The Age of Pope Part 3

Among Pope's a.s.sociates was the 'blameless Bethel,'

'---- who always speaks his thought, And always thinks the very thing he ought,'

and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who was unspoiled by wealth and joined

'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'

and 'humble Allen' who

'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'

and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the immortality a poet can confer.

The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.

Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole, 'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.

This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has acc.u.mulated,'

says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a ma.s.s of biographical anecdote such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.

In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical touches more attractive than Dryden's.

'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he a.s.sailed. No doubt the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope, however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet there were times when he felt acutely the a.s.saults made upon him. 'These things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.

The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub Street but on his own, show very vividly the coa.r.s.eness of London society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of Laureates had n.o.ble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame, while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in tracking the poet's th.o.r.n.y course, while he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'

In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all scribblers should be pa.s.sed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the _Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in 1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest, and much amus.e.m.e.nt to readers who were not included in Pope's black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character he is made to a.s.sume.

That he might have some excuse for his dashing a.s.saults in the _Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_, of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an _Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.

The a.s.sault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.

At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a large edition with names and notes.

'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful n.o.blemen, there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in regular course.'[19]

The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.

Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we except the n.o.ble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among the poets.

'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.

She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold, Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old!

Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away.

Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires, As one by one at dread Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!

Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more; Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!

See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal Darkness buries All.'

The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'

denying all the time that he had any connection with it.

His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_ owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last and perhaps finest pa.s.sage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common source.

'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of G.o.d, and the const.i.tution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_ (1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_ (1710).'

In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.

Pattison a.s.serts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable, and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.

Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.

His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of G.o.d to man' is confused and contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic, and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated into French, into Italian, and into German; it was p.r.o.nounced by Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]

Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not mean, that G.o.d inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that it is 'the realization of anarchy.'

Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.

Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read with ever-growing delight, but there are pa.s.sages in it of as fine an order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was, as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily didactic because its subject is philosophical.'

It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope, however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the _Essay_.

'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the question.'[23]

Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.

The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_ are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all time.

Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought at all.

According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the t.i.tle, _Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. s.p.a.ce will not allow of examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them which call for comment.

The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling pa.s.sion, affords a significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the s.e.x save their foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates the poem:

'Nothing so true as what you once let fall; "Most women have no character at all,"

Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'

The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham and Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence, received 1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is wrapt in mystery.

Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when compared with the brilliant pa.s.sages with which the poem is studded.

Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines on the same n.o.bleman's character.

'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied 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; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.

No wit to flatter left of all his store!

No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.

There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'

There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig statesman for his social qualities:

'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; Seen him unc.u.mbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art and win without a bribe.'

Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges, 'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.