EPISTLES AND SATIRES.
Pope had tried a considerable number of poetical experiments when the
Dunciad appeared, but he had not yet discovered in what direction his
talents could be most efficiently exerted. Bystanders are sometimes
acuter in detecting a man's true forte than the performer himself. In
1722 Atterbury had seen Pope's lines upon Addison, and reported that no
piece of his writing was ever so much sought after. "Since you now
know," he added, "in what direction your strength lies, I hope you will
not suffer that talent to be unemployed." Atterbury seems to have been
rather fond of giving advice to Pope, and puts on a decidedly pedagogic
air when writing to him. The present suggestion was more likely to fall
on willing ears than another made shortly before their final separation.
Atterbury then presented Pope with a Bible, and recommended him to study
its pages. If Pope had taken to heart some of St. Paul's exhortations to
Christian charity, he would scarcely have published his lines upon
Addison, and English literature would have lost some of its most
brilliant pages.
Satire of the kind represented by those lines was so obviously adapted
to Pope's peculiar talent, that we rather wonder at his having taken to
it seriously at a comparatively late period, and even then having
drifted into it by accident rather than by deliberate adoption. He had
aimed, as has been said, at being a philosophic and didactic poet. The
Essay on Man formed part of a much larger plan, of which two or three
fragmentary sketches are given by Spence.[24] Bolingbroke and Pope wrote
to Swift in November, 1729, about a scheme then in course of execution.
Bolingbroke declares that Pope is now exerting what was eminently and
peculiarly his talents, above all writers, living or dead, without
excepting Horace; whilst Pope explained that this was a "system of
ethics in the Horatian way." The language seems to apply best to the
poems afterwards called the Ethic Epistles, though, at this time, Pope,
perhaps, had not a very clear plan in his head, and was working at
different parts simultaneously. The Essay on Man, his most distinct
scheme, was to form the opening book of his poem. Three others were to
treat of knowledge and its limits, of government--ecclesiastical and
civil--and of morality. The last book itself involved an elaborate plan.
There were to be three epistles about each cardinal virtue--one, for
example, upon avarice; another on the contrary extreme of prodigality;
and a third, upon the judicious mean of a moderate use of riches. Pope
told Spence that he had dropped the plan chiefly because his third book
would have provoked every Church on the face of the earth, and he did
not care for always being in boiling water. The scheme, however, was far
too wide and too systematic for Pope's powers. His spasmodic energy
enabled him only to fill up corners of the canvas, and from what he did,
it is sufficiently evident that his classification would have been
incoherent and his philosophy unequal to the task. Part of his work was
used for the fourth book of the Dunciad, and the remainder corresponds
to what are now called the Ethic Epistles. These, as they now stand,
include five poems. One of these has no real connexion with the others.
It is a poem addressed to Addison, "occasioned by his dialogue on
medals," written (according to Pope) in 1715, and first published in
Tickell's edition of Addison's works in 1721. The epistle to Burlington
on taste was afterwards called the Use of Riches, and appended to
another with the same title, thus filling a place in the ethical scheme,
though devoted to a very subsidiary branch of the subject. It appeared
in 1731. The epistle "of the use of riches" appeared in 1732, that of
the knowledge and characters of men in 1733, and that of the characters
of women in 1735. The last three are all that would seem to belong to
the wider treatise contemplated; but Pope composed so much in fragments
that it is difficult to say what bits he might have originally intended
for any given purpose.
Another distraction seems to have done more than his fear of boiling
water to arrest the progress of the elaborate plan. Bolingbroke coming
one day into his room, took up a Horace, and observed that the first
satire of the second book would suit Pope's style. Pope translated it in
a morning or two, and sent it to press almost immediately (1733). The
poem had a brilliant success. It contained, amongst other things, the
couplet which provoked his war with Lady Mary and Lord Hervey. This,
again, led to his putting together the epistle to Arbuthnot, which
includes the bitter attack upon Hervey, as part of a general _apologia
pro vita sua_. It was afterwards called the Prologue to the Satires. Of
his other imitations of Horace, one appeared in 1734 (the second satire
of the second book), and four more (the first and sixth epistles of the
first book and the first and second of the second book) in 1738.
