Alexander Pope

Poet, son of Alexander Pope and his second wife, Edith Turner, b. in London,

England, 22 May, 1688; d. at Twickenham, England, 30 May, 1744. His parents

were both Catholics, and the son lived and died in the profession of the faith to

which he was born. The poet's father was a linen merchant in Lombard Street,

London, who before the end of the seventeenth century retired on a moderate

fortune first to Kensington, then to Binfield, and finally to Chiswick, where he

died in 1717. Soon after this event Pope with his mother removed to the villa at

Twickenham, which became his permanent abode, and which, with its five acres,

its gardens, and its grotto, will be forever associated with his memory. As a child

he was very delicate, and he retained a constitutional weakness as well as a

deformity of body all through his life, while in stature he was very diminutive. His

early education was spasmodic and irregular, but before he was twelve he had

picked up a smattering of Latin and Greek from various tutors and at sundry

schools, and subsequently he acquired a similar knowledge of French and

Italian. From his thirteenth year onward he was self-instructed and he was an

extensive reader. Barred from a political and to a great extent from a professional

career by the penal laws then in force against Catholics, he did not feel the

restraint very acutely, for his earliest aspiration was to be a poet, and at an

exceptionally youthful period he was engaged in writing verses. His first idea was

to compose a great epic, the subject that presented itself being a mythological

one, with Alcander, a prince of Rhodes, as hero; and perhaps he never wholly

relinquished his intention of producing such a poem, for after his death there was

found among his papers a plan for an epic on Brutus, the mythical

great-grandson of Æneas and reputed founder of Britain. The Alcander epic,

which had reached as many as 4000 lines, was laid aside and never completed.

Pope's first publication was the "Pastorals"; "January and May", the latter a

version of Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale"; and the "Episode of Sarpedon" from the

"Iliad". These appeared in 1709 in Tonson's "Poetical Miscellanies". His "Essay

on Criticism" appeared in May, 1711, and some months later was warmly, if not

enthusiastically, commended by Addison in the "Spectator" (No. 253, 20 Dec.,

1711). Steele was eager to get hold of the rising poet to contribute to the paper,

and eventually succeeded, for practically the entire literary portion of one issue

of the "Spectator" (No. 378, 14 May, 1712) is given over to Pope's "Messiah: A

Sacred Eclogue". In 1712 the first edition of "The Rape of the Lock", in two

cantos, came out in Lintot's "Miscellany". Later Pope extended the work to five

cantos, and by introducing the supernatural machinery of sylphs and gnomes

and all the light militia of the lower sky, he gave to the world in 1714 one of its

airiest, most delightful, and most cherished specimens of the mock-heroic

poem. In the April of the preceding year (1713), Addison's tragedy of "Cato" was

produced with almost unparalleled success at Drury Lane Theatre and the

prologue, a dignified and spirited composition, as Macaulay describes it, was

written by Pope. It was published with the play and also in No. 33 of the

"Guardian". To the "Guardian" also Pope contributed eight papers in 1713. In the

same year he published his "Windsor Forest" and the "Ode on St. Cecilia's

Day". "The Wife of Bath", from Chaucer, and two translations from the

"Odyssey"–the "Arrival of Ulysses at Ithaca" and the "Garden of Alcinous"–came

out in 1714 in a volume of miscellanies edited by Steele for Tonson, the

publisher. "The Temple of Fame", in which Steele said there were a thousand

beauties, was separately published in the following year, 1715.

In November of 1713 a turning point was reached in Pope's fortunes. He issued

proposals for the publication, by subscription, of a translation of Homer's "Iliad"

into English verse, with notes. The matter was warmly taken up, and

subscriptions poured in apace. His friends stood by him, Swift in particular

obtaining a long list of influential patrons. Work was at once begun on the

undertaking, and the first four books appeared in 1715, the remaining volumes

coming out at intervals in 1716, 1717, 1718, and 1720, when the task was

completed. Three years later he undertook the translation of the "Odyssey",

which, with the aid of Broome and Fenton as collaborators, he completed by

1726. Pope's exact share was twelve books; the rest were by his assistants. By

Homer Pope made close on £2000, which, added to what his father had left him,

placed him in a position of independence for the remainder of his life. While

engaged on his great translation Pope found time for other forms of literary work,

and in 1717 he published two of the very best of his lyrics, namely, the "Elegy to

the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and the "Epistle of Eloïsa to Abelard", and

he joined with Gay and Arbuthnot in writing and producing the unsuccessful

farce "Three Hours after Marriage". He also undertook for Tonson, the publisher,

an annotated edition of Shakespeare, which appeared in 1725, a task for which

Pope's powers were unequal, for he was not sufficiently versed in the literature of

the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and although the preface is very fine and

many shrewd emendations were made in the text, Pope's Shakespeare was on

the whole far from being a success. It was at once attacked by Theobald, who

thus exposed himself to the characteristic vengeance which Pope was shortly to

take by makaing him the first hero of the "Dunciad". In 1713-14 Pope, with Swift,

