Perhaps no other great poet in English Literature has been so
differently judged at different times as Alexander Pope. Accepted
almost on his first appearance as one of the leading poets of the
day, he rapidly became recognized as the foremost man of letters of
his age. He held this position throughout his life, and for over
half a century after his death his works were considered not only
as masterpieces, but as the finest models of poetry. With the
change of poetic temper that occurred at the beginning of the
nineteenth century Pope's fame was overshadowed. The romantic poets
and critics even raised the question whether Pope was a poet at
all. And as his poetical fame diminished, the harsh judgments of
his personal character increased. It is almost incredible with what
exulting bitterness critics and editors of Pope have tracked out
and exposed his petty intrigues, exaggerated his delinquencies,
misrepresented his actions, attempted in short to blast his
character as a man.
Both as a man and as a poet Pope is sadly in need of a defender
to-day. And a defense is by no means impossible. The depreciation
of Pope's poetry springs, in the main, from an attempt to measure
it by other standards than those which he and his age recognized.
The attacks upon his character are due, in large measure, to a
misunderstanding of the spirit of the times in which he lived and
to a forgetfulness of the special circumstances of his own life.
Tried in a fair court by impartial judges Pope as a poet would be
awarded a place, if not among the noblest singers, at least high
among poets of the second order. And the flaws of character which
even his warmest apologist must admit would on the one hand be
explained, if not excused, by circumstances, and on the other more
than counterbalanced by the existence of noble qualities to which
his assailants seem to have been quite blind.
Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21, 1688. His father was a
Roman Catholic linen draper, who had married a second time. Pope
was the only child of this marriage, and seems to have been a
delicate, sweet-tempered, precocious, and, perhaps, a rather
spoiled child.
Pope's religion and his chronic ill-health are two facts of the
highest importance to be taken into consideration in any study of
his life or judgment of his character. The high hopes of the
Catholics for a restoration of their religion had been totally
destroyed by the Revolution of 1688. During all Pope's lifetime
they were a sect at once feared, hated, and oppressed by the
severest laws. They were excluded from the schools and
universities, they were burdened with double taxes, and forbidden
to acquire real estate. All public careers were closed to them, and
their property and even their persons were in times of excitement
at the mercy of informers. In the last year of Pope's life a
proclamation was issued forbidding Catholics to come within ten
miles of London, and Pope himself, in spite of his influential
friends, thought it wise to comply with this edict. A fierce
outburst of persecution often evokes in the persecuted some of the
noblest qualities of human nature; but a long-continued and
crushing tyranny that extends to all the details of daily life is
only too likely to have the most unfortunate results on those who
are subjected to it. And as a matter of fact we find that the
well-to-do Catholics of Pope's day lived in an atmosphere of
disaffection, political intrigue, and evasion of the law, most
unfavorable for the development of that frank, courageous, and
patriotic spirit for the lack of which Pope himself has so often
been made the object of reproach.
In a well-known passage of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, Pope has
spoken of his life as one long disease. He was in fact a humpbacked
dwarf, not over four feet six inches in height, with long,
spider-like legs and arms. He was subject to violent headaches, and
his face was lined and contracted with the marks of suffering. In
youth he so completely ruined his health by perpetual studies that
his life was despaired of, and only the most careful treatment
saved him from an early death. Toward the close of his life he
became so weak that he could neither dress nor undress without
assistance. He had to be laced up in stiff stays in order to sit
erect, and wore a fur doublet and three pairs of stockings to
protect himself against the cold. With these physical defects he
had the extreme sensitiveness of mind that usually accompanies
chronic ill health, and this sensitiveness was outraged incessantly
by the brutal customs of the age. Pope's enemies made as free with
his person as with his poetry, and there is little doubt that he
felt the former attacks the more bitterly of the two. Dennis, his
first critic, called him "a short squab gentleman, the very bow of
the God of love; his outward form is downright monkey." A rival
poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men
of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty
child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not
on the best authority, that when Pope once forgot himself so far as
to make love to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the lady's answer was
"a fit of immoderate laughter." In an appendix to the Dunciad Pope
collected some of the epithets with which his enemies had pelted
him, "an ape," "an ass," "a frog," "a coward," "a fool," "a little
abject thing." He affected, indeed, to despise his assailants, but
there is only too good evidence that their poisoned arrows rankled
in his heart. Richardson, the painter, found him one day reading
the latest abusive pamphlet. "These things are my diversion," said
the poet, striving to put the best face on it; but as he read, his
friends saw his features "writhen with anguish," and prayed to be
delivered from all such "diversions" as these. Pope's enemies and
their savage abuse are mostly forgotten to-day. Pope's furious
retorts have been secured to immortality by his genius. It would
have been nobler, no doubt, to have answered by silence only; but
before one condemns Pope it is only fair to realize the causes of
his bitterness.
