<SPAN name="X"></SPAN>
<h2>X</h2>
<h2><b>POPE</b></h2>
<br/>
<p>Pope is a poet whose very admirers belittle him. Mr. Saintsbury, for
instance, even in the moment of inciting us to read him, observes that
"it would be scarcely rash to say that there is not an original
thought,
sentiment, image, or example of any of the other categories of poetic
substance to be found in the half a hundred thousand verses of Pope."
And he has still less to say in favour of Pope as a man. He denounces
him for "rascality" and goes on with characteristic irresponsibility to
suggest that "perhaps ... there is a natural connection between the two
kinds of this dexterity of fingering—that of the artist in words, and
that of the pickpocket or the forger." If Pope had been a contemporary,
Mr. Saintsbury, I imagine, would have stunned him with a huge mattock
of
adjectives. As it is, he seems to be in two minds whether to bury or to
praise him. Luckily, he has tempered his moral sense with his sense of
humour, and so comes to the happy conclusion that as a matter of fact,
when we read or read about Pope, "some of the proofs which are most
damning morally, positively increase one's aesthetic delight."</p>
<p>One is interested in Pope's virtues as a poet and his vices as a man
almost equally. It is his virtues as a man and his vices as a poet that
are depressing. He is usually at his worst artistically when he is at
his best morally. He achieves wit through malice: he achieves only
rhetoric through virtue. It is not that one wishes he had been a bad
son
or a Uriah Heep in his friendships. It is pleasant to remember the
pleasure he gave his mother by allowing her to copy out parts of his
translation of the <i>Iliad</i>, and one respects him for refusing a
pension
of £300 a year out of the secret service money from his friend
Craggs.
But one wishes that he had put neither his filial piety nor his
friendship into writing. Mr. Saintsbury, I see, admires "the masterly
and delightful craftsmanship in words" of the tribute to Craggs; but
then Mr. Saintsbury also admires the <i>Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady</i>—a
mere attitude in verse, as chill as a weeping angel in a graveyard.</p>
<p>Pope's attractiveness is less that of a real man than of an
inhabitant
of Lilliput, where it is a matter of no importance whether or not one
lives in obedience to the Ten Commandments. We can regard him with
amusement as a liar, a forger, a glutton, and a slanderer of his kind.
If his letters are the dullest letters ever written by a wit, it is
because he reveals in them not his real vices but his imaginary
virtues.
They only become interesting when we know the secret history of his
life
and read them as the moralizings of a doll Pecksniff. Historians of
literature often assert—mistakenly, I think—that Pliny's letters are
dull, because they are merely the literary exercises of a man
over-conscious of his virtues. But Pliny's virtues, however tip-tilted,
were at least real. Pope's letters are the literary exercises of a man
platitudinizing about virtues he did not possess. They have an
impersonality, like that of the leading articles in <i>The Times</i>.
