CHAPTER IL

IMITATIVE PERIOD OF COMPOSITION.

Life at Binfield-Translation of Statius-The 'Pastorals '-'Windsor Forest'-'The Messiah.'

1700-1712.

BINFIELD, near Wokingham, in Berkshire, is a straggling parish of about five miles in length. The church and a considerable part of the modern village lie under the shelter of a hill, but the house occupied by the Popes was near the highest ground, which commands in every direction extensive and beautiful views. Hence the eye wanders, as Pope's no doubt often did, towards the open heath lands about Ascot, the undula ting well-wooded ranges towards Windsor, and the more distant blue line where the Oxfordshire hills descend to the river above Marlow. Much of the timber in the neighbourhood has been cleared within the last hundred years and the land brought into cultivation, and farm buildings, cottages, and villas, have sprung up on all sides; but at the beginning of the eighteenth century the absence of houses and tillage, and the luxuriant growth of oak, elm, and birch, must have more completely satisfied that idea of romantic solitude which is suggested by the name of Windsor Forest.

In this woodland retreat the elder Pope had bought a house and twenty acres of land. The former, altered and added to by successive occupants, contains now of the original building only one room, which is supposed to have been the poet's study. This, and a row of noble Scotch firs, whose girth

suggests great age, are all that remain to illustrate the description of his dwelling:

"A little house with trees a-row,

And like its master, very low."

The choice of a residence was no doubt determined by the fact that numerous Roman Catholic families were settled in or near Windsor Forest. Among those that were most intimately associated with the Popes, and whose names occur oftenest in the poet's correspondence, were the Dancastles, who, since the days of Elizabeth, had been lords of the manor of Binfield; the Englefields of Whiteknights; and, farther off, the Blounts of Mapledurham. Both Alexander Pope the elder, and his wife, were strict Roman Catholics, and devout to an extent which was somewhat harassing to their son, though he conformed to their ways from a strong sense of filial duty.' His father is said, like himself, to have been crooked, but not of an unsound constitution; 'healthy from temperance and from exercise,' as he was afterwards described in the Epistle to Arbuthnot'; an enthusiastic gardener, whose skill was much admired by his neighbours. He seems also to have had some literary taste, having early encouraged his son to write verses, and being a severe critic of his performances. The same can scarcely be said of his mother, for though he afterwards gave her pleasure by allowing her to try to copy the rough draft of his 'Translation of the Iliad,' we may imagine what the result is likely to have been from the spelling in the only remaining letter which she addressed to him. From her he inherited a propensity to violent headaches.

Of the general character of the society in the neighbourhood of Binfield, Pope has left a vivid sketch in a letter written at a later date to Cromwell :

"I assure you I am looked upon in the neighbourhood for a very sober and well-disposed person, no great hunter indeed, but a great

1 Letter from Pope to Cromwell of

April 10, 1710.

See letter from Dancastle to

Pope, Vol. IX., p. 487.

3 See Vol. IX. p. 479.

esteemer of the noble sport, and only unhappy in my want of constitution for that and drinking. They all say 'tis pity I am so sickly, and I think 'tis pity they are so healthy; but I say nothing that may destroy their good opinion of me. I have not quoted a Latin author since I came down; but have learned without books a song of Mr. Durfey's, who is your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our entertainments, and but for him there would be so miserable a dearth of catches, that I fear they would sans cérémonie put either the parson or me upon making some for them. . . . Neither you with your Ovid, nor I with my Statius, can amuse a whole board of justices and extraordinary squires, or gain one hum of approbation, or laugh of admiration. These things, they would say, are too studious; they may do very well with such as love reading; but give us your ancient poet, Mr. Durfey."1

