and forces, out of which was to spring the new social fabric, were at the date of Pope's birth already manifesting themselves. While the philosophy of Bacon had not yet superseded that of Aristotle in the studies of the Universities, the inductive methods of science were always winning in society at large an increasing number of adherents. Locke's 'Essay on the Understanding' was completed the year before the Revolution; and the same year had seen the publication of a book which was itself to revolutionise the world of physical sciencethe 'Principia' of Newton. The Deists also, who, since the days of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, had been a growing sect in England, now began to exercise a perceptible influence on the course of religious thought. Similar tendencies were visible in the sphere of written language. The place of the accent on words was indeed almost settled, and for nearly a century the poets had contracted the final syllable 'ed' in the past participle, an important step towards the definite determination of the standard; but traces of the old fashion still remained in some of the inflexions of verbs, and in the use of the expletives 'do' and 'did.' A certain conscious archaism of thought, encouraged by the example of Spenser, had been cultivated late in the seventeenth century by the metaphysical' school of poets, while affectations in language of an exactly opposite kind were practised by the imitators of classical antiquity, either, as in the case of the Euphuists, by the excessive use of antithesis, or by the lavish coinage of words derived from the Latin. Between these two extreme tendencies the new school of poetry, founded by Waller, was gradually forming a poetical diction on social idioms, refined by the style of the best classical authors, with whose works the general reader was becoming familiar through the medium of frequent translations. Thus in all directions, amid the clash of opposing forces, Catholic and Protestant, Whig and Tory, Aristotelian and Baconian, Mediævalist and Classicist, the year 1688 found society in England in a state of unsettlement and confusion. The poet who learned to harmonise all these conflicting principles in a form of versification so clear and precise that for fully a hundred years after he began to write it was accepted as the established standard of metrical music, occupied politically and socially a position of remarkable isolation. His parents were, both of them, Roman Catholics. Of his father's family very little is certainly known. When Pope was engaged in his war with the Dunces, the latter sought to mortify him by taunting him with the obscurity of his birth, pretending in various pamphlets that he was the son of a bankrupt, a hatter, or a farmer.' By way of reply to these false reports the poet credited himself with a lineage much more splendid but no less fabulous. In his 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' he asserted and in a note on another verse in the poem he said: “Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the heir of Lindsay." The Earl of Guildford, however, who inherited the estates of the Earls of Downe, and had examined their descent, could find in it nothing to confirm this claim, and a cousin of Pope's, Richard Potinger, said that he had himself never heard of this fine pedigree,' and "what is more, he had an old maiden aunt equally related, a great, genealogist, who was always talking of her family, but never mentioned this circumstance,-on which she certainly would not have been silent had she known anything of it. Mr. Pope's grandfather was a clergyman of the Church of England in Hampshire. He placed his son, Mr. Pope's father, with a merchant at Lisbon, where he became a convert to 1 See note to 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' v. 381. He was called the son of a farmer in 'Farmer Pope and his Son,' published in 1728. 1 Popery." Accepting this statement, which appears to be made on good authority, it would appear to be not improbable, though it is by no means certain, that the poet's grandfather was one Alexander Pope, Rector of Thruxton in Hampshire, who died in 1645. Alexander Pope, his son, and the poet's father, is said to have been a posthumous child." On the mother's side the lineage can be much more easily traced. The note in the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' before referred to says: "His mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York; she had three brothers, one of whom was killed; another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." The Turners were a family of small landowners in Yorkshire, the founder of which, Robert Turner, acquired some wealth as a wax-chandler in the reign of Henry the Eighth. One of his descendants, Philip Turner, married Edith, the daughter of William Gylminge, vintner of York, and had seven children, of