Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

these which have enabled its popularity to survive the decline of the modes of thought which gave it a peculiar interest for the imagination of its earliest readers. When the poem had lost its first novelty, there were some who perceived that its philosophy was open to many of the criticisms of Crousaz; there were others who saw that it could not stand against the ridicule of Voltaire. The Deism, on which it was based gave place in time, as a fashion of thought, first to the scepticism of Hume, and afterwards to the atheism of the French Encyclopædists. On the other hand, even in the first half of the eighteenth century, many men of devout temper, like William Law, author of the Serious Call to a Devout Life,' felt that the strength of Christianity lay in its appeal to the heart; and the plausible arguments of Natural Religion, which had commended themselves to the cold Latitudinarianism of society under George the Second, made no impression on souls touched by the inward and spiritual forces of Methodism. Nevertheless, the subject of the Essay' is of universal interest, for though the problem with which it deals is one that can never be solved by reason alone, it is yet one that will always invite solution. The particular solution offered by Pope is unsatisfactory, but perhaps not more so than any other among the crowd of systems which in every age have attracted adherents and believers, while it has at least the merit of introducing the reader to a representation of Man which, restricted as it is, is founded on nice observation and subtle reflection. Form and Art triumph even in the midst of error: a framework of fallacious generalisation gives coherence to the epigrammatic statement of a multitude of individual truths.

CHAPTER XII.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PERIOD.

Death of Gay-First Imitation of Horace - Verses to the Imitator of Horace' and 'Letter to a Doctor of Divinity-Letter to a Noble Lord'Epistle to Arbuthnot'-Death of Pope's Mother and of Arbuthnot.

1733-1735.

6

POPE's writings fall naturally into two classes; those which were inspired by some motive of fancy or of abstract reflection; and those which had their origin in personal feeling or in the force of circumstances. To the former class belong the 'Pastorals,' 'Windsor Forest,' the Rape of the Lock,' the 'Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' the 'Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard,' the Essay on Man,' and the 'Moral Essays'; to the latter the Dunciad,' the 'Imitations of Horace,' and the Prologue and Epilogue to the 'Satires.' It is, however, to be observed that both kinds of composition are vividly coloured by the poet's own character, and while in the didactic poems, like the Moral Essays,' there is a strong personal element, in the Satires,' which are mainly the product of personal resentment, the private nature of the master motive is softened and elevated by an atmosphere of generous idealism.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

It is noticeable, too, that the Rape of the Lock,' the Essay on Man,' and the like, spring out of independent efforts of imagination; but the works produced by necessity or personal feeling form a closely connected series. We have already seen that the Dunciad' was inspired by the attacks made on the poet while engaged on the Translation of Homer and on the edition of Shakespeare; and we now come to

[ocr errors]

a class of autobiographical and apologetic compositions in prose and verse, which were no less evidently drawn from him by the active retaliatory measures of those who had smarted from the Dunciad.' Of this description are the majority of the 'Imitations of Horace,' the Letter to a Noble Lord,' the Versifications of Donne,' the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' and the so-called surreptitious and authentic volumes of the Correspondence. Johnson, indeed, says that "the Imitations of Horace' seem to have been written as relaxations of Pope's genius," but I think that no one can study these poems in the light of our present knowledge without perceiving how entirely they are the fruit of passion and circumstance.

[ocr errors]

When the first epistle of the 'Essay on Man' was on the eve of publication an inflammation of the breast suddenly carried off one of the friends to whom Pope was most sincerely attached. Gay had lived with him in close companionship for more than twenty years; and, as often happens with men of a similar temper, his easy and rather feeble amiability, endeared him to the bitter and irritable poet. He died on the 4th of December, 1732, and on the 5th Pope wrote to Swift:

"I shall never see you now, I believe; one of your principal calls to England is at an end. Indeed he was the most amiable by far, his qualities were the gentlest; but I love you as well and as firmly. Would to God the man we had lost had not been so amiable or so good; but that is a wish for our own sakes, not for his. Sure, if innocence and integrity can deserve happiness, it must be his."

His grief and agitation threw him into a fever, from which as he was recovering, Lord Bolingbroke one day called upon him, and taking up a volume of Horace which was on the table, happened to light upon the first Satire of the Second Book, which, he observed, exactly fitted Pope's case. After he had gone, the poet read it over: in two mornings he had imitated it, and finding his friends pleased with the result, sent it to press within a week. When

[ocr errors]

it appeared (February 14, 1733), he despatched it to Swift with the Epistle to Bathurst,' which had already been published. "I never," says he in his letter of February 16, 1733, "took more pains than with the former of these" (the Epistle) "nor less than with the latter-yet every friend has forced me to print it, though in truth my own single motive was about twenty lines towards the latter end, which you will find out."

The passage Pope here speaks of is that beginning in the original, "O puer ut sis"; and the verse of which he is particularly thinking is

"Scilicet uni æquus Virtuti atque ejus amicis,"

which Horace applies to Lucilius, but which Pope appropriates to himself. There was, however, another passage in the Latin which supplied Pope with a motive stronger even than the one he actually avows. Horace says:

"At ille

Qui me commorit (melius non tangere, clamo)
Flebit, et insignis totâ cantabitur urbe."

Pope's paraphrase is full of animation :

"Peace is my dear delight-not Fleury's more :
But touch me, and no minister so sore.
Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
And the sad burden of a merry song."

Here, then, is the personal motive of his Satire, plainly avowed; and it is, therefore, on their autobiographical side, as reflecting Pope's ideas of his own character, and his feelings towards his friends and his enemies, that these Imitations' are most deeply interesting.

The interlocutor of the poet in the Dialogue,' answering to Horace's Trebatius,' was William Fortescue, a Devonshire man, who is said to have been an intimate friend of Gay when they were both at Barnstaple Grammar School. Pope

took great pleasure in his society, and Fortescue gave him ' advice without a fee,' probably as to the manner of producing the 'Dunciad,' certainly with regard to his numerous arrangements with his publishers, and on many other occasions. In 1735 Fortescue was made one of the Judges of the Exchequer; in 1738, a Judge of the Common Pleas ; and in 1741, Master of the Rolls. An example of his humour survives in the Report of "Stradling v. Stiles," published in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.'

The autobiographical interest of the 'Imitation' begins when the poet deals with 'offenders.' Horace had enume

rated in his Satire some of his contemporaries with whom he had quarrelled :

"Cervius iratus leges minitatur et urnam;

Canidia Albuci, quibus est inimica, venenum;
Grande malum Turius, si quid se judice certes."

Pope was ready with his parallel:

"Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage,
Hard words or hanging if your judge be

Delia was Mary Howard, widow of Henry, first Earl of Deloraine, and now wife of William Windham, tutor to the Duke of Cumberland. Lord Hervey describes her, in his Memoirs,' as "one of the vainest as well as one of the simplest women that ever lived, but to this wretched head there was certainly joined one of the prettiest faces that ever was formed." A report was current in society that she had attempted to poison a Miss Mackenzie, one of the Maids of Honour. Whether Pope had really been touched' by her, or whether he merely introduced her name as fitting the context, in view of the scandal attaching to her, is uncertain; but as she was reported to be the mistress of the King, it is likely enough that party spirit prompted the allusion.

1 Lord Hervey's 'Memoirs of the Reign of George II.' (edition of 1884), vol. iii., 152.

[merged small][ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »