FIRST PERIOD OF POPE'S LITERARY CAREER.
Pope's rupture with Wycherley took place in the summer of 1710, when
Pope, therefore, was just twenty-two. He was at this time only known as
the contributor of some small poems to a Miscellany. Three years
afterwards (1713) he was receiving such patronage in his great
undertaking, the translation of Homer, as to prove conclusively that he
was regarded by the leaders of literature as a poet of very high
promise; and two years later (1715) the appearance of the first volume
of his translation entitled him to rank as the first poet of the day. So
rapid a rise to fame has had few parallels, and was certainly not
approached until Byron woke and found himself famous at twenty-four.
Pope was eager for the praise of remarkable precocity, and was weak and
insincere enough to alter the dates of some of his writings in order to
strengthen his claim. Yet, even when we accept the corrected accounts of
recent enquirers, there is no doubt that he gave proofs at a very early
age of an extraordinary command of the resources of his art. It is still
more evident that his merits were promptly and frankly recognized by his
contemporaries. Great men and distinguished authors held out friendly
hands to him; and he never had to undergo, even for a brief period, the
dreary ordeal of neglect through which men of loftier but less popular
genius, have been so often compelled to pass. And yet it unfortunately
happened that, even in this early time, when success followed success,
and the young man's irritable nerves might well have been soothed by the
general chorus of admiration he excited and returned bitter antipathies,
some of which lasted through his life.
Pope's works belong to three distinct periods. The translation of Homer
was the great work of the middle period of his life. In his later years
he wrote the moral and satirical poems by which he is now best known.
The earlier period, with which I have now to deal, was one of
experimental excursions into various fields of poetry, with varying
success and rather uncertain aim. Pope had already, as we have seen,
gone through the process of "filling his basket." He had written the
epic poem which happily found its way into the flames. He had translated
many passages that struck his fancy in the classics, especially
considerable fragments of Ovid and Statius. Following Dryden, he had
turned some of Chaucer into modern English; and, adopting a fashion
which had not as yet quite died of inanition, he had composed certain
pastorals in the manner of Theocritus and Virgil. These early
productions had been written under the eye of Trumbull; they had been
handed about in manuscript; Wycherley, as already noticed, had shown
them to Walsh, himself an offender of the same class. Granville,
afterwards Lord Lansdowne, another small poet, read them, and professed
to see in Pope another Virgil; whilst Congreve, Garth, Somers, Halifax,
and other men of weight, condescended to read, admire, and criticize.
Old Tonson, who had published for Dryden, wrote a polite note to Pope,
then only seventeen, saying that he had seen one of the Pastorals in
the hands of Congreve and Walsh, "which was extremely fine," and
requesting the honour of printing it. Three years afterwards it
accordingly appeared in Tonson's Miscellany, a kind of annual, of which
the first numbers had been edited by Dryden. Such miscellanies more or
less discharged the function of a modern magazine. The plan, said Pope
to Wycherley, is very useful to the poets, "who, like other thieves,
escape by getting into a crowd." The volume contained contributions from
Buckingham, Garth, and Howe; it closed with Pope's Pastorals, and opened
with another set of pastorals by Ambrose Philips--a combination which,
as we shall see, led to one of Pope's first quarrels.
The Pastorals have been seriously criticized; but they are, in truth,
mere school-boy exercises; they represent nothing more than so many
experiments in versification. The pastoral form had doubtless been used
in earlier hands to embody true poetic feeling; but in Pope's time it
had become hopelessly threadbare. The fine gentlemen in wigs and laced
coats amused themselves by writing about nymphs and "conscious swains,"
by way of asserting their claims to elegance of taste. Pope, as a boy,
took the matter seriously, and always retained a natural fondness for a
juvenile performance upon which he had expended great labour, and which
was the chief proof of his extreme precocity. He invites attention to
his own merits, and claims especially the virtue of propriety. He does
not, he tells us, like some other people, make his roses and daffodils
bloom in the same season, and cause his nightingales to sing in
November; and he takes particular credit for having remembered that
there were no wolves in England, and having accordingly excised a
passage in which Alexis prophesied that those animals would grow milder
as they listened to the strains of his favourite nymph. When a man has
got so far as to bring to England all the pagan deities, and rival
shepherds contending for bowls and lambs in alternate strophes, these
niceties seem a little out of place. After swallowing such a camel of an
anachronism as is contained in the following lines, it is ridiculous to
pride oneself upon straining at a gnat:--
Inspire me, says Strephon,
Inspire me, Phoebus, in my Delia's praise
With Waller's strains or Granville's moving lays.
A milkwhite bull shall at your altars stand,
That threats a fight, and spurns the rising sand.
Granville would certainly not have felt more surprised at meeting a
wolf, than at seeing a milk-white bull sacrificed to Phoebus on the
banks of the Thames. It would be a more serious complaint that Pope, who
can thus admit anachronisms as daring as any of those which provoked
Johnson in Lycidas, shows none of that exquisite feeling for rural
scenery which is one of the superlative charms of Milton's early poems.
Though country-bred, he talks about country sights and sounds as if he
had been brought up at Christ's Hospital, and read of them only in
Virgil. But, in truth, it is absurd to dwell upon such points. The sole
point worth notice in the Pastorals is the general sweetness of the
versification. Many corrections show how carefully Pope had elaborated
these early lines, and by what patient toil he was acquiring the
peculiar qualities of style in which he was to become pre-eminent. We
may agree with Johnson that Pope performing upon a pastoral pipe is
rather a ludicrous person, but for mere practice even nonsense verses
have been found useful.
The young gentleman was soon to give a far more characteristic specimen
of his peculiar powers. Poets, according to the ordinary rule, should
begin by exuberant fancy, and learn to prune and refine as the reasoning
faculties develop. But Pope was from the first a conscious and
deliberate artist. He had read the fashionable critics of his time, and
had accepted their canons as an embodiment of irrefragable reason. His
head was full of maxims, some of which strike us as palpable truisms,
and others as typical specimens of wooden pedantry. Dryden had set the
example of looking upon the French critics as authoritative lawgivers in
poetry. Boileau's art of poetry was carefully studied, as bits of it
were judiciously appropriated by Pope. Another authority was the great
Bossu, who wrote in 1675 a treatise on epic poetry; and the modern
reader may best judge of the doctrines characteristic of the school, by
the naive pedantry with which Addison, the typical man of taste of his
time, invokes the authority of Bossu and Aristotle, in his exposition of
Paradise Lost.[3] English writers were treading in the steps of Boileau
and Horace. Roscommon selected for a poem the lively topic of
"translated verse," and Sheffield had written with Dryden an essay upon
satire, and afterwards a more elaborate essay upon poetry. To these
masterpieces, said Addison, another masterpiece was now added by Pope's
Essay upon Criticism. Not only did Addison applaud, but later critics
have spoken of their wonder at the penetration, learning, and taste
exhibited by so young a man. The essay was carefully finished. Written
apparently in 1709, it was published in 1711. This was as short a time,
said Pope to Spence, as he ever let anything of his lie by him; he no
doubt employed it, according to his custom, in correcting and revising,
and he had prepared himself by carefully digesting the whole in prose.
It is, however, written without any elaborate logical plan, though it is
quite sufficiently coherent for its purpose. The maxims on which Pope
chiefly dwells are, for the most part, the obvious rules which have been
the common property of all generations of critics. One would scarcely
ask for originality in such a case, any more than one would desire a
writer on ethics to invent new laws of morality. "We require neither
Pope nor Aristotle to tell us that critics should not be pert nor
prejudiced; that fancy should be regulated by judgment; that apparent
facility comes by long training; that the sound should have some
conformity to the meaning; that genius is often envied; and that dulness
is frequently beyond the reach of reproof. "We might even guess, without
the authority of Pope, backed by Bacon, that there are some beauties
which cannot be taught by method, but must be reached "by a kind of
felicity." It is not the less interesting to notice Pope's skill in
polishing these rather rusty sayings into the appearance of novelty. In
a familiar line Pope gives us the view which he would himself apply in
such cases.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
The only fair question, in short, is whether Pope has managed to give a
lasting form to some of the floating commonplaces which have more or
less suggested themselves to every writer. If we apply this test, we
must admit that if the essay upon criticism does not show deep thought,
it shows singular skill in putting old truths. Pope undeniably succeeded
in hitting off many phrases of marked felicity. He already showed the
power, in which he was probably unequalled, of coining aphorisms out of
commonplace. Few people read the essay now, but everybody is aware that
"fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and has heard the warning--
A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring--
maxims which may not commend themselves as strictly accurate to a
scientific reasoner, but which have as much truth as one can demand from
an epigram. And besides many sayings which share in some degree their
merit, there are occasional passages which rise, at least, to the height
of graceful rhetoric if they are scarcely to be called poetical. One
simile was long famous, and was called by Johnson the best in the
language. It is that in which the sanguine youth, overwhelmed by a
growing perception of the boundlessness of possible attainments, is
compared to the traveller crossing the mountains, and seeing--
Hills peep o'er hills and Alps on Alps arise.
The poor simile is pretty well forgotten, but is really a good specimen
of Pope's brilliant declamation.
The essay, however, is not uniformly polished. Between the happier
passages we have to cross stretches of flat prose twisted into rhyme;
Pope seems to have intentionally pitched his style at a prosaic level as
fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come
upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all
grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always
strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when
the context was forgotten and the subject had lost its freshness.
Critics, again, have remarked upon the poverty of the rhymes, and
observed that he makes ten rhymes to "wit" and twelve to "sense." The
frequent recurrence of the words is the more awkward because they are
curiously ambiguous. "Wit" was beginning to receive its modern meaning;
but Pope uses it vaguely as sometimes equivalent to intelligence in
general, sometimes to the poetic faculty, and sometimes to the erratic
fancy, which the true poet restrains by sense. Pope would have been
still more puzzled if asked to define precisely what he meant by the
antithesis between nature and art. They are somehow opposed, yet art
turns out to be only "nature methodized." We have indeed a clue for our
guidance; to study nature, we are told, is the same thing as to study
Homer, and Homer should be read day and night, with Virgil for a comment
and Aristotle for an expositor. Nature, good sense, Homer, Virgil, and
the Stagyrite all, it seems, come to much the same thing.
It would be very easy to pick holes in this very loose theory. But it is
better to try to understand the point of view indicated; for, in truth,
Pope is really stating the assumptions which guided his whole career. No
one will accept his position at the present time; but any one who is
incapable of, at least, a provisional sympathy, may as well throw Pope
aside at once, and with Pope most contemporary literature.
The dominant figure in Pope's day was the Wit. The wit--taken
personally--was the man who represented what we now describe by culture
or the spirit of the age. Bright clear common sense was for once having
its own way, and tyrannizing over the faculties from which it too often
suffers violence. The favoured faculty never doubted its own
qualification for supremacy in every department. In metaphysics it was
triumphing with Hobbes and Locke over the remnants of scholasticism;
under Tillotson, it was expelling mystery from religion; and in art it
was declaring war against the extravagant, the romantic, the mystic, and
the Gothic,--a word then used as a simple term of abuse. Wit and sense
are but different avatars of the same spirit; wit was the form in which
it showed itself in coffee-houses, and sense that in which it appeared
in the pulpit or parliament. When Walsh told Pope to be correct, he was
virtually advising him to carry the same spirit into poetry. The
classicism of the time was the natural corollary; for the classical
models were the historical symbols of the movement which Pope
represented. He states his view very tersely in the essay. Classical
culture had been overwhelmed by the barbarians, and the monks "finished
what the Goths began." Letters revived when the study of classical
models again gave an impulse and supplied a guidance.
At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
The glory of the priesthood and their shame,
Stemm'd the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove these holy Vandals off the stage.
The classicalism of Pope's time was no doubt very different from that of
the period of Erasmus; but in his view it differed only because the
contemporaries of Dryden had more thoroughly dispersed the mists of the
barbarism which still obscured the Shakspearean age, and from which even
Milton or Cowley had not completely escaped. Dryden and Boileau and the
French critics, with their interpreters Roscommon, Sheffield, and Walsh,
who found rules in Aristotle, and drew their precedents from Homer,
were at last stating the pure canons of unadulterated sense. To this
school, wit and sense, and nature, and the classics, all meant pretty
much the same. That was pronounced to be unnatural which was too silly,
or too far-fetched, or too exalted, to approve itself to the good sense
of a wit; and the very incarnation and eternal type of good sense and
nature was to be found in the classics. The test of thorough polish and
refinement was the power of ornamenting a speech with an appropriate
phrase from Horace or Virgil, or prefixing a Greek motto to an essay in
the _Spectator_. If it was necessary to give to any utterance an air of
philosophical authority, a reference to Longinus or Aristotle was the
natural device. Perhaps the acquaintance with classics might not be very
profound; but the classics supplied at least a convenient symbol for the
spirit which had triumphed against Gothic barbarism and scholastic
pedantry.
Even the priggish wits of that day were capable of being bored by
didactic poetry, and especially by such didactic poetry as resolved
itself too easily into a string of maxims, not more poetical in
substance than the immortal "'Tis a sin to steal a pin." The
essay--published anonymously--did not make any rapid success till Pope
sent round copies to well-known critics. Addison's praise and Dennis's
abuse helped, as we shall presently see, to give it notoriety. Pope,
however, returned from criticism to poetry, and his next performance was
in some degree a fresh, but far less puerile, performance upon the
pastoral pipe.[4] Nothing could be more natural than for the young poet
to take for a text the forest in which he lived. Dull as the natives
might be, their dwelling-place was historical, and there was an
excellent precedent for such a performance. Pope, as we have seen, was
familiar with Milton's juvenile poems; but such works as the Allegro and
Penseroso were too full of the genuine country spirit to suit his
probable audience. Wycherley, whom he frequently invited to come to
Binfield, would undoubtedly have found Milton a bore. But Sir John
Denham, a thoroughly masculine, if not, as Pope calls him, a majestic
poet, was a guide whom the Wycherleys would respect. His _Cooper's Hill_
(in 1642) was the first example of what Johnson calls local
poetry--poetry, that is, devoted to the celebration of a particular
place; and, moreover, it was one of the early models of the rhythm which
became triumphant in the hands of Dryden. One couplet is still
familiar:--
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.