Arbuthnot, and other leaders of the Tory Party, had formed a sort of literary

society called the Scriblerus Club, and had amused themselves by burlesquing

the vagaries of literature in the "Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus", which, although

included in the edition of Pope's prose works in 1741, was mainly the

composition of Arbuthnot. Arising partly out of the performance of "Scriblerus",

Pope and Swift published in 1727-28 three volumes of their "Miscellanies", which

contained among other things Pope's "Treatise on the Bathos, or the Art of

Sinking in Poetry", illustrated by examples from the inferior poets of the day.

These "Miscellanies", and particularly the "Bathos", drew down upon the authors

a torrent of abuse from every quill-driver and poetaster who had been in reality

attacked or fancied himself ridiculed. The "Dunciad" was in turn the outcome of

these invectives. This celebrated satire first appeared, in three books, in May,

1728, and an enlarged edition followed in 1729. In 1742 a further issue appeared

with the addition of a fourth book, and in 1743 the poem came out in its final

form with Theobald dethroned and Colley Cibber installed in his room as King of

the Dunces. The publication of this swingeing satire naturally increased the fury

against Pope, who was roundly abused in all the moods and tenses. Nor did he

shrink from the fray. He gave back blow for blow for eight years, 1730-37, in a

weekly sheet, the "Grub Street Journal", as well as paying off old scores when

opportunity offered in his avowed and more ambitious publications.

While thus engaged Pope came more directly than ever before under the

influence of Bolingbroke, with whom he had been on intimate terms in the palmy

pre-Georgian days. Bolingbroke undoubtedly indoctrinated Pope with the trends

of his own system of metaphysics and natural theology, and the fruit was seen

in the "Essay on Man", in four "Epistles" (1732- 34), and in the "Moral Essays",

also in four "Epistles" (1731- 35). The fifth Epistle–"To Mr. Addison, occasioneed

by his 'Dialogues on Medals'"–placed arbitrarily enough by Warburton in this

series of "Moral Essays", was actually written in 1715, and has appeared in

Tickell's edition of Addison's works in 1720. Bolingbroke, in another connexion,

once said of Pope that he was "a very great wit, but a very indifferent

philosopher"; and in these "Essays", especially in the "Essay on Man", he was

endeavouring to expound a system of philosophy which he but imperfectly

understood. The result is that the tendency of his principal theories is towards

fatalism and naturalism, and the consequent reduction of man to a mere puppet.

This position Pope never had the intention of taking up, and he shrank from it

when it was forcibly exposed by Crousaz as logically leading to Spinozism. To

clear himself of the charge of a denial of revealed religion and, in Johnson's

celebrated phrase, of representing "the whole course of things as a necessary

concatenation of indissoluble fatality", he wrote, in 1738, the "Universal Prayer",

which is now generally appended to the "Essay on Man", but which, despite the

piety it displays, is not entirely convincing. From 1732 to 1738 he was busy with

the composition and publication of his "Imitations of Horace", which, in diction

and versification at least, some critics consider his masterpieces. He also at

this period published two of the "Satires of Dr. Donne", which he had versified

earlier in life. In 1735 appeared the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, or Prologue to the

Satires", and in 1738 the "Epilogue to the Satires, in Two Dialogues". In 1737 he

published an authorized and carefully prepared edition of his "Correspondence",

which had been brought out in 1735 by Curil in what Pope alleged to be a

garbled form.

With the publication of the "Dunciad", in 1743, Pope's literary activity ceased.

He indeed set about the collection of his works with a view to an authoritative

edition; but he was obliged to abandon the attempt. His health, always poor,

began rapidly to fail. He always expressed undoubting confidence in a future

state, and when his end was obviously approaching he willingly yielded to the

representations of a Catholic friend that he should see a priest. It was noticed by

those about him that after he had received the last sacraments his frame of mind

was very peaceable. He died calmly the next day, 30 May, 1744, in the

fifty-seventh year of his age. He was buried near the monument which he had

raised to the memory of his father and mother at Twickenham.