Finally, in 1737, he published two dialogues, first called "1738" and
afterwards "The Epilogue to the Satires," which are in the same vein as
the epistle to Arbuthnot. These epistles and imitations of Horace, with
the so-called prologue and epilogue, took up the greatest part of Pope's
energy during the years in which his intellect was at its best, and show
his finest technical qualities. The Essay on Man was on hand during the
early part of this period, the epistles and satires representing a
ramification from the same inquiry. But the essay shows the weak side of
Pope, whilst his most remarkable qualities are best represented by these
subsidiary writings. The reason will be sufficiently apparent after a
brief examination, which will also give occasion for saying what still
remains to be said in regard to Pope as a literary artist.
The weakness already conspicuous in the Essay on Man mars the effect of
the Ethic Epistles. His work tends to be rather an aggregation than an
organic whole. He was (if I may borrow a phrase from the philologists)
an agglutinative writer, and composed by sticking together independent
fragments. His mode of composition was natural to a mind incapable of
sustained and continuous thought. In the epistles, he professes to be
working on a plan. The first expounds his favourite theory (also treated
in the essay) of a "ruling passion." Each man has such a passion, if
only you can find it, which explains the apparent inconsistency of his
conduct. This theory, which has exposed him to a charge of fatalism
(especially from people who did not very well know what fatalism
means), is sufficiently striking for his purpose; but it rather turns up
at intervals than really binds the epistle into a whole. But the
arrangement of his portrait gallery is really unsystematic; the
affectation of system is rather in the way. The most striking characters
in the essay on women were inserted (whenever composed) some time after
its first appearance, and the construction is too loose to make any
interruption of the argument perceptible. The poems contain some of
Pope's most brilliant bits, but we can scarcely remember them as a
whole. The characters of Wharton and Villiers, of Atossa, of the Man of
Ross, and Sir Balaam, stand out as brilliant passages which would do
almost as well in any other setting. In the imitations of Horace he is,
of course, guided by lines already laid down for him; and he has shown
admirable skill in translating the substance as well as the words of his
author by the nearest equivalents. This peculiar mode of imitation had
been tried by other writers, but in Pope's hands it succeeded beyond all
precedent. There is so much congeniality between Horace and Pope, and
the social orders of which they were the spokesmen, that he can
represent his original without giving us any sense of constraint. Yet
even here he sometimes obscures the thread of connexion, and we feel
more or less clearly that the order of thought is not that which would
have spontaneously arisen in his own mind. So, for example, in the
imitation of Horace's first epistle of the first book, the references to
the Stoical and Epicurean morals imply a connexion of ideas to which
nothing corresponds in Pope's reproduction. Horace is describing a
genuine experience, while Pope is only putting together a string of
commonplaces. The most interesting part of these imitations are those in
which Pope takes advantage of the suggestions in Horace to be
thoroughly autobiographical. He manages to run his own experience and
feelings into the moulds provided for him by his predecessor. One of the
happiest passages is that in which he turns the serious panegyric on
Augustus into a bitter irony against the other Augustus, whose name was
George, and who, according to Lord Hervey, was so contrasted with his
prototype, that whereas personal courage was the one weak point of the
emperor, it was the one strong point of the English king. As soon as
Pope has a chance of expressing his personal antipathies or (to do him
bare justice) his personal attachments, his lines begin to glow. When he
is trying to preach, to be ethical and philosophical, he is apt to fall
into mouthing and to lose his place; but when he can forget his stilts,
or point his morality by some concrete and personal instance, every word
is alive. And it is this which makes the epilogues, and more especially
the prologue to the satires, his most impressive performances. The unity
which is very ill-supplied by some ostensible philosophical thesis, or
even by the leading strings of Horace, is given by his own intense
interest in himself. The best way of learning to enjoy Pope is to get by
heart the epistle to Arbuthnot. That epistle is, as I have said, his
Apologia. In its some 400 lines, he has managed to compress more of his
feelings and thoughts than would fill an ordinary autobiography. It is
true that the epistle requires a commentator. It wants some familiarity
with the events of Pope's life, and many lines convey only a part of
their meaning unless we are familiar not only with the events, but with
the characters of the persons mentioned. Passages over which we pass
carelessly at the first reading then come out with wonderful freshness,
and single phrases throw a sudden light upon hidden depths of feeling.
It is also true, unluckily, that parts of it must be read by the rule of
contraries. They tell us not what Pope really was, but what he wished
others to think him, and what he probably endeavoured to persuade
himself that he was. How far he succeeded in imposing upon himself is
indeed a very curious question which can never be fully answered. There
is the strangest mixture of honesty and hypocrisy. Let me, he says, live
my own and die so too--
(To live and die is all I have to do)
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends and read what books I please!