They
have all the qualities of the essay except intimate confession. They
are
irrelevant scrawls which might as readily have been addressed to one
correspondent as another. So much so is this, that when Pope published
them, he altered the names of the recipients of some of them so as to
make it appear that they were written to famous persons when, as a
matter of fact, they were written to private and little-known friends.</p>
<p>The story of the way in which he tampered with his letters and
arranged
for their "unauthorized" publication by a pirate publisher is one of
the
most amazing in the history of forgery. It was in reference to this
that
Whitwell Elwin declared that Pope "displayed a complication of
imposture, degradation, and effrontery which can only be paralleled in
the lives of professional forgers and swindlers." When he published his
correspondence with Wycherley, his contemporaries were amazed that the
boyish Pope should have written with such an air of patronage to the
aged Wycherley and that Wycherley should have suffered it. We know,
now,
however, that the correspondence is only in part genuine, and that Pope
used portions of his correspondence with Caryll and published them as
though they had been addressed to Wycherley. Wycherley had remonstrated
with Pope on the extravagant compliments he paid him: Pope had
remonstrated with Caryll on similar grounds. In the Wycherley
correspondence, Pope omits Wycherley's remonstrance to him and
publishes
his own remonstrance to Caryll as a letter from himself to Wycherley.</p>
<p>From that time onwards Pope spared no effort in getting his
correspondence "surreptitiously" published. He engaged a go-between, a
disreputable actor disguised as a clergyman, to approach Curll, the
publisher, with an offer of a stolen collection of letters, and, when
the book was announced, he attacked Curll as a villain, and procured a
friend in the House of Lords to move a resolution that Curll should be
brought before the House on a charge of breach of privilege, one of the
letters (it was stated) having been written to Pope by a peer. Curll
took a number of copies of the book with him to the Lords, and it was
discovered that no such letter was included. But the advertisement was
a
noble one. Unfortunately, even a man of genius could not devise
elaborate schemes of this kind without ultimately falling under
suspicion, and Curll wrote a narrative of the events which resulted in
seriously discrediting Pope.</p>
<p>Pope was surely one of the least enviable authors who ever lived. He
had
fame and fortune and friends. But he had not the constitution to enjoy
his fortune, and in friendship he had not the gift of fidelity. He
secretly published his correspondence with Swift and then set up a
pretence that Swift had been the culprit. He earned from Bolingbroke in
the end a hatred that pursued him in the grave. He was always begging
Swift to go and live with him at Twickenham. But Swift found even a
short visit trying. "Two sick friends never did well together," he
wrote
in 1727, and he has left us verses descriptive of the miseries of great
wits in each other's company:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Pope has the talent well to speak,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">But not to reach the ear;<br/>
</span><span>His loudest voice is low and weak,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">The Dean too deaf to hear.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Awhile they on each other look,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Then different studies choose;<br/>
</span><span>The Dean sits plodding o'er a book,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Pope walks and courts the muse.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>"Mr. Pope," he grumbled some years later, "can neither eat nor
drink,
loves to be alone, and has always some poetical scheme in his head."
Swift, luckily, stayed in Dublin and remained Pope's friend. Lady Mary,
Wortley Montagu went to Twickenham and became Pope's enemy. The reason
seems to have been that he was more eager for an exchange of
compliments
than for friendship. He affected the attitude of a man in love, when
Lady Mary saw in him only a monkey in love. He is even said to have
thrown his little makeshift of a body, in its canvas bodice and its
three pairs of stockings, at her feet, with the result that she burst
out laughing. Pope took his revenge in the <i>Epistle to Martha Blount</i>,
where, describing Lady Mary as Sappho, he declared of another lady that
her different aspects agreed as ill with each other—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock;<br/>
</span><span>Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task<br/>
</span><span>With Sappho fragrant at an evening mask;<br/>
</span><span>So morning insects, that in muck begun,<br/>
</span><span>Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>His relations with his contemporaries were too often begun in
compliments only to end in abuse of this kind. Even while he was on
good
terms with them, he was frequently doing them ill turns. Thus, he
persuaded a publisher to get Dennis to write abusively of Addison's
<i>Cato</i> in order that he might have an excuse in his turn for
writing
abusively of Dennis, apparently vindicating Addison but secretly taking
a revenge of his own. Addison was more embarrassed than pleased by so
savage a defence, and hastened to assure Dennis that he had had nothing
to do with it. Addison also gave offence to Pope by his too judicious
praise of <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> and the translation of the <i>Iliad</i>.
