Biographical Essays

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Of Italian literature, meantime, Pope knew little or nothing; and
simply because he knew nothing of the language. Tasso, indeed, he
admired; and, which is singular, more than Ariosto. But we believe
that he had read him only in English; and it is certain that he
could not take up an Italian author, either in prose or verse, for
the unaffected amusement of his leisure.

Greek, we all know has been denied to Pope, ever since he
translated Homer, and chiefly in consequence of that translation.
This seems at first sight unfair, because criticism has not
succeeded in fixing upon Pope any errors of ignorance. His
deviations from Homer were uniformly the result of imperfect
sympathy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and therefore
wilful deviations, not (like those of his more pretending
competitors, Addison and Tickell) pure blunders of misapprehension.
But yet it is not inconsistent with this concession to Pope's
merits, that we must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of
Greek when he first commenced his task. And to us it seems
astonishing that nobody should have adverted to that fact as a
sufficient solution, and in fact the only plausible solution, of
Pope's excessive depression of spirits in the earliest stage of his
labors. This depression, after he had once pledged himself to his
subscribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and could
have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious ignorance of
Greek in connection with the solemn responsibilities he had assumed
in the face of a great nation. Nay, even countries as
presumptuously disdainful of tramontane literature as Italy took an
interest in this memorable undertaking. Bishop Berkeley found
Salvini reading it at Florence; and Madame Dacier even, who read
little but Greek, and certainly no English until then, condescended
to study it. Pope's dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for
it impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams,
which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to operate) was
perfectly natural under the explanation we have given, but not
otherwise. And how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust?
Paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the
innumerable aids for interpreting Homer which even then existed, a
man sufficiently acquainted with Latin might make a translation
even critically exact. This Pope was not long in discovering. Other
alleviations of his labor concurred, and in a ratio daily
increasing.

The same formulae were continually recurring, such as,

_"But him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed Achilles;"_

Or,

_"But him sternly beholding, thus spoke Agamemnon the king
of men."_

Then, again, universally the Homeric Greek, from many causes, is
easy; and especially from these two:

1 _st_, The simplicity of the thought, which never gathers
into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, which we
find in the dramatic poets of a higher civilization.

2 _dly_, From the constant hounds set to the expansion of the
thought by the form of the metre; an advantage of verse which makes
the poets so much easier to a beginner in the German language than
the illimitable weavers of prose. The line or the stanza reins up
the poet tightly to his theme, and will not suffer him to
expatiate. Gradually, therefore, Pope came to read the Homeric
Greek, but never accurately; nor did he ever read Eustathius
without aid from Latin. As to any knowledge of the Attic Greek, of
the Greek of the dramatists, the Greek of Plato, the Greek of
Demosthenes, Pope neither had it nor affected to have it. Indeed it
was no foible of Pope's, as we will repeat, to make claims which he
had not, or even to dwell ostentatiously upon those which he had.
And with respect to Greek in particular, there is a manuscript
letter in existence from Pope to a Mr. Bridges at Falham, which,
speaking of the original Homer, distinctly records the knowledge
which he had of his own "imperfectness in the language." Chapman, a
most spirited translator of Homer, probably had no very critical
skill in Greek; and Hobbes was, beyond all question, as poor a
Grecian as he was a doggerel translator; yet in this letter Pope
professes his willing submission to the "authority" of Chapman and
Hobbes, as superior to his own.

Finally, in _Latin_ Pope was a "considerable proficient," even
by the cautious testimony of Dr. Johnson; and in this language only
the doctor was an accomplished critic. If Pope had really the
proficiency here ascribed to him, he must have had it already in
his boyish years; for the translation from Statius, which is the
principal monument of his skill, was executed _before_ he was
fourteen. We have taken the trouble to throw a hasty glance over
it; and whilst we readily admit the extraordinary talent which it
shows, as do all the juvenile essays of Pope, we cannot allow that
it argues any accurate skill in Latin. The word Malea, as we have
seen noticed by some editor, he makes Malea; which in itself, as
the name was not of common occurrence, would not have been an error
worth noticing; but, taken in connection with the certainty that
Pope had the original line before him--

"Arripit ex templo Maleae de valle resurgens,"

when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the
whole rhythm is practically, to the most obtuse ear, would be
annihilated by Pope's false quantity, is a blunder which serves to
show his utter ignorance of prosody. But, even as a version of the
sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and
expansion, Pope's translation is defective, and argues an
occasional inability to construe the text. For instance, at the
council summoned by Jupiter, it is said that he at his first
entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but not so the
inferior gods;

"Nec protinus ausi
Coelicolae, veniam donee pater ipse sedendi
Tranquilla jubet esse manu."