The poem has some vigorous descriptive touches, but is in the main a
forcible expression of the moral and political reflections which would
be approved by the admirers of good sense in poetry.
Pope's _Windsor Forest_, which appeared in the beginning of 1713, is
closely and avowedly modelled upon this original. There is still a
considerable infusion of the puerile classicism of the Pastorals, which
contrasts awkwardly with Denham's strength, and a silly episode about
the nymph Lodona changed into the river Loddon by Diana, to save her
from the pursuit of Pan. But the style is animated, and the
descriptions, though seldom original, show Pope's frequent felicity of
language. Wordsworth, indeed, was pleased to say that Pope had here
introduced almost the only "new images of internal nature" to be found
between Milton and Thomson. Probably the good Wordsworth was wishing to
do a little bit of excessive candour. Pope will not introduce his
scenery without a turn suited to the taste of the town:--
Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display,
And part admit and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's fond address,
Nor quite indulges nor can quite repress.
He has some well turned lines upon the sports of the forest, though they
are clearly not the lines of a sportsman. They betray something of the
sensitive lad's shrinking from the rough squires whose only literature
consisted of Durfey's songs, and who would have heartily laughed at his
sympathy for a dying pheasant. I may observe in passing that Pope always
showed the true poet's tenderness for the lower animals, and disgust at
bloodshed. He loved his dog, and said that he would have inscribed over
his grave, "O rare Bounce," but for the appearance of ridiculing "rare
Ben Jonson." He spoke with horror of a contemporary dissector of live
dogs, and the pleasantest of his papers in the _Guardian_ is a warm
remonstrance against cruelty to animals. He "dares not" attack hunting,
he says--and, indeed, such an attack requires some courage even at the
present day--but he evidently has no sympathy with huntsmen, and has to
borrow his description from Statius, which was hardly the way to get the
true local colour. _Windsor Forest_, however, like _Cooper's Hill_,
speedily diverges into historical and political reflections. The
barbarity of the old forest laws, the poets Denham and Cowley and
Surrey, who had sung on the banks of the Thames, and the heroes who
made Windsor illustrious, suggest obvious thoughts, put into verses
often brilliant, though sometimes affected, varied by a compliment to
Trumbull and an excessive eulogy of Granville, to whom the poem is
inscribed. The whole is skilfully adapted to the time by a brilliant
eulogy upon the peace which was concluded just as the poem was
published. The Whig poet Tickell, soon to be Pope's rival, was
celebrating the same "lofty theme" on his "artless reed," and
introducing a pretty little compliment to Pope. To readers who have lost
the taste for poetry of this class one poem may seem about as good as
the other; but Pope's superiority is plain enough to a reader who will
condescend to distinguish. His verses are an excellent specimen of his
declamatory style--polished, epigrammatic, and well expressed; and,
though keeping far below the regions of true poetry, preserving just
that level which would commend them to the literary statesmen and the
politicians at Will's and Button's. Perhaps some advocate of Free Trade
might try upon a modern audience the lines in which Pope expresses his
aspiration in a footnote that London may one day become a "FREE PORT."
There is at least not one antiquated or obscure phrase in the whole.
Here are half-a-dozen lines:--
The time shall come, when, free as seas and wind,
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide;
Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold,
And the new world launch forth to seek the old.
In the next few years Pope found other themes for the display of his
declamatory powers. Of the _Temple of Fame_ (1715), a frigid imitation
of Chaucer, I need only say that it is one of Pope's least successful
performances; but I must notice more fully two rhetorical poems which
appeared in 1717. These were the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
Lady_ and the _Eloisa to Abelard_. Both poems, and especially the last,
have received the warmest praises from Pope's critics, and even from
critics who were most opposed to his school. They are, in fact, his
chief performances of the sentimental kind. Written in his youth, and
yet when his powers of versification had reached their fullest maturity,
they represent an element generally absent from his poetry. Pope was at
the period in which, if ever, a poet should sing of love, and in which
we expect the richest glow and fervour of youthful imagination. Pope was
neither a Burns, nor a Byron, nor a Keats; but here, if anywhere, we
should find those qualities in which he has most affinity to the poets
of passion or of sensuous emotion, not soured by experience or purified
by reflection. The motives of the two poems were skilfully chosen.
Pope--as has already appeared to some extent--was rarely original in his
designs; he liked to have the outlines at last drawn for him, to be
filled with his own colouring. The _Eloisa to Abelard_ was founded upon
a translation from the French, published in 1714 by Hughes (author of
the _Siege of Damascus_), which is itself a manipulated translation from
the famous Latin originals. Pope, it appears, kept very closely to the
words of the English translation, and in some places has done little
more than versify the prose, though, of course, it is compressed,
rearranged, and modified. The _Unfortunate Lady_ has been the cause of a
good deal of controversy. Pope's elegy implies, vaguely enough, that she
had been cruelly treated by her guardians, and had committed suicide in
some foreign country. The verses, as commentators decided, showed such
genuine feeling, that the story narrated in them must have been
authentic, and one of his own correspondents (Caryll) begged him for an
explanation of the facts. Pope gave no answer, but left a posthumous
note to an edition of his letters calculated, perhaps intended, to
mystify future inquirers. The lady, a Mrs. Weston, to whom the note
pointed, did not die till 1724, and could therefore not have committed
suicide in 1717. The mystification was childish enough, though if Pope
had committed no worse crime of the kind, one would not consider him to
be a very grievous offender. The inquiries of Mr. Dilke, who cleared up
this puzzle, show that there were in fact two ladies, Mrs. Weston and a
Mrs. Cope, known to Pope about this time, both of whom suffered under
some domestic persecution. Pope seems to have taken up their cause with
energy, and sent money to Mrs. Cope when, at a later period, she was
dying abroad in great distress. His zeal seems to have been sincere and
generous, and it is possible enough that the elegy was a reflection of
his feelings, though it suggested an imaginary state of facts. If this
be so, the reference to the lady in his posthumous note contained some
relation to the truth, though if taken too literally it would be
misleading.
The poems themselves are, beyond all doubt, impressive compositions.
They are vivid and admirably worked. "Here," says Johnson of the _Eloisa
to Abelard_, the most important of the two, "is particularly observable
the _curiosa felicitas_, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here
is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language." So far there can be
no dispute. The style has the highest degree of technical perfection,
and it is generally added that the poems are as pathetic as they are
exquisitely written. Bowles, no hearty lover of Pope, declared the
Eloisa to be "infinitely superior to everything of the kind, ancient or
modern." The tears shed, says Hazlitt of the same poem, "are drops
gushing from the heart; the words are burning sighs breathed from the
soul of love." And De Quincey ends an eloquent criticism by declaring
that the "lyrical tumult of the changes, the hope, the tears, the
rapture, the penitence, the despair, place the reader in tumultuous
sympathy with the poor distracted nun." The pathos of the _Unfortunate
Lady_ has been almost equally praised, and I may quote from it a famous
passage which Mackintosh repeated with emotion to repel a charge of
coldness brought against Pope:--
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dress'd,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.
