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ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744)
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There were, among the Roman Catholic families near See also:Bin-See also: It says something for Pope's docility at this See also:stage that he recognized so soon that a See also:long course of preparation was needed for such a magnum See also:opus, and began steadily and patiently to discipline himself . The epic was put aside and afterwards burnt; versification was industriously practised in See also:short " essays "; and an elaborate study was made of accepted critics and See also:models . He learnt most, as he acknowledged, from Dryden, but the See also:harmony of his See also:verse also owed something to an earlier writer, See also:George See also:Sandys, the translator of See also:Ovid . At the beginning of the 18th See also:century Dryden's success had given great See also:vogue to translations and modernizations . The See also:air was full of theories as to the best way of doing such things . What Dryden had touched Pope did not presume to meddle with—Dryden was his hero and See also:master; but there was much more of the same See also:kind to be done . Dryden had rewritten three of the See also:Canterbury tales; Pope tried his See also:hand at the See also:Merchant's Tale, and the See also:Prologue to the Wife of See also:Bath's Tale, and produced also an See also:imitation of the House of Fame . Dryden had translated See also:Virgil; Pope experimented on the Thebais of See also:Statius, Ovid's Heroides and Metamorphoses, and the Odyssey . He knew little Latin and less Greek, but there were older versions in English which helped him to the sense; and, when the correspondents to whom he submitted his versions pointed out mistranslations, he could See also:answer that he had always agreed with them, but that he had deferred to the older translators against his own See also:judgment . It was one of Pope's little vanities to try to give the impression that his metrical skill was more precocious even than it was, and we cannot accept his published versions of Statius and See also:Chaucer (published in " miscellanies " at intervals between 1709 and 1714) as incontrovertible See also:evidence of his proficiency at the age of sixteen or seventeen, the date, according to his own assertion, of their See also:composition . But it is indisputable that at the age of seventeen his skill in verse astonished a See also:veteran critic like Walsh, and some of his pastorals were in the hands of Sir George See also:Granville (afterwards Lord See also:Lansdowne) before 1706 . His metrical See also:letter to Cromwell, which Elwin dates in 1707, when Pope was nineteen, is a brilliant feat of versification, and has turns of wit in it as easy and spirited as any to be found in his mature satires . Pope was twenty-one when he sent the " See also:Ode on Solitude " to Cromwell, and said it was written before he was twelve years old . Precocious Pope was, but he was also industrious; and he spent some eight or nine years in arduous and enthusiastic discipline, reading, studying, experimenting, taking the advice of some and laughing in his See also:sleeve at the advice of others, " poetry his only business," he said, " and idleness his only See also:pleasure," before anything of his appeared in See also:print . In these preliminary studies he seems to have guided himself by the See also:maxim formulated in a letter to Walsh (dated See also:July 2, 1706) that " it seems not so much the perfection of sense to say things that had never been said before, as to See also:express those best that have been said oftenest." His first publication was his " Pastorals." See also:Jacob See also:Tonson, the bookseller, had seen these pastorals in the hands of Walsh and See also:Congreve, and sent a polite See also:note (See also:April 20, 1706) to Pope asking that he might have them for one of his miscellanies . They appeared accordingly in May 1709 at the end of the See also:sixth See also:volume of Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies, containing contributions from See also:Ambrose See also:Philips, See also:Sheffield, See also:Garth and Rowe, with " See also:January and May," Pope's version of Chaucer's " Merchant's Tale." Pope's next publication was the Essay on Criticism (1711), written two years earlier, and printed without the author's name . " In every See also:work regard the writer's end " (1 . 255) is one of its sensible precepts, and one that is often neglected by critics of the essay, who comment upon it as if Pope's end had been to produce an See also:original and profound See also:treatise on first principles . His aim was simply to condense, methodize, and give as perfect and novel expression as he could to floating opinions about the poet's aims and methods, and the critic's duties, to " what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed " (1 . 