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 In
this series of articles, we have looked at poetry addressing a
number of topics, but also the contributions of a number of poets.
To date, I have largely ignored the eighteenth century, or at
least the poets who were responsible for the major change in English
poetry. This was a time of great changes in England: with the
‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 that ended the Stuart dynasty, and
the Act of Settlement in 1701 that established the line of succession
to the throne of Britain, and specifically that it should be Protestant.
As a consequence, the latter part of the seventeenth century and
the early part of the eighteenth century was a tough time for
Catholics.
In 1702,
Queen Anne succeeded to the throne of England, and in 1707 the
formal Union of England and Scotland took place. (Wales had been
regarded as part of England or many years). The relatively brief
reign of Anne (1702 – 1714) is credited as the time when major
changes in the culture of Britain were initiated, and not least
of these was literature. It is often referred to as England’s
‘Augustan Age’. The original Augustan Age was one of the most
illustrious periods in Latin literary history, from approximately
43 BCE to 18 CE, and produced a polished and sophisticated verse.
During this period Virgil completed the Aeneid and the
Georgics; Horace’s Odes appeared; and the elegies
of Sextus Propertius. Livy was writing his monumental history
of Rome. Ovid was the last great writer of this period; he died
in 17 CE. By extension, the term ‘Augustan Age’ is applied to
a “classical” period in the literature of any nation. The choice
tends to be arbitrary: some believe that the period should be
limited to the reign of Queen Anne, when Alexander Pope (1688
– 1744), Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719), Sir Richard Steele (1672
– 1729), John Gay (1685 – 1732) and Matthew Prior (1664 – 1721)
were active; others would extend it to include John Dryden (1631
– 1700) and Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784).
This description
of the period was, of course, related to literature. However,
other changes were taking place; and these led to the same period
being described as ‘The Enlightenment’ or ‘The Age of Reason’.
These terms were related to philosophical developments, led by
people such as the English thinker John Locke (1632 – 1704), the
Scot David Hume (1711 – 1776), and many others. English Protestantism
struggled to express itself in ways that widened the limits of
freedom of speech and press.
 Our
subject this week is Alexander Pope, generally regarded as the
major poet of this period. He was born in Plough Court, off Lombard
Street, in the heart of the City of London. His father was also
called Alexander Pope and was the son of an Anglican vicar, but
had converted to Catholicism, which caused the family many problems.
The poet's mother (the elder Alexander’s second wife) was Edith,
and she was forty-four when Alexander, her only child, was born.
Edith Pope belonged to a large Yorkshire family, which divided
along Catholic and Protestant lines. Alexander Pope remained closely
devoted to his parents throughout their lives. His father had
been a successful linen merchant for almost twenty years prior
to his son's birth, but was forced to retire in 1688, owing to
the anti-Catholic laws passed after the arrival of William III.
In the same year an Act of Parliament came into force prohibiting
Catholics from living within ten miles of the City of London.
The Popes remained in Lombard Street for five years, but in 1693
the family moved to Hammersmith, then a village to the west of
London, where they lived for the next seven years. In 1700, Pope's
father purchased Whitehill House, together with nineteen acres
of land in Windsor Forest at Binfield in Berkshire. This purchase
was aided by Charles Rackett, the husband of the senior Pope’s
daughter Magdalen by his first wife. Pope recalled the period
spent at Binfield as a golden age:
Thy forests,
Windsor, and thy green retreats,
At once the monarch's and the Muse's seats,
Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids!
Unlock your springs, and open all your shades.
Anecdotes
from Pope's life were deemed worthy of collecting during his lifetime.
Joseph Spence (1699 – 1768), a critic, minor poet, and Pope's
biographer, tells that Pope was "a child of a particularly
sweet temper and had a great deal of sweetness in his look when
he was a boy".
 At
that time Catholics suffered from all sorts of repressive legislation
and prejudices - they were not allowed to enter any universities
or hold public employment, for example. Thus Pope had an uneven
education, which was often interrupted. At home, his aunt taught
him to read. He learned Latin and Greek from a local priest and
later acquired knowledge of French and Italian poetry. Pope also
attended clandestine Catholic schools. Most of his time was spent
reading books from his father's library - he "did nothing
but write and read," his half-sister said later. “He did
spend a short period at Twyford School, near Winchester, one of
the best schools available for Catholic boys at the time, but
he only stayed there for a year before being expelled for writing
a lampoon on one of the masters – an omen, perhaps of things to
come.” (I. R. F. Gordon, Emeritus Anglia Polytechnic University;
essay on Pope in the Literary
Encyclopedia). Another source that I make extensive use
of here is The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
by Dr. Samuel Johnson, published in 1781.
