes compared to a spider and
sometimes to a windmill. The only mark of genius lay in his bright and
piercing eye. He was sickly in constitution and required and received
great tenderness and care. Once when three years old he narrowly
escaped from an angry cow but was wounded in the throat. He was
remarkable as a child for his amiable temper; and from the sweetness of
his voice received the name of the Little Nightingale. His aunt gave
him his first lessons in reading and he soon became an enthusiastic
lover of books; and by copying printed characters taught himself to
write. When eight years old he was placed under the care of the family
priest one Bannister who taught him the Latin and Greek grammars
together. He was next removed to a Catholic seminary at Twyford near
Winchester; and while there read Ogilby's "Homer" and Sandys's "Ovid"
with great delight. He had not been long at this school till he wrote a
severe lampoon of two hundred lines' length on his master--so truly
was the "boy the father of the man"--for which demi-Dunciad he was
severely flogged. His father offended at this removed him to a London
school kept by a Mr Deane. This man taught the poet nothing; but his
residence in London gave him the opportunity of attending the theatres.
With these he was so captivated that he wrote a kind of play which was
acted by his schoolfellows consisting of speeches from Ogilby's
"Iliad" tacked together with verses of his own. He became acquainted
with Dryden's works and went to Wills's coffee-house to see him. He
says "Virgilium tantum vidi." Such transient meetings of literary orbs
are among the most interesting passages in biography. Thus met Galileo
with Milton Milton with Dryden Dryden with Pope and Burns with Scott.
Carruthers strikingly remarks "Considering the perils and uncertainties
of a literary life--its precarious rewards feverish anxieties
mortifications and disappointments joined to the tyranny of the
Tonsons and Lintots and the malice and envy of dunces all of which
Dryden had long and bitterly experienced--the aged poet could hardly
have looked at the delicate and deformed boy whose preternatural
acuteness and sensibility were seen in his dark eyes without a feeling
approaching to grief had he known that he was to fight a battle like
that under which he was himself then sinking even though the Temple of
Fame should at length open to receive him." At twelve he wrote the "Ode
to Solitude;" and shortly after his satirical piece on Elkanah Settle
and some of his translations and imitations. His next period he says
was in Windsor Forest where for several years he did nothing but read
the classics and indite poetry. He wrote a tragedy a comedy and four
books of an Epic called "Alexander" all of which afterwards he
committed to the flames. He translated also a portion of Statius and
Cicero "De Senectute" and "thought himself the greatest genius that
ever was." His father encouraged him in his studies and when his verses
did not please him sent him back to "new turn" them saying "These are
not good rhymes." His principal favourites were Virgil's "Eclogues" in
Latin; and in English Spencer Waller and Dryden--admiring Spencer we
presume for his luxuriant fancy Waller for his smooth versification
and Dryden for his vigorous sense and vivid sarcasm. In the Forest he
became acquainted with Sir William Trumbull the retired secretary of
state a man of general accomplishments who read rode conversed with
the youthful poet; introduced him to old Wycherley the dramatist; and
was of material service to his views. With Wycherley who was old
doted and excessively vain Pope did not continue long intimate. A
coldness springing from some criticisms which the youth ventured to
make on the veteran's poetry crept in between them. Walsh of Abberley
in Worcestershire a man of good sense and taste became after a
perusal of the "Pastorals" in MS. a warm friend and kind adviser of
Pope's who has immortalised him in more than one of his poems. Walsh
told Pope that there had never hitherto appeared in Britain a poet who
was at once great and correct and exhorted him to aim at accuracy and
elegance.
When fifteen he visited London in order to acquire a more thorough
knowledge of French and Italian. At sixteen he wrote the "Pastorals"
and a portion of "Windsor Forest" although they were not published for
some time afterwards. By his incessant exertions he now began to feel
his constitution injured. He imagined himself dying and sent farewell
letters to all his friends including the Abbe Southcot. This gentleman
communicated Pope's case to Dr Ratcliffe who gave him some medical
directions; by following which the poet recovered. He was advised to
relax in his studies and to ride daily; and he prudently followed the
advice. Many years afterwards he repaid the benevolent Abbe by
procuring for him through Sir Robert Walpole the nomination to an
abbey in Avignon. This is only one of many proofs that notwithstanding
his waspish temper and his no small share of malice as well as vanity
there was a warm heart in our poet.