The more elaborate poetry of the _Eloisa_ is equally polished
throughout, and too much praise cannot easily be bestowed upon the skill
with which the romantic scenery of the convent is indicated in the
background, and the force with which Pope has given the revulsions of
feeling of his unfortunate heroine from earthly to heavenly love, and
from keen remorse to renewed gusts of overpowering passion. All this may
be said, and without opposing high critical authority. And yet, I must
also say, whether with or without authority, that I, at least, can read
the poems without the least "disposition to cry," and that a single
pathetic touch of Cowper or Wordsworth strikes incomparably deeper. And
if I seek for a reason, it seems to be simply that Pope never crosses
the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable, line which separates true poetry
from rhetoric. The Eloisa ends rather flatly by one of Pope's
characteristic aphorisms. "He best can paint them (the woes, that is, of
Eloisa) who shall feel them most;" and it is characteristic, by the way,
that even in these his most impassioned verses, the lines which one
remembers are of the same epigrammatic stamp, e.g.:
A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be!
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
The worker in moral aphorisms cannot forget himself even in the full
swing of his fervid declamation. I have no doubt that Pope so far
exemplified his own doctrine that he truly felt whilst he was writing.
His feelings make him eloquent, but they do not enable him to "snatch a
grace beyond the reach of art," to blind us for a moment to the presence
of the consummate workman, judiciously blending his colours, heightening
his effects, and skilfully managing his transitions or consciously
introducing an abrupt outburst of a new mood. The smoothness of the
verses imposes monotony even upon the varying passions which are
supposed to struggle in Eloisa's breast. It is not merely our knowledge
that Pope is speaking dramatically which prevents us from receiving the
same kind of impressions as we receive from poetry--such, for example,
as some of Cowper's minor pieces--into which we know that a man is
really putting his whole heart. The comparison would not be fair, for in
such cases we are moved by knowledge of external facts as well as by the
poetic power. But it is simply that Pope always resembles an orator
whose gestures are studied, and who thinks while he is speaking of the
fall of his robes and the attitude of his hands. He is throughout
academical; and though knowing with admirable nicety how grief should be
represented, and what have been the expedients of his best predecessors,
he misses the one essential touch of spontaneous impulse.
One other blemish is perhaps more fatal to the popularity of the Eloisa.
There is a taint of something unwholesome and effeminate. Pope, it is
true, is only following the language of the original in the most
offensive passages; but we see too plainly that he has dwelt too fondly
upon those passages, and worked them up with especial care. We need not
be prudish in our judgment of impassioned poetry; but when the passion
has this false ring, the ethical coincides with the æsthetic objection.
I have mentioned these poems here, because they seem to be the
development of the rhetorical vein which appeared in the earlier work.
But I have passed over another work which has sometimes been regarded as
his masterpiece. A Lord Petre had offended a Miss Fermor by stealing a
lock of her hair. She thought that he showed more gallantry than
courtesy, and some unpleasant feeling resulted between the families.
Pope's friend, Caryll, thought that it might be appeased if the young
poet would turn the whole affair into friendly ridicule. Nobody, it
might well be supposed, had a more dexterous touch; and a brilliant
trifle from his hands, just fitted for the atmosphere of drawing-rooms,
would be a convenient peace-offering, and was the very thing in which he
might be expected to succeed. Pope accordingly set to work at a dainty
little mock-heroic, in which he describes, in playful mockery of the
conventional style, the fatal coffee-drinking at Hampton, in which the
too daring peer appropriated the lock. The poem received the praise
which it well deserved; for certainly the young poet had executed his
task to a nicety. No more brilliant, sparkling, vivacious trifle, is to
be found in our literature than the _Rape of the Lock_, even in this
early form. Pope received permission from the lady to publish it in
Lintot's Miscellany in 1712, and a wider circle admired it, though it
seems that the lady and her family began to think that young Mr. Pope
was making rather too free with her name. Pope meanwhile, animated by
his success, hit upon a singularly happy conception, by which he thought
that the poem might be rendered more important. The solid critics of
those days were much occupied with the machinery of epic poems; the
machinery being composed of the gods and goddesses who, from the days of
Homer, had attended to the fortunes of heroes. He had hit upon a curious
French book, the _Comte de Gabalis_, which professes to reveal the
mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and it occurred to him that the elemental
sylphs and gnomes would serve his purpose admirably. He spoke of his new
device to Addison, who administered--and there is not the slightest
reason for doubting his perfect sincerity and good meaning--a little
dose of cold water. The poem, as it stood, was a "delicious little
thing"--_merum sal_--and it would be a pity to alter it. Pope, however,
adhered to his plan, made a splendid success, and thought that Addison
must have been prompted by some mean motive. The _Rape of the Lock_
appeared in its new form, with sylphs and gnomes, and an ingenious
account of a game at cards and other improvements, in 1714. Pope
declared, and critics have agreed, that he never showed more skill than
in the remodelling of this poem; and it has ever since held a kind of
recognised supremacy amongst the productions of the drawing-room muse.
The reader must remember that the so-called heroic style of Pope's
period is now hopelessly effete. No human being would care about
machinery and the rules of Bossu, or read without utter weariness the
mechanical imitations of Homer and Virgil which were occasionally
attempted by the Blackmores and other less ponderous versifiers. The
shadow grows dim with the substance. The burlesque loses its point when
we care nothing for the original; and, so far, Pope's bit of
filigree-work, as Hazlitt calls it, has become tarnished. The very
mention of beaux and belles suggests the kind of feeling with which we
disinter fragments of old-world finery from the depths of an ancient
cabinet, and even the wit is apt to sound wearisome. And further, it
must be allowed to some hostile critics that Pope has a worse defect.
The poem is, in effect, a satire upon feminine frivolity. It continues
the strain of mockery against hoops and patches and their wearers, which
supplied Addison and his colleagues with the materials of so many
_Spectators_. I think that even in Addison there is something which
rather jars upon us. His persiflage is full of humour and kindliness,
but underlying it there is a tone of superiority to women which is
sometimes offensive. It is taken for granted that a woman is a fool, or
at least should be flattered if any man condescends to talk sense to
her. With Pope this tone becomes harsher, and the merciless satirist
begins to show himself. In truth, Pope can be inimitably pungent, but he
can never be simply playful. Addison was too condescending with his
pretty pupils; but under Pope's courtesy there lurks contempt, and his
smile has a disagreeable likeness to a sneer. If Addison's manner
sometimes suggests the blandness of a don who classes women with the
inferior beings unworthy of the Latin grammar, Pope suggests the
brilliant wit whose contempt has a keener edge from his resentment
against fine ladies blinded to his genius by his personal deformity.
Even in his dedication, Pope, with unconscious impertinence, insults his
heroine for her presumable ignorance of his critical jargon. His smart
epigrams want but a slight change of tone to become satire. It is the
same writer who begins an essay on women's characters by telling a woman
that her sex is a compound of
Matter too soft a lasting mask to bear;
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair,
and communicates to her the pleasant truth that
Every woman is at heart a rake.
