William Minto and Margaret Bryant

“ They were historically unjust to Pope, who did not originate this diction, but only furnished the most finished examples of it. At the beginning of the 10th century Pope still had an ardent admirer in Byron, whose first satires are written in Pope's couplet. The much abused pseudo-poetic diction in substance consisted in an ambition to “rise above the vulgar style, ” to dress nature to advantage-a natural ambition when the arbiters of literature were people of fashion. ”

“ When Pope showed a leaning to the Tories in Windsor Forest, the members of Addison's coterie made insidious war on him. Within a few weeks of the publication of the poem, and when it was the talk of the town, there began to appear in the Guardian (Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32) a series of articles on “ Pastorals." Not a word was said about Windsor Forest, but everybody knew to what the general principles referred. Modern pastoral poets were ridiculed for introducing Greek moral deities, Greek flowers and fruits, Greek names of shepherds, Greek sports and customs and religious rites. ”

“ What Dryden had touched Pope did not presume to meddle with-Dryden was his hero and master; but there was much more of the same kind to be done. Dryden had rewritten three of the Canterbury tales; Pope tried his hand at the Merchant’s Tale, and the Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and produced also an imitation of the House of Fame. Dryden had translated Virgil; Pope experimented on the Thebais of Statius, Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses, and the Odyssey. He knew little Latin and less Greek, but there were older versions in English which helped him to the sense ”

“ Sir Leslie Stephen objected on somewhat different grounds to the poet's tone towards women. His laughter at Pope's raillery was checked by the fact that women are spoken of in the poem as if they were all like Belinda. The poem shows the hand of the satirist who was later to assert that “ every woman is at heart a rake, ” in the epistle addressed to Martha Blount. Windsor Forest, modelled on Sir John Denham's Cooper's Hill, had been begun, according to Pope's account, when he was sixteen or seventeen. ”

“ There were, among the Roman Catholic families near Binfield, men capable of giving a direction to his eager ambition, men of literary tastes, and connexions with the literary world. These held together as members of persecuted communities always do, and were kept in touch with one another by the family priests. Pope was thus brought under the notice of Sir William Trumbull, a retired diplomatist living at Easthampstead, within a few miles of Binfield. ”

“ He left the income from his property to Martha Blount till her death, after which it was to go to his half-sister Magdalen Rackett and her children. His unpublished MSS. were left at the discretion of Lord Bolingbroke, and his copyrights to Warburton.
If we are to judge Pope, whether as a man or as a poet, with human fairness, and not merely by comparison with standards of abstract perfection, there are two features of his times that must be kept steadily in view-the character of political strife in those days and the political relations of men of letters. ”

“ See also George Paston, Mr Pope: His Life and Times (1909) . The first check to the admiration that prevailed during Pope’s lifetime was given by the publication of Joseph Warton’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (vol. i.. 1757; vol. ii., 1782) . Warton had a sincere appreciation of Pope’s work, but he began the reaction which culminated with the romantic writers of the beginning of the 19th century, and set the fashion of an undue disparagement of Pope’s genius as a poet with enduring effects on popular opinion. ”

“ The publication by Wycherley's executors of a posthumous volume of the dramatist's prose and verse furnished Pope with an excuse for the appearance of his own correspondence with Wycherley, which was accompanied by a series of unnecessary deceptions. After manipulating his correspondence so as to place his own character in the best light, he deposited a copy in the library of Edward, second earl of Oxford, and then he had it printed. The sheets were offered to Curll by a person calling himself P.T., who professed a desire to injure Pope, but was no other than Pope himself. ”

“ The estrangement from Addison was completed in connexion with Pope's translation of Homer. This enterprise was definitely undertaken in 1713. The work was to be published by subscription, as Dryden's Virgil had been. Men of all parties subscribed, their unanimity being a striking proof of the position Pope had attained at the age of twenty-five. It was as if he had received a national commission as by general consent the first poet of his time. But the unanimity was broken by a discordant note. A member of the Addison clique, Tickell, attempted to run a rival version. ”

“ Pope himself had not comprehended the drift of the arguments he had adopted from Bolingbroke, and was alarmed when he found that his poem was generally interpreted as an apology for the free-thinkers. Warburton is said to have qualified its doctrines as “ rank atheism, ” and asserted that it was put together from the “ worst passages of the worst authors.” The essay was soon translated into the chief European languages, and in 1737 its orthodoxy was assailed by a Swiss professor, jean Pierre de Crousaz, in an Examen de Vessay de M. Pope sur Vhamme. ”