Well, he was independent in his fashion, and we can at least believe
that he so far believed in himself. But when he goes on to say that he
"can sleep without a poem in his head,
Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead,"
we remember his calling up the maid four times a night in the dreadful
winter of 1740 to save a thought, and the features writhing in anguish
as he read a hostile pamphlet. Presently he informs us that "he thinks a
lie in prose or verse the same"--only too much the same! and that "if he
pleased, he pleased by manly ways." Alas! for the manliness. And yet
again when he speaks of his parents,
Unspotted names and venerable long
If there be force in virtue or in song,
can we doubt that he is speaking from the heart? We should perhaps like
to forget that the really exquisite and touching lines in which he
speaks of his mother had been so carefully elaborated.
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of declining age,
With lenient acts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
If there are more tender and exquisitely expressed lines in the
language, I know not where to find them; and yet again I should be glad
not to be reminded by a cruel commentator that poor Mrs. Pope had been
dead for two years when they were published, and that even this touching
effusion has therefore a taint of dramatic affectation.
To me, I confess, it seems most probable, though at first sight
incredible, that these utterances were thoroughly sincere for the
moment. I fancy that under Pope's elaborate masks of hypocrisy and
mystification there was a heart always abnormally sensitive.
Unfortunately it was as capable of bitter resentment as of warm
affection, and was always liable to be misled by the suggestions of his
strangely irritable vanity. And this seems to me to give the true key to
Pope's poetical as well as to his personal characteristics.
To explain either, we must remember that he was a man of impulses; at
one instant a mere incarnate thrill of gratitude or generosity, and in
the next of spite or jealousy. A spasm of wounded vanity would make him
for the time as mean and selfish as other men are made by a frenzy of
bodily fear. He would instinctively snatch at a lie even when a moment's
reflection would have shown that the plain truth would be more
convenient, and therefore he had to accumulate lie upon lie, each
intended to patch up some previous blunder. Though nominally the poet of
reason, he was the very antithesis of the man who is reasonable in the
highest sense: who is truthful in word and deed because his conduct is
regulated by harmonious and invariable principles. Pope was governed by
the instantaneous feeling. His emotion came in sudden jets and gushes,
instead of a continuous stream. The same peculiarity deprives his poetry
of continuous harmony or profound unity of conception. His lively sense
of form and proportion enables him indeed to fill up a simple framework
(generally of borrowed design) with an eye to general effect, as in the
Rape of the Lock or the first Dunciad. But even there his flight is
short; and when a poem should be governed by the evolution of some
profound principle or complex mood of sentiment, he becomes incoherent
and perplexed. But on the other hand he can perceive admirably all that
can be seen at a glance from a single point of view. Though he could not
be continuous, he could return again and again to the same point; he
could polish, correct, eliminate superfluities, and compress his meaning
more and more closely, till he has constructed short passages of
imperishable excellence. This microscopic attention to fragments
sometimes injures the connexion, and often involves a mutilation of
construction. He corrects and prunes too closely. He could, he says, in
reference to the Essay on Man, put things more briefly in verse than in
prose; one reason being that he could take liberties of this kind not
permitted in prose writing. But the injury is compensated by the
singular terseness and vivacity of his best style. Scarcely any one, as
is often remarked, has left so large a proportion of quotable
phrases,[25] and, indeed, to the present he survives chiefly by the
current coinage of that kind which bears his image and superscription.
This familiar remark may help us to solve the old problem whether Pope
was, or rather in what sense he was, a poet. Much of his work may be
fairly described as rhymed prose, differing from prose not in substance
or tone of feeling, but only in the form of expression. Every poet has
an invisible audience, as an orator has a visible one, who deserve a
great part of the merit of his works. Some men may write for the
religious or philosophic recluse, and therefore utter the emotions which
come to ordinary mortals in the rare moments when the music of the
spheres, generally drowned by the din of the commonplace world, becomes
audible to their dull senses. Pope, on the other hand, writes for the
wits who never listen to such strains, and moreover writes for their
ordinary moods. He aims at giving us the refined and doubly distilled
essence of the conversation of the statesmen and courtiers of his time.
The standard of good writing always implicitly present to his mind is
the fitness of his poetry to pass muster when shown by Gay to his
duchess, or read after dinner to a party composed of Swift, Bolingbroke,
and Congreve. That imaginary audience is always looking over his
shoulder, applauding a good hit, chuckling over allusions to the last
bit of scandal, and ridiculing any extravagance tending to romance or
sentimentalism.