In 1707 Pope became acquainted with Michael Blount of Maple Durham
near Reading; whose two sisters Martha and Teresa he has commemorated
in various verses. On his connexion with these ladies some mystery
rests. Bowles has strongly and plausibly urged that it was not of the
purest or most creditable order. Others have contended that it did not
go further than the manners of the age sanctioned; and they say "a much
greater license in conversation and in epistolary correspondence was
permitted between the sexes than in our decorous age!" We are not
careful to try and settle such a delicate question--only we are inclined
to suspect that when common decency quits the _words_ of male and
female parties in their mutual communications it is a very ample
charity that can suppose it to adhere to their _actions_. And nowhere do
we find grosser language than in some of Pope's prose epistles to the
Blounts.
His "Pastorals" after having been handed about in MS. and shewn to
such reputed judges as Lord Halifax Lord Somers Garth Congreve &c.
were at last in 1709 printed in the sixth volume of Tonson's
"Miscellanies." Like all well-finished commonplaces they were received
with instant and universal applause. It is humiliating to contrast the
reception of these empty echoes of inspiration these agreeable
_centos_ with that of such genuine although faulty poems as Keat's
"Endymion" Shelley's "Queen Mab" and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads."
Two years later (in 1711) a far better and more characteristic
production from his pen was ushered anonymously into the world. This was
the "Essay on Criticism" a work which he had first written in prose
and which discovers a ripeness of judgment a clearness of thought a
condensation of style and a command over the information he possesses
worthy of any age in life and almost of any mind in time. It serves
indeed to shew what Pope's true forte was. That lay not so much in
poetry as in the knowledge of its principles and laws--not so much in
creation as in criticism. He was no Homer or Shakspeare; but he might
have been nearly as acute a judge of poetry as Aristotle and nearly as
eloquent an expounder of the rules of art and the glories of genius as
Longinus.
In the same year Pope printed "The Rape of the Lock" in a volume of
Miscellanies. Lord Petre had much in the way described by the poet
stolen a lock of Miss Belle Fermor's hair--a feat which led to an
estrangement between the families. Pope set himself to reconcile them by
this beautiful poem--a poem which has embalmed at once the quarrel and
the reconciliation to all future time. In its first version the
machinery was awanting the "lock" was a desert the "rape" a natural
event--the small infantry of sylphs and gnomes were slumbering
uncreated in the poet's mind; but in the next edition he contrived to
introduce them in a manner so easy and so exquisite as to remind you of
the variations which occur in dreams where one wonder seems softly to
slide into the bosom of another and where beautiful and fantastic
fancies grow suddenly out of realities like the bud from the bough or
the fairy-seeming wing of the summer-cloud from the stern azure of the
heavens.
A little after this Pope became acquainted with a far greater better
and truer man than himself Joseph Addison. Warburton and others have
sadly misrepresented the connexion between these two famous wits as
well as their relative intellectual positions. Addison was a more
amiable and childlike person than Pope. He had much more too of the
Christian. He was not so elaborately polished and furbished as the
author of "The Rape of the Lock;" but he had naturally a finer and
richer genius. Pope found early occasion for imagining Addison his
disguised enemy. He gave him a hint of his intention to introduce the
machinery into "The Rape of the Lock." Of this Addison disapproved and
said it was a delicious little thing already--_merum sal_. This Pope
and some of his friends have attributed to jealousy; but it is obvious
that Addison could not foresee the success with which the machinery was
to be managed and did foresee the difficulties connected with tinkering
such an exquisite production. We may allude here to the circumstances
which at a later date produced an estrangement between these
celebrated men. When Tickell Addison's friend published the first book
of the "Iliad" in opposition to Pope's version Addison gave it the
preference. This moved Pope's indignation and led him to assert that it
was Addison's own composition. In this conjecture he was supported by
Edward Young who had known Tickell long and intimately and had never
heard of him having written at college as was averred this
translation. It is now however we believe certain from the MS. which
still exists that Tickell was the real author. A coldness from this
date began between Pope and Addison. An attempt to reconcile them only
made matters worse; and at last the breach was rendered irremediable by
Pope's writing the famous character of his rival afterwards inserted in
the Prologue to the Satires--a portrait drawn with the perfection of
polished malice and bitter sarcasm but which seems more a caricature
than a likeness. Whatever Addison's faults his conduct to Pope did not
deserve such a return. The whole passage is only one of those painful
incidents which disgrace the history of letters and prove how much
spleen ingratitude and baseness often co-exist with the highest parts.
