"We see," says he, "he has given a new life, and a more natural beauty, to this way of writing, by substituting in the place of those antiquated fables the superstitious mythology which prevails among the shepherds of our own country."' The eulogies of the 'Spectator' were soon echoed in five papers in the 'Guardian,'' by a writer who is conjectured, not without probability, to have been Tickell, another prominent member of the coterie at Button's. He too laid great stress on Philips' originality. After giving a general view of pastoral poetry, chiefly derived from Fontenelle's essay on the subject, "I must observe," he says, "that our countrymen have so good an opinion of the ancients, and think so modestly of themselves, that the generality of pastoral writers have either stolen all from the Greeks and Romans, or so servilely imitated their manners and customs as makes them very ridiculous." He then shows how different and how much better is the practice of Philips, and he concludes: "It is easy to be observed that these rules are drawn from what our countrymen Spenser and Philips have performed in this way. I shall not presume to say any more of them than that both have copied and improved the beauties of the ancients, whose manner of thinking I would above all things recommend. As far as our language would allow them, they have formed a pastoral style according to the Doric of Theocritus, in which I dare not say they have excelled Virgil! but I may be allowed, for the honour of our language, to suppose it more capable of that pretty rusticity than the Latin." Such criticism, if not insincere, was obviously absurd, as the writer himself shows by his argument in defence of Philips' innovations. "The reason," he says," why such changes from the ancients should be introduced is very obvious; namely that poetry being imitation, and that imitation being the best which deceives the most easily, it follows that we must take up the customs which are most familiar or universally known, 24 'Spectator,' Oct. 80, 1712. 2 Numbers 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. since no man can be deceived or delighted with the imitation of what he is ignorant of." But as the Pastorals of Philips were in essence, like Pope's, imitations not of Nature, but of a mere literary convention, no reader could be so foolish as to be 'deceived' by their resemblance to truth, and the more they departed from convention for the purpose of assuming a superficial colour of reality, the more childish did the poet's device appear. Could any reasonable being imagine English rustics alternately piping to each other, after the manner of Sicilian shepherds, in celebration of the charms of their respective mistresses? If not, how could it help matters to call the speakers in the poems Lobbin and Hobbinol, instead of Damon and Menalcas, or to pretend that beings so artificial might believe in Puck, though they had rejected Pan? This much at least Pope saw very clearly, and he had a right to be angry at the fulsome flattery of the criticism. But he was touched on a more personal point. Though his Pastorals had appeared in the same volume as Philips', they appeared to be deliberately ignored by the writer in the 'Guardian,' who maintained that there had been only four true masters of pastoral poetry in above two thousand years, "Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born Philips." Pope, who knew that, in respect of melody of versification, there was no comparison between the two sets of Pastorals, set himself to redress the injustice by a device of characteristic subtlety. He wrote a sixth paper on pastoral, professedly by the same hand as those which had already appeared in the 'Guardian,' with the pretended motive of clearing the writer from the charge of partiality in having made no mention of the poems of Pope.' Imitating, with admirable dexterity, the tone of exaggerated praise which had characterised the earlier criticisms, he continued to illustrate the true principles of pastoral poetry from Philips' ''Guardian,' No. 40. practice, but in such a way as to show the judicious reader, by the examples given, either the absurdity of Philips or the superior merit of Pope. Thus assuming 'simplicity to be the distinguishing characteristic of Pastoral,' he observes innocently, that he has often wondered why Virgil did not seek to imitate the Doric of Theocritus in old Latin, as Philips had done in old English. "For example might he not have said 'quoi' instead of 'cui'; quoijum for cujum; volt for vult, &c.; as well as our modern hath 'welladay' for 'alas,' 'whileome' for 'of old,' 'make inock' for 'deride,' and 'witless younglings' for 'simple lambs,' &c., by which means he had attained as much of the air of Theocritus as Philips hath of Spenser." He speaks of the 'great judgment' which Philips had shown in describing wolves in England, and of the poetical creation' by which he hath raised up finer beds of flowers than the most industrious gardener; his endives, lilies, king-cups, and daffodils, blow all in the same season.' After citing several passages from the rival poets in which, though the preference is always given to Philips, the example shows the great superiority of Pope; It is a justice I owe to Mr. Philips,' says the critic, 'to discover those parts in which no man can compare with him.' First he praises his 'beautiful rusticity,' as shown in the following lines: "O woful day! O day of woe! quoth she, And woful I, who live the day to see!" "The simplicity of diction," he observes gravely, "the melancholy flowing of the numbers, the solemnity of the sound, and the easy turn of the words in this dirge (to make use of our author's expression), are extremely elegant. "In another of his Pastorals, a shepherd utters a dirge not much inferior to the former, in the following lines: -- "Ah me, the while! ah me! the luckless day, Ah silly I more silly than my sheep, Which on the flowery plains I once did keep. "How he still charms the ear with those artful repetitions of the epithets! and how significant is the last verse! I defy the most common reader to repeat them without feeling some motions of compassion!" He next dwells with approval on Philips' versification of trite proverbs; and finally eulogises his provincialisms, citing with grave approbation a ludicrous old 'pastoral ballad' in the Somersetshire dialect, which he professes to have discovered. "I am loth," he says in conclusion, "to show my fondness for antiquity so far as to prefer this ancient British author to our present English writers of Pastoral; but I cannot avoid making this obvious remark, that Philips hath hit into the same road with this old West Country bard of ours." The essay was sent anonymously to the 'Guardian,' and it is said that Steele was deceived by the irony, and showing it to Pope, protested that he would "never publish any paper where one member of the Club was complimented at the expense of another." Pope, affecting indifference, begged that the paper might appear, and it was accordingly printed, to the great amusement of those who understood the jest, but, as may be imagined, to the no small disgust of Philips. The latter seems to have been so enraged as to lose all sense of good breeding; he hung up a birch-rod in Button's, and swore that if Pope appeared there he would use it on his person. The poet may have thought he was likely to keep his word; at any rate about this period he apparently discontinued his attendance at the Club, and began to resume the company of his old associates at Will's. CHAPTER V. 'THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.' Early Version-'La Secchia Rapita '-'Le Lutrin'-'The Dispensary '— Superiority of 'The Rape of the Lock' to all other Mock-Heroic Poems. 1712-1714. We have seen Pope in his boyhood forming the groundwork of his versification by translating the Latin poets; then proceeding to the imitation of external classical forms, and almost simultaneously framing for himself those just principles of criticism which led him to his true goal, imitation of the classical spirit. The year 1714 saw him, with a now matured experience of life and manners, reducing his critical principles to practice, in a poem at once the most original, the most fanciful, and the most correct that he ever produced, a composition which is unapproached for excellence in its own class, and from which even the harshest judges of his genius are unable to withhold their enthusiastic admiration. The history of the Rape of the Lock,' of its origin, of the execution of the rudimentary conception, and of its subsequent development, stands among the most interesting stories in the annals of poetry, and justifies the boast of the author that the change made in the form of the poem was one of the greatest proofs of judgment of anything he ever did.' In 1711, Robert, 7th Lord Petre, a young man of twenty, in a freak of gallantry cut a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor, one of the celebrated beauties of the day. The Fermors had been settled for generations at Tusmore, in Oxfordshire, and Arabella was the fourth child of Henry, the proprietor of the place, and of Alice his wife. As both she and Lord Petre 'Spence's 'Anecdotes,' p. 142. |