Gordon says
“At some stage during his childhood Pope developed a tubercular
infection of the bone that became known later as Pott's disease
(after Dr Percival Pott, 1714-88, whose observation and treatment
of it were famous in the eighteenth century). This disease, which
was most likely contracted though his nurse's milk, gradually
dwarfed Pope and reduced him to a hunchback so that at his most
fully developed he never attained a height greater than four feet
six inches. It finally left him a permanent cripple who had to
wear stays in order to be able to stand. Throughout his life he
was afflicted by constant headaches, which, Dr Johnson tells us,
“he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee”. He suffered
violent pains in his bones and muscle joints and he was perpetually
in need of nursing attendants. He felt the cold severely and wore
a kind of fur doublet to protect him from it and a laced canvas
bodice to support his emaciated frame.”
Over the
period 1731 to 1734, he wrote a letter to his friend and doctor
in the form of a long, largely autobiographical, poem; this was
published in 1735 as An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot;
it contains his own view of his physical problems – “this long
disease, my life”. Here are two stanzas:
Why did
I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobey'd.
The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not Wife,
To help me thro' this long disease, my Life,
To second, ARBUTHNOT! thy Art and Care,
And teach the Being you preserv'd, to bear.
But why
then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise;
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends
before)
With open arms receiv'd one Poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd!
Happier their author, when by these belov'd!
George Granville,
Lord Lansdowne (1667 – 1735); William Walsh (1663 – 1708); and
Sir Samuel Garth (1661 – 1719) were poets; Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury,
Lord Somers, and Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham were statesmen
and patrons. Pope edited Sheffield’s poems. William Congreve (1670
– 1729) was a playwright, whose early work was greatly admired
by John Dryden. Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), author of Gulliver’s
Travels was politically active as well as being an Irish churchman
and a wit. ‘St. John’ was Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke
(1678 – 1751), an English statesman.
 Pope
was a precocious child and at an early age became acquainted with
the literary wits at Will's Coffee House on the corner of Russell
Street and Bow Street in London who earlier had formed Dryden's
circle. Dr Johnson tells us that “he professed to have learned
his poetry from Dryden”, and there is even a record of the young
Pope's being taken, when he was only twelve years old, to see
Dryden at Will's; that would have been close to the end of Dryden’s
life. After he left Twyford School Pope largely educated himself.
He told Joseph Spence towards the end of his life, in June 1739,
that “in a few years I had dipped into a great number of the English,
French, Italian, Latin and Greek poets. This I did without any
design but that of pleasing myself, and got the languages by hunting
after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read
the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy
led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the woods and
the fields just as they fall in his way. I still look upon these
five or six years as the happiest part of my life.”
Pope remarked
that he was writing poetry, mostly in imitation of contemporary
English poets, when he was thirteen. There is a collection of
Pope’s poems edited by John Butt that was published in 1963, and
this has the early poems in chronological order; the first of
these is in a group which Pope entitled Verses in imitation
of Waller, by a Youth of thirteen; Of A Lady Singing To Her Lute:
Fair charmer,
cease! nor make your voice's prize,
A heart resign'd, the conquest of your eyes:
Well might, alas! that threaten'd vessel fail,
Which winds and lightning both at once assail.
We were too blest with these enchanting lays,
Which must be heavenly when an angel plays:
But killing charms your lover's death contrive,
Lest heavenly music should be heard alive.
Orpheus could charm the trees, but thus a tree,
Taught by your hand, can charm no less than he:
A poet made the silent wood pursue,
This vocal wood had drawn the poet too.
Edmund Waller
(1606 – 1687) was best known for his use of the heroic couplet,
which was the form used by the Augustan poets. Dryden remarked
that Waller “first made writing easily an art”.
However,
these early poems had very limited circulation; this one was not
published until 1717. Pope’s first published poems were his Pastorals
(1709). “While these were greatly admired by his Tory friends
at Will's, they immediately brought him into conflict with London's
rival literary group, Joseph Addison's “little Senate” of Whig
writers, which met at Buttons” (Gordon). Thus, from the time of
his first publication, Pope became involved in the party political
warfare that was to dominate his literary career. Our first Poem
of this Week is Summer.
The Second Pastoral, or Alexis; it is dedicated to Dr.
Garth. The poem contains four lines that are used in a beautiful
song, with music by George Frederic Handel:
Where'er
you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where'er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
This is from
an opera called Semele, which Handel wrote in 1745, when
he was 59 years old. The libretto is by Congreve, and he wrote
it in 1710; however, I do not find this quatrain in Congreve’s
libretto, although my own copy of the song credits Congreve as
the lyricist. In 1745, both Congreve and Pope were dead, of course.
Interesting! I wonder if any of our readers can find an explanation?
The Pastorals
were well received. Dr. Johnson remarks “Walsh, a name yet
preserved among the minor poets, was one of his first encouragers.
His regard was gained by the Pastorals, and from him
Pope received the counsel by which he seems to have regulated
his studies. Walsh [William Walsh (1663 – 1708)] advised him to
correctness, which, as he told him, the English poets had hitherto
neglected, and which therefore was left to him as a basis of fame;
and, being delighted with rural poems, recommended to him to write
a pastoral comedy, like those which are read so eagerly in Italy;
a design which Pope probably did not approve, as he did not follow
it.”