Women, in short, are all frivolous beings, whose one genuine interest is
in love-making. The same sentiment is really implied in the more playful
lines in the _Rape of the Lock_. The sylphs are warned by omens that
some misfortune impends; but they don't know what.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw;
Or stain her honour or her new brocade,
Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade;
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball,
Or whether heaven has doom'd that Shock must fall.
We can understand that Miss Fermor would feel such raillery to be
equivocal. It may be added, that an equal want of delicacy is implied in
the mock-heroic battle at the end, where the ladies are gifted with an
excess of screaming power:--
'Restore the lock!' she cries, and all around
'Restore the lock,' the vaulted roofs rebound--
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roar'd for the handkerchief that caused his pain.
These faults, though far from trifling, are yet felt only as blemishes
in the admirable beauty and brilliance of the poem. The successive
scenes are given with so firm and clear a touch--there is such a sense
of form, the language is such a dexterous elevation of the ordinary
social twaddle into the mock-heroic, that it is impossible not to
recognize a consummate artistic power. The dazzling display of true wit
and fancy blinds us for the time to the want of that real tenderness and
humour, which would have softened some harsh passages, and given a more
enduring charm to the poetry. It has, in short, the merit that belongs
to any work of art which expresses in the most finished form the
sentiment characteristic of a given social phase; one deficient in many
of the most ennobling influences, but yet one in which the arts of
converse represent a very high development of shrewd sense refined into
vivid wit. And we may, I think, admit that there is some foundation for
the genealogy that traces Pope's Ariel back to his more elevated
ancestor in the _Tempest_. The later Ariel, indeed, is regarded as the
soul of a coquette, and is almost an allegory of the spirit of poetic
fancy in slavery to polished society.
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain
While clogg'd he beats his silken wings in vain.
Pope's Ariel is a parody of the ethereal being into whom Shakspeare had
refined the ancient fairy; but it is a parody which still preserves a
sense of the delicate and graceful. The ancient race which appeared for
the last time in this travesty of the fashion of Queen Anne, still
showed some touch of its ancient beauty. Since that time no fairy has
appeared without being hopelessly childish or affected.
Let us now turn from the poems to the author's personal career during
the same period. In the remarkable autobiographic poem called the
_Epistle to Arbuthnot_, Pope speaks of his early patrons and friends,
and adds--
Soft were my numbers; who could take offence
When pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress or a purling stream.
Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill--
I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answer'd,--I was not in debt.
Pope's view of his own career suggests the curious problem: how it came
to pass that so harmless a man should be the butt of so many
hostilities? How could any man be angry with a writer of gentle
pastorals and versified love-letters? The answer of Pope was, that this
was the normal state of things. "The life of a wit," he says, in the
preface to his works, "is a warfare upon earth;" and the warfare results
from the hatred of men of genius natural to the dull. Had any one else
made such a statement, Pope would have seen its resemblance to the
complaint of the one reasonable juryman overpowered by eleven obstinate
fellows. But we may admit that an intensely sensitive nature is a bad
qualification for a public career. A man who ventures into the throng of
competitors without a skin will be tortured by every touch, and suffer
the more if he turns to retaliate.
Pope's first literary performances had not been so harmless as he
suggests. Amongst the minor men of letters of the day was the surly John
Dennis. He was some thirty years Pope's senior; a writer of dreary
tragedies which had gained a certain success by their Whiggish
tendencies, and of ponderous disquisitions upon critical questions, not
much cruder in substance though heavier in form than many utterances of
Addison or Steele. He could, however, snarl out some shrewd things when
provoked, and was known to the most famous wits of the day. He had
corresponded with Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherley, and published some of
their letters. Pope, it seems, had been introduced to him by Cromwell,
but they had met only two or three times. When Pope had become ashamed
of following Wycherley about like a dog, he would soon find out that a
Dennis did not deserve the homage of a rising genius. Possibly Dennis
had said something of Pope's Pastorals, and Pope had probably been a
witness, perhaps more than a mere witness, to some passage of arms in
which Dennis lost his temper. In mere youthful impertinence he
introduced an offensive touch in the _Essay upon Criticism_. It would be
well, he said, if critics could advise authors freely,--
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares, tremendous, with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
The name Appius referred to Dennis's tragedy of _Appius and Virginia_, a
piece now recollected solely by the fact that poor Dennis had invented
some new thunder for the performance; and by his piteous complaint
against the actors for afterwards "stealing his thunder," had started a
proverbial expression. Pope's reference stung Dennis to the quick. He
replied by a savage pamphlet, pulling Pope's essay to pieces, and
hitting some real blots, but diverging into the coarsest personal abuse.
Not content with saying in his preface that he was attacked with the
utmost falsehood and calumny by a little affected hypocrite, who had
nothing in his mouth but truth, candour, and good-nature, he reviled
Pope for his personal defects; insinuated that he was a hunch-backed
toad; declared that he was the very shape of the bow of the god of love;
that he might be thankful that he was born a modern, for had he been
born of Greek parents his life would have been no longer than that of
one of his poems, namely, half a day; and that his outward form, however
like a monkey's, could not deviate more from the average of humanity
than his mind. These amenities gave Pope his first taste of good savage
slashing abuse. The revenge was out of all proportion to the offence.
Pope, at first, seemed to take the assault judiciously. He kept silence,
and simply marked some of the faults exposed by Dennis for alteration.
But the wound rankled, and when an opportunity presently offered itself,
Pope struck savagely at his enemy. To show how this came to pass, I must
rise from poor old Dennis to a more exalted literary sphere.
The literary world, in which Dryden had recently been, and Pope was soon
to be, the most conspicuous figure, was for the present under the mild
dictatorship of Addison. We know Addison as one of the most kindly and
delicate of humourists, and we can perceive the gentleness which made
him one of the most charming of companions in a small society. His sense
of the ludicrous saved him from the disagreeable ostentation of powers
which were never applied to express bitterness of feeling or to edge
angry satire. The reserve of his sensitive nature made access difficult,
but he was so transparently modest and unassuming that his shyness was
not, as is too often the case, mistaken for pride. It is easy to
understand the posthumous affection which Macaulay has so eloquently
expressed, and the contemporary popularity which, according to Swift,
would have made people unwilling to refuse him had he asked to be king.
And yet I think that one cannot read Addison's praises without a certain
recalcitration, like that which one feels in the case of the model boy
who wins all the prizes, including that for good conduct. It is hard to
feel very enthusiastic about a virtue whose dictates coincide so
precisely with the demands of decorum, and which leads by so easy a path
to reputation and success. Popularity is more often significant of the
tact which makes a man avoid giving offence, than of the warm impulses
of a generous nature. A good man who mixes with the world ought to be
hated, if not to hate. But whatever we may say against his excessive
goodness, Addison deserved and received universal esteem, which in some
cases became enthusiastic. Foremost amongst his admirers was the
warm-hearted, reckless, impetuous Steele, the typical Irishman; and
amongst other members of his little senate--as Pope called it--were
Ambrose Philips and Tickell, young men of letters and sound Whig
politics, and more or less competitors of Pope in literature. When Pope
was first becoming known in London the Whigs were out of power; Addison
and his friends were generally to be found at Button's Coffee-house in
the afternoon, and were represented to the society of the time by the
_Spectator_, which began in March, 1711, and appeared daily to the end
of 1712. Naturally, the young Pope would be anxious to approach this
famous clique, though his connexions lay in the first instance amongst
the Jacobite and Catholic families. Steele, too, would be glad to
welcome so promising a contributor to the _Spectator_ and its successor
the _Guardian_.
