ALEXANDER POPE, 1688-1744 Alexander Pope is the recognized leader of the English Augustan poets. Early in life he set for himself an ideal in poetry, toward which he constantly strove and to which he attained in almost perfection—the ideal of correctness. To the setting of this ideal he had been admonished by a friend, but his own genius would have directed him to it without any impulse from without. His early reading of the classics led him naturally in that direction, and his early efforts in poetry, the translating of the Latin poets Statius and Ovid, and the turning of Chaucer's poetry into contemporary, fashionable couplets-all strengthened the inclination. For this reason, in considering the poets of the eighteenth century in the light of their indebtedness to the poets of the reign of Augustus, and to Horace in particular, it is Pope's name that rises first and most naturally to the mind. For he cultivated, and succeeded preeminently in producing, poetry of the quality of that of the great Augustan poets, especially of Horace, who has described this quality in two brilliant words, 'lucidus ordo.' Pope's effort was a fully conscious one; he never lost sight of his ideal, and when he erred, it was not in the careful polishing of his lines, or in the conciseness of the thought contained in them. Throughout his work Horace was often his model, consciously so, if not, as in the Imitations, avowedly so:1 Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you. 1 Imitations of Horace, The Second Epistle of the Second Book 144 (The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. by Whitwell Elwin and W. J. Courthope, 1871-1889, 3. 385). He sums up what he wishes his poetry to be, in a line in the Essay on Man,1 Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, which Horace has already implied in his lines: Sectantem levia nervi Deficiunt animique. The truth that, contained in the 'spirit' and essential to it, there must be wise thinking,3 Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons, he has recognized, and expressed in a couplet of one of the Moral Essays:* Something there is more needful than expense, These Moral Essays, when they were published in 1743, had as motto the following lines of Horace: Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe iocoso, Then there is his famous definition of wit, 6 True wit is nature to advantage dressed; 1 Essay on Man 4. 381 (Wks. 2. 455). 2 A. P. 26-27. 3 A. P. 309. 4 Moral Essays 4. 41-42 (Wks. 3. 175). 5 S. 1. 10. 9-14. Essay on Criticism 297-298 (Wks. 2. 51). which he himself notes as derived from Quintilian, but in which he is clearly following Boileau, who in his turn was probably following Horace, who has expressed the thought with the greatest simplicity:1 Difficile est proprie communia dicere. Finally, in his imitation of the Second Epistle of the Second Book, Pope has found opportunity for a fuller expression of his own rules and method of work." In this Epistle Horace has laid down his rules for the writing of a poem that is to be a true work of art. Beginning with the admonition,3 Qui legitimum cupiet fecisse poema, Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti; in which Pope can follow him with his own strict injunctions to the poet, But how severely with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read! Horace continues until he has presented what he considers the full duties of the poet; and Pope gladly follows him, for he finds in his lines rules for the kind of writing that he emulates. His paraphrase of the last lines of this passage 1 A. P. 128. 2 Imitations of Horace, The Second Epistle of the Second Book 157-179 (Wks. 3. 386-387). 3 E. 2. 2. 109-113. See the whole passage 109-125. Luxuriantia compescet, nimis aspera sano Ludentis speciem dabit et torquebitur, ut qui Nunc Satyrum, nunc agrestem Cyclopa movetur— is peculiarly striking as describing the progress of his own genius: Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, Thus the keynote of what were the guiding principles of Pope's poetry is to be sought in Horace, or in words of Pope that have had their original suggestion in Horace. It is known of both poets that they polished and refined their verses to a higher degree than any other poet upon record, and the result in each case is clearly to be seen. That Horace did not spare the file which he advocates in the Ars Poetica, his perfect Alcaic and Sapphic measures are a lasting witness; and Pope in his brilliant couplets brought this particular type of English poetry to a height that cannot be surpassed; so that poets who have succeeded these two great masters of versification have been fain to seek distinction in another field. Inherent in the beauty of verse-form to be found in the two poets is the refined terseness of utterance that distinguishes their poetry above that of any other classical or English poet, and that in Pope at least gives the suggestion of a series of epigrams strung together like a glittering rope of beads. This power to compress a striking thought into the briefest and clearest content of metrical expression explains why Horace and Pope are such often quoted 1 See also Essay on Criticism 362-363 (Wks. 2. 56). poets. There are not very many English poets who have been able, in brief form, 'proprie communia dicere.' In his character as a satirist Pope also emulated Horace. In his Prologue to the Satires he explains what he believes to be his use of the weapon of satire:1 A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, The dread of his 'babbling blockheads' is the equivalent of Horace's 'magnus timor latronibus,' whom Pope imitates in his assurance that his satire is directed only against the guilty:2 At bene si quis Et vivat puris manibus contemnat utrumque. How successfully and how honestly Pope followed this rule of his great master in satire is another question. For the actual subject-matter of his poetry, with the exception of the Essay on Criticism, much of which he derived through Boileau from Horace, Pope was not dependent upon Horace until he began his series of Imitations. So much for the likeness of Pope to Horace. His unlikeness to him stands out the more vividly for the very reason that he avowedly used so many of his methods, and wrote so often, as he himself has said, 'in the Horatian way.' It seems a curious contradiction to say that Pope's method of writing was distinctly after the manner of Horace, but that his spirit was foreign to the spirit of the Augustan poet. And yet so it is. In his satire Horace honestly tries to hold up to ridicule the vices that he sees around him, sullying the social life of Rome: to strike the vice, not the person, and to use individual names only when they have come so to exemplify the type as to become 1 Prologue to the Satires 303-304 (Wks. 3. 264). 2 S. 1. 4. 67-68. |