An interesting description of the poet's appearance has been left by Sir Joshua Reynolds. When the painter first came to London he was the pupil of Hudson, by whom he was sent one day to a sale of pictures. While standing near the auctioneer the boy heard a bustle at the other end of the crowded room, and thought some one had fainted. However, he soon heard the name of "Mr. Pope!" "Mr. Pope!" echoed from every mouth, and all the people, as the poet passed, held out their hands for him to take. Reynolds, though not in the front row, stretched out his hand under the arm of a man who stood before him, and Pope took it in his, and this he did to all he passed.

The boy used his eyes to advantage. In later years he described the poet in the following terms : "He was about four feet six high, very humpbacked and deformed. He had a very large and very fine eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which ran across the cheeks were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords." Roubiliac, the statuary, who made a bust of him from life, observed that his countenance was that of a person who had been much afflicted with headache, and that he should have known the fact from the contracted appearance of the skin above the eyebrows, though he had not been otherwise apprised of it.

CHAPTER LXIII

The Pope Controversy

IN 1756 Joseph Warton brought out the first vol

ume of his "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Alexander Pope," a curiously discursive work, which seems to have been composed with the object of showing the reading of Warton rather than discussing the writing of Pope. In the preface, which was addressed to Dr. Young, Warton boldly announced that, deeply as he revered the memory of Pope, and greatly as he admired his abilities, he could not place him at the head of his profession. "In other words," he explains, "in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art."

With this announcement, the heretical daring of which can scarcely now be estimated, the first shot was fired in the great Pope controversy. Warton proceeded to divide the English poets into four classes. In the first class he placed the three great imaginative poets, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton; in the second class Dryden, Cowley, Waller, Prior, Garth, Gay, Fenton, and other lesser lights, who shone more especially in moral and panegyrical

poetry; in the third class men of wit and taste, such as Butler, Donne, Rochester, Dorset and Swift; in the fourth class the mere versifiers, such as Buckingham, Lansdowne, and Broome.1 The Essay was intended to determine the class to which Pope belonged.

Warton remarked, with perfect justice, that the works of the great Mr. Pope had never been the subject of fair and candid criticism, and, in the innocence of his heart, he thought that it would be no unpleasing amusement to examine at large, without blind panegyric or impotent invective, the writings of the English classic. At the present day Warton would be considered a most generous and appreciative critic, but his suggestion that didactic poetry, however "correct,' correct," was not the highest kind of poetry, and that Pope did not stand on the same plane as Milton, brought condemnation upon his book and unpopularity upon himself.

It was twenty-six years before Warton published his second volume, at the close of which he attempted to answer his own question: "Where shall we, with justice, be authorised to place our admired Pope?" The answer, taken by itself, ought to have satisfied every reasonable admirer of Pope: "Not assuredly in the same rank with Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton . . . . but, considering the correctness, elegance, and utility of his works, the weight of sentiment, and the knowledge of man they contain, we may venture to assign

It is curious that Chaucer finds no place in Warton's catalogue.

him a place next to Milton and just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine Music Ode of Dryden, and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that, though Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist."

But Warton was not content with putting Pope in his " proper place," for, greatly daring, he contended that the sublime and the pathetic were the two chief nerves of all genuine poetry, and inquired what there was of the sublime or the pathetic in Pope. This was whittling away the poet's claims with a vengeance. If Pope were only placed at the head of a second-rate didactic school, and if didactic poetry were not genuine poetry, the logical conclusion was that Pope was not a genuine poet. Hence the battle-cries of controversy.

In 1769 a feebly written "Life of Pope" was published by Ruffhead, who, inspired by Warburton, attempted to refute the damaging contentions of Warton. In 1781 came Johnson's valuable little memoir of Pope in his "Lives of the Poets," from which several passages have been quoted. Johnson draws an interesting comparison between Dryden and Pope, remarking that Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. "The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. . . If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and 23

VOL. II

constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight." 1

1

If Johnson stripped away some of Pope's critical and philosophical pretensions with rather a heavy hand, he had no doubt about Pope's place on Parnassus. "If Pope be not a poet," he asks, "where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made." 2

In 1806 a new impetus was given to the Pope controversy by the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles's edition of "Pope's Works and Correspondence." Bowles, a sonneteer of no mean quality, and a friend of the Lake poets, went even further than Warton in his depreciation of the correct school. Moreover, in dealing with Pope's character and career, he showed no inclination to gloss over the less favourable traits, or to condone the more doubtful episodes. He dealt sternly with the Correspondence

1 In 1765 Boswell records the following conversation with Johnson: "I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, distinguished Pope and Dryden thus: 'Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat, trim nags; Dryden a coach and six stately horses.' Johnson: 'Why, sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six; but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling; Pope's go at a steady even trot.'"

• Horace Walpole describes Johnson's "Memoir of Pope" as a trumpery performance, stuffed with crabbed phrases, vulgarisms, and trashy anecdotes. He quotes Johnson's observation that the constituent and fundamental principle of Pope's character was good sense, "a prompt and intuitive perception of consonance and propriety." "Was good sense ever so mercilessly overlaid by a babbling old woman?" asks Horace.

'Bowles had been a pupil of Warton's at Winchester.