However,
the work that really made the difference was An Essay on Criticism
(1711), a remarkably ambitious poem demonstrating an extraordinary
wide reading in ancient and modern poetry and criticism for a
twenty-year old poet. The poem is a kind of handbook to neoclassicism,
synthesising the best in ancient and modern thought about poetry.
The poem
is 744 lines long, and not even the tolerant Editor of the Mediadrome
will allow me to include it in this week’s article! However, Pope’s
notes indicate that it is in three sections, and the second section
is the one most concerned with the craft of poetry, and I am going
to quote a few sections from there:
A
little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
Here is a
section which discusses an excessive attention to detail, at the
expense of art:
Once
on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discours'd in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produc'd his play, and begg'd the knight's advice,
Made him observe the subject and the plot,
The manners, passions, unities, what not?
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.
"What! leave the combat out?" exclaims the knight;
"Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite."
"Not so by Heav'n" (he answers in a rage)
"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.
"Then build a new, or act it in a plain."
Thus
critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
The ‘Stagirite’
here is Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE), who came from Stagira. As most
people now know, for three years around 339 BCE he lived in Pella,
the capital of Macedonia, and tutored the future Alexander the
Great. His major contribution to literature was his Poetics,
in which he discusses the differences between tragedy and comedy,
argues in favor of imitation (mimesis) and catharsis,
and presents a number of arguments that have had a great influence
on Western drama and literature through the ages. I find Quixote’s
comments interesting in terms of the way Hollywood now deals with
(for example) the Trojan War!
The ‘Dennis’
referred to here was John Dennis (1657-1734), a major neo-classic
literary critic, whose views Pope questioned, possibly because
of the systematic and methodical insistence on clear definitions
and distinctions. In attacking the Essay on Criticism, Dennis
questioned Pope's "failure" in defining "Nature"
and "wit" precisely. The dispute between Dennis and
Pope was a major factor at the time, and became very unpleasant:
Dennis wrote at one point that Pope was “as stupid and as venomous
as a hunch-backed toad”. Dennis had published a book The Grounds
of Criticism in Poetry in 1704, commenting on what he regarded
as the generally poor quality of contemporary English poetry.
From the
point of view of these columns, perhaps the most important part
of Pope’s Essay is the section that relates to how to
write poetry, the attention to structure, the issues of rhyme,
and particularly matching the character of the lines to the content
– heavy and ponderous for Ajax lifting a boulder, light and flowing
when Camilla flies over the cornfields. For this reason, I have
chosen this section as our Second Poem of this Week: But
Most by Numbers Judge a Poet's Song.
 Pope
wrote a poem Eloisa to Abelard, which was published in
1717 in Pope's Works. The
Medieval Source Book says: “The letters of Abelard and
Heloise are, now, among the best known documents of early romantic
love. From the thirteenth century on, there are references to
the couple by multiple authors. With their inclusion by Jean de
Meun (1240 – 1305) in his Roman de la Rose (1280), their
immortality as symbols was ensured. (Note, however, Betty Radice's
opinion that it was Petrarch (1304 – 1374), who owned one of nine
surviving manuscripts, who first showed a ‘genuine interest’)”
The subject was selected by Pope in part because John Hughes,
an acquaintance of his, had published an English translation.
The Latin text had originally been published in 1616 and had been
translated into French in 1697. Hughes translated the French version,
and Pope's poem draws heavily on that version. The poem is an
example of a genre represented in Latin by Ovid's Heroides.
These heroic epistles are always addressed by a woman to a man
who has abandoned her; the situations require an "heroic"
treatment because they involved important personages.
Peter Abelard
(1079-1142), already at thirty-eight a famous scholar, became
the tutor of Eloisa (or Heloise), the eighteen-year-old niece
of Fulbert, the canon of Paris. Their passionate secret love resulted
in Eloisa's conceiving, whereupon Abelard removed her to Brittany.
After refusing to agree to marriage for a long time because it
would ruin Abelard's career in the church, Eloisa finally consented
and the couple returned to Paris for a secret wedding. But the
uncle's anger revived. Abelard took Eloisa to a convent at Argenteuil
where she was professed as a novice. Her uncle then paid ruffians
to attack Abelard in his lodgings and castrate him. After his
various attempts at monastic life, students again gathered about
Abelard and built him the halls and church of the Paraclete, sixty
miles from Paris. Further persecution by his enemies or fear of
them eventually led him to accept the Abbey of St. Gildeas in
Brittany. When Eloisa's nuns were expelled from Argenteuil, he
offered them the Paraclete and visited them as a spiritual director,
until his visits caused scandal. Eloisa began the correspondence
after a letter, addressed to an unfortunate friend, describing
his adversities as a means of comforting the friend, fell into
her hands.
Pope’s poem
is long, but here is a stanza I have selected because of the use
of a line in a recent film title:
How
happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.