Pope, we may therefore believe, was heartily delighted when, some months
after Dennis's attack, a notice of his _Essay upon Criticism_ appeared
in the _Spectator_, December 20, 1711. The reviewer censured some
attacks upon contemporaries--a reference obviously to the lines upon
Dennis--which the author had admitted into his "very fine poem;" but
there were compliments enough to overbalance this slight reproof. Pope
wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Steele, overflowing with the
sincerest gratitude of a young poet on his first recognition by a high
authority. Steele, in reply, disclaimed the article, and promised to
introduce Pope to its real author, the great Addison himself. It does
not seem that the acquaintance thus opened with the Addisonians ripened
very rapidly, or led to any considerable results. Pope, indeed, is said
to have written some _Spectators_. He certainly sent to Steele his
_Messiah_, a sacred eclogue in imitation of Virgil's _Pollio_. It
appeared on May 14th, 1712, and is one of Pope's dexterous pieces of
workmanship, in which phrases from Isaiah are so strung together as to
form a good imitation of the famous poem, which was once supposed to
entitle Virgil to some place among the inspired heralds of Christianity.
Pope sent another letter or two to Steele, which look very much like
intended contributions to the _Spectator_, and a short letter about
Hadrian's verses to his soul, which appeared in November, 1712. When, in
1713, the _Guardian_ succeeded the _Spectator_, Pope was one of Steele's
contributors, and a paper by him upon dedications appeared as the fourth
number. He soon gave a more remarkable proof of his friendly relations
with Addison.
It is probable that no first performance of a play upon the English
stage ever excited so much interest as that of Addison's _Cato_. It was
not only the work of the first man of letters of the day, but it had, or
was taken to have, a certain political significance. "The time was
come," says Johnson, "when those who affected to think liberty in danger
affected likewise to think that a stage-play might preserve it."
Addison, after exhibiting more than the usual display of reluctance,
prepared his play for representation, and it was undoubtedly taken to be
in some sense a Whig manifesto. It was therefore remarkable that he
should have applied to Pope for a prologue, though Pope's connexions
were entirely of the anti-Whiggish kind, and a passage in _Windsor
Forest_, his last new poem (it appeared in March 1713), indicated pretty
plainly a refusal to accept the Whig shibboleths. In the _Forest_ he was
enthusiastic for the peace, and sneered at the Revolution. Pope
afterwards declared that Addison had disavowed all party intentions at
the time, and he accused him of insincerity for afterwards taking credit
(in a poetical dedication of _Cato_) for the services rendered by his
play to the cause of liberty. Pope's assertion is worthless in any case
where he could exalt his own character for consistency at another man's
expense, but it is true that both parties were inclined to equivocate.
It is, indeed, difficult to understand how, if any "stage-play could
preserve liberty," such a play as _Cato_ should do the work. The
polished declamation is made up of the platitudes common to Whigs and
Tories; and Bolingbroke gave the one to his own party when he presented
fifty guineas to _Cato_'s representative for defending the cause of
liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs, said Pope,
design a second present when they can contrive as good a saying.
Bolingbroke was, of course, aiming at Marlborough, and his
interpretation was intrinsically as plausible as any that could have
been devised by his antagonists. Each side could adopt _Cato_ as easily
as rival sects can quote the Bible; and it seems possible that Addison
may have suggested to Pope that nothing in _Cato_ could really offend
his principles. Addison, as Pope also tells us, thought the prologue
ambiguous, and altered "Britons, _arise_!" to "Britons, _attend_!" lest
the phrase should be thought to hint at a new revolution. Addison
advised Pope about this time not to be content with the applause of
"half the nation," and perhaps regarded him as one who, by the fact of
his external position with regard to parties, would be a more
appropriate sponsor for the play.
Whatever the intrinsic significance of _Cato_, circumstances gave it a
political colour; and Pope, in a lively description of the first
triumphant night to his friend Caryll, says, that as author of the
successful and very spirited prologue, he was clapped into a Whig,
sorely against his will, at every two lines. Shortly before he had
spoken in the warmest terms to the same correspondent of the admirable
moral tendency of the work; and perhaps he had not realized the full
party significance till he became conscious of the impression produced
upon the audience. Not long afterwards (letter of June 12, 1713), we
find him complaining that his connexion with Steele and the _Guardian_
was giving offence to some honest Jacobites. Had they known the nature
of the connexion, they need hardly have grudged Steele his contributor.
His next proceedings possibly suggested the piece of advice which
Addison gave to Lady M. W. Montagu: "Leave Pope as soon as you can; he
will certainly play you some devilish trick else."
His first trick was calculated to vex an editor's soul. Ambrose Philips,
as I have said, had published certain pastorals in the same volume with
Pope's. Philips, though he seems to have been less rewarded than most of
his companions, was certainly accepted as an attached member of
Addison's "little senate;" and that body was not more free than other
mutual admiration societies from the desire to impose its own prejudices
upon the public. When Philips's _Distressed Mother_, a close imitation
of Racine's _Andromaque_, was preparing for the stage, the Spectator was
taken by Will Honeycomb to a rehearsal (_Spectator_, January 31, 1712),
and Sir Roger de Coverley himself attended one of the performances
(_Ib._, March 25) and was profoundly affected by its pathos. The last
paper was of course by Addison, and is a real triumph of art as a most
delicate application of humour to the slightly unworthy purpose of
puffing a friend and disciple. Addison had again praised Philips's
Pastorals in the _Spectator_ (October 30, 1712), and amongst the early
numbers of the _Guardian_ were a short series of papers upon pastoral
poetry, in which the fortunate Ambrose was again held up as a model,
whilst no notice was taken of Pope's rival performance. Pope, one may
believe, had a contempt for Philips, whose pastoral inanities, whether
better or worse than his own, had not the excuse of being youthful
productions. Philips has bequeathed to our language the phrase
"Namby-pamby," imposed upon him by Henry Carey (author of _Sally in our
Alley_, and the clever farce _Chrononhotonthologos_), and years after
this he wrote a poem to Miss Pulteney in the nursery, beginning,--
"Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,"
which may sufficiently interpret the meaning of his nickname. Pope's
irritable vanity was vexed at the liberal praises bestowed on such a
rival, and he revenged himself by an artifice more ingenious than
scrupulous. He sent an anonymous article to Steele for the _Guardian_.