The words of Pope are as true now as ever they were--"the life of a wit
is a warfare upon earth;" and a warfare in which poisoned missiles and
every variety of falsehood are still common. We may also here mention
that while the friendship of Pope and Addison lasted the former
contributed the well-known prologue to the latter's "Cato."
One of Pope's most intimate friends in his early days was Henry
Cromwell--a distant relative of the great Oliver--a gentleman of
fortune gallantry and literary taste who became his agreeable and
fascinating but somewhat dangerous companion. He is supposed to have
initiated Pope into some of the fashionable follies of the town. At this
time Pope's popularity roused one of his most formidable foes against
him. This was that Cobbett of criticism old John Dennis--a man of
strong natural powers much learning and a rich coarse vein of humour;
but irascible vindictive vain and capricious. Pope had provoked him
by an attack in his "Essay on Criticism" and the savage old man
revenged himself by a running fire of fierce diatribes against that
"Essay" and "The Rape of the Lock." Pope waited till Dennis had
committed himself by a powerful but furious assault on Addison's "Cato"
(most of which Johnson has preserved in his Life of Pope); and then
partly to court Addison and partly to indulge his spleen at the critic
wrote a prose satire entitled "The Narrative of Dr Robert Norris on
the Frenzy of J.D." In this however he overshot the mark; and Addison
signified to him that he was displeased with the spirit of his
narrative--an intimation which Pope keenly resented. _This_ scornful
dog would not eat the dirty pudding that was graciously flung to him;
and Pope found that without having conciliated Addison he had made
Dennis's furnace of hate against himself seven times hotter than before.
In 1712 appeared "The Messiah" "The Dying Christian to his Soul" "The
Temple of Fame" and the "Elegy on the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady."
Her story is still involved in mystery. Her name is said to have been
Wainsbury. She was attached to a lover above her degree--some say to
the Duke of Berry whom she had met in her early youth in France. In
despair of obtaining her desire she hanged herself. It is curious if
true that she was as deformed in person as Pope himself. Her family
seems to have been noble. In 1713 he published "Windsor Forest" an
"Ode on St Cecilia's Day" and several papers in the _Guardian_--one of
them being an exquisitely ironical paper comparing Phillip's pastorals
with his own and affecting to give them the preference--the extracts
being so selected as to damage his rival's claims. This year also he
wrote although he did not publish his fine epistle to Jervas the
painter. Pope was passionately fond of the art of painting and
practised it a good deal under Jervas's instructions although he did
not reach great proficiency. The prodigy has yet to be born who combines
the characters of a great painter and a great poet.
About this time Pope commenced preparations for the great work of
translating Homer; and subscription-papers accordingly were issued.
Dean Swift was now in England and took a deep interest in the success
of this undertaking recommending it in coffee-houses and introducing
the subject and Pope's name to the leading Tories. Pope met the Dean for
the first time in Berkshire where in one of his fits of savage disgust
at the conflicting parties of the period he had retired to the house of
a clergyman and an intimacy commenced which was only terminated by
death. We have often regretted that Pope had not selected some author
more suitable to his genius than Homer. Horace or Lucretius or even
Ovid would have been more congenial. His imitations of Horace shew us
what he might have made of a complete translation. What a brilliant
thing a version of Lucretius in the style of the "Essay on Man" would
have been! And his "Rape of the Lock" proves that he had considerable
sympathy with the elaborate fancy although not with the meretricious
graces of Ovid. But with Homer the severely grand the simple the
warlike the lover and painter of all Nature's old original forms--the
ocean the mountains and the stars--what thorough sympathy could a man
have who never saw a real mountain or a battle and whose enthusiasm for
scenery was confined to purling brooks trim gardens artificial
grottos and the shades of Windsor Forest? Accordingly his Homer
although a beautiful and sparkling poem is not a satisfactory
translation of the "Iliad" and still less of the "Odyssey." He has
trailed along the naked lances of the Homeric lines so many flowers and
leaves that you can hardly recognise them and feel that their point is
deadened and their power gone. This at least is our opinion; although
many to this day continue to admire these translations and have even
said that if they are not Homer they are something better.