In 1712,
Pope wrote what was to be one of is most successful poems, The
Rape of the Lock, originally in two Cantos.
 Samuel
Johnson calls it “…the most airy, the most ingenious, and the
most delightful of all his compositions, occasioned by a frolick
of gallantry, rather too familiar, in which Lord Petre cut off
a lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair. This, whether stealth or
violence, was so much resented, that the commerce of the two families,
before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr. Caryl, a gentleman
who, being secretary to King James's Queen, had followed his Mistress
into France, and who being the author of Sir Solomon Single, a
comedy, and some translations, was entitled to the notice of a
wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a reconciliation by a ludicrous
poem, which might bring both the parties to a better temper. In
compliance with Caryl's request, though his name was for a long
time marked only by the first and last letter, C--l, a poem of
two cantos was written (1711), as is said, in a fortnight, and
sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to shew it;
and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the author,
dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it. The
event is said to have been such as was desired; the pacification
and diversion of all to whom it related.”
Here, the
word ‘ludicrous’ in the eighteenth Century meant ‘Sportive, intended
in jest’.
Addison thought
it was perfect as it was, but Pope thought it could be improved,
and two years later published a five Canto version, which is the
version we generally know now. As Johnson writes:
“Pope,
however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, having
luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians,
imparted the scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison,
who told him that his work, as it stood, was "a delicious
little thing," and gave him no encouragement to retouch
it.
“Addison's
counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future efflorescence
of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no
art or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy
was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were
ready at his hand to colour and embellish it. His attempt was
justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands
forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite
example of ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon
the display of powers more truly poetical than he had shewn
before; with elegance of description and justness of precepts,
he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention.”
The phrase
‘borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians’ is explained by Pope
in his introduction of the poem to Mrs. Fermor:
“The Machinery,
Madam, is a term invented by the Criticks, to signify that Part
which the Deities, Angels, or Daemons, are made to act in a
Poem: For the ancient Poets are in one Respect like many modern
Ladies: Let an Action be never so trivial in itself, they always
make it appear of the utmost Importance. These Machines I determin'd
to raise on a very new and odd Foundation, the Rosicrucian Doctrine
of Spirits.
“I know
how disagreeable it is to make use of hard Words before a Lady:
but 'tis so much the Concern of a Poet to have his works understood,
and particularly by your Sex, that You must give me leave to
explain two or three difficult Terms.
“The Rosicrucians
are a People I must bring You acquainted with. The best Account
I know of them is in a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis,
which both in its Title and Size is so like a Novel, that many
of the Fair Sex have read it for one by Mistake. According to
these Gentlemen the four Elements are inhabited by Spirits,
which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The
Gnomes, or Daemons of Earth, delight in Mischief: but the Sylphs,
whose Habitation is Air, are the best-conditioned Creatures
imaginable. For they say, any Mortals may enjoy the most intimate
Familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a Condition very
easy to all true Adepts, an inviolate Preservation of Chastity.”
Here is a
portion of the poem where the wicked Baron with his scissors cuts
the lock of Belinda’s hair:
The Peer
now spreads the glitt'ring Forfex wide,
T'inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,
A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
Fate urg'd the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
(But Airy Substance soon unites again)
The meeting Points that sacred Hair dissever
From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!
Then flash'd the living Lightnings
from her Eyes,
And Screams of Horror rend th' affrighted Skies.
Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,
When Husbands or when Lap-dogs breath their last,
Or when rich China Vessels, fal'n from high,
In glittring Dust and painted Fragments lie!
Let Wreaths of Triumph now my
Temples twine,
(The Victor cry'd) the glorious Prize is mine!
While Fish in Streams, or Birds delight in Air,
Or in a Coach and Six the British Fair,
As long as Atalantis shall be read,
Or the small Pillow grace a Lady's Bed,
While Visits shall be paid on solemn Days,
When numerous Wax-lights in bright Order blaze,
While Nymphs take Treats, or Assignations give,
So long my Honour, Name, and Praise shall live!
What Time wou'd spare, from Steel
receives its date,
And Monuments, like Men, submit to Fate!
Steel cou'd the Labour of the Gods destroy,
And strike to Dust th' Imperial Tow'rs of Troy.
Steel cou'd the Works of mortal Pride confound,
And hew Triumphal Arches to the Ground.
What Wonder then, fair Nymph! thy Hairs shou'd feel
The conqu'ring Force of unresisted Steel?
In 1713,
although by now Pope’s work was becoming popular, he still wasn’t
making much money. He decided to solicit subscriptions to finance
a translation of Homer’s Iliad. Johnson remarks “To print
by subscription was, for some time, a practice peculiar to the
English. The first considerable work for which this expedient
was employed is said to have been Dryden's Virgil.”