In which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the ellipsis of
the word _sedere_, or _sese locare_; but the meaning is
evidently that the other gods did not presume to sit down
_protinus_, that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and
interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a
gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express
permission to take their seats. But Pope, manifestly unable to
extract any sense from the passage, translates thus:

"At Jove's assent the deities around
In solemn slate the consistory _crown'd_;"

where at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial
ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. Again, at v. 178,
_ruptaeque vices_ is translated," _and all the ties of
nature broke_; "but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of
the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently
violated by Eteocles. Other mistakes might be cited, which seem to
prove that Pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very
imperfect one. [Endnote: 6] Pope, in short, never rose to such a
point in classical literature as to read either Greek or Latin
authors without effort, and for his private amusement.

The result, therefore, of Pope's self-tuition appears to us,
considered in the light of an attempt to acquire certain
accomplishments of knowledge, a most complete failure. As a
linguist, he read no language with ease; none with pleasure to
himself; and none with so much accuracy as could have carried him
through the most popular author with a general independence on
interpreters. But, considered with a view to his particular
faculties and slumbering originality of power, which required
perhaps the stimulation of accident to arouse them effectually, we
are very much disposed to think that the very failure of his
education as an artificial training was a great advantage finally
for inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemnification,
upon its native powers. Had he attained, as with better tuition he
would have attained, distinguished excellence as a scholar, or as a
student of science, the chances are many that he would have settled
down into such studies as thousands could pursue not less
successfully than he; whilst as it was, the very dissatisfaction
which he could not but feel with his slender attainments, must have
given him a strong motive for cultivating those impulses of
original power which he felt continually stirring within him, and
which were vivified into trials of competition as often as any
distinguished excellence was introduced to his knowledge.

Pope's father, at the time of his birth, lived in Lombard Street;
[Endnote: 7] a street still familiar to the public eye, from its
adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan establishments, and to
the English ear possessing a degree of historical importance;
first, as the residence of those Lombards, or Milanese, who
affiliated our infant commerce to the matron splendors of the
Adriatic and the Mediterranean; next, as the central resort of
thrme jewellers, or "goldsmiths," as they were styled, who
performed all the functions of modern bankers from the period of
the parliamentary war to the rise of the Bank of England, that is,
for six years after the birth of Pope; and, lastly, as the seat,
until lately, of that vast Post Office, through which, for so long
a period, has passed the correspondence of all nations and
languages, upon a scale unknown to any other country. In this
street Alexander Pope the elder had a house, and a warehouse, we
presume, annexed, in which he conducted the wholesale business of a
linen merchant. As soon as he had made a moderate fortune he
retired from business, first to Kensington, and afterwards to
Binfield, in Windsor Forest. The period of this migration is not
assigned by any writer. It is probable that a prudent man would not
adopt it with any prospect of having more children. But this chance
might be considered as already extinguished at the birth of Pope;
for though his father had then only attained his forty-fourth year,
Mrs. Pope had completed her forty-eighth. It is probable, from the
interval of seven days which is said to have elapsed between Pope's
punishment and his removal from the school, that his parents were
then living at such a distance from him as to prevent his ready
communication with them, else we may be sure that Mrs. Pope would
have flown on the wings of love and wrath to the rescue of her
darling. Supposing, therefore, as we _do_ suppose, that Mr.
Bromley's school in London was the scene of his disgrace, it would
appear on this argument that his parents were then living in
Windsor Forest. And this hypothesis falls in with another anecdote
in Pope's life, which we know partly upon his own authority. He
tells Wycherley that he had seen Dryden, and barely seen him.
_Virgilium vidi tantum_. This is presumed to have been in
Will's Coffee-house, whither any person in search of Dryden would
of course resort; and it must have been before Pope was twelve
years old, for Dryden died in 1700. Now there is a letter of Sir
Charles Wogan's, stating that he first took Pope to Will's; and his
words are, "from our forest." Consequently, at that period, when he
had not completed his twelfth year, Pope was already living in the
forest.