The limitations imposed by such a condition are obvious. As men of
taste, Pope's friends would make their bow to the recognized
authorities. They would praise _Paradise Lost_, but a new Milton would
be as much out of place with them as the real Milton at the court of
Charles II. They would really prefer to have his verses tagged by
Dryden, or the Samson polished by Pope. They would have ridiculed
Wordsworth's mysticism or Shelley's idealism, as they laughed at the
religious "enthusiasm" of Law or Wesley, or the metaphysical subtleties
of Berkeley and Hume. They preferred the philosophy of the Essay on Man,
which might be appropriated by a common-sense preacher, or the rhetoric
of _Eloisa and Abelard_, bits of which might be used to excellent effect
(as indeed Pope himself used the peroration) by a fine gentleman
addressing his gallantry to a contemporary Sappho. It is only too easy
to expose their shallowness, and therefore to overlook what was genuine
in their feelings. After all, Pope's eminent friends were no mere
tailor's blocks for the display of laced coats. Swift and Bolingbroke
were not enthusiasts nor philosophers, but certainly they were no fools.
They liked in the first place thorough polish. They could appreciate a
perfectly turned phrase, an epigram which concentrated into a couplet a
volume of quick observations, a smart saying from Rochefoucauld or La
Bruyère, which gave an edge to worldly wisdom; a really brilliant
utterance of one of those maxims, half true and not over profound, but
still presenting one aspect of life as they saw it, which have since
grown rather threadbare. This sort of moralizing, which is the staple of
Pope's epistles upon the ruling passion or upon avarice, strikes us now
as unpleasantly obvious. We have got beyond it and want some more
refined analysis and more complex psychology. Take, for example, Pope's
epistle to Bathurst, which was in hand for two years, and is just 400
lines in length. The simplicity of the remarks is almost comic. Nobody
wants to be told now that bribery is facilitated by modern system of
credit.
Blest paper-credit! last and best supply
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
This triteness blinds us to the singular felicity with which the
observations have been verified, a felicity which makes many of the
phrases still proverbial. The mark is so plain that we do scant justice
to the accuracy and precision with which it is hit. Yet when we notice
how every epithet tells, and how perfectly the writer does what he tries
to do, we may understand why Pope extorted contemporary admiration. We
may, for example, read once more the familiar passage about Buckingham.
The picture, such as it is, could not be drawn more strikingly with
fewer lines.
In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaister and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed but repair'd with straw,
With tape-ty'd curtains never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies! alas, how changed from him,
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay in Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
As great as gay, at council in a ring
Of mimick'd statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit to flatter left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
Thus, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, the lord of useless thousands ends.
It is as graphic as a page of Dickens, and has the advantage of being
less grotesque, if the sentiment is equally obvious. When Pope has made
his hit, he does not blur the effect by trying to repeat it.
In these epistles, it must be owned that the sentiment is not only
obvious but prosaic. The moral maxims are delivered like advice offered
by one sensible man to another, not with the impassioned fervour of a
prophet. Nor can Pope often rise to that level at which alone satire is
transmuted into the higher class of poetry. To accomplish that feat, if,
indeed, it be possible, the poet must not simply ridicule the fantastic
tricks of poor mortals, but show how they appear to the angels who weep
over them. The petty figures must be projected against a background of
the infinite, and we must feel the relations of our tiny eddies of life
to the oceanic currents of human history. Pope can never rise above the
crowd. He is looking at his equals, not contemplating them from the
height which reveals their insignificance. The element, which may fairly
be called poetical, is derived from an inferior source; but sometimes
has passion enough in it to lift him above mere prose.
In one of his most animated passages, Pope relates his desire to--
Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men,
Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car,
Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star.
For the moment he takes himself seriously; and, indeed, he seems to have
persuaded both himself and his friends that he was really a great
defender of virtue. Arbuthnot begged him, almost with his dying breath,
to continue his "noble disdain and abhorrence of vice," and, with a due
regard to his own safety, to try rather to reform than chastise; and
Pope accepts the office ostentatiously. His provocation is "the strong
antipathy of good to bad," and he exclaims,--
Yes! I am proud--I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touch'd and shamed by ridicule alone.
If the sentiment provokes a slight incredulity, it is yet worth while
to understand its real meaning; and the explanation is not very far to
seek.
