Solitude." His father encouraged his tastes; and Pope's life as an author dates from his sixteenth year, when he wrote his "Pastorals," which were praised far beyond their deserts. His "Essay on Criticism," published when he was twenty-three, is in a higher strain. It has lived, and will continue to live, in spite of the depreciatory estimates of De Quincey and Elwin. Other works followed in quick succession, the principal of which were his "Messiah," "Odes," "Windsor Forest," "Essay on Man," "Rape of the Lock," the matchless "Eloïsa to Abelard," and "The Dunciad." His most laborious literary undertaking was his translation of Homer. Of this the great scholar, Bentley, remarked, in return for a presentation copy, "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." By this work Pope realized above £5000, part of which he laid out in the purchase of a house with five acres at Twickenham, to which he removed with his aged mother in 1715. He was never married. Pope is a poet of the intellect rather than of nature and the emotions. The nineteenth century raised the question, contested by Bowles on the adverse side, and Roscoe on the other, whether Pope was a poet at all. Wordsworth thought poorly of him; but Wordsworth had no wit, and wit is the predominant element in Pope. "There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times," says Byron, "than the depreciation of Pope, the most perfect of our pocts, and the purest of our moralists. *** In my mind, the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth." "In spite of the influences," says Mr. John Dennis (1876), "at work during the earlier years of this century, tending to lessen the poetical fame of Pope, his reputation has grown, and is still growing." And Mr. John Ruskin, in his lectures on Art, after referring to Pope as one of the most accomplished artists in literature, adds: "Putting Shakspeare aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to be the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind." The Rape of the Lock" is a brilliant specimen of the mock-heroic style. The "Essay on Man" is a singularly successful effort to weave ethical philosophy into poe. try. The argument seems directly intended to meet the form of doubt prevalent at the time, and which brought into question not only the divine justice, but the divine existence. Jealousy of his marvellous success involved Pope in a literary warfare, the evidences of which are abundantly exhibited in his later writings. By some critics his "Dunciad" is regarded as his greatest effort. Full of wit and power as it is, however, it is little read in our day. Such a war upon the dunces should have been beneath the nature and the dignity of a true poet. Pope ought never to have soiled his hands with the dirt of Grub Street. A constant state of excitement, added to a life of ceaseless study and contemplation, operating on a feeble frame, completely exhausted the powers of Pope before his fifty-seventh year. He complained of his inability to think; yet a short time before his death he said, "I am so certain of the soul's being immortal that I seem to feel it in me, as it were, by intuition." Another of his dying remarks was, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and, indeed, friendship itself is only a part of virtue." Pope's example teaches us that the patient labor of the artist must supplement genius for the production of works of enduring fame. This is a lesson which some even of the popular poets of our day, who "say what they feel without considering what is fitting to be said," very much need. ODE ON SOLITUDE. WRITTEN BEFORE POPE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD. Happy the man whose wish and care Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Blest, who can unconcern'dly find Sound sleep by night, study and ease, Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; FROM "THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM." But most by numbers judge a poet's song; Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, ALEXANDER POPE. While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still-expected rhymes. Where'er you find the "cooling western breeze," In the next line it "whispers through the trees;" If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep," The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep ;" Then at the last and only couplet, fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, 143 Of man, what see we but his station here "Tis ours to trace him only in our own. That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length What varied being peoples every star,— along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow, Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, TO HENRY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things Say, first, of God above, or man below, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? In God's, one single can its end produce, When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of being, which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect-what no eye can see, No glass can reach,-from infinite to thee, From thee to nothing! On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours; Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth or ten-thousandth, breaks the chain alike. And if each system in gradation roll, Alike essential to the amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole, must fall. Let Earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly; Planets and suns run lawless through the sky: Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on being wrecked, and world on world; Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod, And Nature trembles to the throne of God! All this dread order break? For whom? for thee? Vile worm! O madness! pride! impiety! What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear, repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another in this general frame; Just as absurd to mourn the tasks or pains The great directing Mind of all ordains. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent, Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. Cease, then, nor order imperfection name; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, FROM THE "EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT." "Shut, shut the door, good John," fatigued I said; "Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead!" The dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. What walls can guard me, or what shades cau hide? They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide; By land, by water, they renew the charge; rhyme, Happy to catch me just at dinner-time. Is there a parson, much be-mused in beer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross, Friend to my life (which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song), A place to which insolvent debtors retired to enjoy an illegal protection. ALEXANDER POPE. What drop or nostrum can this plague remove? If foes, they write; if friends, they read me dead. With honest anguish and an aching head, "Nine years!" cries he, who, high in Drury Lane, Bless me! a packet.-""Tis a stranger sues, If I dislike it, "Furies, death, and rage;" Fired that the house reject him, "Sdeath, I'll print it, And shame the fools,-your interest, sir, with Lintot." Lintot, dull rogue, will think your price too much: "Not, sir, if you revise it and retouch." All my demurs but double his attacks: At last he whispers, "Do, and we go snacks." Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door, "Sir, let me see your works and you no more!" Why did I write? What sin to me unknown I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came : The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife; FROM "THE RAPE OF THE LOCK." And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, 145 To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; CANTO II. Nor with more glories, in the ethereal plain, But every eye was fixed on her alone. On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore; Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those : Favors to none, to all she smiles extends: Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet, graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: 1 Strangely among our grandmothers reckoned ornaments to beauty. If to her share some female errors fall, This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER. Father of all! in every age, In every clime, adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! Thou great First Cause, least understood, To know but this, that thou art good, Yet gave me, in this dark estate, What conscience dictates to be done, That more than heaven pursue. What blessings thy free bounty gives, Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives: To enjoy is to obey. Yet not to earth's contracted span Let not this weak, unknowing hand If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart To find that better way. Save me alike from foolish pride, Teach me to feel another's woe; Mean though I am, not wholly so, Since quickened by thy breath; Oh, lead me, wheresoe'er I go,— Through this day's life or death. This day, be bread and peace my lot: All else beneath the sun Thou know'st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done. To thee, whose temple is all space, THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. This ode was partly suggested by the following lines, written by the Emperor Adrian: ADRIANI MORIENTIS.-AD ANIMAM SUAM. Animula, vagula, blandula, Pope's lines were composed at the request of Steele, who wrote: "This is to desire of you that you would please to make an ode as of a cheerful, dying spirit; that is to say, the Emperor Adrian's animula vagula put into two or three stanzas for music." Pope replied with the three stanzas below, and says to Steele in a letter, "You have it, as Cowley calls it, warm from the brain. It came to me the first moment I waked this morn. ing." Vital spark of heavenly flame, Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away. |