It is a professed continuation of the previous papers on pastorals, and
is ostensibly intended to remove the appearance of partiality arising
from the omission of Pope's name. In the first paragraphs the design is
sufficiently concealed to mislead an unwary reader into the belief that
Philips is preferred to Pope; but the irony soon becomes transparent,
and Philips's antiquated affectation is contrasted with the polish of
Pope, who is said even to "deviate into downright poetry." Steele, it is
said, was so far mystified as to ask Pope's permission to publish the
criticism. Pope generously permitted, and accordingly Steele printed
what he must soon have discovered to be a shrewd attack upon his old
friend and ally. Some writers have found a difficulty in understanding
how Steele could have so blundered. One might, perhaps, whisper in
confidence to the discreet, that even editors are mortal, and that
Steele was conceivably capable of the enormity of reading papers
carelessly. Philips was furious, and hung up a birch in Button's
Coffee-house, declaring that he would apply it to his tormentor should
he ever show his nose in the room. As Philips was celebrated for skill
with the sword, the mode of vengeance was certainly unmanly, and stung
the soul of his adversary, always morbidly sensitive to all attacks, and
especially to attacks upon his person. The hatred thus kindled was never
quenched, and breathes in some of Pope's bitterest lines.
If not a "devilish trick," this little performance was enough to make
Pope's relations to the Addison set decidedly unpleasant. Addison is
said (but the story is very improbable) to have enjoyed the joke. If so,
a vexatious incident must have changed his view of Pope's pleasantries,
though Pope professedly appeared as his defender. Poor old
Thersites-Dennis published, during the summer, a very bitter attack upon
Addison's _Cato_. He said afterwards--though, considering the relations
of the men, some misunderstanding is probable--that Pope had indirectly
instigated this attack through the bookseller, Lintot. If so, Pope must
have deliberately contrived the trap for the unlucky Dennis; and, at any
rate, he fell upon Dennis as soon as the trap was sprung. Though Dennis
was a hot-headed Whig, he had quarrelled with Addison and Steele, and
was probably jealous, as the author of tragedies intended, like _Cato_,
to propagate Whig principles, perhaps to turn Whig prejudices to
account. He writes with the bitterness of a disappointed and unlucky
man, but he makes some very fair points against his enemy. Pope's
retaliation took the form of an anonymous "Narrative of the Frenzy of
John Dennis."[5] It is written in that style of coarse personal satire
of which Swift was a master, but for which Pope was very ill fitted. All
his neatness of style seems to desert him when he tries this tone, and
nothing is left but a brutal explosion of contemptuous hatred. Dennis is
described in his garret, pouring forth insane ravings prompted by his
disgust at the success of _Cato_; but not a word is said in reply to
Dennis' criticisms. It was plain enough that the author, whoever he
might be, was more anxious to satisfy a grudge against Dennis than to
defend Dennis's victim. It is not much of a compliment to Addison to say
that he had enough good feeling to scorn such a mode of retaliation, and
perspicuity enough to see that it would be little to his credit.
Accordingly, in his majestic way, he caused Steele to write a note to
Lintot (August 4, 1713), disavowing all complicity, and saying that if
even he noticed Mr. Dennis's criticisms, it should be in such a way as
to give Mr. Dennis no cause of complaint. He added that he had refused
to see the pamphlet when it was offered for his inspection, and had
expressed his disapproval of such a mode of attack. Nothing could be
more becoming; and it does not appear that Addison knew, when writing
this note, that Pope was the author of the anonymous assault. If, as the
biographers say, Addison's action was not kindly to Pope, it was bare
justice to poor Dennis. Pope undoubtedly must have been bitterly vexed
at the implied rebuff, and not the less because it was perfectly just.
He seems always to have regarded men of Dennis's type as outside the
pale of humanity. Their abuse stung him as keenly as if they had been
entitled to speak with authority, and yet he retorted it as though they
were not entitled to common decency. He would, to all appearance, have
regarded an appeal for mercy to a Grub-street author much as Dandie
Dinmont regarded Brown's tenderness to a "brock"--as a proof of
incredible imbecility, or, rather, of want of proper antipathy to
vermin. Dennis, like Philips, was inscribed on the long list of his
hatreds; and was pursued almost to the end of his unfortunate life.
Pope, it is true, took great credit to himself for helping his miserable
enemy when dying in distress, and wrote a prologue to a play acted for
his benefit. Yet even this prologue is a sneer, and one is glad to think
that Dennis was past understanding it. We hardly know whether to pity or
to condemn the unfortunate poet, whose unworthy hatreds made him suffer
far worse torments than those which he could inflict upon their objects.
By this time we may suppose that Pope must have been regarded with
anything but favour in the Addison circle; and, in fact, he was passing
into the opposite camp, and forming a friendship with Swift and Swift's
patrons. No open rupture followed with Addison for the present; but a
quarrel was approaching which is, perhaps, the most celebrated in our
literary history. Unfortunately, the more closely we look, the more
difficult it becomes to give any definite account of it. The statements
upon which accounts have been based have been chiefly those of Pope
himself; and these involve inconsistencies and demonstrably inaccurate
statements. Pope was anxious in later life to show that he had enjoyed
the friendship of a man so generally beloved, and was equally anxious to
show that he had behaved generously and been treated with injustice and,
indeed, with downright treachery. And yet, after reading the various
statements made by the original authorities, one begins to doubt whether
there was any real quarrel at all; or rather, if one may say so, whether
it was not a quarrel upon one side.
It is, indeed, plain that a coolness had sprung up between Pope and
Addison. Considering Pope's offences against the senate, his ridicule
of Philips, his imposition of that ridicule upon Steele, and his
indefensible use of Addison's fame as a stalking-horse in the attack
upon Dennis, it is not surprising that he should have been kept at arm's
length. If the rod suspended by Philips at Button's be authentic (as
seems probable), the talk about Pope, in the shadow of such an ornament,
is easily imaginable. Some attempts seem to have been made at a
reconciliation. Jervas, Pope's teacher in painting--a bad artist, but a
kindly man--tells Pope on August 20, 1714, of a conversation with
Addison. It would have been worth while, he says, for Pope to have been
hidden behind a wainscot or a half-length picture to have heard it.
Addison expressed a wish for friendly relations, was glad that Pope had
not been "carried too far among the enemy" by Swift, and hoped to be of
use to him at Court--for Queen Anne died on August 1st; the wheel had
turned; and the Whigs were once more the distributors of patronage.
Pope's answer to Jervas is in the dignified tone; he attributes
Addison's coolness to the ill offices of Philips, and is ready to be on
friendly terms whenever Addison recognizes his true character and
independence of party. Another letter follows, as addressed by Pope to
Addison himself; but here alas! if not in the preceding letters, we are
upon doubtful ground. In fact, it is impossible to doubt that the letter
has been manipulated after Pope's fashion, if not actually fabricated.
It is so dignified as to be insulting. It is like a box on the ear
administered by a pedagogue to a repentant but not quite pardoned pupil.
Pope has heard (from Jervas, it is implied) of Addison's profession; he
is glad to hope that the effect of some "late malevolences" is
disappearing; he will not believe (that is, he is strongly inclined to
believe) that the author of _Cato_ could mean one thing and say
another; he will show Addison his first two books of Homer as a proof of
this confidence, and hopes that it will not be abused; he challenges
Addison to point out the ill nature in the _Essay upon Criticism_; and
winds up by making an utterly irrelevant charge (as a proof, he says, of
his own sincerity) of plagiarism against one of Addison's _Spectators_.
