POPE.

Alexander Lexander Pope, the most brilliant of all wits who have at

any

period applied themselves to the poetic treatment of human manners,

to the selecting from the play of human character what is

picturesque, or the arresting what is fugitive, was born in the

city of London on the 21st day of May, in the memorable year 1688;

about six months, therefore, before the landing of the Prince of

Orange, and the opening of that great revolution which gave the

final ratification to all previous revolutions of that tempestuous

century. By the "city" of London the reader is to understand us as

speaking with technical accuracy of that district, which lies

within the ancient walls and the jurisdiction of the lord mayor.

The parents of Pope, there is good reason to think, were of "gentle

blood," which is the expression of the poet himself when describing

them in verse. His mother was so undoubtedly; and her illustrious

son, in speaking of her to Lord Harvey, at a time when any

exaggeration was open to an easy refutation, and writing in a

spirit most likely to provoke it, does not scruple to say, with a

tone of dignified haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a

filial champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that by birth and

descent she was not below that young lady, (one of the two

beautiful Miss Lepels,) whom his lordship had selected from all the

choir of court beauties as the future mother of his children. Of

Pope's extraction and immediate lineage for a space of two

generations we know enough. Beyond that we know little. Of this

little a part is dubious; and what we are disposed to receive as

_not_ dubious, rests chiefly on his own authority. In the

prologue to his Satires, having occasion to notice the lampooners

of the times, who had represented his father as "a mechanic, a

hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt," he feels himself called upon to

state the truth about his parents; and naturally much more so at a

time when the low scurrilities of these obscure libellers had been

adopted, accredited, and diffused by persons so distinguished in

all points of personal accomplishment and rank as Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu and Lord Harvey: _"hard as thy heart"_ was one of the

lines in their joint pasquinade, _" hard as thy heart, and as thy

birth obscure."_ Accordingly he makes the following formal

statement: "Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in

Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe. His mother

was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York. She had three

brothers, one of whom was killed; another died in the service of

King Charles [meaning Charles I.]; the eldest, following his

fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left _her_

what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of

her family." The sequestrations here spoken of were those inflicted

by the commissioners for the parliament; and usually they levied a

fifth, or even two fifths, according to the apparent delinquency of

the parties. But in such cases two great differences arose in the

treatment of the royalists; first, that the report was colored

according to the interest which a man possessed, or other private

means for biassing the commissioners; secondly, that often, when

money could not be raised on mortgage to meet the sequestration, it

became necessary to sell a family estate suddenly, and. therefore

in those times at great loss; so that a nominal fifth might be

depressed by favor to a tenth, or raised by the necessity of

selling to a half. And hence might arise the small dowry of Mrs.

Pope, notwithstanding the family estate in Yorkshire had centred in

her person. But, by the way, we see from the fact of the eldest

brother having sought service in Spain, that Mrs. Pope was a

Papist; not, like her husband, by conversion, but by hereditary

faith. This account, as publicly thrown out in the way of challenge

by Pope, was, however, sneered at by a certain Mr. Pottinger of

those days, who, together with his absurd name, has been safely

transmitted to posterity in connection with this single feat of

having contradicted Alexander Pope. We read in a diary published by

the Microcosm," _Met a large hat, with a man under it_. "And

so, here, we cannot so properly say that Mr. Pottinger brings down

the contradiction to our times, as that the contradiction brings

down Mr. Pottinger." Cousin Pope, "said Pottinger," had made

himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered where he got it. "And

he then goes on to plead in abatement of Pope's pretensions," that

an old maiden aunt, equally related," (that is, standing in the

same relation to himself and to the poet,) "a great genealogist, who

was always talking of her family, never mentioned this

circumstance." And again we are told, from another quarter, that

the Earl of Guildford, after express investigation of this matter,

"was sure that," amongst the descendants of the Earls of Downe,

"there was none of the name of Pope." How it was that Lord

Guildford came to have any connection with the affair, is not

stated by the biographers of Pope; but we have ascertained that, by

marriage with a female descendant from the Earls of Downe, he had

come into possession of their English estates.

Finally, though it is rather for the honor of the Earls of Downe

than of Pope to make out the connection, we must observe that Lord

Guildford's testimony, _if ever given at all_, is simply

negative; he had found no proofs of the connection, but he had not

found any proofs to destroy it; whilst, on the other hand, it ought

to be mentioned, though unaccountably overlooked by all previous

biographers, that one of Pope's anonymous enemies, who hated him

personally, but was apparently master of his family history, and

too honorable to belie his own convictions, expressly affirms of

his own authority, and without reference to any claim put forward

by Pope, that he was descended from a junior branch of the Downe

family. Which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating

the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact;

and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the

light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous

fiction put forward by Pope to confute Lord Harvey.

It is probable to us, that the Popes, who had been originally

transplanted from England to Ireland, had in the person of some

cadet been re-transplanted to England; and that having in that way

been disconnected from all personal recognition, and all local

memorials of the capital house, by this sort of

_postliminium_, the junior branch had ceased to cherish the

honor of a descent which was now divided from all direct advantage.

At all events, the researches of Pope's biographers have not been

able to trace him farther back in the paternal line than to his

grandfather; and he (which is odd enough, considering the popery of

his descendants) was a clergyman of the established church in

Hampshire. This grandfather had two sons. Of the eldest nothing is

recorded beyond the three facts, that he went to Oxford, that he

died there, and that he spent the family estate. [Endnote: 2] The

younger son, whose name was Alexander, had been sent when young, in

some commercial character, to Lisbon; [Endnote: 3] and there it

was, in that centre of bigotry, that he became a sincere and most

disinterested Catholic. He returned to England; married a Catholic

young widow; and became the father of a second Alexander Pope,

_ultra Sauromatas notus et Antipodes._

By his own account to Spence, Pope learned "very early to read;"

and writing he taught himself "by copying, from printed books;"

all which seems to argue, that, as an only child, with an indolent

father and a most indulgent mother, he was not molested with much

schooling in his infancy. Only one adventure is recorded of his

childhood, viz., that he was attacked by a cow, thrown down, and

wounded in the throat.

Pope escaped this disagreeable kind of vaccination without serious

injury, and was not farther tormented by cows or schoolmasters

until he was about eight years old, when the family priest, that

is, we presume, the confessor of his parents, taught him, agreeably

to the Jesuit system, the rudiments of Greek and Latin

concurrently. This priest was named Banister; and his name is

frequently employed, together with other fictitious names, by way

of signature to the notes in the Dunciad, an artifice which was

adopted for the sake of giving a characteristic variety to the

notes, according to the tone required for the illustration of the

text. From his tuition Pope was at length dismissed to a Catholic

school at Twyford, near Winchester. The selection of a school in

this neighborhood, though certainly the choice of a Catholic family

was much limited, points apparently to the old Hampshire connection

of his father. Here an incident occurred which most powerfully

illustrates the original and constitutional determination to satire

of this irritable poet. He knew himself so accurately, that in

after times, half by way of boast, half of confession, he says,

"But touch me, and no Minister so sore:

Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time

Slides into verse and hitches in a rhyme,

Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,

And the sad burthen of some merry song."

Already, it seems, in childhood he had the same irresistible

instinct, victorious over the strongest sense of personal danger.

He wrote a bitter satire upon the presiding pedagogue, was brutally

punished for this youthful indiscretion, and indignantly removed by

his parents from the school. Mr. Roscoe speaks of Pope's personal

experience as necessarily unfavorable to public schools; but in

reality he knew nothing of public schools. All the establishments

for Papists were narrow, and suited to their political depression;

and his parents were too sincerely anxious for their son's

religious principles to risk the contagion of Protestant

association by sending him elsewhere.

From the scene [Endnote: 4] of his disgrace and illiberal

punishment, he passed, according to the received accounts, under

the tuition of several other masters in rapid succession. But it is

the less necessary to trouble the reader with their names, as Pope

himself assures us, that he learned nothing from any of them. To

Banister he had been indebted for such trivial elements of a

schoolboy's learning as he possessed at all, excepting those which

he had taught himself. And upon himself it was, and his own

admirable faculties, that he was now finally thrown for the rest of

his education, at an age so immature that many boys are then first

entering their academic career. Pope is supposed to have been

scarcely twelve years old when he assumed the office of

self-tuition, and bade farewell for ever to schools and tutors.

Such a phenomenon is at any rate striking. It is the more so, under

the circumstances which attended the plan, and under the results

which justified its execution. It seems, as regards the plan,

hardly less strange that prudent parents should have acquiesced in

a scheme of so much peril to his intellectual interests, than that

the son, as regards the execution, should have justified their

confidence by his final success. More especially this confidence

surprises us in the father. A doating mother might shut her eyes to

all remote evils in the present gratification to her affections;

but Pope's father was a man of sense and principle; he must have

weighed the risks besetting a boy left to his own intellectual

guidance; and to these risks he would allow the more weight from

his own conscious defect of scholarship and inability to guide or

even to accompany his son's studies. He could neither direct the

proper choice of studies; nor in any one study taken separately

could he suggest the proper choice of books.