Pope's best writing, I have said, is the essence of conversation. It has
the quick movement, the boldness and brilliance, which we suppose to be
the attributes of the best talk. Of course the apparent facility is due
to conscientious labour. In the Prologue and Epilogue and the best parts
of the imitations of Horace, he shows such consummate mastery of his
peculiar style, that we forget the monotonous metre. The opening
passage, for example, of the Prologue is written apparently with the
perfect freedom of real dialogue; in fact, it is of course far more
pointed and compressed than any dialogue could ever be. The dramatic
vivacity with which the whole scene is given, shows that he could use
metre as the most skilful performer could command a musical instrument.
Pope, indeed, shows in the Essay on Criticism, that his view about the
uniformity of sound and sense were crude enough; they are analogous to
the tricks by which a musician might decently imitate the cries of
animals or the murmurs of a crowd; and his art excludes any attempt at
rivalling the melody of the great poets who aim at producing a harmony
quite independent of the direct meaning of their words. I am only
speaking of the felicity with which he can move in metre, without the
slightest appearance of restraint, so as to give a kind of idealized
representation of the tone of animated verbal intercourse. Whatever
comes within this province he can produce with admirable fidelity. Now
in such talks as we imagine with Swift and Bolingbroke, we may be quite
sure that there would be some very forcible denunciation of
corruption--corruption being of course regarded as due to the diabolical
agency of Walpole. During his later years, Pope became a friend of all
the Opposition clique, which was undermining the power of the great
minister. In his last letters to Swift, Pope speaks of the new circle of
promising patriots who were rising round him, and from whom he
entertained hopes of the regeneration of this corrupt country.
Sentiments of this kind were the staple talk of the circles in which he
moved; and all the young men of promise believed, or persuaded
themselves to fancy, that a political millennium would follow the
downfall of Walpole. Pope, susceptible as always to the influences of
his social surroundings, took in all this, and delighted in figuring
himself as the prophet of the new era and the denouncer of wickedness in
high places. He sees "old England's genius" dragged in the dust, hears
the black trumpet of vice proclaiming that "not to be corrupted is the
shame," and declares that he will draw the last pen for freedom, and use
his "sacred weapon" in truth's defence.
To imagine Pope at his best, we must place ourselves in Twickenham on
some fine day, when the long disease has relaxed its grasp for a moment;
when he has taken a turn through his garden, and comforted his poor
frame with potted lampreys and a glass or two from his frugal pint.
Suppose two or three friends to be sitting with him, the stately
Bolingbroke or the mercurial Bathurst, with one of the patriotic hopes
of mankind, Marchmont or Lyttelton, to stimulate his ardour, and the
amiable Spence, or Mrs. Patty Blount to listen reverentially to his
morality. Let the conversation kindle into vivacity, and host and guests
fall into a friendly rivalry, whetting each other's wits by lively
repartee, and airing the little fragments of worldly wisdom which pass
muster for profound observation at Court; for a time they talk
platitudes, though striking out now and then brilliant flashes, as from
the collision of polished rapiers; they diverge, perhaps, into
literature, and Pope shines in discussing the secrets of the art to
which his whole life has been devoted with untiring fidelity. Suddenly
the mention of some noted name provokes a startling outburst of personal
invective from Pope; his friends judiciously divert the current of wrath
into a new channel, and he becomes for the moment a generous patriot
declaiming against the growth of luxury; the mention of some
sympathizing friend brings out a compliment, so exquisitely turned, as
to be a permanent title of honour, conferred by genius instead of power;
or the thought of his parents makes his voice tremble, and his eyes
shine with pathetic softness; and you forgive the occasional affectation
which you can never quite forget, or even the occasional grossness or
harshness of sentiment which contrasts so strongly with the superficial
polish. A genuine report of even the best conversation would be
intolerably prosy and unimaginative. But imagine the very pith and
essence of such talk brought to a focus, concentrated into the smallest
possible space with the infinite dexterity of a thoroughly trained hand,
and you have the kind of writing in which Pope is unrivalled; polished
prose with occasional gleams of genuine poetry--the epistle to Arbuthnot
and the epilogue to the Satires.
One point remains to be briefly noticed. The virtue on which Pope prided
himself was correctness; and I have interpreted this to mean the quality
which is gained by incessant labour, guided by quick feeling, and always
under the strict supervision of common sense. The next literary
revolution led to a depreciation of this quality. Warton (like Macaulay
long afterwards) argued that in a higher sense, the Elizabethan poets
were really as correct as Pope. Their poetry embodied a higher and more
complex law, though it neglected the narrow cut-and-dried precepts
recognized in the Queen Anne period. The new school came to express too
undiscriminating a contempt for the whole theory and practice of Pope
and his followers. Pope, said Cowper, and a thousand critics have echoed
his words,--
Made poetry a mere mechanic art
And every warbler had his tune by heart.
