་ And thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive, was, however, scarcely just, if we consider that this large sum was in part a benevelence' from the upper classes of society, designed to reward his literary merit. The fame of Pope was not advanced in an equal degree with his fortune by his labours as a translator. The 'fatal facility' of his rhyme, the additional false ornaments which he imparted to the ancient Greek, and his departure from the nice discrimination of character and speech which prevails in Homer, are faults now universally admitted. Cowper-though he failed himself in Homer-justly remarks, that the Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in Pope's hands have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them.' They still, however, maintain their popularity with the great mass of readers, and are unequalled in splendid versification. The 'Odyssey' was not published until 1725, and Pope on this occasion called in the assistance of his poetical friends Broome and Fenton. These two coadjutors translated twelve books, and the notes were compiled by Broome, who received from Pope a sum of £500, besides being allowed the subscriptions collected from personal friends, amounting to £70, 4s. Fenton's share was only £200. Deducting the sums paid to his co-translators, Pope realised by the Odyssey' upwards of £3500; and together the Iliad' and 'Odyssey' had brought to the poet a fortune of from eight to nine thousand pounds-a striking instance of the princely patronage then extended to literature. While engaged with the 'Iliad,' Pope removed from Binfield, his father having sold his estate there, and resided, from April 1716 till the beginning of 1718, at Chiswick. Here he collected and published his poetical works; and in this volume first appeared the most picturesque, melodious, and passionate of all his productions, the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' and the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard.' The delicacy of the poet in veiling over the story of Abelard and Eloisa, and at the same time preserving the ardour of Eloisa's passion; the beauty of his imagery and descriptions; the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and falling like the tones of an Eolian harp, as he successively portrays the tumults of guilty love, the deepest penitence, and the highest devotional rapture, have never been surpassed. If less genial tastes and a love of satire withdrew Pope from those fountain-springs of the muse, it was obviously from no want of power in the poet to display the richest hues of imagination, or the finest impulses of the heart. At Chiswick, Pope's father died (October 23, 1717), and shortly afterwards the poet removed with his aged mother to Twickenham, where he had taken a lease of a house and grounds, and where he continued to reside during the remainder of his life. This classic spot, which Pope delighted to improve, and where he was visited by ministers of state, wits, poets, and beauties, is now greatly defaced-his house pulled down, and his pleasure-grounds broken up and vulgarised.* Having completed the 'Iliad,' the poet's next great undertaking was an edition of Shakspeare, published in 1725, in six quarto volumes. The preface to this work is the best of his prose productions, but Pope failed as an editor. He wanted the requisite knowledge of Elizabethan literature, and the diligence necessary to collate copies and fix and illustrate the text. Fenton gave assistance in this edition of Shakspeare, for which he received £30, 148. Pope's remuneration as editor was £217, 128. In 1727 and 1728, Pope published, in conjunction with his friend Swift, three volumes of Miscellanies,' which drew down upon the authors a torrent of invective, lampoons, and libels, and led to the Dunciad.' This elaborate and splendid satire was first printed in an imperfect form in May 1728, then enlarged with notes, the 'Prolegomena' of Scriblerus, &c. and published in April 1729. The work displays the fertile invention of the poet, the variety of illustration at his command, and the unrivalled force and facility of his diction; but it is often indelicate, and still oftener unjust towards the miserable poets and critics against whom he waged war. 'I have often wondered,' says Cowper, that the same poet who wrote the "Dunciad" should have written these lines: That mercy I to others shew, That mercy shew to me. Alas for Pope, if the mercy he shewed to others was the measure of the mercy he received!' Sir Walter Scott has justly remarked, that Pope must have suffered the most from these wretched contentions. His propensity to satire was, however, irresistible; he was eminently sensitive, vain, and irritable, and implacable in his resentment towards all who had questioned or slighted his poetical supremacy. * Pope's house was not large, but sufficiently commodious for the wants of an English gentleman whose friends visited himself rather than his dwelling, and who were superior to the necessity of stately ceremonial. On one side it fronted to the road, which it closely adjoined, on the other, to a narrow lawn sloping to the Thames. A piece of pleasure-ground, including a garden, was cut off by the public road; an awkward and unpoetical arrangement, which the proprietor did his best to improve, by constructing his grotto or passage below the highway. After the poet's death. the villa was purchased by Sir William Stanhope, and subsequently occupied by Lord Mendip; but. being in 1807 sold to the Baroness Howe, it was by that lady taken down, that a larger house might be built near its site. The grounds have suffered a complete change since Pope's time, and an obelisk which he erected to the memory of his mother, at their further extremity, has been removed The only certain remnants of the poet's mansion are the vaults upon which it was built, three in number, the central one being connected with a tunnel, which, passing under the road, gives admission to the grounds: while the side ones are of the character of grottos, paved with square bricks, and stuck over with shells. It is curious to find over the central stone of the entrance into the left of these grottos, a large ammonite and over the other. the piece of hardened clay in which its cast was left. Pope must have regarded these merely as curiosities or lusus naturæ, little dreaming of the wonderful tale of the early condition of our globe which they assist in telling. A short narrow piazza in front of the grottos is probably the evening colonnade' of the lines on the absence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The taste with which Pope laid out his grounds at Twickenham (five acres in all). had a marked effect on English landscape gardening. The Prince of Wales took the design of his garden from the poet's ; and Kent, the improver and embelisher of pleasure-grounds, received his best lessons from Pope. He aided materially in banishing the stiff formal Dutch style. Between the years His next works were more worthy of his fame. 1731 and 1735, he had published his Epistles to Burlington, Bathurst, Cobham, and Arbuthnot, and also his greatest ethical work, his 'Essay on Man,' being part of a course of moral philosophy in verse which he projected. The Essay' is now read, not for its philosophy, but for its poetry. Its metaphysical distinctions are neglected for those splendid passages and striking incidents which irradiate the poem. In lines like the following, he speaks with a mingled sweetness and dignity superior to his great master Dryden: Норе. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: The Poor Indian. Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Yet simple nature to his hope has given He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; Happiness. O Happiness! our being's end and aim, Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name; Or reaped in iron harvests of the field? Where grows!-where grows it not? If vain our toil, Fixed to no spot is Happiness sincere; "Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;' "Tis never to be bought, but always free, And, fled from monarchs, ST. JOHN ! dwells with thee. The Essay on Man' is in four Epistles, the first of which was published anonymously in February 1733, and the second about three months afterwards. The third and fourth appeared in the winter of 1733-4. The right to print these Epistles for one year was bought by a publisher, Gilliver, for £50 an epistle. Pope's future labours were chiefly confined to satire. Misfortunes were also now gathering round him. Swift was fast verging on imbecility, and was lost to the world; Atterbury and Gay died in 1732; and next year his venerable mother, whose declining years he had watched with affectionate solicitude, also expired. Between the years 1735 and 1739, Pope published his inimitable Imitations of Horace,' satirical, moral, and critical, containing the most noble and generous sentiments, mixed up with withering invective and the fiercest denunciations. In 1742, he added a fourth book to the Dunciad,' displaying the final advent of the goddess to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the dull upon earth. The point of his individual satire, and the richness and boldness of his general design, attest the undiminished powers and intense feeling of the poet. Next year, Pope prepared a new edition of the four books of the 'Dunciad,' and elevated Colley Cibber to the situation of hero of the poem. This unenviable honour had previously been enjoyed by Theobald, a tasteless critic but successful commentator on Shakspeare; and in thus yielding to his personal dislike of Cibber, Pope injured the force of his satire. The laureate, as Warton justly remarks, with a great stock of levity, vanity, and affectation, had sense, and wit, and humour; and the author of the "Careless Husband" was by no means a proper king of the dunces.' Cibber was all vivacity and conceit-the very reverse of personified dulness, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound. Political events came in the rear of this accumulated and vehement satire to agitate the last days of Pope. The anticipated approach of the Pretender led the government to issue a proclamation prohibiting every Roman Catholic from appearing within ten miles of London. The poet complied with the proclamation; and he was soon afterwards too ill to be in town. This 'additional proclamation from the Highest of all Powers,' as he terms his sickness, he submitted to without murmuring. A constant state of excitement, added to a life of ceaseless study and contemplation, operating on a frame naturally delicate and deformed from birth, had completely exhausted the powers of Pope. 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 within 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.' He died at Twickenham on the 30th of May, 1744. The character and genius of Pope have given rise to abundance of comment and speculation. The occasional fierceness and petulance of his satire cannot be justified, and must be ascribed to his extreme sensibility, to over-indulged vanity, and to a hasty and irritable temper. His sickly constitution debarring him from active pursuits, he placed too high a value on mere literary fame, and was deficient in the manly virtues of sincerity and candour. There was no artifice to which he was not willing to stoop to elevate his own reputation or lower that of an opponent. The most elaborate of his stratagems was that by which he published his correspondence, charging the publication upon some unknown literary burglar in alliance with Curll the bookseller. The whole of his literary history is indeed full of small plots and manœuvring, and no reliance can be placed on his statements. He appreciated moral excellence-the feeling and the admiration were there-but the lower part of his nature was constantly dragging him down to little meannesses and duplicity. At the same time he was a public benefactor, by stigmatising the vices of the great, and lashing the absurd pretenders to taste and literature. He was a fond and steady friend; and in all our literary_biography, there is nothing finer than his constant undeviating affection and reverence for his venerable parents. Me let the tender office long engage, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Prologue to the Satires. As a poet, it would be absurd to rank Pope with the greatest masters of the lyre. He was the poet of artificial life and manners rather than the poet of nature. He was a nice observer and an accurate describer of the phenomena of the mind and of the varying shades and gradations of vice and virtue, wisdom and folly. He was too fond of point and antithesis, but the polish of the weapon was equalled by its keenness. Let us look,' says Campbell, 'to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious.' His wit, fancy, and good sense are as remarkable as his satire. His elegance has never been surpassed, or perhaps equalled: it is a combination of intellect, imagination, and taste, under the direction of an independent spirit and refined moral feeling. If he had studied more in the school of nature and of Shakspeare, and less in the school of Horace and Boileau; if be had cherished the frame and spirit in which he composed the 'Elegy' and the 'Eloisa,' and forgot his too exclusive devotion to that which inspired the Dunciad,' the world would have hallowed his memory with a still more affectionate and permanent interest than even that which waits on him as one of our most brilliant and accomplished English poets. Mr. Campbell in his |