298) . " The town " was interested in belles lettres, and given to conversing on the subject; Pope's essay was simply a brilliant contribution to the fashionable conversation . The youthful author said that he did not expect the See also:sale to be See also:quick because " not one See also:gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it." The sales were slow until Pope caused copies to be sent to Lord Lansdowne and others, but its success was none the less brilliant for the delay . The town was fairly, dazzled by the See also:young poet's learning, judgment, and felicity of expression . Many of the admirers of the poem doubtless would have thought less of it if they had not believed all the See also:maxims to be original . " I admired," said See also:Lady See also:Mary Wortley See also:Montagu, " Mr Pope's Essay on Criticism at first very much, because I had not then read any of the See also:ancient critics, and did not know that it was all stolen." Pope gained See also:credit for much that might have been found, where he found it, in the Institutes of See also:Quintilian, in the numerous See also:critical writings of Rene See also:Rapin, and in Rene le See also:Bossu's treatise on epic poetry . See also:Addison has been made responsible for the exaggerated value once set on the essay, but Addison's See also:paper (Spectator, No . 253) was not unmixed praise . He deprecated the attacks made by Pope on contemporary literary reputations, although he did full See also:justice to the poet's metrical skill . Addison and Pope became acquainted with one another, and Pope's sacred See also:eclogue, " See also:Messiah," was printed as No . 378 of the Spectator . In the Essay on Criticism Pope provoked one See also:bitter personal enemy. in John See also:Dennis, the critic, by a description of him as Appius, who " stares, tremendous, with a See also:threat'ning See also:eye." Dennis retorted in Reflections . . upon a See also:late Rhapsody . . (1711), abusing Pope among other things for his personal deformity . Pope never forgot this brutal attack, which he described in a note inserted after Dennis's See also:death, as late as 1743, as written " in a manner perfectly lunatic." The See also:Rape of the See also:Lock in its first See also:form appeared in 1712 in See also:Lintot's Miscellanies; the " machinery " of sylphs and See also:gnomes was an afterthought, and the poem was republished as we now have it See also:early in 1714 . William, 4th See also:Baron See also:Petre, had surreptitiously cut off a lock of See also:Miss Arabella Fermor's See also:hair, and the See also:liberty had been resented; Pope heard the story from his friend John Caryll, who suggested that the See also:breach between the families might be healed by making the incident the subject of a See also:mock-heroic poem like Boileau's Lutrin . Pope caught at the hint; the mock-heroic treatment of the See also:pretty frivolities of fashionable life just suited his freakish sprightliness of wit, and his studies of the See also:grand epic at the See also:time put him in excellent vein .
The Rape of the Lock is admitted to be a masterpiece of airiness, ingenuity, and exquisite finish
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But the poem struck See also:Taine as a piece of harsh, scornful, indelicate buffoonery, a See also:mere See also:succession of oddities and contrasts, of expressive figures unexpected and grinning, an example of English insensibility to French sweetness and refinement
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Sir See also:Leslie See also:Stephen objected on somewhat different grounds to the poet's See also:tone towards See also:women
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His_ See also:laughter at Pope's raillery was checked by the fact that women are spoken of in the poem as if they were all like Belinda
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The poem shows the hand of the satirist who was later to assert that " every woman is at See also:heart a See also:rake," in the See also:epistle addressed to Martha See also:Blount
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Windsor Forest, modelled on Sir John See also:Denham's See also: . . Frenzy of Mr John Dennis (1713), which, though nominally in See also:defence of Addison, had for its See also:main purpose the gratification of Pope's own hostility to L• See also:ennis . Addison disavowed any connivance in this coarse attack in a letter written on his behalf by See also:Steele to Lintot, saying that if he noticed Dennis's attack at all it would be in such a way as to allow him no just cause of complaint . Coolness between Addison and Pope naturally followed this See also:episode . When the Rape of the Lock was published, Addison, who is said to have praised the poem highly to Pope in private, dismissed it in the Spectator with two sentences of patronizing faint praise to the young poet, and, coupling it with See also:Tickell's " Ode on the Prospect of Peace," devoted the See also:rest of the article to an elaborate puff of " the pastorals of Mr Philips." When Pope showed a leaning to the Tories in Windsor Forest, the members of Addison's coterie made insidious war on him . Within a few See also:weeks of the publication of the poem, and when it was the talk of the town, there began to appear in the Guardian (Nos . 22, 23, 28, 30, 32) a See also:series of articles on " Pastorals." Not a word was said about Windsor Forest, but everybody knew to what the See also:general principles referred . See also:Modern See also:pastoral poets were ridiculed for introducing Greek moral deities, Greek See also:flowers and fruits, Greek names of shepherds, Greek See also:sports and customs and religious See also:rites . They ought to make use of English rural See also:mythology—hobthrushes, fairies, goblins and witches; they should give English names to their shepherds; they should mention flowers indigenous to English See also:climate and See also:soil; and they should introduce English proverbial sayings, See also:dress, and customs . All excellent principles, and all neglected by Pope in Windsor Forest . The poem was fairly open to criticism in these points; there are many beautiful passages in it, showing See also:close though somewhat professional observation of