The "Iliad" took him six years and was a work which cost him much
anxiety as well as labour the more as his scholarship was far from
profound. He was assisted in the undertaking by Parnell (who wrote the
Life of Homer) by Broome Jortin and others. The first volume appeared
in June 1715 and the other volumes followed at irregular intervals. He
began it in 1712 his twenty-fifth year and finished it in 1718 his
thirtieth year. Previous to its appearance his remuneration for his
poems had been small and his circumstances were embarrassed; but the
result of the subscription which amounted to L5320 4s. rendered him
independent for life.
While at Binfield he had often visited London; and there in the
society of Howe Garth Parnell and the rest used to indulge in
occasional excesses which did his feeble constitution no good; and
once according to Colley Cibber he narrowly escaped a serious scrape
in a house of a certain description--Colley by his own account
"helping out the tomtit for the sake of Homer!" This statement indeed
Pope has denied; but his veracity was by no means his strongest point.
After writing a "Farewell to London" he retired in 1715 to
Twickenham along with his parents; and remained there cultivating his
garden digging his grottos and diversifying his walks till the end of
his days.
Some years before he had become acquainted with Lady Mary Wortley
Montague the most brilliant woman of her age--witty fascinating
beautiful and accomplished--full of enterprise and spirit too
although decidedly French in her tastes manners and character. Pope
fell violently in love with her and had her undoubtedly in his eye when
writing "Eloisa and Abelard" which he did at Oxford in 1716 shortly
after her going abroad and which appeared the next year. His passion
was not requited--nay was treated with contempt and ridicule; and he
became in after years a bitter enemy and foul-mouthed detractor of the
lady although after her return in 1718 she resided near him at
Twickenham and they seemed outwardly on good terms.
In 1717 and the succeeding year Pope lost successively his father
Parnell Garth and Rowe and bitterly felt their loss. He finished as
we have seen the "Iliad" in 1718; but the fifth and sixth volumes
which were the last did not appear till 1720. Its success which at the
time was triumphant roused against him the whole host of envy and
detraction. Dennis and all Grub Street with him were moved to assail
him. Pamphlets after pamphlets were published all of which after
reading with writhing anguish Pope had the resolution to bind up into
volumes--a great collection of calumny which he preserved probably
for purposes of future revenge. His own friends on the other hand
hailed his work with applause--Gay writing a most graceful and elegant
poem in _ottava rima_ entitled "Mr Pope's Welcome Home from Greece"
in which his different friends are pictured as receiving him home on the
shores of Britain after an absence of six years. Bentley that stern
old Grecian avoided the extremes of a howling Grub Street on the one
hand and a flattering aristocracy on the other and expressed what is
we think the just opinion when he said "It is a pretty poem but it is
not Homer."
In 1721 he issued a selection from the poems of Parnell and prefixed a
very beautiful dedication to the Earl of Oxford commencing with--
"Such were the notes thy once-loved poet sung
Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
Oh just beheld and lost admired and mourn'd
With softest manners gentlest arts adorn'd!"
In 1722 he engaged to translate the "Odyssey." He employed Broome and
Fenton as his assistants in the work; and the portions translated by
them were thought as good as his. He remunerated them very handsomely.
Of this work the first three quarto volumes appeared in 1725; and the
fourth and fifth which completed the work the following year. Pope
sold the copyright to Lintot for L600.
He was busy at this time too with an edition of Shakspeare--not quite
worthy of either poet. It appeared in six volumes quarto in 1725. His
preface was good but he was deficient in antiquarian lore; and his
mortification was extreme when Theobald destined to figure in "The
Dunciad" a mere plodding hack not only in his "Shakspeare Restored"
exposed many blunders in Pope's edition; but issued some years
afterwards an edition of his own which was much better received by the
public.
In 1726 there was a great gathering of the Tory wits at Twickenham.
Swift had come from Ireland and resided for some time with Pope.
Bolingbroke came over occasionally from Dawley; and Gay was often there
to laugh with and be laughed at by the rest. Swift had "Gulliver's
Travels"--the most ingenious and elaborate libel against man and God
ever written--in his pocket nearly ready for publication; and we may
conceive the grim sardonic smile with which he read it to his friends
and their tumultuous mirth. Gay was projecting his "Beggars' Opera" and
Pope preparing some of his witty "Miscellanies." At the end of two
months the Dean was hurried home by the tidings of Stella's illness. He
left the "Travels" behind him for the copyright of which Pope procured
L300--a sum counted then very large and which Swift generously handed
over to Pope.