Pope's education was short and irregular. He was taught the
rudiments of Latin and Greek by his family priest, attended for a
brief period a school in the country and another in London, and at
the early age of twelve left school altogether, and settling down
at his father's house in the country began to read to his heart's
delight. He roamed through the classic poets, translating passages
that pleased him, went up for a time to London to get lessons in
French and Italian, and above all read with eagerness and attention
the works of older English poets, — Spenser, Waller, and Dryden. He
had already, it would seem, determined to become a poet, and his
father, delighted with the clever boy's talent, used to set him
topics, force him to correct his verses over and over, and finally,
when satisfied, dismiss him with the praise, "These are good
rhymes." He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, all of which
he afterward destroyed and, as he laughingly confessed in later
years, he thought himself "the greatest genius that ever
was."
Pope was not alone, however, in holding a high opinion of his
talents. While still a boy in his teens he was taken up and
patronized by a number of gentlemen, Trumbull, Walsh, and Cromwell,
all dabblers in poetry and criticism. He was introduced to the
dramatist Wycherly, nearly fifty years his senior, and helped to
polish some of the old man's verses. His own works were passed
about in manuscript from hand to hand till one of them came to the
eyes of Dryden's old publisher, Tonson. Tonson wrote Pope a
respectful letter asking for the honor of being allowed to publish
them. One may fancy the delight with which the sixteen-year-old boy
received this offer. It is a proof of Pope's patience as well as
his precocity that he delayed three years before accepting it. It
was not till 1709 that his first published verses, the Pastorals, a
fragment translated from Homer, and a modernized version of one of
the Canterbury Tales, appeared in Tonson's Miscellany.
With the publication of the Pastorals, Pope embarked upon his life
as a man of letters. They seem to have brought him a certain
recognition, but hardly fame. That he obtained by his next poem,
the Essay on Criticism, which appeared in 1711. It was applauded in
the Spectator, and Pope seems about this time to have made the
acquaintance of Addison and the little senate which met in Button's
coffee house. His poem the Messiah appeared in the Spectator in May
1712; the first draft of The Rape of the Lock in a poetical
miscellany in the same year, and Addison's request, in 1713, that
he compose a prologue for the tragedy of Cato set the final stamp
upon his rank as a poet.
Pope's friendly relations with Addison and his circle were not,
however, long continued. In the year 1713 he gradually drew away
from them and came under the influence of Swift, then at the height
of his power in political and social life. Swift introduced him to
the brilliant Tories, politicians and lovers of letters, Harley,
Bolingbroke, and Atterbury, who were then at the head of affairs.
Pope's new friends seem to have treated him with a deference which
he had never experienced before, and which bound him to them in
unbroken affection. Harley used to regret that Pope's religion
rendered him legally incapable of holding a sinecure office in the
government, such as was frequently bestowed in those days upon men
of letters, and Swift jestingly offered the young poet twenty
guineas to become a Protestant. But now, as later, Pope was firmly
resolved not to abandon the faith of his parents for the sake of
worldly advantage. And in order to secure the independence he
valued so highly he resolved to embark upon the great work of his
life, the translation of Homer.
"What led me into that," he told a friend long after, "was purely
the want of money. I had then none; not even to buy books."