Without discussing the wider question, I may here briefly remark that
this judgment, taken absolutely, gives a very false impression of Pope's
artistic quality. Pope is undoubtedly monotonous. Except in one or two
lyrics, such as the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, which must be reckoned
amongst his utter failures, he invariably employed the same metre. The
discontinuity of his style, and the strict rules which he adopted, tend
to disintegrate his poems. They are a series of brilliant passages,
often of brilliant couplets, stuck together in a conglomerate; and as
the inferior connecting matter decays, the interstices open and allow
the whole to fall into ruin. To read a series of such couplets, each
complete in itself, and each so constructed as to allow of a very small
variety of form, is naturally to receive an impression of monotony.
Pope's antitheses fall into a few common forms, which are repeated over
and over again, and seem copy to each other. And, in a sense, such work
can be very easily imitated. A very inferior artist can obtain most of
his efforts, and all the external qualities of his style. One
ten-syllabled rhyming couplet, with the whole sense strictly confined
within its limits, and allowing only of such variety as follows from
changing the pauses, is undoubtedly very much like another. And
accordingly one may read in any collection of British poets innumerable
pages of versification which--if you do not look too close--are exactly
like Pope. All poets who have any marked style are more or less
imitable; in the present age of revivals, a clever versifier is capable
of adopting the manners of his leading contemporaries, or that of any
poet from Spenser to Shelley or Keats. The quantity of work scarcely
distinguishable from that of the worst passages in Mr. Tennyson, Mr.
Browning, and Mr. Swinburne, seems to be limited only by the supply of
stationery at the disposal of practised performers. That which makes the
imitations of Pope prominent is partly the extent of his sovereignty;
the vast number of writers who confined themselves exclusively to his
style; and partly the fact that what is easily imitable in him is so
conspicuous an element of the whole. The rigid framework which he
adopted is easily definable with mathematical precision. The difference
between the best work of Pope and the ordinary work of his followers is
confined within narrow limits, and not easily perceived at a glance. The
difference between blank verse in the hands of its few masters and in
the hands of a third-rate imitator strikes the ear in every line. Far
more is left to the individual idiosyncrasy. But it does not at all
follow, and in fact it is quite untrue that the distinction which turns
on an apparently insignificant element is therefore unimportant. The
value of all good work ultimately depends on touches so fine as to elude
the sight. And the proof is that although Pope was so constantly
imitated, no later and contemporary writer succeeded in approaching his
excellence. Young, of the _Night Thoughts_, was an extraordinarily
clever writer and talker, even if he did not (as one of his hearers
asserts) eclipse Voltaire by the brilliance of his conversation.
Young's satires show abundance of wit, and one may not be able to say at
a glance in what they are inferior to Pope. Yet they have hopelessly
perished, whilst Pope's work remains classical. Of all the crowd of
eighteenth-century writers in Pope's manner, only two made an approach
to him worth notice. Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_ surpasses Pope
in general sense of power, and Goldsmith's two poems in the same style
have phrases of a higher order than Pope's. But even these poems have
not made so deep a mark. In the last generation, Gifford's _Baviad and
Mæviad_, and Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, were clever
reproductions of the manner; but Gifford is already unreadable, and
Byron is pale beside his original; and, therefore, making full allowance
for Pope's monotony, and the tiresome prominence of certain mechanical
effects, we must, I think, admit that he has after all succeeded in
doing with unsurpassable excellence what innumerable rivals have failed
to do as well. The explanation is--if the phrase explains anything--that
he was a man of genius, or that he brought to a task, not of the highest
class, a keenness of sensibility, a conscientious desire to do his very
best, and a capacity for taking pains with his work, which enabled him
to be as indisputably the first in his own peculiar line, as our
greatest men have been in far more lofty undertakings.
The man who could not publish Pastorals without getting into quarrels,
was hardly likely to become a professed satirist without giving offence.