Thus began the maniacal suspicion of Addison, which was expressed with
the genius of venom in the <i>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.</i></p>
<p>There was never a poet whose finest work needs such a running
commentary
of discredit as Pope's. He may be said, indeed, to be the only great
poet in reading whom the commentary is as necessary as the text. One
can
enjoy Shakespeare or Shelley without a note: one is inclined even to
resent the intrusion of the commentator into the upper regions of
poetry. But Pope's verse is a guide to his age and the incidents of his
waspish existence, lacking a key to which one misses three-fourths of
the entertainment. The <i>Danciad</i> without footnotes is one of the
obscurest poems in existence: with footnotes it becomes a perfect epic
of literary entomology. And it is the same with at least half of his
work. Thus, in the <i>Imitations of Horace</i>, a reference to Russell
tells
us little till we read in a delightful footnote:</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>There was a Lord Russell who, by living too luxuriously, had quite
spoiled his constitution. He did not love sport, but used to go out
with his dogs every day only to hunt for an appetite. If he felt
anything of that, he would cry out, "Oh, I have found it!" turn short
round and ride home again, though they were in the midst of the finest
chase. It was this lord who, when he met a beggar, and was entreated by
him to give him something because he was almost famished with hunger,
called him a "happy dog."</p>
</div>
<p>There may have been a case for neglecting Pope before Mr. Elwin and
Mr.
Courthope edited and annotated him—though he had been edited well
before—but their monumental edition has made him of all English poets
one of the most incessantly entertaining.</p>
<p>Pope, however, is a charmer in himself. His venom has graces. He is
a
stinging insect, but of how brilliant a hue! There are few satires in
literature richer in the daintiness of malice than the <i>Epistle to
Martha Blount</i> and the <i>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</i>. The
"characters" of
women in the former are among the most precious of those railleries of
sex in which mankind has always loved to indulge. The summing-up of the
perfect woman:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>And mistress of herself, though china fall,<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>is itself perfect in its wit. And the fickle lady, Narcissa, is a
portrait in porcelain:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Narcissa's nature, tolerably mild,<br/>
</span><span>To make a wash, would hardly stew a child;<br/>
</span><span>Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer.<br/>
</span><span>And paid a tradesman once, to make him stare;...<br/>
</span><span>Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs,<br/>
</span><span>Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres;<br/>
</span><span>Now conscience chills her and now passion burns;<br/>
</span><span>And atheism and religion take their turns;<br/>
</span><span>A very heathen in the carnal part,<br/>
</span><span>Yet still a sad, good Christian at the heart.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The study of Chloe, who "wants a heart," is equally delicate and
witty:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,<br/>
</span><span>Content to dwell in decencies for ever—<br/>
</span><span>So very reasonable, so unmoved,<br/>
</span><span>As never yet to love, or to be loved.<br/>
</span><span>She, while her lover pants upon her breast,<br/>
</span><span>Can mark the figures on an Indian chest;<br/>
</span><span>And when she sees her friend in deep despair,<br/>
</span><span>Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair!...<br/>
</span><span>Would Chloe know if you're alive or dead?<br/>
</span><span>She bids her footman put it in her head.<br/>
</span><span>Chloe is prudent—would you too be wise?<br/>
</span><span>Then never break your heart when Chloe dies.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The <i>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</i> is still more dazzling. The
venom is
passionate without ever ceasing to be witty. Pope has composed a
masterpiece of his vanities and hatreds. The characterizations of
Addison as Atticus, and of Lord Hervey as Sporus:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk—<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Sporus, "the bug with gilded wings"—are portraits one may almost
call
beautiful in their bitter phrasing. There is nothing make-believe here
as there is in the virtue of the letters. This is Pope's confession,
the
image of his soul. Elsewhere in Pope the accomplishment is too often
rhetorical, though <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> is as delicate in
artifice as
a French fairy-tale, the <i>Dunciad</i> an amusing assault of a major
Lilliputian on minor Lilliputians, and the <i>Essay on Criticism</i>—what
a
regiment of witty lines to be written by a youth of twenty or
twenty-one!—much nearer being a great essay in verse than is generally
admitted nowadays. As for the <i>Essay on Man</i>, one can read! it
more than
once only out of a sense of duty. Pope has nothing to tell us that we
want to know about man except in so far as he dislikes him. We praise
him as the poet who makes remarks—as the poet, one might almost say,
who makes faces. It is when he sits in the scorner's chair, whether in
good humour or in bad, that he is the little lord of versifiers.</p>
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