Johnson also
says, “There was reason to believe that Pope's attempt would be
successful. He was in the full bloom of reputation, and was personally
known to almost all whom dignity of employment or splendour of
reputation had made eminent; he conversed indifferently with both
parties [Tories and Whigs], and never disturbed the publick with
his political opinions; and it might be naturally expected, as
each faction then boasted its literary zeal, that the great men,
who on other occasions practised all the violence of opposition,
would emulate each other in their encouragement of a poet who
had delighted all, and by whom none had been offended.
“With those
hopes, he offered an English Iliad to subscribers, in
six volumes in quarto, for six guineas; a sum, according to the
value of money at that time, by no means inconsiderable, and greater
than I believe to have been ever asked before. His proposal, however,
was very favourably received, and the patrons of literature were
busy to recommend his undertaking, and promote his interest.”
He did indeed
receive sufficient subscriptions to allow him to start the work,
and completed it in 1718, when he was 30. He received 575 subscriptions,
and by the time the work was completed and delivered he received
five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds four shillings,
a very considerable sum; this was enough to assure him of a reasonably
comfortable life.
 In
the spring of 1719, he was able to lease riverside land in Twickenham,
on which were some houses. He lived in one of them, demolished
another, and on the cleared land built his villa, where he would
spend the rest of his life. His father had died in 1717, and he
brought with him to Twickenham his mother, his childhood nurse,
Mary Beach, and a hound named Bounce (he always named his dog
Bounce). He obtained a license to build a tunnel under an adjacent
road, to give him access to about five acres of land, where he
designed a garden in the fashion of the times. The most famous
component of this landscaping was his grotto, which he completed
in 1725 (actually, in a sense he never completed it, for he was
continuously changing it until his death). Johnson thought that
the grotto was in the tunnel under the road, but apparently this
was not so. Towards the end of 1739 Pope visited the Hotwell Spa
on the banks of the Avon at Bristol. He became entranced by the
geology of the gorge and its colors to the extent that he resolved
to redesign the grotto as a museum of mineralogy and mining. Help
was sought from Dr Oliver at Bath and Dr William Borlase in Cornwall
and the following spring material from Cornish tin mines was delivered,
with instructions for its reassembly in the grotto. Other material
was contributed over the following years by many people. Some
were his friends, like Ralph Allen of Bath; there were others
who liked to think themselves so. Material came from abroad: Peru,
Egypt, Italy, Germany, Norway and the West Indies as well as from
all over England. A stalagmite from Wookey Hole in Somerset was
sent by a Mr. Bruce and two small "joints" of basalt
from the Giants' Causeway in Ireland were given by Sir Hans Sloane,
joining over 140 other mineral and geological contributions.
The timing
of Pope’s move is interesting, because it was at the time of the
biggest financial disaster Britain had ever experienced – the
South Sea Bubble.
The beginning
can be traced to 1711 when the South Sea Company was given a monopoly
of all trade to the South Seas. The real prize here was the anticipated
trade that would open up with the rich Spanish colonies in South
America upon the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession--a
war that began in 1703 and would end in 1713 with a treaty that
did favor England but not nearly to the extent that was hoped.
In return for this monopoly, the South Sea Company would assume
a portion of the national debt that England had incurred during
the war. When Britain and Spain officially went to war again in
1718, the immediate prospects for any benefits from trade to South
America were nil. What mattered to speculators, however, were
future prospects, and here it could always be argued that incredible
prosperity lay ahead and would be realized when open hostilities
came to an end. The South Sea Bubble resulted in the first stock
market crash in England, and a disastrous loss of fortunes up
and down the social scale. (For more information on this early
scam, visit David McNeil's excellent
Bubble Project pages.)
The Pope
family were always very careful with money. When his father left
London, he had brought all his money with him in a box, and it
was never transferred to a bank, or anything like it. Apparently,
Pope did venture some money in the South Sea scheme, and for a
while thought he was going to be really rich, but he got out early
enough to escape the catastrophe; it is said that he ended up
more or less even.
Beginning
in the spring of 1714, a group of five Tory writers and friends,
Pope, Swift, Dr Arbuthnot, Gay, and Parnell, occasionally joined
by a sixth person, Queen Anne's minister, Robert Harley, Earl
of Oxford, started to meet once a week. Their principal purpose
was to ridicule false taste in learning “under the character of
a man of capacity enough who had dipped in every art and science,
but injudiciously in each.” They named this fictitious pedant
Martinus Scriblerus, the Latinate suffixes to his name being part
of the parody of pretentious learning. The meetings of the club
came to a somewhat abrupt end with the death of Queen Anne on
1 August 1714 and the subsequent fall from power of the Tory Government.
Perhaps the
most obvious of the products of the Scriblerus Club was Peri
Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. This has been called
a treatise on how not to write poetry, and its structure is based
on a first century book On the Sublime whose author is
not actually known: it was originally attributed to Cassius Longinus
(213 – 273 CE), but is clearly of an earlier date; the author
is now referred to as ‘Pseudo Longinus’. In Greek the name is
Peri Hupsous. The word Bathous also comes from
Greek, where it mean depth, the opposite of Hupsous;
but the word ‘bathos’ in the sense of ‘ludicrous descent from
the elevated to the commonplace; anticlimax’ (OED) that we have
now was actually created by Pope. Peri Bathous originated
as part of the overall collective Scriblerian enterprise, and
Dr Arbuthnot, in particular, had a strong hand in it; but it is
generally accepted that Pope was the prime mover and leading author.