The case we apprehend to have been this. Alexander Pope, the elder,

was a man of philosophical desires and unambitious character. Quiet

and seclusion and innocence of life,--these were what he affected

for himself; and that which had been found available for his own

happiness, he might reasonably wish for his son. The two hinges

upon which his plans may be supposed to have turned, were, first,

the political degradation of his sect; and, secondly, the fact that

his son was an only child. Had he been a Protestant, or had he,

though a Papist, been burthened with a large family of children, he

would doubtless have pursued a different course. But to him, and,

as he sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors

was sternly barred. Apostasy only could lay it open. And, as the

sentiments of honor and duty in this point fell in with the vices

of his temperament, high principle concurring with his

constitutional love of ease, we need not wonder that he should

early retire from commerce with a very moderate competence, or that

he should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one who was to

stand in the same position. This son was from his birth deformed.

That made it probable that he might not marry. If he should, and

happened to have children, a small family would find an adequate

provision in the patrimonial funds; and a large one at the worst

could only throw him upon the same commercial exertions to which he

had been obliged himself. The Roman Catholics, indeed, were just

then situated as our modern Quakers are. Law to the one, as

conscience to the other, closed all modes of active employment

except that of commercial industry. Either his son, therefore,

would be a rustic recluse, or, like himself, he would be a

merchant.

With such prospects, what need of an elaborate education? And where

was such an education to be sought? At the petty establishments of

the suffering Catholics, the instruction, as he had found

experimentally, was poor. At the great national establishments his

son would be a degraded person; one who was permanently repelled

from every arena of honor, and sometimes, as in cases of public

danger, was banished from the capital, deprived of his house, left

defenceless against common ruffians, and rendered liable to the

control of every village magistrate. To one in these circumstances

solitude was the wisest position, and the best qualification, for

that was an education that would furnish aids to solitary thought.

No need for brilliant accomplishments to him who must never display

them; forensic arts, pulpit erudition, senatorial eloquence,

academical accomplishments--these would be lost to one against whom

the courts, the pulpit, the senate, the universities, were closed.

Nay, by possibility worse than lost; they might prove so many

snares or positive bribes to apostasy. Plain English, therefore,

and the high thinking of his compatriot authors, might prove the

best provision for the mind of an English Papist destined to

seclusion.

Such are the considerations under which we read and interpret the

conduct of Pope's parents; and they lead us to regard as wise and

conscientious a scheme which, under ordinary circumstances, would

have been pitiably foolish. And be it remembered, that to these

considerations, derived exclusively from the civil circumstances of

the family, were superadded others derived from the astonishing

prematurity of the individual. That boy who could write at twelve

years of age the beautiful and touching stanzas on Solitude, might

well be trusted with the superintendence of his own studies. And

the stripling of sixteen, who could so far transcend in good sense

the accomplished statesmen or men of the world with whom he

afterwards corresponded, might challenge confidence for such a

choice of books as would best promote the development of his own

faculties.

In reality, one so finely endowed as Alexander Pope, could not

easily lose his way in the most extensive or ill-digested library.

And though he tells Atterbury, that at one time he abused his

opportunities by reading controversial divinity, we may be sure

that his own native activities, and the elasticity of his mind,

would speedily recoil into a just equilibrium of study, under wider

and happier opportunities. Reading, indeed, for a person like Pope,

is rather valuable as a means of exciting his own energies, and of

feeding his own sensibilities, than for any direct acquisitions of

knowledge, or for any trains of systematic research. All men are

destined to devour much rubbish between the cradle and the grave;

and doubtless the man who is wisest in the choice of his books,

will have read many a page before he dies that a thoughtful review

would pronounce worthless. This is the fate of all men. But the

reading of Pope, as a general result or measure of his judicious

choice, is best justified in his writings. They show him well

furnished with whatsoever he wanted for matter or for

embellishment, for argument or illustration, for example and model,

or for direct and explicit imitation.

Possibly, as we have already suggested, within the range of English

literature Pope might have found all that he wanted. But variety

the widest has its uses; and, for the extension of his influence

with the polished classes amongst whom he lived, he did wisely to

add other languages; and a question has thus arisen with regard to

the extent of Pope's attainments as a self-taught linguist. A man,

or even a boy, of great originality, may happen to succeed best, in

working his own native mines of thought, by his unassisted

energies. Here it is granted that a tutor, a guide, or even a

companion, may be dispensed with, and even beneficially. But in the

case of foreign languages, in attaining this machinery of

literature, though anomalies even here do arise, and men there are,

like Joseph Scaliger, who form their own dictionaries and grammars

in the mere process of reading an unknown language, by far the

major part of students will lose their time by rejecting the aid of

tutors. As there has been much difference of opinion with regard to

Pope's skill in languages, we shall briefly collate and bring into

one focus the stray notices.

As to the French, Voltaire, who knew Pope personally, declared that

he "could hardly _read_ it, and spoke not one syllable of the

language." But perhaps Voltaire might dislike Pope? On the

contrary, he was acquainted with his works, and admired them to the

very level of their merits. Speaking of him _after death_ to

Frederick of Prussia, he prefers him to Horace and Boileau,

asserting that, by comparison with _them_,

"Pope _approfondit_ ce qu'ils ont _effleura_.

D'un esprit plus hardi, d'un pas plus assure,

Il porta le flambeau dans l'abeme de l'otre;

Et l'homme _avec lui seul_ apprit a se connoetre.

L'art quelquefois frivole, et quelquefois divine,

L'art des vers est dans Pope utile au genre humain."

This is not a wise account of Pope, for it does not abstract the

characteristic feature of his power; but it is a very kind one. And

of course Voltaire could not have meant any unkindness in denying

his knowledge of French. But he was certainly wrong. Pope, in

_his_ presence, would decline to speak or to read a language

of which the pronunciation was confessedly beyond him. Or, if he

did, the impression left would be still worse. In fact, no man ever

will pronounce or talk a language which he does not use, for some

part of every day, in the real intercourse of life. But that Pope

read French of an ordinary cast with fluency enough, is evident

from the extensive use which he made of Madame Dacier's labors on

the Iliad, and still more of La Valterie's prose translation of the

Iliad. Already in the year 1718, and long before his personal

knowledge of Voltaire, Pope had shown his accurate acquaintance

with some voluminous French authors, in a way which, we suspect,

was equally surprising and offensive to his noble correspondent.

The Duke of Buckingham [Endnote: 5] had addressed to Pope a

letter, containing some account of the controversy about Homer,

which had then been recently carried on in France between La Motte

and Madame Dacier. This account was delivered with an air of

teaching, which was very little in harmony with its excessive

shallowness. Pope, who sustained the part of pupil in this

interlude, replied in a manner that exhibited a knowledge of the

parties concerned in the controversy much superior to that of the

duke. In particular, he characterized the excellent notes upon

Horace of M. Dacier, the husband, in very just terms, as

distinguished from those of his conceited and half-learned wife;

and the whole reply of Pope seems very much as though he had been

playing off a mystification on his grace. Undoubtedly the pompous

duke felt that he had caught a Tartar. Now M. Dacier's Horace,

which, with the text, fills nine volumes, Pope could not have read

_except_ in French; for they are not even yet translated into

English. Besides, Pope read critically the French translations of

his own Essay on Man, Essay on Criticism, Rape of the Lock, &c. He

spoke of them as a critic; and it was at no time a fault of Pope's

to make false pretensions. All readers of Pope's Satires must also

recollect numerous proofs, that he had read Boileau with so much

feeling of his peculiar merit, that he has appropriated and

naturalized in English some of his best passages. Voltaire was,

therefore, certainly wrong.

Of Italian literature, meantime, Pope knew little or nothing; and

simply because he knew nothing of the language. Tasso, indeed, he

admired; and, which is singular, more than Ariosto. But we believe

that he had read him only in English; and it is certain that he

could not take up an Italian author, either in prose or verse, for

the unaffected amusement of his leisure.

Greek, we all know has been denied to Pope, ever since he

translated Homer, and chiefly in consequence of that translation.

This seems at first sight unfair, because criticism has not

succeeded in fixing upon Pope any errors of ignorance. His

deviations from Homer were uniformly the result of imperfect

sympathy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and therefore

wilful deviations, not (like those of his more pretending

competitors, Addison and Tickell) pure blunders of misapprehension.

But yet it is not inconsistent with this concession to Pope's

merits, that we must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of

Greek when he first commenced his task. And to us it seems

astonishing that nobody should have adverted to that fact as a

sufficient solution, and in fact the only plausible solution, of

Pope's excessive depression of spirits in the earliest stage of his

labors. This depression, after he had once pledged himself to his

subscribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and could

have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious ignorance of

Greek in connection with the solemn responsibilities he had assumed

in the face of a great nation. Nay, even countries as

presumptuously disdainful of tramontane literature as Italy took an

interest in this memorable undertaking. Bishop Berkeley found

Salvini reading it at Florence; and Madame Dacier even, who read

little but Greek, and certainly no English until then, condescended

to study it. Pope's dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for

it impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams,

which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to operate) was

perfectly natural under the explanation we have given, but not

otherwise. And how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust?

Paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the

innumerable aids for interpreting Homer which even then existed, a

man sufficiently acquainted with Latin might make a translation

even critically exact. This Pope was not long in discovering. Other

alleviations of his labor concurred, and in a ratio daily

increasing.

The same formulae were continually recurring, such as,

_"But him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed Achilles;"_

Or,

_"But him sternly beholding, thus spoke Agamemnon the king

of men."_

Then, again, universally the Homeric Greek, from many causes, is

easy; and especially from these two:

1 _st_, The simplicity of the thought, which never gathers

into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, which we

find in the dramatic poets of a higher civilization.

2 _dly_, From the constant hounds set to the expansion of the

thought by the form of the metre; an advantage of verse which makes

the poets so much easier to a beginner in the German language than

the illimitable weavers of prose. The line or the stanza reins up

the poet tightly to his theme, and will not suffer him to

expatiate. Gradually, therefore, Pope came to read the Homeric

Greek, but never accurately; nor did he ever read Eustathius

without aid from Latin. As to any knowledge of the Attic Greek, of

the Greek of the dramatists, the Greek of Plato, the Greek of

Demosthenes, Pope neither had it nor affected to have it. Indeed it

was no foible of Pope's, as we will repeat, to make claims which he

had not, or even to dwell ostentatiously upon those which he had.

And with respect to Greek in particular, there is a manuscript

letter in existence from Pope to a Mr. Bridges at Falham, which,

speaking of the original Homer, distinctly records the knowledge

which he had of his own "imperfectness in the language." Chapman, a

most spirited translator of Homer, probably had no very critical

skill in Greek; and Hobbes was, beyond all question, as poor a

Grecian as he was a doggerel translator; yet in this letter Pope

professes his willing submission to the "authority" of Chapman and

Hobbes, as superior to his own.

Finally, in _Latin_ Pope was a "considerable proficient," even

by the cautious testimony of Dr. Johnson; and in this language only

the doctor was an accomplished critic. If Pope had really the

proficiency here ascribed to him, he must have had it already in

his boyish years; for the translation from Statius, which is the

principal monument of his skill, was executed _before_ he was

fourteen. We have taken the trouble to throw a hasty glance over

it; and whilst we readily admit the extraordinary talent which it

shows, as do all the juvenile essays of Pope, we cannot allow that

it argues any accurate skill in Latin. The word Malea, as we have

seen noticed by some editor, he makes Malea; which in itself, as

the name was not of common occurrence, would not have been an error

worth noticing; but, taken in connection with the certainty that

Pope had the original line before him--

"Arripit ex templo Maleae de valle resurgens,"

when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the

whole rhythm is practically, to the most obtuse ear, would be

annihilated by Pope's false quantity, is a blunder which serves to

show his utter ignorance of prosody. But, even as a version of the

sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and

expansion, Pope's translation is defective, and argues an

occasional inability to construe the text. For instance, at the

council summoned by Jupiter, it is said that he at his first

entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but not so the

inferior gods;

"Nec protinus ausi

Coelicolae, veniam donee pater ipse sedendi

Tranquilla jubet esse manu."

In which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the ellipsis of

the word _sedere_, or _sese locare_; but the meaning is

evidently that the other gods did not presume to sit down

_protinus_, that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and

interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a

gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express

permission to take their seats. But Pope, manifestly unable to

extract any sense from the passage, translates thus:

"At Jove's assent the deities around

In solemn slate the consistory _crown'd_;"

where at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial

ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. Again, at v. 178,

_ruptaeque vices_ is translated," _and all the ties of

nature broke_; "but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of

the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently

violated by Eteocles. Other mistakes might be cited, which seem to

prove that Pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very

imperfect one. [Endnote: 6] Pope, in short, never rose to such a

point in classical literature as to read either Greek or Latin

authors without effort, and for his private amusement.

The result, therefore, of Pope's self-tuition appears to us,

considered in the light of an attempt to acquire certain

accomplishments of knowledge, a most complete failure. As a

linguist, he read no language with ease; none with pleasure to

himself; and none with so much accuracy as could have carried him

through the most popular author with a general independence on

interpreters. But, considered with a view to his particular

faculties and slumbering originality of power, which required

perhaps the stimulation of accident to arouse them effectually, we

are very much disposed to think that the very failure of his

education as an artificial training was a great advantage finally

for inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemnification,

upon its native powers. Had he attained, as with better tuition he

would have attained, distinguished excellence as a scholar, or as a

student of science, the chances are many that he would have settled

down into such studies as thousands could pursue not less

successfully than he; whilst as it was, the very dissatisfaction

which he could not but feel with his slender attainments, must have

given him a strong motive for cultivating those impulses of

original power which he felt continually stirring within him, and

which were vivified into trials of competition as often as any

distinguished excellence was introduced to his knowledge.

Pope's father, at the time of his birth, lived in Lombard Street;

[Endnote: 7] a street still familiar to the public eye, from its

adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan establishments, and to

the English ear possessing a degree of historical importance;

first, as the residence of those Lombards, or Milanese, who

affiliated our infant commerce to the matron splendors of the

Adriatic and the Mediterranean; next, as the central resort of

thrme jewellers, or "goldsmiths," as they were styled, who

performed all the functions of modern bankers from the period of

the parliamentary war to the rise of the Bank of England, that is,

for six years after the birth of Pope; and, lastly, as the seat,

until lately, of that vast Post Office, through which, for so long

a period, has passed the correspondence of all nations and

languages, upon a scale unknown to any other country. In this

street Alexander Pope the elder had a house, and a warehouse, we

presume, annexed, in which he conducted the wholesale business of a

linen merchant. As soon as he had made a moderate fortune he

retired from business, first to Kensington, and afterwards to

Binfield, in Windsor Forest. The period of this migration is not

assigned by any writer. It is probable that a prudent man would not

adopt it with any prospect of having more children. But this chance

might be considered as already extinguished at the birth of Pope;

for though his father had then only attained his forty-fourth year,

Mrs. Pope had completed her forty-eighth. It is probable, from the

interval of seven days which is said to have elapsed between Pope's

punishment and his removal from the school, that his parents were

then living at such a distance from him as to prevent his ready

communication with them, else we may be sure that Mrs. Pope would

have flown on the wings of love and wrath to the rescue of her

darling. Supposing, therefore, as we _do_ suppose, that Mr.

Bromley's school in London was the scene of his disgrace, it would

appear on this argument that his parents were then living in

Windsor Forest. And this hypothesis falls in with another anecdote

in Pope's life, which we know partly upon his own authority. He

tells Wycherley that he had seen Dryden, and barely seen him.

_Virgilium vidi tantum_. This is presumed to have been in

Will's Coffee-house, whither any person in search of Dryden would

of course resort; and it must have been before Pope was twelve

years old, for Dryden died in 1700. Now there is a letter of Sir

Charles Wogan's, stating that he first took Pope to Will's; and his

words are, "from our forest." Consequently, at that period, when he

had not completed his twelfth year, Pope was already living in the

forest.

From this period, and so long as the genial spirits of youth

lasted, Pope's life must have been one dream of pleasure. He tells

Lord Harvey that his mother did not spoil him; but that was no

doubt because there was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on

either side, when all was one placid scene of parental obedience

and gentle filial authority. We feel persuaded that, if not in

words, in spirit and inclination, they would, in any notes they

might have occasion to write, subscribe themselves "your dutiful

parents." And of what consequence in whose hands were the reins

which were never needed? Every reader must be pleased to know that

these idolizing parents lived to see their son at the very summit

of his public elevation; even his father lived two years and a half

after the publication of his Homer had commenced, and when his

fortune was made; and his mother lived for nearly eighteen years

more. What a felicity for her, how rare and how perfect, to find

that he, who to her maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of

human beings, and the idol of her heart, had already been the idol

of the nation before he had completed his youth. She had also

another blessing not always commanded by the most devoted love;

many sons there are who think it essential to manliness that they

should treat their mother's doating anxiety with levity, or even

ridicule. But Pope, who was the model of a good son, never swerved

in words, manners, or conduct, from the most respectful tenderness,

or intermitted the piety of his attentions. And so far did he carry

this regard for his mother's comfort, that, well knowing how she

lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied himself for many

years all excursions which could not be fully accomplished within

the revolution of a week. And to this cause, combined with the

excessive length of his mother's life, must be ascribed the fact

that Pope never went abroad; not to Italy with Thomson or with

Berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends; not to Ireland, where

