The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame.
The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of
the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed
without this acknowledgment,[1] or think a concealment of this nature
the less unfair for being common. The reader who would compare this with
Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in
the two first books that answers to their title.[2] Whenever any hint is
taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal
notes.[3]
Some modern critics, from a pretended refinement of taste, have declared
themselves unable to relish allegorical poems.[4] It is not easy to
penetrate into the meaning of this criticism; for if fable be allowed
one of the chief beauties, or, as Aristotle calls it, the very soul of
poetry, it is hard to comprehend how that fable should be the less
valuable for having a moral. The ancients constantly made use of
allegories. My Lord Bacon has composed an express treatise in proof of
this, entitled, The Wisdom of the Ancients; where the reader may see
several particular fictions exemplified and explained with great
clearness, judgment, and learning. The incidents, indeed, by which the
allegory is conveyed, must be varied according to the different genius
or manners of different times; and they should never be spun too long,
or too much clogged with trivial circumstances, or little
particularities. We find an uncommon charm in truth, when it is conveyed
by this sideway to our understanding: and it is observable, that even in
the most ignorant ages this way of writing has found reception. Almost
all the poems in the old Provencal had this turn; and from these it was
that Petrarch took the idea of his poetry. We have his Trionfi in this
kind; and Boccace pursued in the same track. Soon after, Chaucer
introduced it here, whose Romaunt of the Rose, Court of Love, Flower and
the Leaf, House of Fame, and some others of his writings, are
masterpieces of this sort. In epic poetry, it is true, too nice and
exact a pursuit of the allegory is justly esteemed a fault; and Chaucer
had the discernment to avoid it in his Knight's Tale, which was an
attempt towards an epic poem. Ariosto, with less judgment, gave entirely
into it in his Orlando; which, though carried to an excess, had yet so
much reputation in Italy, that Tasso (who reduced heroic poetry to the
juster standard of the ancients) was forced to prefix to his work a
scrupulous explanation of the allegory of it, to which the fable itself
could scarce have directed his readers. Our countryman, Spenser,
followed, whose poem is almost entirely allegorical, and imitates the
manner of Ariosto rather than that of Tasso. Upon the whole, one may
observe this sort of writing, however discontinued of late, was in all
times, so far from being rejected by the best poets, that some of them
have rather erred by insisting on it too closely, and carrying it too
far; and that to infer from thence that the allegory itself is vicious,
is a presumptuous contradiction to the judgment and practice of the
greatest geniuses, both ancient and modern.--POPE.
Pope, as he tells Steele in their correspondence (Nov. 16, 1712), had
written the Temple of Fame 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. It 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.--JOHNSON.
It was, to the Italians we owed anything that could be called poetry,
from whom Chaucer, imitated by Pope in this vision, copied largely, as
_they_ are said to have done from the bards of Provence. But whatever
Chaucer might copy from the Italians, yet the artful and entertaining
plan of his Canterbury Tales was purely original and his own. This
admirable piece, even exclusive of its poetry, is highly valuable, as it
preserves to us the liveliest and exactest picture of the manners,
customs, characters, and habits, of our forefathers, whom he has brought
before our eyes acting as on a stage, suitably to their different orders
and employments. With these portraits the driest antiquary must be
delighted. By this plan, he has more judiciously connected these stories
which the guests relate, than Boccace has done his novels, whom he has
imitated, if not excelled, in the variety of the subjects of his tales.
It is a common mistake, that Chaucer's excellence lay in his manner of
treating light and ridiculous subjects; for whoever will attentively
consider the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, will be convinced that he
equally excels in the pathetic and the sublime. The House of Fame, as
being merely descriptive, is of an inferior rank to those in Chaucer of
the narrative kind, and which paint life and manners. The design is
improved and heightened by the masterly hand of Pope. It is not
improbable that this subject was suggested to our author, not only by
Dryden's translations of Chaucer, of which Pope was so fond, but
likewise by that celebrated paper of Addison, in the Tatler, called the
Table of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced,
and seated according to their respective merits and characters, and
which was published some years before this poem was written. The six
persons Pope thought proper to select as worthy to be placed on the
highest seats of honour are Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Horace, Aristotle,
Tully. It is observable that our author has omitted the great dramatic
poets of Greece. Sophocles and Euripides deserved certainly an
honourable niche in the Temple of Fame, as much as Pindar and Horace.