His comment to Swift, in a letter of January 1728, confirms this:
“I have entirely methodized and in a manner written it all. The
Dr [Arbuthnot] grew quite indolent in it for something newer,
I know not what.” Swift almost certainly was also involved in
the early stages, but both he and Arbuthnot withdrew when Pope
started preparing it for publication in 1728, fourteen years after
it was first mooted in the Scriblerus club. When it appeared,
the author was shown as ‘Martinus Scriblerus’.
Pope establishes
the prevailing ironic tone in the opening chapter with Scriblerus
proclaiming his position as a defender of the moderns against
the ancients. He states his public-spirited intention to compile
an art of modern poetry, “universally known . . . to infinitely
excel that of the ancients”, to set against the many dealing with
ancient poetry. He says he has undertaken the arduous task of
leading the “promising geniuses of this age . . . by the hand,
and step by step, the gentle down-hill way to the Bathos;
the Bottom, the End, the Central Point, the non plus ultra,
of true Modern Poesie!” He proposes to gather “the scattered rules
of our art into regular institutes” so that the ancients may be
justly rebutted and put in their proper place.
In the final
chapters the arguments are summarized: Scriblerus cannot “too
earnestly recommend to our authors the study of the Abuse of Speech.”
Figures of speech must be turned in the most intricate, oblique
and distorted way possible. They can be arranged under three classes:
the confusing; the magnifying; and the diminishing. Metaphors
should be mixed and taken from the lowest things. “Wherever you
start a metaphor, you must be sure to run it down
and pursue it as far as it can go.” A genuine writer of the Profund
“will take care never to magnify any object without clouding
it at the same time: his thought will appear in a true mist and
very unlike what it is in Nature. It must always be remembered
that darkness is an essential quality of the Profund.” The most
important amongst the diminishing figures of speech is “the anticlimax,
where the second line drops quite short of the first, than which
nothing creates greater surprise.” The expression must be “proportionably
[sic] low to the Profundity of the thought. It must not be always
grammatical, lest it appear pedantic and ungentlemanly; nor too
clear, for fear it become vulgar.” Scriblerus says that of styles
he will mention “only the principal which owe to the Moderns either
their chief improvement or entire invention.” He describes the
Florid, the Pert, the Alamode (i.e. the fashionable, or à
la mode), the Finical and the Cumbrous. “None is more proper
to Bathos,” he tells us, “than the Florid style, as flowers which
are the lowest of vegetables, are most gaudy,
and do many times grow in great plenty at the bottom of ponds
and ditches.”
Of course,
on the way through the document Pope makes a point of savaging
a number of his contemporaries in a way that makes their identities
quite clear! (Much of the material in the last paragraphs is drawn
from Gordon’s contribution to the Literary Encyclopedia.)
Very soon
after this, Pope published another of his major contributions,
the Dunciad. The following is drawn from Johnson, who
described it as:
“One of
his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured
to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked,
and some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves.
“This satire
had the effect which he intended, by blasting the characters
which it touched. The prevalence of this poem was gradual and
slow: the plan, if not wholly new, was little understood by
common readers. Many of the allusions required illustration;
the names were often expressed only by the initial and final
letters, and, if they had been printed at length, were such
as few had known or recollected. The subject itself had nothing
generally interesting; for whom did it concern to know that
one or another scribbler was a dunce? If therefore it had been
possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and
their resentment, The Dunciad might have made its way very slowly
in the world.
“This,
however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance
to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others, and,
supposing the world already acquainted with all his pleasures
and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes
which had never been known unless related by himself, and at
which those that hear them will only laugh; for no man sympathises
with the sorrows of vanity.”
Pope himself
described some of the excitement that the book produced, in a
Dedication that he wrote to Lord Middlesex: “On the 12th of March,
1729, at St. James's, the poem was presented to the King and Queen
by Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister; and some days after
the whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen
and persons of the first distinction. On the day the book was
first vended a crowd of authors besieged the shop; intreaties,
advices, threats of law and battery, nay cries of treason, were
all employed to hinder the coming-out of The Dunciad:
on the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts
to procure it. What could a few poor authors do against so great
a majority as the publick? There was no stopping a torrent with
a finger, so out it came. Many ludicrous circumstances attended
it. The Dunces (for by this name they were called) held weekly
clubs, to consult of hostilities against the author: one wrote
a letter to a great minister, assuring him Mr. Pope was the greatest
enemy the government had; and another bought his image in clay
to execute him in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction
the gentlemen were a little comforted.”