nature, but the mixture of See also:heathen deities and conventional archaic fancies with modern realities is incongruous, and the comparison of See also:Queen See also:Anne to See also:Diana was ludicrous . But the sting of the articles did not See also:lie in the truth of the oblique criticisms . The pastorals of Ambrose Philips, published four years before, were again trotted out . Here was a true pastoral poet, the eldest born of See also:Spenser, the worthy successor of See also:Theocritus and Virgil ! Pope took an amusing revenge, which turned the laugh against his assailants . He sent Steele an anonymous paper in continuation of the articles in the Guardian on pastoral poetry, reviewing the poems of Mr Pope by the See also:light of the principles laid down . Ostensibly Pope was censured for breaking the rules, and Philips praised for conforming to them, quotations being given from both . The quotations were sufficient to dispose of the pretensions of poor Philips, and Pope did not choose his own worst passages, accusing himself of actually deviating sometimes into poetry . Although the Guardian's principles were also brought into ridicule by See also:burlesque exemplifications of them after the manner of Gay's Shepherd's See also:Week, Steele, misled by the opening sentences, was at first unwilling to print what appeared to be a See also:direct attack on Pope, and is said to have asked Pope's consent to the publication, which was graciously granted . The links that attached Pope to the Tory party were strengthened by a new friendship . His first letter to See also:Swift, who became warmly attached to him, is dated the 8th of See also:December 1713 . Swift had been a leading member of the See also:Brothers' See also:Club, from which the famous Scriblerus Club seems to have been an offshoot . The leading members of this informal literary society were Swift, See also:Arbuthnot, Congreve, See also:Bishop See also:Atterbury, Pope, Gay and Thomas See also:Parnell . Their See also:chief See also:object was a general war against the dunces, waged with great spirit by Arbuthnot, Swift and Pope . The estrangement from Addison was completed in connexion with Pope's translation of Homer . This enterprise was definitely undertaken in 1713 . The work was to be published by subscription, as Dryden's Virgil had been . Men of all parties subscribed, their unanimity being a striking See also:proof of the position Pope had attained at the age of twenty-five . It was as if he had received a See also:national See also:commission as by general consent the first poet of his time . But the unanimity was broken by a discordant note . A member of fhe Addison clique, Tickell, attempted to run a See also:rival version . Pope suspected Addison's instigation; Tickell had at least Addison's encouragement . Pope's famous See also:character of Addison as " See also:Atticus " in the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (ii . 193–215) was, however, in-spired by resentment at insults that existed chiefly in his own See also:imagination, though Addison was certainly not among his warmest admirers . Pope afterwards claimed to have been magnanimous, but he spoiled his See also:case by the See also:petty inventions of his account of the See also:quarrel . The translation of Homer was Pope's chief employment for twelve years . The new pieces in the miscellanies published in 1717, his " See also:Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady," and his "Eloisa to See also:Abelard," were probably written some years before their publication . His " Eloisa to Abelard " was based on an English translation by John See also:Hughes of a French version of the Letters, which differed very considerably from the original Latin . The Iliad was delivered to the subscribers in instalments in 1715, 1717, 1718 and 1720 . Pope's own defective scholarship made help necessary . William See also:Broome and John See also:Jortin supplied the bulk of the notes, and Thomas Parnell the See also:preface . For the translation of the Odyssey he took See also:Elijah See also:Fenton and Broome as coadjutors, who between them translated twelve out of the twenty-four books.' It was completed in 1725 . The profitableness of ,the work was Pope's chief temptation to undertake it . His receipts for his earlier poems had totalled about £150, but he cleared more than £8000 by the two translations, after deducting all payments to coadjutors—a much larger sum than had ever been received by an English author before . The translation of Homer had established Pope's reputation with his contemporaries, and has endangered it ever since it was challenged . Opinions have varied on the purely literary merits of the poem, but with regard to it as a translation few have differed from See also:Bentley's criticism, " A See also:fine poem, Mr Pope, but you must not See also:call it Homer." His collaboration with Broome (q.v.) and Fenton (q.v.) 2 involved him in a series of recriminations . Broome was weak enough to sign a note at the end of the work understating the extent of Fenton's assistance as well as his own, and ascribing the merit of their translation, reduced to less than See also:half its real proportions, to a regular revision and correction—mostly imaginary—at Pope's hands . These falsehoods were deemed necessary by Pope to protect himself against possible protests from the subscribers . In 1722 he edited the poems of Thomas Parnell, and in 1725 made a considerable sum by an unsatisfactory edition of See also:Shakespeare, in which he had the assistance of Fenton and Gay . Pope, with his economical habits, was rendered See also:ind |