his presence would have been hailed as a national honor; not even

to France, on a visit to his admiring and admired friend Lord

Bolingbroke. For as to the fear of sea-sickness, _that_ did

not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would

not have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover to Calais. It

is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the

perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him

from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so

constant. But it is certain that, long before he passed the

meridian of his life, Pope had come to view this confinement with

far other thoughts. Experience had then taught him, that to no man

is the privilege granted of possessing more than one or two friends

who are such in extremity. By that time he had come to view his

mother's death with fear and anguish. She, he knew by many a sign,

would have been happy to lay down her life for his sake; but for

others, even those who were the most friendly and the most constant

in their attentions, he felt but too certainly that his death, or

his heavy affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but would not

materially disturb their peace of mind. "It is but in a very narrow

circle," says he, in a confidential letter, "that friendship walks

in this world, and I care not to tread out of it more than I needs

must; knowing well it is but to two or three, (if quite so many,)

that any man's welfare or memory can be of consequence." After such

acknowledgments, we are not surprised to find him writing thus of

his mother, and his fearful struggles to fight off the shock of his

mother's death, at a time when it was rapidly approaching. After

having said of a friend's death, "the subject is beyond writing

upon, beyond cure or ease by reason or reflection, beyond all but

one thought, that it is the will of God," he goes on thus, "So will

the death of my mother be, which now I tremble at, now resign to,

now bring close to me, now set farther off; every day alters, turns

me about, confuses my whole frame of mind." There is no pleasure,

he adds, which the world can give "equivalent to countervail either

the death of one I have so long lived with, or of one I have so

long lived for." How will he comfort himself after her death? "I

have nothing left but to turn my thoughts to one comfort, the last

we usually think of, though the only one we should in wisdom depend

upon. I sit in her room, and she is always present before me but

when I sleep. I wonder I am so well. I have shed many tears; but

now I weep at nothing."

A man, therefore, happier than Pope in his domestic relations

cannot easily have lived. It is true these relations were

circumscribed; had they been wider, they could not have been so

happy. But Pope was equally fortunate in his social relations.

What, indeed, most of all surprises us, is the courteous,

flattering, and even brilliant reception which Pope found from his

earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men of the world.

Wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the most dignified, and men of

fashion the most brilliant, all alike treated him not only with

pointed kindness, but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him

as their intellectual superior. Without rank, high birth, fortune,

without even a literary name, and in defiance of a deformed person,

Pope, whilst yet only sixteen years of age, was caressed, and even

honored; and all this with no one recommendation but simply the

knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the premature

expectations which he raised of future excellence. Sir William

Trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had held the highest stations,

both diplomatic and ministerial, made him his daily companion.

Wycherley, the old _roue_ of the town, a second-rate wit, but

not the less jealous on that account, showed the utmost deference

to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have regarded with

contempt, and between whom and himself there were nearly "fifty

good years of fair and foul weather." Cromwell, [Endnote: 8] a

fox-hunting country gentleman, but uniting with that character the

pretensions of a wit, and affecting also the reputation of a rake,

cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferiority. Nay,

which never in any other instance happened to the most fortunate

poet, his very inaugural essays in verse were treated, not as

prelusive efforts of auspicious promise, but as finished works of

art, entitled to take their station amongst the literature of the

land; and in the most worthless of all his poems, Walsh, an

established authority, and whom Dryden pronounced the ablest critic

of the age, found proofs of equality with Virgil.

The literary correspondence with these gentlemen is interesting, as

a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. Every nerve

was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a

fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that

between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to

overcrow each other. To us, in this age of purer and more masculine

taste, the whole scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young

fops dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most

elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, bows the

most overshadowing, until plain walking, running, or the motions of

natural dancing, are thought too insipid for endurance. In this

instance the taste had perhaps really been borrowed from France,

though often enough we impute to France what is the native growth

of all minds placed in similar circumstances. Madame de Sevigne's

Letters were really models of grace. But Balzac, whose letters,

however, are not without interest, had in some measure formed

himself upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and Seneca.

Pope and his correspondents, meantime, degraded the dignity of

rhetoric, by applying it to trivial commonplaces of compliment;

whereas Seneca applied it to the grandest themes which life or

contemplation can supply. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on first

coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally adopted their style.

She found this sort of _euphuism_ established; and it was not

for a very young woman to oppose it. But her masculine

understanding and powerful good sense, shaken free, besides, from

all local follies by travels and extensive commerce with the world,

first threw off these glittering chains of affectation.

Dean Swift, by the very constitution of his mind, plain, sinewy,

nervous, and courting only the strength that allies itself with

homeliness, was always indisposed to this mode of correspondence.

And, finally, Pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and

his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside altogether.

One reason doubtless was, that he found it too fatiguing; since in

this way of letter-writing he was put to as much expense of wit in

amusing an individual correspondent, as would for an equal extent

have sufficed to delight the whole world. A funambulist may harass

his muscles and risk his neck on the tight-rope, but hardly to

entertain his own family. Pope, however, had another reason for

declining this showy system of fencing; and strange it is that he

had not discovered this reason from the very first. As life

advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business advanced; the

careless condition of youth prompted no topics, or at least

prescribed none, but such as were agreeable to the taste, and

allowed of an ornamental coloring. But when downright business

occurred, exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged,

negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there

by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion

thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the

case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by

any effort of ingenuity, it _had_, could it look otherwise

than silly and unreasonable:

"Ornari les a ipsa negat, contenta doceri."

Pope's idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concurring with good

sense and the necessities of business on the other, drove him to

quit his gay rhetoric in letter-writing. But there are passages

surviving in his correspondence which indicate, that, after all,

had leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, he

still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, and cherished

it as a first love. But in this harsh world, as the course of true

love, so that of rhetoric, never did run smooth; and thus it

happened that, with a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to

bid it adieu. Strange that any man should think his own sincere and

confidential overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, men,

and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the

legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of

watching their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his cups

and balls. We of this age, who have formed our notions of

epistolary excellence from the chastity of Gray's, the brilliancy

of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's during her later life, and the

mingled good sense and fine feeling of Cowper's, value only those

letters of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value. And

even with regard to these, we may say that there is a great mistake

made; the best of those later letters between Pope and Swift, &c.,

are not in themselves at all superior to the letters of sensible

and accomplished women, such as leave every town in the island by

every post. Their chief interest is a derivative one; we are

pleased with any letter, good or bad, which relates to men of such

eminent talent; and sometimes the subjects discussed have a

separate interest for themselves. But as to the quality of the

discussion, apart from the person discussing and the thing

discussed, so trivial is the value of these letters in a large

proportion, that we cannot but wonder at the preposterous value

which was set upon them by the writers. [Endnote: 9] Pope

especially ought not to have his ethereal works loaded by the mass

of trivial prose which is usually attached to them.

This correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the time, though

one mode by which, in the absence of reviews, the reputation of an

author was spread, did not perhaps serve the interests of Pope so

effectually as the poems which in this way he circulated in those

classes of English society whose favor he chiefly courted. One of

his friends, the truly kind and accomplished Sir William Trumbull,

served him in that way, and perhaps in another eventually even more

important. The library of Pope's father was composed exclusively of

polemical divinity, a proof, by the way, that he was not a blind

convert to the Roman Catholic faith; or, if he was so originally,

had reviewed the grounds of it, and adhered to it after strenuous

study. In this dearth of books at his own home, and until he was

able to influence his father in buying more extensively, Pope had

benefited by the loans of his friends; amongst whom it is probable

that Sir William, as one of the best scholars of the whole, might

assist him most. He certainly offered him the most touching

compliment, as it was also the wisest and most paternal counsel,

when he besought him, as one _goddess-born_, to quit the

convivial society of deep-drinkers:

"Heu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis."

With these aids from friends of rank, and his way thus laid open to

public favor, in the year 1709 Pope first came forward upon the

stage of literature. The same year which terminated his legal

minority introduced him to the public. _Miscellanies_ in those

days were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. Tonson

happened at this time to be publishing one of some extent, the

sixth volume of which offered a sort of ambush to the young

aspirant of Windsor Forest, from which he might watch the public

feeling. The volume was opened by Mr. Ambrose Philips, in the

character of pastoral poet; and in the same character, but

stationed at the end of the volume, and thus covered by his bucolic

leader, as a soldier to the rear by the file in advance, appeared

Pope; so that he might win a little public notice, without too much

seeming to challenge it. This half-clandestine emersion upon the

stage of authorship, and his furtive position, are both mentioned

by Pope as accidents, but as accidents in which he rejoiced, and

not improbably accidents which Tonson had arranged with a view to

his satisfaction.

It must appear strange that Pope at twenty-one should choose to

come forward for the first time with a work composed at sixteen. A

difference of five years at that stage of life is of more effect

than of twenty at a later; and his own expanding judgment could

hardly fail to inform him, that his Pastorals were by far the worst

of his works. In reality, let us not deny, that had Pope never

written any thing else, his name would not have been known as a

name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from

oblivion by some satirist or writer of a Dunciad. Were a man to

meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.,"

_Love out of Mount Mlna by Whirlwind_"he would suppose himself

reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the

many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us:

"I know thee. love! on foreign mountains born.

Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed.

Thou wert from Aetna's burning entrails torn.

Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born."

But the very names "Damon" and "Strephon," "Phillis" and "Delia,"

are rank with childishness. Arcadian life is, at the best, a

feeble conception, and rests upon the false principle of crowding

together all the luscious sweets of rural life, undignified by the

danger which attends pastoral life in our climate, and unrelieved

by shades, either moral or physical. And the Arcadia of Pope's age

was the spurious Arcadia of the opera theatre, and, what is worse,

of the French opera.

The hostilities which followed between these rival wooers of the

pastoral muse are well known. Pope, irritated at what he conceived

the partiality shown to Philips in the Guardian, pursued the review

ironically; and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with

praises, draws into pointed relief some of his most flagrant

faults. The result, however, we cannot believe. That all the wits,

except Addison, were duped by the irony, is quite impossible. Could

any man of sense mistake for praise the remark, that Philips had

imitated "_every_ line of Strada; "that he had introduced

wolves into England, and proved himself the first of gardeners by

making his flowers "blow all in the same season." Or, suppose

those passages unnoticed, could the broad sneer escape him, where

Pope taxes the other writer (viz., himself) with having deviated"

into downright poetry; "or the outrageous ridicule of Philip's

style, as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, the

quotation from Gay, beginning,

"Rager, go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun

Will quite bego before ch' 'avs half a don!"

Philips is said to have resented this treatment by threats of

personal chastisement to Pope, and even hanging up a rod at

Button's coffee-house. We may be certain that Philips never

disgraced himself by such ignoble conduct. If the public indeed

were universally duped by the paper, what motive had Philips for

resentment? Or, in any case, what plea had he for attacking Pope,

who had not come forward as the author of the essay? But, from

Pope's confidential account of the matter, we know that Philips saw

him daily, and never offered him "any indecorum;" though, for some

cause or other, Pope pursued Philips with virulence through life.

In the year 1711, Pope published his Essay on Criticism, which some

people have very unreasonably fancied his best performance; and in

the same year his Rape of the Lock, the most exquisite monument of

playful fancy that universal literature offers. It wanted, however,

as yet, the principle of its vitality, in wanting the machinery of

sylphs and gnomes, with which addition it was first published in

1714.

In the year 1712, Pope appeared again before the public as the

author of the Temple of Fame, and the Elegy to the Memory of an

Unfortunate Lady. Much speculation has arisen on the question

concerning the name of this lady, and the more interesting question

concerning the nature of the persecutions and misfortunes which she

suffered. Pope appears purposely to decline answering the questions

of his friends upon that point; at least the questions have reached

us, and the answers have not. Joseph Warton supposed himself to

have ascertained four facts about her: that her name was Wainsbury;

that she was deformed in person; that she retired into a convent

from some circumstances connected with an attachment to a young man

of inferior rank; and that she killed herself, not by a sword, as

the poet insinuates, but by a halter. As to the latter statement,

it may very possibly be true; such a change would be a very slight

exercise of the poet's privileges. As to the rest, there are

scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. Pope certainly speaks of

her under the name of Mrs. (_i. e._ Miss) W--, which at least

argues a poetical exaggeration in describing her as a being "that

once had _titles_, honor, wealth, and fame;" and he may as

much have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty. It is indeed

noticeable, that he speaks simply of her _decent_ limbs,

which, in any English use of the word, does not imply much

enthusiasm of praise. She appears to have been the niece of a Lady

A--; and Mr. Craggs, afterwards secretary of state, wrote to Lady

A--on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in her fate. As to

her being a relative of the Duke of Buckingham's, that rests upon a

mere conjectural interpretation applied to a letter of that

nobleman's. But all things about this unhappy lady are as yet

enveloped in mystery. And not the least part of the mystery is a

letter of Pope's to a Mr. C--, bearing date 1732, that is, just

twenty years after the publication of the poem, in which Pope, in a

manly tone, justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses

against his unknown correspondent the very blame which he had

applied generally to the kinsman of the poor victim in 1712. Now,

unless there is some mistake in the date, how are we to explain

this gentleman's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to

Pope's anathema, with which the world had resounded for twenty

years?

Pope had now established his reputation with the public as the

legitimate successor and heir to the poetical supremacy of Dryden.

His Rape of the Lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern

literature, and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking

to extend his fame, he might count upon a pretty general support in

applying what he had already established to the promotion of his

own interest. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1713, he formed a final

resolution of undertaking a new translation of the Iliad. It must

be observed, that already in 1709, concurrently with his Pastorals,

he had published specimens of such a translation; and these had

been communicated to his friends some time before. In particular,

Sir William Trumbull, on the 9th of April, 1708, urged upon Pope a

complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey. Defective skill in

the Greek language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the

timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite twenty years

old, restrained Pope for five years and more. What he had practised

as a sort of _bravura_, for a single effort of display, he

recoiled from as a daily task to be pursued through much toil, and

a considerable section of his life. However, he dallied with the

purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one who wishes to

hear them undervalued; until at length Sir Richard Steele

determined him to the undertaking, a fact overlooked by the

biographers, but which is ascertained by Ayre's account of that

interview between Pope and Addison, probably in 1716, which sealed

the rupture between them. In the autumn of 1713, he made his design

known amongst his friends. Accordingly, on the 21st of October, we

have Lord Lansdown's letter, expressing his great pleasure at the

communication; on the 26th, we have Addison's letter encouraging

him to the task; and in November of the same year occurs the

amusing scene so graphically described by Bishop Kennet, when Dean

Swift presided in the conversation, and, amongst other indications

of his conscious authority, "instructed a young nobleman, that the

best poet in England was Mr. Pope, 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 until I have a thousand guineas for him_."

If this were the extent of what Swift anticipated from the work, he

fell miserably below the result. But, perhaps, he spoke only of a

cautionary _arrha_ or earnest. As this was unquestionably the

greatest literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting

the most lucrative of Sir Walter Scott's, if due allowance be made

for the altered value of money, and if we consider the Odyssey as

forming part of the labor, it may be right to state the particulars

of Pope's contract with Lintot.

The number of subscribers to the Iliad was 575, and the number of

copies subscribed for was 654. The work was to be printed in six

quarto volumes; and the subscription was a guinea a volume.

Consequently by the subscription Pope obtained six times 654

guineas, or 4218L. 6s., (for the guinea then passed for 21s. 6d.);

and for the copyright of each volume Lintot offered 200L,

consequently 1200L for the whole six; so that from the Iliad the

profit exactly amounted to 5310L. 16s. Of the Odyssey, 574 copies

were subscribed for. It was to be printed in five quarto volumes,

and the subscription was a guinea a volume. Consequently by the

subscription Pope obtained five times 574 guineas, or 3085L. 5s.;

and for the copyright Lintot offered 600L. The total sum received,

therefore, by Pope, on account of the Odyssey, was 3685L. 5s. But

in this instance he had two coadjutors, Broome and Fenton; between

them they translated twelve books, leaving twelve to Pope. The

notes also were compiled by Broome; but the Postscript to the notes

was written by Pope. Fenton received 300L, Broome 500L. Such at

least is Warton's account, and more probable than that of Ruffhead,

who not only varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum

given to the assistants by 100L. Thus far we had followed the

guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie upon the face of the

transaction. But we have since detected a written statement of

Pope's, unaccountably overlooked by the biographers, and serving of

itself to show how negligently they have read the works of their

illustrious subject. The statement is entitled to the fullest

attention and confidence, not being a hasty or casual notice of the

transaction, but pointedly shaped to meet a calumnious rumor

against Pope in his character of paymaster; as if he who had found

so much liberality from publishers in his own person, were

niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those relations to

others. Broome, it was alleged, had expressed himself dissatisfied

with Pope's remuneration. Perhaps he had. For he would be likely to

frame his estimate for his own services from the scale of Pope's

reputed gains; and those gains would, at any rate, be enormously

exaggerated, as uniformly happens where there is a basis of the

marvellous to begin with. And, secondly, it would be natural enough

to assume the previous result from the Iliad as a fair standard for

computation; but in this, as we know, all parties found themselves

disappointed, and Broome had the less right to murmur at this,

since the arrangement with himself as chief journeyman in the job

was one main cause of the disappointment. There was also another

reason why Broome should be less satisfied than Fenton. Verse for

verse, any one thousand lines of a translation so purely mechanical

might stand against any other thousand; and so far the equation of

claims was easy. A book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, and

Cocker's Golden Rule open before him, could do full justice to Mr.

Broome _as a poet_ every Saturday night. But Broome had a

separate account current for pure prose against Pope. One he had in

conjunction with Fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so

much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, except as to

the allowance for tare and tret as a discount in favor of Pope. But

the prose account, the account for notes, requiring very various

degrees of reading and research, allowed of no such easy equation.