Besides numerous stabs administered to old enemies, Pope opened some
fresh animosities by passages in these poems. Some pointed ridicule was
aimed at Montagu, Earl of Halifax, in the Prologue; for there can be no
doubt that Halifax[26] was pointed out in the character of Bufo. Pope
told a story in later days of an introduction to Halifax, the great
patron of the early years of the century, who wished to hear him read
his Homer. After the reading Halifax suggested that one passage should
be improved. Pope retired rather puzzled by his vague remarks, but, by
Garth's advice, returned some time afterwards, and read the same passage
without alteration. "Ay, now Mr. Pope," said Halifax, "they are
perfectly right; nothing can be better!" This little incident perhaps
suggested to Pope that Halifax was a humbug, and there seems, as already
noticed, to have been some difficulty about the desired dedication of
the Iliad. Though Halifax had been dead for twenty years when the
Prologue appeared, Pope may have been in the right in satirizing the
pompous would-be patron, from whom he had received nothing, and whose
pretences he had seen through. But the bitterness of the attack is
disagreeable when we add that Pope paid Halifax high compliments in the
preface to the Iliad, and boasted of his friendship, shortly after the
satire, in the Epilogue to the Satires. A more disagreeable affair at
the moment was the description, in the Epistle on Taste, of Canons, the
splendid seat of the Duke of Chandos. Chandos, being still alive,
resented the attack, and Pope had not the courage to avow his meaning,
which might in that case have been justifiable. He declared to
Burlington (to whom the epistle was addressed), and to Chandos, that he
had not intended Canons, and tried to make peace by saying in another
epistle that "gracious Chandos is beloved at sight." This exculpation,
says Johnson, was received by the duke "with great magnanimity, as by a
man who accepted his excuse, without believing his professions." Nobody,
in fact, believed, and even Warburton let out the secret by a comic
oversight. Pope had prophesied in his poem that another age would see
the destruction of "Timon's Villa," when laughing Ceres would reassume
the land. Had he lived three years longer, said Warburton in a note,
Pope would have seen his prophecy fulfilled, namely, by the destruction
of Canons. The note was corrected, but the admission that Canons
belonged to Timon had been made.
To such accusations Pope had a general answer. He described the type,
not the individual. The fault was with the public, who chose to fit the
cap. His friend remonstrates in the Epilogue against his personal
satire. "Come on, then, Satire, general, unconfined," exclaims the poet,
Spread thy broad wing and souse on all the kind
* * * * *
Ye reverend atheists. (Friend) Scandal! name them! who?
(Pope) Why, that's the thing you bade me not to do.
Who starved a sister, who forswore a debt,
I never named; the town's inquiring yet.
The pois'ning dame-- (F.) You mean-- (P.) I don't. (F.) You
do.
(P.) See, now, I keep the secret, and not you!
It must in fact be admitted that from the purely artistic point of view,
Pope is right. Prosaic commentators are always asking, Who is meant by a
poet, as though a poem were a legal document. It may be interesting, for
various purposes, to know who was in the writer's mind, or what fact
suggested the general picture. But we have no right to look outside the
poem itself, or to infer anything not within the four corners of the
statement. It matters not for such purposes whether there was, or was
not, any real person corresponding to Sir Balaam, to whom his wife said,
when he was enriched by Cornish wreckers, "live like yourself,"
When lo! two puddings smoked upon the board,
in place of the previous one on Sabbath days. Nor does it even matter
whether Atticus meant Addison, or Sappho Lady Mary. The satire is
equally good, whether its objects are mere names or realities.
But the moral question is quite distinct. In that case we must ask
whether Pope used words calculated or intended to fix an imputation upon
particular people. Whether he did it in prose or verse, the offence was
the same. In many cases he gives real names, and in many others gives
unmistakable indications, which must have fixed his satire to particular
people. If he had written Addison for Atticus (as he did at first), or
Lady Mary for Sappho, or Halifax for Bufo, the insinuation could not
have been clearer. His attempt to evade his responsibility was a mere
equivocation--a device which he seems to have preferred to direct lying.
The character of Bufo might be equally suitable to others; but no
reasonable man could doubt that every one would fix it upon Halifax. In
some cases--possibly in that of Chandos--he may have thought that his
language was too general to apply, and occasionally it seems that he
sometimes tried to evade consequences by adding some inconsistent
characteristic to his portraits.
I say this, because I am here forced to notice the worst of all the
imputations upon Pope's character. The epistle on the characters of
women now includes the famous lines on Atossa, which did not appear till
after Pope's death.[27] They were (in 1746) at once applied to the
famous Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough; and a story immediately became
current that the duchess had paid Pope 1000_l._ to suppress them, but
that he preserved them, with a view to their ultimate publication. This
story was repeated by Warton and by Walpole; it has been accepted by Mr.