It seems that about this time, 1713, Pope's father had experienced
some heavy financial losses, and the poet, whose receipts in money
had so far been by no means in proportion to the reputation his
works had brought him, now resolved to use that reputation as a
means of securing from the public a sum which would at least keep
him for life from poverty or the necessity of begging for
patronage. It is worth noting that Pope was the first Englishman of
letters who threw himself thus boldly upon the public and earned
his living by his pen.
The arrangements for the publication and sale of Pope's translation
of Homer were made with care and pushed on with enthusiasm. He
issued in 1713 his proposals for an edition to be published by
subscription, and his friends at once became enthusiastic
canvassers. We have a characteristic picture of Swift at this time,
bustling about a crowded ante-chamber, and informing the company
that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist) who had begun
a translation of Homer for which they must all subscribe, "for,"
says he, "the author shall not begin to print till I have a
thousand guineas for him." The work was to be in six volumes, each
costing a guinea. Pope obtained 575 subscribers, many of whom took
more than one set. Lintot, the publisher, gave Pope £1200 for the
work and agreed to supply the subscription copies free of charge.
As a result Pope made something between £5000 and £6000, a sum
absolutely unprecedented in the history of English literature, and
amply sufficient to make him independent for life.
But the sum was honestly earned by hard and wearisome work. Pope
was no Greek scholar; it is said, indeed, that he was just able to
make out the sense of the original with a translation. And in
addition to the fifteen thousand lines of the Iliad, he had engaged
to furnish an introduction and notes. At first the magnitude of the
undertaking frightened him.
"What terrible moments," he said to Spence, "does one feel after
one has engaged for a large work. In the beginning of my
translating the Iliad, I wished anybody would hang me a hundred
times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first that I often used to
dream of it and do sometimes still."
In spite of his discouragement, however, and of the ill health
which so constantly beset him, Pope fell gallantly upon his task,
and as time went on came almost to enjoy it. He used to translate
thirty or forty verses in the morning before rising and, in his own
characteristic phrase, "piddled over them for the rest of the day."
He used every assistance possible, drew freely upon the scholarship
of friends, corrected and recorrected with a view to obtaining
clearness and point, and finally succeeded in producing a version
which not only satisfied his own critical judgment, but was at once
accepted by the English-speaking world as the standard translation
of Homer.
The first volume came out in June, 1715, and to Pope's dismay and
wrath a rival translation appeared almost simultaneously. Tickell,
one of Addison's "little senate," had also begun a translation of
the Iliad, and although he announced in the preface that he
intended to withdraw in favor of Pope and take up a translation of
the Odyssey, the poet's suspicions were at once aroused. And they
were quickly fanned into a flame by the gossip of the town which
reported that Addison, the recognized authority in literary
criticism, pronounced Tickell's version "the best that ever was in
any language." Rumor went so far, in fact, as to hint pretty
broadly that Addison himself was the author, in part, at least, of
Tickell's book; and Pope, who had been encouraged by Addison to
begin his long task, felt at once that he had been betrayed. His
resentment was all the more bitter since he fancied that Addison,
now at the height of his power and prosperity in the world of
letters and of politics, had attempted to ruin an enterprise on
which the younger man had set all his hopes of success and
independence, for no better reason than literary jealousy and
political estrangement. We know now that Pope was mistaken, but
there was beyond question some reason at the time for his thinking
as he did, and it is to the bitterness which this incident caused
in his mind that we owe the famous satiric portrait of Addison as
Atticus.
The last volume of the Iliad appeared in the spring of 1720, and in
it Pope gave a renewed proof of his independence by dedicating the
whole work, not to some lord who would have rewarded him with a
handsome present, but to his old acquaintance, Congreve, the last
survivor of the brilliant comic dramatists of Dryden's day. And now
resting for a time from his long labors, Pope turned to the
adornment and cultivation of the little house and garden that he
had leased at Twickenham.
Pope's father had died in 1717, and the poet, rejecting politely
but firmly the suggestion of his friend, Atterbury, that he might
now turn Protestant, devoted himself with double tenderness to the
care of his aged and infirm mother. He brought her with him to
Twickenham, where she lived till 1733, dying in that year at the
great age of ninety-one. It may have been partly on her account
that Pope pitched upon Twickenham as his abiding place. Beautifully
situated on the banks of the Thames, it was at once a quiet country
place and yet of easy access to London, to Hampton Court, or to
Kew. The five acres of land that lay about the house furnished Pope
with inexhaustible entertainment for the rest of his life. He
"twisted and twirled and harmonized" his bit of ground "till it
appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond
one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods." Following
the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his lawns
with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a
colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel
decorated fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass,
which Pope dug under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope
received in state, and his house and garden was for years the
center of the most brilliant society in England. Here Swift came on
his rare visits from Ireland, and Bolingbroke on his return from
exile. Arbuthnot, Pope's beloved physician, was a frequent visitor,
and Peterborough, one of the most distinguished of English
soldiers, condescended to help lay out the garden. Congreve came
too, at times, and Gay, the laziest and most good-natured of poets.
Nor was the society of women lacking at these gatherings. Lady Mary
Wortley Montague, the wittiest woman in England, was often there,
until her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old Duchess of
Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope's last years; and the
Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of
the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from
first to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed,
sweet-tempered Patty Blount, Pope's best and dearest friend. Not
long after the completion of the Iliad, Pope undertook to edit
Shakespeare, and completed the work in 1724. The edition is, of
course, quite superseded now, but it has its place in the history
of Shakespearean studies as the first that made an effort, though
irregular and incomplete, to restore the true text by collation and
conjecture. It has its place, too, in the story of Pope's life,
since the bitter criticism which it received, all the more
unpleasant to the poet since it was in the main true, was one of
the principal causes of his writing the Dunciad. Between the
publication of his edition of Shakespeare, however, and the
appearance of the Dunciad, Pope resolved to complete his
translation of Homer, and with the assistance of a pair of friends,
got out a version of the Odyssey in 1725. Like the Iliad, this was
published by subscription, and as in the former case the greatest
men in England were eager to show their appreciation of the poet by
filling up his lists. Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig statesman,
took ten copies, and Harley, the fallen Tory leader, put himself,
his wife, and his daughter down for sixteen. Pope made, it is said,
about £3700 by this work.
In 1726, Swift visited Pope and encouraged him to complete a satire
which he seems already to have begun on the dull critics and hack
writers of the day. For one cause or another its publication was
deferred until 1728, when it appeared under the title of the
Dunciad. Here Pope declared open war upon his enemies. All those
who had attacked his works, abused his character, or scoffed at his
personal deformities, were caricatured as ridiculous and sometimes
disgusting figures in a mock epic poem celebrating the accession of
a new monarch to the throne of Dullness. The Dunciad is little read
to-day except by professed students of English letters, but it
made, naturally enough, a great stir at the time and vastly
provoked the wrath of all the dunces whose names it dragged to
light. Pope has often been blamed for stooping to such ignoble
combat, and in particular for the coarseness of his abuse, and for
his bitter jests upon the poverty of his opponents. But it must be
remembered that no living writer had been so scandalously abused as
Pope, and no writer that ever lived was by nature so quick to feel
and to resent insult. The undoubted coarseness of the work is in
part due to the gross license of the times in speech and writing,
and more particularly to the influence of Swift, at this time
predominant over Pope. And in regard to Pope's trick of taunting
his enemies with poverty, it must frankly be confessed that he
seized upon this charge as a ready and telling weapon. Pope was at
heart one of the most charitable of men. In the days of his
prosperity he is said to have given away one eighth of his income.
And he was always quick to succor merit in distress; he pensioned
the poet Savage and he tried to secure patronage for Johnson. But
for the wretched hack writers of the common press who had barked
against him he had no mercy, and he struck them with the first rod
that lay ready to his hands.