There it was, we conceive, that Broome's discontent arose. Pope,

however, declares, that he had given him 500L, thus confirming the

proportions of Warton against Ruffhead, (that is, in effect,

Warburton,) and some other advantages which were not in money, nor

deductions at all from his own money profits, but which may have

been worth so much money to Broome, as to give some colorable truth

to Ruffhead's allegation of an additional 100L. In direct money, it

remains certain that Fenton had three, and Broome five hundred

pounds. It follows, therefore, that for the Iliad and Odyssey

jointly he received a sum of 8996L. 1s., and paid for assistance

800L, which leaves to himself a clear sum of 8196L. 1s. And, in

fact, his profits ought to be calculated without deduction, since

it was his own choice, from indolence, to purchase assistance.

The Iliad was commenced about October, 1713. In the summer of the

following year he was so far advanced as to begin making

arrangements with Lintot for the printing; and the first two books,

in manuscript, were put into the hands of Lord Halifax. In June,

1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers received their

copies of the first volume; and in July Lintot began to publish

that volume generally. Some readers will inquire, who paid for the

printing and paper, &c.? All this expense fell upon Lintot, for

whom Pope was superfluously anxious. The sagacious bookseller

understood what he was about; and, when a pirated edition was

published in Holland, he counteracted the injury by printing a

cheap edition, of which 7500 copies were sold in a few weeks; an

extraordinary proof of the extended interest in literature. The

second, third, and fourth volumes of the Iliad, each containing,

like the first, four books, were published successively in 1716,

1717, 1718; and in 1720, Pope completed the work by publishing the

fifth volume, containing five books, and the sixth, containing the

last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus.

The Odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, as Mr. Roscoe

virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the publication of it was

finished in 1725. The sale, however, was much inferior to that of

the Iliad; for which more reasons than one might be assigned. But

there can be no doubt that Pope himself depreciated the work, by

his undignified arrangements for working by subordinate hands. Such

a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of

rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it

to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its

arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But in literature such arrangements

are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much

exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of

mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords)" _a

knack_; "it was deliberately helping forward that idea to let

off parts of the labor. Only think of Milton letting off by

contract to the lowest offer, and to be delivered by such a day,

(for which good security to be found,) six books of Paradise Lost.

It is true, the great dramatic authors were often

_collaborateurs_, but their case was essentially different.

The loss, however, fell not upon Pope, but upon Lintot, who, on

this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather broadly of

prosecution. But that was out of the question. Pope had acted

indiscreetly, but nothing could be alleged against his honor; for

he had expressly warned the public, that he did not, as in the

other case, profess _to translate_, but _to undertake

[Endnote: 10] a translation_ of the Odyssey. Lintot, however,

was no loser absolutely, though he might be so in relation to his

expectations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, and

became sheriff of the county in which his estates lay.

We have pursued the Homeric labors uninterruptedly from their

commencement in 1713, till their final termination in 1725, a

period of twelve years or nearly; because this was the task to

which Pope owed the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life,

since it was this which enabled him to decline a pension from all

administrations, and even from his friend Craggs, the secretary, to

decline the express offer of 300L per annum. Indeed Pope is always

proud to own his obligations to Homer. In the interval, however,

between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope listened to proposals made

by Jacob Tonson, that he should revise an edition of Shakspeare.

For this, which was in fact the first attempt at establishing the

text of the mighty poet, Pope obtained but little money, and still

less reputation. He received, according to tradition, only 217L.

12s. for his trouble of collation, which must have been

considerable, and some other trifling editorial labor. And the

opinion of all judges, from the first so unfavorable as to have

depreciated the money-value of the book enormously, perhaps from a

prepossession of the public mind against the fitness of Pope for

executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since pronounced

this work the very worst edition in existence. For the edition we

have little to plead; but for the editor it is but just to make

three apologies. In the _first_ place, he wrote a brilliant

preface, which, although (like other works of the same class) too

much occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, for the

sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep injustice to

Shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, extended his fame, by

giving the sanction and countersign of a great wit to the national

admiration. _Secondly_, as Dr. Johnson admits, Pope's failure

pointed out the right road to his successors. _Thirdly_, even

in this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated scale of

merit, as distributed amongst the long succession of editors

through that century, Pope holds a rank proportionable to his age.

For the year 1720, he is no otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer,

Capell, Warburton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively

below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below Steevens, as

he again was below Malone and Read.

The gains from Shakspeare would hardly counterbalance the loss

which Pope sustained this year from the South Sea Bubble. One

thing, by the way, is still unaccountably neglected by writers on

this question. How it was that the great Mississippi Bubble, during

the Orleans regency in Paris, should have happened to coincide with

that of London. If this were accident, how marvellous that the same

insanity should possess the two great capitals of Christendom in

the same year? If, again, it were not accident, but due to some

common cause, why is not that cause explained? Pope to his nearest

friends never stated the amount of his loss. The biographers report

that at one time his stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand

pounds. But that is quite impossible. It is true, that as the stock

rose at one time a thousand per cent., this would not imply on

Pope's part an original purchase beyond twenty-five hundred pounds

or thereabouts. But Pope has furnished an argument against _that,

_ which we shall improve. He quotes, more than once, as

applicable to his own case, the old proverbial riddle of Hesiod,

_----- ----- ------, the half is more than the whole_. What

did he mean by that? We understand it thus: That between the

selling and buying, the variations had been such as to sink his

shares to one half of the price they had once reached, but, even at

that depreciation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had

been at first. But the half of 25,000 would be a far larger sum

than Pope could have ventured to risk upon a fund confessedly

liable to daily fluctuation. 3000 English pounds would be the

utmost he could risk; in which case the half of 25,000 pounds

would have left him so very much richer, that he would have

proclaimed his good fortune as an evidence of his skill and

prudence. Yet, on the contrary, he wished his friends to understand

at times that he had lost. But his friends forgot to ask one

important question: Was the word _loss_ to be understood in

relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth which he once

possessed, or in relation to the absolute sum invested in the South

Sea fund? The truth is, Pope practised on this, as on other

occasions, a little finessing, which is the chief foible in his

character. His object was, that, according to circumstances, he

might vindicate his own freedom from the common mania, in case his

enemies should take that handle for attacking him; or might have it

in his power to plead poverty, and to account for it, in case he

should ever accept that pension which had been so often tendered

but never sternly rejected.

In 1723 Pope lost one of his dearest friends, Bishop Atterbury, by

banishment; a sentence most justly incurred, and mercifully

mitigated by the hostile Whig government. On the bishop's trial a

circumstance occurred to Pope which flagrantly corroborated his own

belief in his natural disqualification for public life. He was

summoned as an evidence on his friend's behalf. He had but a dozen

words to say, simply explaining the general tenor of his lordship's

behavior at Bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though

supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he broke down. Lord

Bolingbroke, returning from exile, met the bishop at the sea-side;

upon which it was wittily remarked that they were "exchanged." Lord

Bolingbroke supplied to Pope the place, or perhaps more than

supplied the place, of the friend he had lost; for Bolingbroke was

a free-thinker, and so far more entertaining to Pope, even whilst

partially dissenting, than Atterbury, whose clerical profession

laid him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is reason

to think, of conscience.

In 1725, on closing the Odyssey, Pope announces his intention to

Swift of quitting the labors of a translator, and thenceforwards

applying himself to original composition. This resolution led to

the Essay on Man, which appeared soon afterwards; and, with the

exception of two labors, which occupied Pope in the interval

between 1726 and 1729, the rest of his life may properly be

described as dedicated to the further extension of that Essay. The

two works which he interposed were a collection of the fugitive

papers, whether prose or verse, which he and Dean Swift had

scattered amongst their friends at different periods of life. The

avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the secret

motive, as disclosed in Pope's confidential letters, was to make it

impossible thenceforwards for piratical publishers like Curll. Both

Pope and Swift dreaded the malice of Curll in case they should die

before him. It was one of Curll's regular artifices to publish a

heap of trash on the death of any eminent man, under the title of

his Remains; and in allusion to that practice, it was that

Arbuthnot most wittily called Curll "one of the new terrors of

death." By publishing _all_, Pope would have disarmed Curll

beforehand; and that was in fact the purpose; and that plea only

could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, the other sixty

years old, for reprinting _jeux d'esprit_ that never had any

other apology than the youth of their authors. Yet, strange to say,

after all, some were omitted; and the omission of one opened the

door to Curll as well as that of a score. Let Curll have once

inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he would soon have driven it

home.

This Miscellany, however, in three volumes, (published in 1727, but

afterwards increased by a fourth in 1732,) though in itself a

trifling work, had one vast consequence. It drew after it swarms of

libels and lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at Pope, although

the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page.

These libels in _their_ turn produced a second reaction; and,

by stimulating Pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for

the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of

Pope's works; a monument of satirical power the greatest which man

has produced, not excepting the MacFleckno of Dryden, namely, the

immortal Dunciad.