But the truth is it was not fashionable in Pope's time, nor among his
acquaintance, attentively to study these poets. I own I have some
particular reasons for thinking that he was not very conversant in this
sort of composition, having no inclination to the drama. In a note on
the third book of his Homer, where Helen points out to Priam the names
and characters of the Grecian leaders from the walls of Troy, he
observes, that several great poets have been engaged by the beauty of
this passage to an imitation of it. But who are the poets he enumerates
on this occasion? Only Statius and Tasso; the former of whom, in his
seventh book, and the latter in his third, shows the forces and the
commanders that invested the cities of Thebes and Jerusalem. Not a
syllable is mentioned of that capital scene in the Phoenissae of
Euripides, from the hundred and twentieth to the two hundredth line,
where the old man, standing with Antigone on the walls of Thebes, marks
out to her the various figures, habits, armour, and qualifications of
each different warrior, in the most lively and picturesque manner, as
they appear in the camp beneath them. In conclusion, we may observe that
Pope's alterations of Chaucer are introduced with judgment and art, and
that these alterations are more in number, and more important in
conduct, than any Dryden has made of the same author.
The Temple of Fame was communicated to Steele, who entertained a high
opinion of its beauties, and who conveyed it to Addison. Pope had
ornamented the poem with the machinery of guardian angels, which he
afterwards omitted. He speaks of his work with a diffidence uncommon in
a young poet, and which does him credit. "No errors," he says to Steele,
"are so trivial but they deserve to be mended. I could point you to
several; but it is my business to be informed of those faults I do not
know, and as for those I do, not to talk of them but to correct them.
You speak of that poem in a style I neither merit nor expect, but, I
assure you, if you freely mark or dash out, I shall look upon your blots
to be its greatest beauties,--I mean, if Mr. Addison and yourself should
like it in the whole. I am afraid of nothing so much as to impose
anything on the world which is unworthy its acceptance."--WARTON.
Chaucer's poem contains great strokes of Gothic imagination, yet
bordering often on the most ideal and capricious extravagance. Pope has
imitated this piece with his usual elegance of diction and harmony of
versification; but, in the mean time, he has not only misrepresented the
story, but marred the character of the poem. He has endeavoured to
correct its extravagancies by new refinements and additions of another
cast; but he did not consider that extravagancies are essential to a
poem of such a structure, and even constitute its beauties. An attempt
to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject formed on
principles so professedly romantic and anomalous, is like giving
Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant
imitation of this piece, I think I am walking among the modern monuments
unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey.--T. WARTON.
Little can be added to T. Warton's masterly appreciation of the
characteristic merit of this poem. May I be just allowed to mention,
that there is less harmony of versification in this poem, than in most
of the preceding, particularly the Rape of the Lock, Elegy to an
Unfortunate Lady, and, above all, the Epistle of Eloisa. The pause is
too generally at the end of the line, and on the fourth and fifth
syllable. Pope bids
The Muses raise
The golden trumpet of eternal praise.
Chaucer with a bolder personification sends for Eolus, "that king of
Thrace," from "his cave of stone," to sound his "trump of gold." These
circumstances may designate in some measure the character of either
poem. I must confess I think there can be no comparison between the bold
trump of Eolus which he set
To his mouth
And blew it east, and west, and south,
And north, as loud as any thunder,
and the delicate but less animated tone of the Muses in Pope.--BOWLES.
If Chaucer was indebted to any of the Italian poets for the idea of his
House of Fame, it was to Petrarca, who in his Trionfo della Fama has
introduced many of the most eminent characters of ancient times. It must
however be observed, that the poem of Petrarca is extremely simple and
inartificial, and consists only in supposing that the most celebrated
men of ancient Greece and Rome pass in review before him; whilst that of
Chaucer is the work of a powerful imagination, abounding with beautiful
and lively descriptions, and forming a connected and consistent whole.
Pope's Temple of Fame is one of the noblest, though earliest,
productions of the author, displaying a fertile invention and an
uncommon grandeur and facility of style. It is confessedly founded on
Chaucer's House of Fame; but the design is greatly altered and improved,
and many of the thoughts and descriptions are entirely his own; yet such
is the coincidence and happy union of the work with its prototype, that
it is almost impossible to distinguish those portions for which he is
indebted to Chaucer from those of his own invention. The conclusion, as
descriptive of his own feelings at an early period of his own life, is
particularly interesting.--ROSCOE.