whom William, the father of the poet's mother, was the fifth. To him Lancelot Turner, his uncle, bequeathed the bulk of his fortune, including the manor of Towthorpe, and a rent-charge on the manor of Ruston, which came into the possession of Pope's father on his marriage into the Turner family, and is mentioned in his will. William Turner married Thomasine Newton, a member of a good family at Thorpe, in Yorkshire, and had by her seventeen. children, Edith, the poet's mother, and her grandmother Turner's namesake, being one of them. Of the other children, besides the sons mentioned in the note in the Epistle to Arbuthnot,' the only one connected with the history of the poet was Christiana, who married Samuel Cooper, a portrait painter of reputation, and a friend of Butler, author of 1 Warton's edition of Pope's Works, vol. iv. 53. 2 Pope: his Descent and Family Connections,' By Joseph Hunter, 3 P. T. to Curll. See Vol. VI. 423. 'Pope: Additional Facts concerning his Maternal Ancestry.' By Robert Davies. 'Hudibras.' Christiana's husband died in 1672. She herself lived till 1693, and remembered in her will her nephew, Alexander Pope, who was also her godson. She leaves him my painted China dish, with a silver foote, and a dish to sett it in, and after my sister Elizabeth Turner's decease, I give him all my bookes, pictures, and meddalls, sett in gold or otherwise." 66 Edith Turner was Alexander Pope's second wife. On his return from Lisbon he seems to have followed the trade of a linendraper in Broad Street, London, and the Register of St. Bennet-Fink shows that on the 12th August, 1679, he buried his first wife, Magdalen, by whom he had one daughter, the Magdalen Racket whom the poet frequently speaks of in his correspondence as his sister.' After his second marriage he removed his business to Lombard Street, where his son was born, both parents being at the time more than forty years old. From this date up to the little Alexander's twelfth year, when, as he himself tells us, his father removed him to Binfield, the history of the family is almost a blank. There is nothing to show how long the father continued to pursue his business, or when he acquired the property at Binfield. He seems to have made a small fortune in trade, which, according to Hearne the antiquary, an accurate reporter, brought him an income of three or four hundred a year.' It has been assumed on the most shadowy evidence that, before making his purchase in Windsor Forest, he resided at Kensington; on the other hand it is natural to suppose that many reasons may have conspired to make him desire a residence at some distance from London immediately after the Revolution; nor can anything be argued from his son's expression, recorded by Spence, that when he was about twelve years old 'he went with his father into the Forest.' Such a phrase may mean no more than at this age taken from school to live at home. he was Very little is recorded of his childhood. Mrs. Racket, his half-sister, relates that, while he was a child in coats, a cow, that was being driven by the place where he was at play, struck at him with her horns, tore off his hat, wounded him in the throat, and trampled on him.' In these early days his shape, it appears, was not deformed. A cousin of his, a Mr. Mannick, told Spence that, in the picture of him drawn when he was about ten years old, his face was round, plump, pretty, and of a fresh complexion, and that it was the perpetual application he fell into in his twelfth year that changed his form and ruined his constitution. He is said to have been a child of a particularly sweet disposition, which exhibited itself in the musical tones of his voice, so that his friends called him the little nightingale'; and this characteristic, according to Southerne the dramatist, survived even in the vexations and animosities of his declining years. His education was superficial and desultory. He tells us that he was taught his letters by an old aunt, perhaps for he was a precocious child-his godmother, Christiana Cooper. Writing he learned for himself by copying printed books, a practice which he long continued. Johnson pronounces that "his ordinary hand was not elegant," but this judgment seems to have been founded on the observation of the specimens preserved in the 'Translation of the Iliad,' an obviously unfair test. Richardson, son of the painter, on the other hand, who was well acquainted with his writing, after transcribing the various readings of Windsor Forest,' adds in a note, " Altered from the first copy of the author's own hand, written out beautifully, as usual, for the criticism and perusal of his friends." All the fair copies of Pope's MSS. that I have myself seen entirely 1 Spence, 'Anecdotes,' p. 5. A slightly different account of the same incident was given by Mrs. Racket on another occasion, see Spence, 'Anecdotes,' p. 267. 2 Spence, Anecdotes,' p. 26. |