In September this year when returning in Lord Bolingbroke's coach from
Dawley the poet was overturned in a little rivulet near Twickenhan and
nearly drowned. The unfortunate little man! One is reminded of
Gulliver's accident in the Brobdignagian cream-pot. In trying to break
the glasses of the coach which were down he severely cut his right
hand and lost the use of two of his fingers--an addition to his other
deformities not very desirable; and we suspect that Pope thought
Voltaire (who had met him at Bolingbroke's) but a miserable comforter
when in a letter of pretended condolence he asked--"Is it possible
that those fingers which have written 'The Rape of the Lock' and
dressed Homer so becomingly in an English coat should have been so
barbarously treated? Let the hand of Dennis or of your poetasters be cut
off; yours is sacred." It was perhaps in keeping that those mutilated
fingers were soon to be employed in attacking Dennis and that the
embittered poet was about with the half of his hand but with the whole
of his heart to write "The Dunciad."
In the end of April 1727 we find Swift again in Twickenham where his
irritation at the continued ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole served to
infuse more venom into the "Miscellanies" concocted between him and
Pope--two volumes of which appeared in June this year. Gay also and
the ingenious and admirable Dr Arbuthnot contributed their quota to
these volumes. Swift speedily fell ill with that giddiness and deafness
which were the _avant-couriers_ of his final malady; and in August he
left Twickenham and in October London and England for ever.
In these "Miscellanies" there appeared the famous "Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus" written chiefly by Pope in which he lashed the various
proficients in the bathos under the names of flying fishes swallows
parrots frogs eels &c. and appended the initials of well-known
authors to each head. This roused Grub Street whose malice had nearly
fallen asleep into fresh fury and he was bitterly assailed in every
possible form. Like Hyder Ali he now--to travesty Burke--"in the
recesses of a mind capacious of such things determined to leave all
Duncedom an everlasting monument of vengeance and became at length so
confident of his force so collected in his might that he made no
secret whatever of his dreadful resolution but compounding all the
materials of fun sarcasm irony and invective into one black cloud
he hung for a while on the declivities of Richmond Hill; and whilst the
authors were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor which
blackened all their horizon it suddenly burst and poured down the whole
of its contents on the garrets of Grub Street. Then issued a scene of
(ludicrous) woe the like of which no eye had seen no heart conceived
and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of literary war
before known or heard of--(MacFlecknoe the Rehearsal &c.)--were mercy
to the new tempest of havoc which burst from the brain of this
remorseless poet. A storm of universal laughter filled every
bookseller's shop and penetrated into the remotest attics. The
miserable dunces in part were stricken mad with rage--in part dumb
with consternation. Some fled for refuge to ale and others to ink;
while not a few fell or feared to fall into the 'jaws of famine.'"
This singular poem was written in 1727. It was first printed
surreptitiously (_i.e._ with the connivance of the author) in Dublin
and then reprinted in London. The first perfect edition however did
not appear in London till 1729. On the day of its publication according
to Pope a crowd of authors besieged the publisher's shop; and by
entreaties threats nay cries of treason tried to hinder its
appearance. What a scene it must have been--of teeth gnashing above
ragged coats and eyes glaring through old periwigs--of faces livid with
famine and ferocity; while to complete the confusion hawkers
booksellers and even lords were mixed with the crowd clamouring for
its issue! And as says Pope "there is no stopping a torrent with a
finger out it came." The consequence he had foreseen. A universal howl
of rage and pain burst from the aggrieved dunces on whose naked sides
the hot pitch had fallen. They pushed their rejoinders beyond the limits
of civilised literary warfare; and although Pope had been coarse in his
language they were coarser far and their blackguardism was not
redeemed by wit or genius. Pope felt or seemed to feel entire
indifference as to these assaults. On some of them indeed he could
afford to look down with contempt on account of their obvious _animus_
and gross language. Others again were neutralised by the fact that
their authors had provoked reprisals by their previous insults or
ingratitude to Pope. Many however were too obscure for his notice; and
some such as Aaron Hill and Bentley did not deserve to be classed with
the Theobalds and Ralphs. To Hill he after some finessing was
compelled to make an apology. Altogether although this production
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