During his work on the Dunciad, Pope came into intimate relations
with Bolingbroke, who in 1725 had returned from his long exile in
France and had settled at Dawley within easy reach of Pope's villa
at Twickenham. Bolingbroke was beyond doubt one of the most
brilliant and stimulating minds of his age. Without depth of
intellect or solidity of character, he was at once a philosopher, a
statesman, a scholar, and a fascinating talker. Pope, who had
already made his acquaintance, was delighted to renew and improve
their intimacy, and soon came wholly under the influence of his
splendid friend. It is hardly too much to say that all the rest of
Pope's work is directly traceable to Bolingbroke. The Essay on Man
was built up on the precepts of Bolingbroke's philosophy; the
Imitations of Horace were undertaken at Bolingbroke's suggestion;
and the whole tone of Pope's political and social satire during the
years from 1731 to 1738 reflects the spirit of that opposition to
the administration of Walpole and to the growing influence of the
commercial class, which was at once inspired and directed by
Bolingbroke. And yet it is exactly in the work of this period that
we find the best and with perhaps one exception, the Essay on Man,
the most original, work of Pope. He has obtained an absolute
command over his instrument of expression. In his hands the heroic
couplet sings, and laughs, and chats, and thunders. He has turned
from the ignoble warfare with the dunces to satirize courtly
frivolity and wickedness in high places. And most important of all
to the student of Pope, it is in these last works that his
personality is most clearly revealed. It has been well said that
the best introduction to the study of Pope, the man, is to get the
Epistle to Arbuthnot by heart.
Pope gradually persuaded himself that all the works of these years,
the Essay on Man, the Satires, Epistles, and Moral Essays, were but
parts of one stupendous whole. He told Spence in the last years of
his life:
"I had once thought of completing my ethic work in four books. —
The first, you know, is on the Nature of Man [the Essay on Man];
the second would have been on knowledge and its limits — here would
have come in an Essay on Education, part of which I have inserted
in the Dunciad [i.e. in the Fourth Book, published in 1742]. The
third was to have treated of Government, both ecclesiastical and
civil — and this was what chiefly stopped my going on. I could not
have said what I would have said without provoking every church on
the face of the earth; and I did not care for living always in
boiling water. — This part would have come into my Brutus [an epic
poem which Pope never completed], which is planned already. The
fourth would have been on Morality; in eight or nine of the most
concerning branches of it."
It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Pope with his
irregular methods of work and illogical habit of thought had
planned so vast and elaborate a system before he began its
execution. It is far more likely that he followed his old method of
composing on the inspiration of the moment, and produced the works
in question with little thought of their relation or
interdependence. But in the last years of his life, when he had
made the acquaintance of Warburton, and was engaged in reviewing
and perfecting the works of this period, he noticed their general
similarity in form and spirit, and, possibly under Warburton's
influence, conceived the notion of combining and supplementing them
to form that "Greater Essay on Man" of which he spoke to Spence,
and of which Warburton himself has given us a detailed
account.
1688
|
Born, May 21
|
1700
|
Moves to Binfield
|
1709
|
Pastorals
|
1711
|
Essay on Criticism
|
1711-12
|
Contributes to Spectator
|
1712
|
Rape of the Lock, first form
|
1713
|
Windsor Forest
|
1713
|
Issues proposals for translation of Homer
|
1714
|
Rape of the Lock, second form
|
1715
|
First volume of the Iliad
|
1715
|
Temple of Fame
|
1717
|
Pope's father dies
|
1717
|
Works, including some new poems
|
1719
|
Settles at Twickenham
|
1720
|
Sixth and last volume of the Iliad
|
1722
|
Begins translation of Odyssey
|
1725
|
Edits Shakespeare
|
1726
|
Finishes translation of Odyssey
|
1727-8
|
Miscellanies by Pope and Swift
|
1728-9
|
Dunciad
|
1731-2
|
Moral Essays: Of Taste, Of the Use of Riches
|
1733-4
|
Essay on Man
|
1733-8
|
Satires and Epistles
|
1735
|
Works
|
1735
|
Letters published by Curll
|
1741
|
Works in Prose; vol. II. includes the correspondence with
Swift
|
1742
|
Fourth book of Dunciad
|
1742
|
Revised Dunciad
|
1744
|
Died, May 30
|
1751
|
First collected edition, published by Warburton, 9 vols.
|