Probably no writer, as such, ever made more enemies than Pope. Not only did

he lash Bufo and Sporus, Sappho and Atosa, and scores of others by their own

names or under thin disguise, but he boasted that he made a hundred smart in

Timon and in Balaam. Herein indeed he over-reached himself, for the great

majority of the victims of his satire would have been long ago forgotten but that

he has embalmed them for all time in the "Dunciad" and elsewhere. But if he had

the fatal gift of arousing enmity and the fault of vindictiveness in the persecution

of those who had incurred his wrath, it must be put to the credit side of his

account that scattered throughout his works there are many generous tributes to

worth among his contemporaries. He possessed beyond question a deep fund of

affection. He was a loving and devoted son, a loyal and constant friend. His

happy relations with Arbuthnot and Swift, with Atterbury and Oxford, with Parnell

and Prior, with Bolingbroke and Gay, with Warburton and Spence, and with

many others of his acquaintances were interrupted only by death. His friendship

with Addison, which augured so auspiciously at first, was unfortunately soon

clouded over. The question of their estrangement has been so voluminously

discussed by Johnson, Macaulay, Ward, and others that it is unnecessary, as it

would be unprofitable, to pursue it here in detail. It will perhaps be sufficient to

say that there were probably faults on both sides. If Pope was unduly

suspicious, Addison was certainly too partial to the members of his own

immediate little coterie. And if for real or fancied slights or wrongs Pope took an

exemplary vengeance in his celebrated character of Atticus (Epistle to Dr.

Arbuthnot, II, 193-214), it must always be borne in mind that he has taken care

in many passages to pay compliments to Addison, and not empty compliments

either, but as handsome as they were well deserved. A reference, for example,

to Epistle I of the Second Book of Horace, will sufficiently prove the truth of this

statement. Regarding Pope's position in the literature of his country, there has

been an extraordinary amount of controversy; some critics going the length of

denying him the right to be called a poet at all. Opinion has fluctuated

remarkably on his merits. By his contemporaries he was regarded with a sort of

reverential awe. To his immediate successors he was the grand exemplar of

what a poet should be. His standing was first assailed by Joseph Warton, in

1756, in his "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope", but Johnson gave the

great weight of his authority to the other side. During the Romantic reaction of

the last part of the eighteenth century he lost caste to some extent, and his

reputation was very seriously jeopardized in the height of the Romantic

movement from about 1820 onward. He was, however, warmly defended by

Campbell, Byron, and others. Nor is he without stalwart champions in our own

day. At present opinion appears to have crystallized in the direction of

recognizing him as among the really great names of English literature. Johnson's

criticism may, on the whole, be regarded as sound. His opinion, expressed in

his biography of the poet, is that Pope had in proportions very nicely adjusted to

one another all the qualities that constitute genius, invention, imagination,

judgment, rare power of expression, and melody in metre; and he replies to the

question that had been raised, as to whether Pope was a poet, by asking in

return: If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To treat this subject

fully would lead to a discussion of two very vexed questions, namely what poetry

really is, and what the proper subjects of poetry are. It will perhaps serve the

purpose if the opinion be indicated that, when detraction has done its worst,

Pope will still stand out, not perhaps as a master-genius, but as the typical man

of letters and as the great representative English poet of the first half of the

eighteenth century.

DENNIS, Reflections upon a late Rhapsody called an Essay upon Cricticism (London, 1711);

IDEM, True Character of Mr. Pope (London, 1716); IDEM, Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of

Homer, with the Letters concerning Windsor Forest and the Temple of Fame (London, 1717);

SPENCE, An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey (London, 1727); IDEM, Anecdotes,

Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope and

others (London, 1820); AYRE, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Alexander Pope (London, 1745);

WARTON, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, I (London, 1756), II (London, 1782);

JOHNSON, Life of Pope (London, 1781); EARL OF CARLISLE, Two Lectures on the Poetry of

Pope (London, 1851); WARD, Introductory Memoir prefixed to the Globe ed. of The Poetical Works

of Alexander Pope (London, 1869); EDWIN ABBOTT, A Concordance to the Works of Alexander

Pope, with an Introduction by E. A. ABBOTT (London, 1875); STEPHEN, Alexander Pope in

"English Men of Letters" series (London and New York, 1880); EMILY MORSE SYMONDS, Mr.

Pope, His Life and Times (London, 1909); eds. of Pope's Works by WARBURTON (London, 1751,

reprinted 1769, with Life by RUFFHEAD); BOWLES, with Life (London, 1806, new ed. 1847);

ROSCOE, with Life (London, 1824, new ed., 1847); CARRUTHERS, with Life (London, 1853,

second ed. of the Life, 1846); and EDWIN AND COURTHOPE, with Life by COURTHOPE (London,

1871-1889).

P. J . Lennox

Transcribed by W G Kofron

With thanks to St. Mary's Church, Akron, Ohio

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII

Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org