In October of the year 1727, this poem, in its original form, was

completed. Many editions, not spurious altogether, nor

surreptitious, but with some connivance, not yet explained, from

Pope, were printed in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto

and acknowledged edition was published in London early in "1728-9,"

as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the

reader,) in 1729. On March 12 of which year it was presented by the

prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king and queen at St.

James's.

Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and

afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the

efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in

fact, than all his Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared

his friends to expect for the future only an indolent companion and

a hermit. Events rapidly succeeded which tended to strengthen the

impression he had conceived of his own decay, and certainly to

increase his disgust with the world. In 1732 died his friend

Atterbury; and on December the 7th of the same year Gay, the most

unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and the one with whom he

had at one time been domesticated, expired, after an illness of

three days, which Dr. Arbuthnot declares to have been "the most

precipitate" he ever knew. But in fact Gay had long been decaying,

from the ignoble vice of too much and too luxurious eating. Six

months after this loss, which greatly affected Pope, came the last

deadly wound which this life could inflict, in the death of his

mother. She had for some time been in her dotage, and recognized no

face but that of her son, so that her death was not unexpected; but

that circumstance did not soften the blow of separation to Pope.

She died on the 7th of June, 1733, being then ninety-three years

old. Three days after, writing to Richardson the painter, for the

purpose of urging him to come down and take her portrait before the

coffin was closed, he says, "I thank God, her death was as easy as

her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even a

sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of

tranquillity," that "it would afford the finest image of a saint

expired that ever painting drew. Adieu, may you die as happily."

The funeral took place on the 11th; Pope then quitted the house,

unable to support the silence of her chamber, and did not return

for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself to the sight of her

vacant apartment.

Swift also he had virtually lost for ever. In April, 1727, this

unhappy man had visited Pope for the last time. During this visit

occurred the death of George I. Great expectations arose from that

event amongst the Tories, in which, of course,' Swift shared. It

was reckoned upon as a thing of course that Walpole would be

dismissed. But this bright gleam of hope proved as treacherous as

all before; and the anguish of this final disappointment perhaps it

was which brought on a violent attack of Swift's constitutional

malady. On the last of August he quitted Pope's house abruptly,

concealed himself in London, and finally quitted it, as stealthily

as he had before quitted Twickenham, for Ireland, never more to

return. He left a most affectionate letter for Pope; but his

affliction, and his gloomy anticipations of insanity, were too

oppressive to allow of his seeking a personal interview.

Pope might now describe himself pretty nearly as _ultimus

suorum_; and if he would have friends in future, he must seek

them, as he complains bitterly, almost amongst strangers and

another generation. This sense of desolation may account for the

acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward.

Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which

uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal

invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as

uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of

dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a

general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and

there pursuing his themes into the fields of metaphysics, but no

farther in either field of morals or metaphysics than he could make

compatible with a poetical treatment. These works, however,

naturally entangled him in feuds of various complexions with people

of very various pretensions; and to admirers of Pope so fervent as

we profess ourselves, it is painful to acknowledge that the dignity

of his latter years, and the becoming tranquillity of increasing

age, are sadly disturbed by the petulance and the tone of

irritation which, alike to those in the wrong and in the right,

inevitably besiege all personal disputes. He was agitated, besides,

by a piratical publication of his correspondence. This emanated of

course from the den of Curll, the universal robber and "_blatant

beast_" of those days; and, besides the injury offered to his

feelings by exposing some youthful sallies which he wished to have

suppressed, it drew upon him a far more disgraceful imputation,

most assuredly unfounded, but accredited by Dr. Johnson, and

consequently in full currency to this day, of having acted

collusively with Curll, or at least through Curll, for the

publication of what he wished the world to see, but could not else

have devised any decent pretext for exhibiting. The disturbance of

his mind on this occasion led to a circular request, dispersed

amongst his friends, that they would return his letters. All

complied except Swift. He only delayed, and in fact shuffled. But

it is easy to read in his evasions, and Pope, in spite of his

vexation, read the same tale, viz., that, in consequence of his

recurring attacks and increasing misery, he was himself the victim

of artifices amongst those who surrounded him. What Pope

apprehended happened.

The letters were all published in Dublin and in London, the

originals being then only returned when they had done their work of

exposure.

Such a tenor of life, so constantly fretted by petty wrongs, or by

leaden insults, to which only the celebrity of their object lent

force or wings, allowed little opportunity to Pope for recalling

his powers from angry themes, and converging them upon others of

more catholic philosophy. To the last he continued to conceal

vipers beneath his flowers; or rather, speaking proportionately to

the case, he continued to sheath amongst the gleaming but innocuous

lightnings of his departing splendors, the thunderbolts which

blasted for ever. His last appearance was his greatest. In 1742 he

published the fourth book of the Dunciad; to which it has with much

reason been objected, that it stands in no obvious relation to the

other three, but which, taken as a separate whole, is by far the

most brilliant and the weightiest of his works. Pope was aware of

the _hiatus_ between this last book and the rest, on which

account he sometimes called it the greater Dunciad; and it would

have been easy for him, with a shallow Warburtonian ingenuity, to

invent links that might have satisfied a mere _verbal_ sense

of connection. But he disdained this puerile expedient. The fact

was, and could not be disguised from any penetrating eye, that the

poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects; it had arisen

spontaneously at various times, by looking at the same general

theme of dulness (which, in Pope's sense, includes all aberrations

of the intellect, nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the

faculties) under a different angle of observation, and from a

different centre. In this closing book, not only bad authors, as in

the other three, but all abuses of science or antiquarian

knowledge, or connoisseurship in the arts, are attacked. Virtuosi,

medalists, butterfly-hunters, florists, erring metaphysicians, &c.,

are all pierced through and through as with the shafts of Apollo.

But the imperfect plan of the work as to its internal economy, no

less than its exterior relations, is evident in many places; and in

particular the whole catastrophe of the poem, if it can be so

called, is linked to the rest by a most insufficient incident. To

give a closing grandeur to his work, Pope had conceived the idea of

representing the earth as lying universally under the incubation of

one mighty spirit of dulness; a sort of millennium, as we may call

it, for ignorance, error, and stupidity. This would take leave of

the reader with effect; but how was it to be introduced? at what

era? under what exciting cause? As to the eras, Pope could not

settle that; unless it were a _future_ era, the description of

it could not be delivered as a prophecy; and, not being prophetic,

it would want much of its grandeur. Yet, _as_ a part of

futurity, how is it connected with our present times? Do they and

their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or as a contingency

upon certain habits which we have it in our power to eradicate, (in

which case this vision of dulness has a _practical_ warning,)

or is it a mere necessity, one amongst the many changes attached to

the cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings round with the

revolutions of its wheel? All this Pope could not determine; but

the exciting cause he has determined, and it is preposterously

below the effect. The goddess of dulness yawns; and her yawn,

which, after all, should rather express the fact and state of

universal dulness than its cause, produces a change over all

nations tantamount to a long eclipse. Meantime, with all its

defects of plan, the poem, as to execution, is superior to all

which Pope has done; the composition is much superior to that of

the Essay on Man, and more profoundly poetic. The parodies drawn

from Milton, as also in the former books, have a beauty and effect

which cannot be expressed; and, if a young lady wished to cull for

her album a passage from all Pope's writings, which, without a

trace of irritation or acrimony, should yet present an exquisite

gem of independent beauty, she could not find another passage equal

to the little story of the florist and the butterfly-hunter. They

plead their cause separately before the throne of dulness; the

florist telling how he had reared a superb carnation, which, in

honor of the queen, he called Caroline, when his enemy, pursuing a

butterfly which settled on the carnation, in securing his own

object, had destroyed that of the plaintiff. The defendant replies

with equal beauty; and it may certainly be affirmed, that, for

brilliancy of coloring and the art of poetical narration, the tale

is not surpassed by any in the language.

This was the last effort of Pope worthy of separate notice. He was

now decaying rapidly, and sensible of his own decay. His complaint

was a dropsy of the chest, and he knew it to be incurable. Under

these circumstances, his behavior was admirably philosophical. He

employed himself in revising and burnishing all his later works, as

those upon which he wisely relied for his reputation with future

generations. In this task he was assisted by Dr. Warburton, a new

literary friend, who had introduced himself to the favorable notice

of Pope about four years before, by a defence of the Essay on Man,

which Crousaz had attacked, but in general indirectly and

ineffectually, by attacking it through the blunders of a very

faulty translation. This poem, however, still labors, to religious

readers, under two capital defects. If man, according to Pope, is

now so admirably placed in the universal system of things, that

evil only could result from any change, then it seems to follow,

either that a fall of man is inadmissible; or at least, that, by

placing him in his true centre, it had been a blessing universally.

The other objection lies in this, that if all is right already, and

in this earthly station, then one argument for a future state, as

the scene in which evil is to be redressed, seems weakened or

undermined.