Things started
to go down hill at about this point. In December of 1732 his great
friend John Gay died. Here is is Epitaph. On Mr. Gay. In Westminster-Abbey,
1732:
Of Manners
gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child;
With native Humour temp’ring virtuous Rage,
Form’d to delight at once and lash the age;
Above Temptation, in a low Estate,
And uncorrupted, ev’n among the Great;
A safe Companion, and an easy Friend,
Unblam’d thro’ Life, lamented in thy End.
These are Thy Honours! not that here thy Bust
Is mix’d with Heroes, or with Kings thy dust;
But that the Worthy and the Good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms – Here lies GAY.
In June of
1733 his mother died. Johnson has this to say:
“In the
next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for
she had lasted to the age of ninety-three; but she did not die
unlamented. The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree
amiable and exemplary; his parents had the happiness of living
till he was at the summit of poetical reputation, till he was
at ease in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and
found no diminution of his respect or tenderness. Whatever was
his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability,
to them he was gentle. Life has, among its soothing and quiet
comforts, few things better to give than such a son.”
The first
part of his last major work appeared in the same year, An
Essay on Man. It is written as four Epistles; the second
of which is entitled Of the Nature and State of Man, With
Respect to Himself as an Individual. Here is the opening:
Know then
thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall:
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
 You
will notice that I have said nothing about his women friends.
There were two of particular importance, and they were very different.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague (or Montagu) was the daughter of Evelyn
and Mary Pierrepont. Pierrepont became the first Duke of Kingston
in 1715 and their daughter was born in 1689. As was common at
the time in noble families, she received essentially no formal
education, but she read many of the books in her parents' libraries
and secretly taught herself Latin by using a Latin dictionary.
(I find that difficult to imagine!)
By 1710 she
had translated Epictetus' Enchiridion and sent a copy
to a London bishop with a letter advocating a woman's right to
formal education. Such independence of mind would characterize
her entire adult life. The practice also was for the marriages
of the daughters of the aristocracy to be arranged by their parents.
Lady Mary objected to that, and in 1712, while contracts with
a prospective husband were being drawn up, she eloped to become
the wife of the extremely wealthy Edward Wortley Montagu; they
had a son in 1713. In 1716, following the accession of King George
I, her husband was appointed ambassador to Constantinople (modern
Istanbul). While she was in Turkey she observed the practice of
inoculating healthy children with a weakened strain of smallpox
to confer immunity from the more virulent strains of the disease.
She had herself suffered from smallpox in 1715, and her brother
had died from the disease. She immediately had her son inoculated.
(Read her
own account of inoculation here.) On their return from Turkey,
she worked hard to popularize the idea, and had her daughter inoculated
too. Edward Jenner (1749-1823) would eventually be given credit
for the smallpox vaccine, but Lady Mary deserves credit for popularizing
the concept long before Jenner’s birth, and of course it is worth
noting that the principle had been established in the Orient well
before that.
Her marriage
had begun to fail quite early, but it is interesting that she
still wrote a book entitled On the Mischief of Giving Fortunes
with Women in Marriage (Miscellanea, published by
Curll in 1726) criticizing the idea of arranged marriages. I bet
her father had a different take on the outcome, though! However,
her husband was friendly with Addison, and through him Mary met
many of the writers of her generation, including Alexander Pope
and John Gay.
Her first
poems appeared shortly after her marriage. Like her peers, Lady
Mary wrote in many of the forms of Augustan verse—satires, mock
epics, translations, and ballads. By all accounts, she often wrote
at the spur of the moment with little revision. Her poems maintain
some of this casual feel. Nonetheless, they reveal a strikingly
independent and clever mind. They appeared sporadically during
her life and were first collected posthumously in 1768. Lady Mary
spent the latter part of her life traveling in Europe, primarily
in France and Italy. She died in 1762.
Pope became
infatuated with Lady Mary and his affectionate letters followed
her progress across Europe: to Vienna, diverting to Hanover then
to Italy, Belgrade and across Hungary to Constantinople. He even
contemplated following her to Italy, first proposing a rendezvous
in the Spring of 1717, and again on their return journey in the
Autumn of that year.
In about
1720 Mr. Wortley leased and then bought a house in Twickenham
from Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646 – 1723), a major painter, possibly
through the agency of Pope. This year, too, Pope commissioned
Kneller, now established in Whitton, to paint her portrait, in
Turkish costume.
Relations
with Pope cooled sometime during 1722, possibly on account of
her friendship with Philip, Duke of Wharton, who leased The Grove
at the top of Cross Deep that year. By 1727, for reasons that
are obscure, her friendship with Pope had turned to mutual enmity.
This was given expression through the exchange of various anonymous
and mutual insults. In 1729 Lady Mary mocked Pope's Grotto "that
palace placed beneath a muddy road":
Here chose
the goddess her belov'd retreat,
Which Phoebus tries in vain to penetrate,
Adorn'd within with Shells of small expense,
(Emblems of tinsel Rhyme and triffleing sense).