“ Epistle III., “ Of the Use of Riches, ” addressed to Allen Bathurst, Lord Bathurst, in 1732, is a direct attack on Walpole's methods of corruption, and on his financial policy in general; and the two dialogues (1738) known as the “ Epilogue to the Satires, ” professedly a defence of satire, form an eloquent attack on the court. Pope was attached to the prince of Wales's party, and he did not forget to insinuate, what was indeed the truth, that the queen had refused the prince her pardon on her deathbed. ”

“ Pope was wise enough to accept with all gratitude an ally who was so useful a friend and so dangerous an enemy, and from that time onward Warburton was the authorized commentator of his works.
The Essay on Man was to have formed part of a series of philosophic poems on a systematic plan. The other pieces were to treat of human reason, of the use of learning, wit, education and riches, of civil and ecclesiastical polity, of the character of women, &c. ”

“ Joseph Warton's edition in 1797 a ded to the mass of commentary without giving much new elucidation to the allusions of the text, which even Swift, with his exceptional facilities, had found obscure. In 1769~1807 an edition was issued which included Owen Ruffhead's Life of Alexander Pope (1769) , inspired by Warburton. The notes of many commentators, with some letters and a memoir, were included in the Works of Alexander Pope, edited by W. L. Bowles (10 vols., 1806) . His Poetical Works were edited by Alexander Dyce (1856) ”

“ Wycherley introduced him to William Walsh, then of great renown as a critic. [1] Before the poet was seventeen he was admitted in this way to the society of London “wits” and men of fashion, and was cordially encouraged as a prodigy. Wycherley’s correspondence with Pope was skilfully manipulated by the younger man to represent Wycherley as submitting, at first humbly and then with an ill-grace, to Pope’s criticisms. The publication (Elwin and Courthope, vol. v.) of the originals of Wycherley’s letters from MSS ”

“ Pope’s version of Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale.”
Pope’s next publication was the Essay on Criticism (1711) , written two years earlier, and printed without the author’s name. “In every Work regard the writer’s end” (l. 255) is one of its sensible precepts, and one that is often neglected by critics of the essay, who comment upon it as if Pope’s end had been to produce an original and profound treatise on first principles. ”

“ V The methods he employed to secure his correspondence with Swift were even more discreditable. The proceedings can only be explained as the measures of ia desperate man whose maladies seem to have engendered a passion for trickery. They are related in detail by Elwin in the introduction to vol. i. of Pope's Works. A man who is said to have “ played the politician about cabbages and turnips, ” and who “ hardly drank tea without a stratagem, ” was not likely to be straightforward in a matter in which his ruling passion was concerned. ”

“ The government was almost as unsettled as in the early days of personal monarchy, and there was this difference-that it was policy rather than force upon which men depended for keeping their position. ”

“ As long as the succession to the Crown was doubtful, and political failure might mean loss of property, banishment or death, politicians, playing for higher stakes, played more fiercely and unscrupulously than in modern days, and there was no controlling force of public opinion to keep them within the bounds of common honesty. ”

“ Warburton's name is attached to many new notes, and one of the preliminary dissertations by Ricardus Aristarchus on the hero of the poem seems to be by him.,
The four epistles of the Essay on Man (1733) were also intimately connected with passing controversies. They belong to the same intellectual movement with Butler's Analogy#-the effort of the 18th century to put religion on a rational basis. But Pope was not a thinker like Butler. The subject was suggested to him by Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, who had returned from exile in 1723, and was 'a fellow-member of the Scriblerus Club. ”

“ POPE, ALEXANDER (1688–1744) , English poet, was born in Lombard Street, London, on the 21st of May 1688. His father, Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic, was a linen-draper who afterwards retired from business with a small fortune, and nxed his residence about 1700 at Binfield in Windsor Forest. Pope’s education was desultory. ”

“ They ought to make use of English rural mythology-hob thrushes, fairies, goblins and witches; they should give English names to their shepherds; they should mention flowers indigenous to English climate and soil; and they should introduce English proverbial sayings, dress, and customs. All excellent principles, and all neglected by Pope in Windsor Forest. The poem was fairly open to criticism in these points ”

“ By his notes he wilfully misrepresented the meaning of the allusions in the satires, and made them more agreeable to his friends and to the court, while he made opportunities for the gratification of his own spite against various individuals. ”