As the weakness of Pope increased, his nearest friends, Lord

Bolingbroke, and a few others, gathered around him. The last scenes

were passed almost with ease and tranquillity. He dined in company

two days before he died: and on the very day preceding his death he

took an airing on Blackheath. A few mornings before he died, he was

found very early in his library writing on the immortality of the

soul. This was an effort of delirium; and he suffered otherwise

from this affection of the brain, and from inability to think in

his closing hours. But his humanity and goodness, it was remarked,

had survived his intellectual faculties. He died on the 30th of

May, 1744; and so quietly, that the attendants could not

distinguish the exact moment of his dissolution.

We had prepared an account of Pope's quarrels, in which we had

shown that, generally, he was not the aggressor; and often was

atrociously ill used before he retorted. This service to Pope's

memory we had judged important, because it is upon these quarrels

chiefly that the erroneous opinion has built itself of Pope's

fretfulness and irritability. And this unamiable feature of his

nature, together with a proneness to petty manoeuvring, are the

main foibles that malice has been able to charge upon Pope's moral

character. Yet, with no better foundation for their malignity than

these doubtful propensities, of which the first perhaps was a

constitutional defect, a defect of his temperament rather than his

will, and the second has been much exaggerated, many writers have

taken upon themselves to treat Pope as a man, if not absolutely

unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as mean,

little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and morose. Now the

difference between ourselves and these writers is fundamental. They

fancy that in Pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was

here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the

contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition radically noble

and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles, or,

to adopt the distinction of Shakspeare, they see nothing but "dust

a little gilt," and we "gold a little dusted." A very rapid glance

we will throw over the general outline of his character.

As a friend, it is noticed emphatically by Martha Blount and other

contemporaries, who must have had the best means of judging, that

no man was so warm-hearted, or so much sacrificed himself for

others, as Pope; and in fact many of his quarrels grew out of this

trait in his character. For once that he levelled his spear in his

own quarrel, at least twice he did so on behalf of his insulted

parents or his friends. Pope was also noticeable for the duration

of his friendships; [Endnote: 11] some dropped him,--but he never

any throughout his life. And let it be remembered, that amongst

Pope's friends were the men of most eminent talents in those days;

so that envy at least, or jealousy of rival power, was assuredly no

foible of his. In that respect how different from Addison, whose

petty manoeuvring against Pope proceeded entirely from malignant

jealousy. That Addison was more in the wrong even than has

generally been supposed, and Pope more thoroughly innocent as well

as more generous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of

showing decisively. As a son, we need not insist on Pope's

preeminent goodness. Dean Swift, who had lived for months together

at Twickenham, declares that he had not only never witnessed, but

had never heard of anything like it. As a Christian, Pope appears

in a truly estimable light. He found himself a Roman Catholic by

accident of birth; so was his mother; but his father was so upon

personal conviction and conversion, yet not without extensive study

of the questions at issue. It would have laid open the road to

preferment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before him, if

Pope would have gone over to the Protestant faith. And in his

conscience he found no obstacle to that change; he was a

philosophical Christian, intolerant of nothing but intolerance, a

bigot only against bigots. But he remained true to his baptismal

profession, partly on a general principle of honor in adhering to a

distressed and dishonored party, but chiefly out of reverence and

affection to his mother. In his relation to women, Pope was amiable

and gentlemanly; and accordingly was the object of affectionate

regard and admiration to many of the most accomplished in that sex.

This we mention especially because we would wish to express our

full assent to the manly scorn with which Mr. Roscoe repels the

libellous insinuations against Pope and Miss Martha Blount. A more

innocent connection we do not believe ever existed. As an author,

Warburton has recorded that no man ever displayed more candor or

more docility to criticisms offered in a friendly spirit. Finally,

we sum up all in saying, that Pope retained to the last a true and

diffusive benignity; that this was the quality which survived all

others, notwithstanding the bitter trial which his benignity must

have stood through life, and the excitement to a spiteful reaction

of feeling which was continually pressed upon him by the scorn and

insult which his deformity drew upon him from the unworthy.

But the moral character of Pope is of secondary interest. We are

concerned with it only as connected with his great intellectual

power. There are three errors which seem current upon this subject.

_First_, that Pope drew his impulses from French literature;

_secondly_, that he was a poet of inferior rank;

_thirdly_, that his merit lies in superior "correctness." With

respect to the first notion, it has prevailed by turns in every

literature. One stage of society, in every nation, brings men of

impassioned minds to the contemplation of manners, and of the

social affections of man as exhibited in manners. With this

propensity cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency when

looking at the great models of the literature who have usually

preoccupied the grander passions, and displayed their movements in

the earlier periods of literature. Now it happens that the French,

from an extraordinary defect in the higher qualities of passion,

have attracted the notice of foreign nations chiefly to that field

of their literature, in which the taste and the unimpassioned

understanding preside. But in all nations such literature is a

natural growth of the mind, and would arise equally if the French

literature had never existed. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, or

even of Charles II.'s, were not French by their taste or their

imitation. Butler and Dryden were surely not French; and of Milton

we need not speak; as little was Pope French, either by his

institution or by his models. Boileau he certainly admired too

much; and, for the sake of a poor parallelism with a passage about

Greece in Horace, he has falsified history in the most ludicrous

manner, without a shadow of countenance from facts, in order to

make out that we, like the Romans, received laws of taste from

those whom we had conquered. But these are insulated cases and

accidents, not to insist on his known and most profound admiration,

often expressed, for both Chaucer, and Shakspeare, and Milton.

Secondly, that Pope is to be classed as an inferior poet, has

arisen purely from a confusion between the departments of poetry

which he cultivated and the merit of his culture. The first place

must undoubtedly be given for ever,--it cannot be refused,--to the

impassioned movements of the tragic, and to the majestic movements

of the epic muse. We cannot alter the relations of things out of

favor to an individual. But in his own department, whether higher

or lower, that man is supreme who has not yet been surpassed; and

such a man is Pope. As to the final notion, first started by Walsh,

and propagated by Warton, it is the most absurd of all the three;

it is not from superior correctness that Pope is esteemed more

correct, but because the compass and sweep of his performances lies

more within the range of ordinary judgments. Many questions that

have been raised upon Milton or Shakspeare, questions relating to

so subtile a subject as the flux and reflux of human passion, lie

far above the region of ordinary capacities; and the

indeterminateness or even carelessness of the judgment is

transferred by a common confusion to its objects. But waiving this,

let us ask, what is meant by "correctness?" Correctness in what? In

developing the thought? In connecting it, or effecting the

transitions? In the use of words? In the grammar? In the metre?

Under every one of these limitations of the idea, we maintain that

Pope is _not_ distinguished by correctness; nay, that, as

compared with Shakspeare, he is eminently incorrect. Produce us

from any drama of Shakspeare one of those leading passages that all

men have by heart, and show us any eminent defect in the very

sinews of the thought. It is impossible; defects there may be, but

they will always be found irrelevant to the main central thought,

or to its expression. Now turn to Pope; the first striking passage

which offers itself to our memory, is the famous character of

Addison, ending thus:

"Who would not laugh, if such a man there be,

Who but must weep if Atticus were he?"

Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque assembly of noble

and ignoble qualities. Very well; but why then must we weep?

Because this assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent

man of genius. Well, that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for

the degradation of human nature. But then revolves the question,

why must we laugh? Because, if the belonging to a man of genius

were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know from the very

first. The very first line says, "Peace to all such. But were there

one whose fires _true genius kindles_ and fair fame inspires."

Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous

character. We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a

sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius;

and this we had already known from the beginning. Match us this

prodigious oversight in Shakspeare. Again, take the Essay on

Criticism. It is a collection of independent maxims, tied together

into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or

logical dependency; generally so vague as to mean nothing. Like the

general rules of justice, &c., in ethics, to which every man

assents; but when the question comes about any practical case,

_is_ it just? The opinions fly asunder far as the poles. And,

what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so

often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this very

poem. As a single instance, he proscribes monosyllabic lines; and

in no English poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of

that class as in this. We have counted above a score, and the last

line of all is monosyllabic.

Not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for qualities the

very same as belong to his most distinguished brethren, is Pope to

be considered a great poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful

description, pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. His

characteristic difference is simply that he carried these powers

into a different field, and moved chiefly amongst the social paths

of men, and viewed their characters as operating through their

manners. And our obligations to him arise chiefly on this ground,

that having already, in the persons of earlier poets, carried off

the palm in all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for

the majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence of the

tragic drama, to Pope we owe it that we can now claim an equal

preeminence in the sportive and aerial graces of the mock heroic

and satiric muse; that in the Dunciad we possess a peculiar form of

satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by any other

nation) we see alternately her festive smile and her gloomiest

scowl; that the grave good sense of the nation has here found its

brightest mirror; and, finally, that through Pope the cycle of our

poetry is perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we might

claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or grace.