Perpetual fogs enclose the sacred Cave;
The neighbouring Sinks their fragrant Odours gave.
The information
here comes from the Twickenham
Museum website.
You can imagine
how well this went over with Pope! In 1733, he wrote To Lord
Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley:
When I
but call a flagrant Whore unsound,
Or have a Pimp or Flaterer in
the Wind,
Sapho engag’d crys out your Back is round,
Adonis screams – Ah! Foe to all
Mankind!
Thanks,
dirty Pair! you teach me what to say,
When you attack my Morals, Sense,
or Truth,
I answer thus – poor Sapho you grow grey,
And sweet Adonis – you have lost
a Tooth.
His other
lady friend was Martha Blount.
Following
the anti-Catholic legislation that led to Pope’s family moving
out of London, upper class Catholic families were based in and
around large estates in the countryside, essentially keeping quiet.
One such family was that of the Englefields, whose house was Whiteknights
Park in Berkshire, less than five miles from Binfield. In 1606
the estate was purchased by Sir Francis Englefield, the 1st baronet,
as a substitute Berkshire home; the family having had their vast
Englefield Estates confiscated for recusancy in 1585. Recusancy
means that they refused to attend services in an Anglican church.
The Englefields moved over from Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire and
Whiteknights remained their main family residence until they sold
it to the Marquis of Blandford in 1798. When the Popes moved into
the area, Anthony Englefield was the head of the family. His daughter
Martha had married Lister Blount (1654 – 1710) of Mapledurham.
The Blounts were another old Catholic family, and Mapledurham
was on the Thames within five miles of both Whiteknights and Binfield.
Lister and Martha had two daughters: Teresa, who called herself
Zephelinda (1688 – 1759); and her younger sister Martha, who styled
herself Parthenia, but was otherwise known as Patty (1690 – 1763).
Martha and Teresa Blount were introduced to Alexander Pope at
Whiteknights in 1707 when Pope and Teresa were both nineteen,
Martha seventeen. He was a frequent visitor to them at Whiteknights
and Mapledurham. More attracted to Teresa at first, but following
a disagreement with her in 1716 for reasons that are not clear,
he later became closer to Martha. His friendship with her lasted
the rest of his life. Both sisters died unmarried.
He frequently
wrote romantic and outrageously libertine letters to them. It
seems that the correspondence was permitted partly because no
one took the content seriously, partly because of his genius for
poetry and partly because he was an increasingly hopeless invalid.
George I
was crowned in October 1714. Martha and Teresa Blount were in
London for the coronation. Martha, however, seems to have missed
it through catching smallpox. Both girls were taken back to Mapledurham
soon after the ceremony and missed the celebrations that followed.
Pope tried to console Teresa with an Epistle To Miss Blount,
on her leaving the Town, after the Coronation. Here is the
first stanza:
As some
fond virgin, whom her mother's care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
Just when she learns to roll a melting eye,
And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh;
From the dear man unwilling she must sever,
Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever:
Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew,
Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew;
Not that their pleasures caused her discontent,
She sigh'd not that they staid, but that she went.
As I have
said before, Martha was a companion for the rest of his life.
Here is a poem he wrote for her birthday in 1723, To Mrs M.
B. on her Birthday:
Oh, be
thou blest with all that Heaven can send,
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend:
Not with those toys the female world admire,
Riches that vex, and vanities that tire.
With added years, if life bring nothing new,
But, like a sieve, let every blessing through,
Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, some sad reflection more;
Is that a birthday? 'tis alas! too clear
'Tis but the funeral of the former year.
Let joy
or ease, let affluence or content,
And the gay conscience of a life well spent,
Calm every thought, inspirit every grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face
Let day improve on day, and year on year,
Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear;
Till death unfelt that tender frame destroy,
In some soft dream, or ecstasy of joy,
Peaceful sleep out the Sabbath of the tomb,
And wake to raptures in a life to come.
My third
poem of this week was also addressed to Martha: Epistle
to Miss Blount, With the Works of Voiture. Vincent de
Voiture (1598 – 1648) was a French poet and letter writer. Pope’s
poem was written around 1710; it was published in 1712.
Alexander
Pope died on May 30th, 1744, nine days after his 56th birthday,
surrounded by his friends. He was buried in the nave of the Church
of Saint Mary the Virgin in Twickenham. Both his parents are buried
there, and he had installed a memorial to them on the north-east
wall of the gallery of the church.
In his will
he left Martha about £3,000 (= £160,000 today), sixty
books of her choice, his household goods and plate, the furniture
of his grotto at Twickenham and the urns that now stand by the
garden door at Mapledurham. These were designed by William Kent,
a highly respected landscape architect at the time. A few of Pope's
books are still at Mapledurham.
So there
we are. A remarkable life of a remarkable, albeit difficult man.
His contribution to English poetry was very important, and the
guidance contained in his Essay is still a basic guidance for
a poet today. As a poet once remarked, “If it rhymes, and you’ve
heard it before, it’s by Pope!”
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