From this period, and so long as the genial spirits of youth
lasted, Pope's life must have been one dream of pleasure. He tells
Lord Harvey that his mother did not spoil him; but that was no
doubt because there was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on
either side, when all was one placid scene of parental obedience
and gentle filial authority. We feel persuaded that, if not in
words, in spirit and inclination, they would, in any notes they
might have occasion to write, subscribe themselves "your dutiful
parents." And of what consequence in whose hands were the reins
which were never needed? Every reader must be pleased to know that
these idolizing parents lived to see their son at the very summit
of his public elevation; even his father lived two years and a half
after the publication of his Homer had commenced, and when his
fortune was made; and his mother lived for nearly eighteen years
more. What a felicity for her, how rare and how perfect, to find
that he, who to her maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of
human beings, and the idol of her heart, had already been the idol
of the nation before he had completed his youth. She had also
another blessing not always commanded by the most devoted love;
many sons there are who think it essential to manliness that they
should treat their mother's doating anxiety with levity, or even
ridicule. But Pope, who was the model of a good son, never swerved
in words, manners, or conduct, from the most respectful tenderness,
or intermitted the piety of his attentions. And so far did he carry
this regard for his mother's comfort, that, well knowing how she
lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied himself for many
years all excursions which could not be fully accomplished within
the revolution of a week. And to this cause, combined with the
excessive length of his mother's life, must be ascribed the fact
that Pope never went abroad; not to Italy with Thomson or with
Berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends; not to Ireland, where
his presence would have been hailed as a national honor; not even
to France, on a visit to his admiring and admired friend Lord
Bolingbroke. For as to the fear of sea-sickness, _that_ did
not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would
not have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover to Calais. It
is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the
perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him
from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so
constant. But it is certain that, long before he passed the
meridian of his life, Pope had come to view this confinement with
far other thoughts. Experience had then taught him, that to no man
is the privilege granted of possessing more than one or two friends
who are such in extremity. By that time he had come to view his
mother's death with fear and anguish. She, he knew by many a sign,
would have been happy to lay down her life for his sake; but for
others, even those who were the most friendly and the most constant
in their attentions, he felt but too certainly that his death, or
his heavy affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but would not
materially disturb their peace of mind. "It is but in a very narrow
circle," says he, in a confidential letter, "that friendship walks
in this world, and I care not to tread out of it more than I needs
must; knowing well it is but to two or three, (if quite so many,)
that any man's welfare or memory can be of consequence." After such
acknowledgments, we are not surprised to find him writing thus of
his mother, and his fearful struggles to fight off the shock of his
mother's death, at a time when it was rapidly approaching. After
having said of a friend's death, "the subject is beyond writing
upon, beyond cure or ease by reason or reflection, beyond all but
one thought, that it is the will of God," he goes on thus, "So will
the death of my mother be, which now I tremble at, now resign to,
now bring close to me, now set farther off; every day alters, turns
me about, confuses my whole frame of mind." There is no pleasure,
he adds, which the world can give "equivalent to countervail either
the death of one I have so long lived with, or of one I have so
long lived for." How will he comfort himself after her death? "I
have nothing left but to turn my thoughts to one comfort, the last
we usually think of, though the only one we should in wisdom depend
upon. I sit in her room, and she is always present before me but
when I sleep. I wonder I am so well. I have shed many tears; but
now I weep at nothing."

A man, therefore, happier than Pope in his domestic relations
cannot easily have lived. It is true these relations were
circumscribed; had they been wider, they could not have been so
happy. But Pope was equally fortunate in his social relations.
What, indeed, most of all surprises us, is the courteous,
flattering, and even brilliant reception which Pope found from his
earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men of the world.
Wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the most dignified, and men of
fashion the most brilliant, all alike treated him not only with
pointed kindness, but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him
as their intellectual superior. Without rank, high birth, fortune,
without even a literary name, and in defiance of a deformed person,
Pope, whilst yet only sixteen years of age, was caressed, and even
honored; and all this with no one recommendation but simply the
knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the premature
expectations which he raised of future excellence. Sir William
Trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had held the highest stations,
both diplomatic and ministerial, made him his daily companion.
Wycherley, the old _roue_ of the town, a second-rate wit, but
not the less jealous on that account, showed the utmost deference
to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have regarded with
contempt, and between whom and himself there were nearly "fifty
good years of fair and foul weather." Cromwell, [Endnote: 8] a
fox-hunting country gentleman, but uniting with that character the
pretensions of a wit, and affecting also the reputation of a rake,
cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferiority. Nay,
which never in any other instance happened to the most fortunate
poet, his very inaugural essays in verse were treated, not as
prelusive efforts of auspicious promise, but as finished works of
art, entitled to take their station amongst the literature of the
land; and in the most worthless of all his poems, Walsh, an
established authority, and whom Dryden pronounced the ablest critic
of the age, found proofs of equality with Virgil.

The literary correspondence with these gentlemen is interesting, as
a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. Every nerve
was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a
fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that
between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to
overcrow each other. To us, in this age of purer and more masculine
taste, the whole scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young
fops dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most
elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, bows the
most overshadowing, until plain walking, running, or the motions of
natural dancing, are thought too insipid for endurance. In this
instance the taste had perhaps really been borrowed from France,
though often enough we impute to France what is the native growth
of all minds placed in similar circumstances. Madame de Sevigne's
Letters were really models of grace. But Balzac, whose letters,
however, are not without interest, had in some measure formed
himself upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and Seneca.
Pope and his correspondents, meantime, degraded the dignity of
rhetoric, by applying it to trivial commonplaces of compliment;
whereas Seneca applied it to the grandest themes which life or
contemplation can supply. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on first
coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally adopted their style.
She found this sort of _euphuism_ established; and it was not
for a very young woman to oppose it. But her masculine
understanding and powerful good sense, shaken free, besides, from
all local follies by travels and extensive commerce with the world,
first threw off these glittering chains of affectation.