This is the letter of one wit to another, and must therefore not be taken too seriously. The satire is inapplicable to at least two of Pope's near neighbours,-Englefield of Whiteknights, a man of some taste and literary refinement; and Thomas Dancastle, the Squire of Binfield, whose admiration for the poet's genius was so enthusiastic that he transcribed for him the fair copy of his 'Translation of the Iliad.' Nevertheless, it may readily be imagined that Pope did not find in the society about him much that was congenial with his temper; hence he no doubt fell at an early age into those habits of introspection which throughout his life betray themselves so unmistakably in his style. His mornings were occupied with desultory rambles through English, Latin, and Italian literature; in the afternoon in long solitary walks, or with only the company of his dog,' he would meditate in Priest's Wood on what he had just been reading; and each day was closed with an attempt to reduce to writing the thoughts that crowded his imagination. In his twelfth year he wrote the first draft of the Ode to Solitude,' and the paraphrase of Thomas à Kempis; while the germs of his satirical genius show themselves in the verses addressed in his fourteenth year to the author of 'Successio,' one

1 Vol. VI. p. 91.

Letter to Cromwell of Oct. 10, 1709.

couplet of which he afterwards inserted in the 'Dunciad.' He told Spence that when very young he completed a tragedy on the Legend of St. Genevieve. He wrote also, while between thirteen and fifteen years of age, an Epic poem, of which the hero is variously stated by himself to have been Deucalion and Alcander, Prince of Rhodes.' It was about four thousand lines in length. "I had the copy by me," the poet told Spence, "till I burnt it by the advice of the Bishop of Rochester a little before he went abroad." From this poem, too, he preserved in his usual economical fashion a couplet for use in the 'Essay on Criticism':

"Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down enlarging as they flow."

And another in the Dunciad':

"As man's meanders to the vital spring

Roll all their tides, then back their circles bring."

His judgment, however, told him that, as a whole, these boyish efforts were futile. "My first taking to imitating," he says, "was not out of vanity, but humility: I saw how defective my own things were, and endeavoured to mend my manner by copying good strokes from others." He seems in these words to be referring to his "Translation of the First Book of the Thebais of Statius,' whom after Virgil he preferred, at least in his younger days, above all Latin poets. The first draft of this translation was made, according to his own account, in 1702 or 1703, and though it was not published till 1712, when much had been added to it, and the whole severely corrected, yet, as it is not likely that he took the trouble to make the translation

"As clocks to weight their nimble

motion owe,

The wheels above urged by the wheels below."

SPENCE, 'Anecdotes,' p. 279. Spence, 'Anecdotes,' pp. 24 and Some episodes in the poem are mentioned on p. 279.

276.

In fact, he burnt it of his own accord. Atterbury approved the sentence, but regretted that no fragment of the poem had been preserved as a specimen. See Atterbury's Letter to Pope of February 18, 1717.

Spence, 'Anecdotes,' p. 278.

entirely afresh, it is fair to assume that the body of the composition is preserved in its original form. It is therefore of the highest interest, as the first well developed example of a style which was to become famous; and the question naturally arises by what means, at so early an age, he had acquired his harmonious system of versification.

It is often said that Waller was the first of English poets to write couplets after the fashion that prevailed in the latter half of the seventeenth, and all through the eighteenth century. But this statement requires to be precisely limited. Waller was no doubt the earliest of our writers who, after the language assumed anything approaching fixity, paid attention to the genius of the heroic measure. "When he was a briske young sparke," says Aubrey, "and first studyed poetry, 'Methought,' said he, 'I never saw a good copie of English verses: they want smoothness: then I began to essay."" But in truth the epigrammatic capacity of the couplet is contained in the metre itself; couplets as concise and trenchant as those of Dryden and Pope are to be found in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' as for instance in the portrait of the Monk

"I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond

With gris, and that the finest of the lond.
And for to fasten his hood under his chinne,
He had of gold y-wrought a curious pinne :
A love-knotte in the greter end ther was.
His hed was balled and shone as any glas,
And eke his face as it hadde ben anoint.
He was a lord full fat and in good point.
His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed,
That stemed as a forneis of a led."

Similar metrical effects may be found in almost every poet who has used the measure between Chaucer and Waller." Chaucer, however, writing before words had received their

Aubrey's 'Lives of Eminent Men,' Vol. II. Part 2, p. 563.

There is a specially notable instance in Spenser's Mother Hub

VOL. V.

bard's Tale,' in the passage beginning "Full little knowest thou that hast not tried."