Had such a letter been actually sent as it now stands, Addison's good
nature could scarcely have held out. As it is, we can only assume that
during 1714 Pope was on such terms with the clique at Button's, that a
quarrel would be a natural result. According to the ordinary account the
occasion presented itself in the next year.
A translation of the first Iliad by Tickell appeared (in June, 1715)
simultaneously with Pope's first volume. Pope had no right to complain.
No man could be supposed to have a monopoly in the translation of Homer.
Tickell had the same right to try his hand as Pope; and Pope fully
understood this himself. He described to Spence a conversation in which
Addison told him of Tickell's intended work. Pope replied that Tickell
was perfectly justified. Addison having looked over Tickell's
translation of the first book, said that he would prefer not to see
Pope's, as it might suggest double dealing; but consented to read Pope's
second book, and praised it warmly. In all this, by Pope's own showing,
Addison seems to have been scrupulously fair; and if he and the little
senate preferred Tickell's work on its first appearance, they had a full
right to their opinion, and Pope triumphed easily enough to pardon them.
"He was meditating a criticism upon Tickell," says Johnson, "when his
adversary sank before him without a blow." Pope's performance was
universally preferred, and even Tickell himself yielded by anticipation.
He said, in a short preface, that he had abandoned a plan of translating
the whole Iliad on finding that a much abler hand had undertaken the
work, and that he only published this specimen to bespeak favour for a
translation of the Odyssey. It was, say Pope's apologists, an awkward
circumstance that Tickell should publish at the same time as Pope, and
that is about all that they can say. It was, we may reply in
Stephenson's phrase, very awkward--for Tickell. In all this, in fact, it
seems impossible for any reasonable man to discover anything of which
Pope had the slightest ground of complaint; but his amazingly irritable
nature was not to be calmed by reason. The bare fact that a translation
of Homer appeared contemporaneously with his own, and that it came from
one of Addison's court, made him furious. He brooded over it, suspected
some dark conspiracy against his fame, and gradually mistook his morbid
fancies for solid inference. He thought that Tickell had been put up by
Addison as his rival, and gradually worked himself into the further
belief that Addison himself had actually written the translation which
passed under Tickell's name. It does not appear, so far as I know, when
or how this suspicion became current. Some time after Addison's death,
in 1719, a quarrel took place between Tickell, his literary executor,
and Steele. Tickell seemed to insinuate that Steele had not sufficiently
acknowledged his obligations to Addison, and Steele, in an angry retort,
called Tickell the "reputed translator" of the first Iliad, and
challenged him to translate another book successfully. The innuendo
shows that Steele, who certainly had some means of knowing, was willing
to suppose that Tickell had been helped by Addison. The manuscript of
Tickell's work, which has been preserved, is said to prove this to be an
error, and in any case there is no real ground for supposing that
Addison did anything more than he admittedly told Pope, that is, read
Tickell's manuscript and suggest corrections.
To argue seriously about other so-called proofs, would be waste of time.
They prove nothing except Pope's extreme anxiety to justify his wild
hypothesis of a dark conspiracy. Pope was jealous, spiteful, and
credulous. He was driven to fury by Tickell's publication, which had the
appearance of a competition. But angry as he was, he could find no real
cause of complaint, except by imagining a fictitious conspiracy; and
this complaint was never publicly uttered till long after Addison's
death. Addison knew, no doubt, of Pope's wrath, but probably cared
little for it, except to keep himself clear of so dangerous a companion.
He seems to have remained on terms of civility with his antagonist, and
no one would have been more surprised than he to hear of the quarrel,
upon which so much controversy has been expended.
The whole affair, so far as Addison's character is concerned, thus
appears to be a gigantic mare's nest. There is no proof, or even the
slightest presumption, that Addison or Addison's friends ever injured
Pope, though it is clear that they did not love him. It would have been
marvellous if they had. Pope's suspicions are a proof that in this case
he was almost subject to the illusion characteristic of actual insanity.
The belief that a man is persecuted by hidden conspirators is one of the
common symptoms in such cases; and Pope would seem to have been almost
in the initial stage of mental disease. His madness, indeed, was not
such as would lead us to call him morally irresponsible, nor was it the
kind of madness which is to be found in a good many people who well
deserve criminal prosecution; but it was a state of mind so morbid as to
justify some compassion for the unhappy offender.
One result besides the illustration of Pope's character remains to be
noticed. According to Pope's assertion it was a communication from Lord
Warwick which led him to write his celebrated copy of verses upon
Addison. Warwick (afterwards Addison's stepson) accused Addison of
paying Gildon for a gross libel upon Pope. Pope wrote to Addison, he
says, the next day. He said in this letter that he knew of Addison's
behaviour--and that, unwilling to take a revenge of the same kind, he
would rather tell Addison fairly of his faults in plain words. If he had
to take such a step, it would be in some such way as followed, and he
subjoined the first sketch of the famous lines. Addison, says Pope, used
him very civilly ever afterwards. Indeed, if the account be true,
Addison showed his Christian spirit by paying a compliment in one of his
_Freeholders_ (May 17th, 1716) to Pope's Homer.
Macaulay, taking the story for granted, praises Addison's magnanimity,
which, I must confess, I should be hardly Christian enough to admire. It
was however asserted at the time that Pope had not written the verses
which have made the quarrel memorable till after Addison's death. They
were not published till 1723, and are not mentioned by any independent
authority till 1722, though Pope afterwards appealed to Burlington as a
witness to their earlier composition. The fact seems to be confirmed by
the evidence of Lady M. W. Montagu, but it does not follow that Addison
ever saw the verses. He knew that Pope disliked him; but he probably did
not suspect the extent of the hostility. Pope himself appears not to
have devised the worst part of the story--that of Addison having used
Tickell's name--till some years later. Addison was sufficiently
magnanimous in praising his spiteful little antagonist as it was; he
little knew how deeply that antagonist would seek to injure his
reputation.
And here, before passing to the work which afforded the main pretext of
the quarrel, it may be well to quote once more the celebrated satire. It
may be remarked that its excellence is due in part to the fact that, for
once, Pope does not lose his temper. His attack is qualified and really
sharpened by an admission of Addison's excellence. It is therefore a
real masterpiece of satire, not a simple lampoon. That it is an
exaggeration is undeniable, and yet its very keenness gives a
presumption that it is not altogether without foundation.
Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne:
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to praise or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause:
While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise;
Who would not laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Any poet who followed Bossu's rules, said Voltaire, might be certain
that no one would read him; happily it was impossible to follow them.
[4] There is the usual contradiction as to the date of composition of
_Windsor Forest_. Part seems to have been written early (Pope says
1704), and part certainly not before 1712.
[5] Mr. Dilke, it is perhaps right to say, has given some reasons for
doubting Pope's authorship of this squib; but the authenticity seems to
be established, and Mr. Dilke himself hesitates.