Carruthers, who suggests, by way of palliation, that Pope was desirous
at the time of providing for Martha Blount, and probably took the sum in
order to buy an annuity for her. Now, if the story were proved, it must
be admitted that it would reveal a baseness in Pope which would be
worthy only of the lowest and most venal literary marauders. No more
disgraceful imputation could have been made upon Curll, or Curll's
miserable dependents. A man who could so prostitute his talents must
have been utterly vile. Pope has sins enough to answer for; but his
other meannesses were either sacrifices to his morbid vanity, or (like
his offence against Swift, or his lies to Aaron Hill and Chandos)
collateral results of spasmodic attempts to escape from humiliation. In
money-matters he seems to have been generally independent. He refused
gifts from his rich friends, and confuted the rather similar calumny
that he had received 500_l._ from the Duke of Chandos. If the account
rested upon mere contemporary scandal, we might reject it on the ground
of its inconsistency with his known character, and its likeness to other
fabrications of his enemies. There is, however, further evidence. It is
such evidence as would, at most, justify a verdict of "not proven" in a
court of justice. But the critic is not bound by legal rules, and has to
say what is the most probable solution, without fear or favour.
I cannot here go into the minute details. This much, however, may be
taken as established. Pope was printing a new edition of his works at
the time of his death. He had just distributed to his friends some
copies of the Ethic Epistles, and in those copies the Atossa appeared.
Bolingbroke, to whom Pope had left his unpublished papers, discovered
it, and immediately identified it with the duchess, who (it must be
noticed) was still alive. He wrote to Marchmont, one of Pope's
executors, that there could be "no excuse for Pope's design of
publishing it after the favour you and I know." This is further
explained by a note added in pencil by Marchmont's executor, "1000_l._;"
and the son of this executor, who published the Marchmont papers, says
that this was the favour received by Pope from the duchess. This,
however, is far from proving a direct bribe. It is, in fact, hardly
conceivable that the duchess and Pope should have made such a bargain in
direct black and white, and equally inconceivable that two men like
Bolingbroke and Marchmont should have been privy to such a transaction,
and spoken of it in such terms. Bolingbroke thinks that the favour
received laid Pope under an obligation, but evidently does not think
that it implied a contract. Mr. Dilke has further pointed out that there
are many touches in the character which distinctly apply to the Duchess
of Buckingham, with whom Pope had certainly quarrelled, and which will
not apply to the Duchess of Marlborough, who had undoubtedly made
friends with him during the last years of his life. Walpole again tells
a story, partly confirmed by Warton, that Pope had shown the character
to each duchess (Warton says only to Marlborough), saying that it was
meant for the other. The Duchess of Buckingham, he says, believed him;
the other had more sense and paid him 1000_l._ to suppress it. Walpole
is no trustworthy authority; but the coincidence implies at least that
such a story was soon current.
The most probable solution must conform to these data. Pope's Atossa was
a portrait which would fit either lady, though it would be naturally
applied to the most famous. It seems certain also that Pope had received
some favours (possibly the 1000_l._ on some occasion unknown) from the
Duchess of Marlborough, which was felt by his friends to make any attack
upon her unjustifiable. We can scarcely believe that there should have
been a direct compact of the kind described. If Pope had been a person
of duly sensitive conscience he would have suppressed his work. But to
suppress anything that he had written, and especially a passage so
carefully laboured, was always agony to him. He preferred, as we may
perhaps conjecture, to settle in his own mind that it would fit the
Duchess of Buckingham, and possibly introduced some of the touches to
which Mr. Dilke refers. He thought it sufficiently disguised to be
willing to publish it whilst the person with whom it was naturally
identified was still alive. Had she complained, he would have relied
upon those touches, and have equivocated as he equivocated to Hill and
Chandos. He always seems to have fancied that he could conceal himself
by very thin disguises. But he ought to have known, and perhaps did
know, that it would be immediately applied to the person who had
conferred an obligation. From that guilt no hypothesis can relieve him;
but it is certainly not proved, and seems, on the whole, improbable that
he was so base as the concessions of his biographers would indicate.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Spence, pp. 16, 48, 137, 315.
[25] To take an obviously uncertain test, I find that in Bartlett's
dictionary of familiar quotations, Shakspeare fills 70 pages; Milton,
23; Pope, 18; Wordsworth, 16; and Byron, 15. The rest are nowhere.
[26] Roscoe's attempt at a denial was conclusively answered by Bowles in
one of his pamphlets.
[27] On this subject Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_.