Dean Swift, by the very constitution of his mind, plain, sinewy,
nervous, and courting only the strength that allies itself with
homeliness, was always indisposed to this mode of correspondence.
And, finally, Pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and
his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside altogether.
One reason doubtless was, that he found it too fatiguing; since in
this way of letter-writing he was put to as much expense of wit in
amusing an individual correspondent, as would for an equal extent
have sufficed to delight the whole world. A funambulist may harass
his muscles and risk his neck on the tight-rope, but hardly to
entertain his own family. Pope, however, had another reason for
declining this showy system of fencing; and strange it is that he
had not discovered this reason from the very first. As life
advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business advanced; the
careless condition of youth prompted no topics, or at least
prescribed none, but such as were agreeable to the taste, and
allowed of an ornamental coloring. But when downright business
occurred, exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged,
negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there
by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion
thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the
case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by
any effort of ingenuity, it _had_, could it look otherwise
than silly and unreasonable:

"Ornari les a ipsa negat, contenta doceri."

Pope's idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concurring with good
sense and the necessities of business on the other, drove him to
quit his gay rhetoric in letter-writing. But there are passages
surviving in his correspondence which indicate, that, after all,
had leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, he
still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, and cherished
it as a first love. But in this harsh world, as the course of true
love, so that of rhetoric, never did run smooth; and thus it
happened that, with a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to
bid it adieu. Strange that any man should think his own sincere and
confidential overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, men,
and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the
legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of
watching their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his cups
and balls. We of this age, who have formed our notions of
epistolary excellence from the chastity of Gray's, the brilliancy
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's during her later life, and the
mingled good sense and fine feeling of Cowper's, value only those
letters of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value. And
even with regard to these, we may say that there is a great mistake
made; the best of those later letters between Pope and Swift, &c.,
are not in themselves at all superior to the letters of sensible
and accomplished women, such as leave every town in the island by
every post. Their chief interest is a derivative one; we are
pleased with any letter, good or bad, which relates to men of such
eminent talent; and sometimes the subjects discussed have a
separate interest for themselves. But as to the quality of the
discussion, apart from the person discussing and the thing
discussed, so trivial is the value of these letters in a large
proportion, that we cannot but wonder at the preposterous value
which was set upon them by the writers. [Endnote: 9] Pope
especially ought not to have his ethereal works loaded by the mass
of trivial prose which is usually attached to them.

This correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the time, though
one mode by which, in the absence of reviews, the reputation of an
author was spread, did not perhaps serve the interests of Pope so
effectually as the poems which in this way he circulated in those
classes of English society whose favor he chiefly courted. One of
his friends, the truly kind and accomplished Sir William Trumbull,
served him in that way, and perhaps in another eventually even more
important. The library of Pope's father was composed exclusively of
polemical divinity, a proof, by the way, that he was not a blind
convert to the Roman Catholic faith; or, if he was so originally,
had reviewed the grounds of it, and adhered to it after strenuous
study. In this dearth of books at his own home, and until he was
able to influence his father in buying more extensively, Pope had
benefited by the loans of his friends; amongst whom it is probable
that Sir William, as one of the best scholars of the whole, might
assist him most. He certainly offered him the most touching
compliment, as it was also the wisest and most paternal counsel,
when he besought him, as one _goddess-born_, to quit the
convivial society of deep-drinkers:

"Heu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis."

With these aids from friends of rank, and his way thus laid open to
public favor, in the year 1709 Pope first came forward upon the
stage of literature. The same year which terminated his legal
minority introduced him to the public. _Miscellanies_ in those
days were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. Tonson
happened at this time to be publishing one of some extent, the
sixth volume of which offered a sort of ambush to the young
aspirant of Windsor Forest, from which he might watch the public
feeling. The volume was opened by Mr. Ambrose Philips, in the
character of pastoral poet; and in the same character, but
stationed at the end of the volume, and thus covered by his bucolic
leader, as a soldier to the rear by the file in advance, appeared
Pope; so that he might win a little public notice, without too much
seeming to challenge it. This half-clandestine emersion upon the
stage of authorship, and his furtive position, are both mentioned
by Pope as accidents, but as accidents in which he rejoiced, and
not improbably accidents which Tonson had arranged with a view to
his satisfaction.

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