How he still charms the ear with these artful repetitions of the epithets! And how significant is the last verse! I defy the most common reader to repeat them without feeling some motion of compassion.1 With this episode—which very probably opened his eyes to the radical defects of his own pastoral performances--closed a period of great importance in Pope's poetical development, namely his formal imitation of classical diction, before he had completely learned to assimilate the classical spirit, and to apply it to the circumstances of his age. Approaching the art of poetry through translation, because he early perceived the shortcomings of his original work, he was for some time in bondage to his admiration for the great poets of Greece and Rome, whom he apostrophises in his Essay on Criticism: Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days, Whose honours with increase of ages grow, T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own. Doubting still his own sense, he strove to imitate Virgil in the external effects both of his diction and versification. As regards his diction he fancied that he was writing classically when he said in Windsor Forest that "Blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground"; that "Cancer glows with Phoebus' fiery car"; that "The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death"; or that the angler "hopes the scaly breed." 2 Isaiah had said: "Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see." Pope translated this, in his Messiah, into "classical" English :— 1 Guardian, No. 40. VOL. V 2 Windsor Forest, 38, 132, 139, 147. M Hear him, ye deaf, and all ye blind, behold! He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, "I will set in the desert the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together" of Isaiah's text becomes in The Messiah: Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, The spiry fir and shapely box adorn. To leafless shrubs the flowering palms succeed, But the most important effect produced by the poetical practice of this period was on Pope's versification. Almost all critics have spoken with admiration of the new vein of harmony introduced into English poetry by his Pastorals, which ought indeed to be regarded primarily as exercises in metre. At the same time it is not an uncommon thing to find the smoothness and regularity of Pope's rhythms contrasted disadvantageously with the freedom and variety of Dryden's style: a method of comparison and contrast which altogether ignores the different objects aimed at by each poet. Dryden's purpose was to develop in English verse the colloquial principle which had been applied by a succession of poets from Drayton downwards. More and more he felt that his own strength lay in treating the heroic couplet as an instrument "fittest for discourse." A numerous succession of prologues and epilogues had accustomed him to converse in metre with public audiences, and had trained him to form, within the limits of the couplet, rhythmical sentences, expressive of his ardent and masculine genius. These seemed to follow almost accidentally the movements of his imagination, and were musical without method through sheer vigour of thought. Often, no doubt, the course of thinking produced a musical succession of couplets, as in the famous passage in Aureng Zebe;1 the lines on old age translated from Lucretius; the expression of penitence in The Hind and the Panther for his own scepticism and un2 Vol. iii. p. 529. 2 1 Vol. iv. p. 410. 3 3 Vol. iii. p. 518. belief; and many other melodious flights of the same kind. But there is no evidence that Dryden worked on the regular musical principle of varying the cæsura in successive lines, explained by Pope in a letter to Cromwell;1 indeed the verses in his poetry without a regular pause are innumerable. Pope, on the contrary, in his early poems, though he by no means rejected the colloquial basis of the couplet, modified it by a large infusion of romantic and literary elements. Unlike Dryden, he was almost a stranger to the stage. A lonely and reflective student, his conversation, at least as a youth, was with books rather than men: he wrote on set themes, and strove to imitate in English the harmonies of the Latin poets whom he translated. Hence in his Pastorals there was an imaginative tendency which did not enter into Dryden's genius, who could never have conceived a musical effect like the following: Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along! Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away! Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along! 1 Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vol. v. pp. 20-21. Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away! Ye powers, what pleasing frenzy soothes my mind! She comes, my Delia comes ! Now cease my lay, Before sending to The Guardian the review of Philips' Pastorals, Pope had shown the versatility of his genius in a composition formulating the critical principles by which he regulated his art. The Essay on Criticism was probably written in 1709. This was Pope's own statement in 1717, and in every edition of his collected works up to 1743, when it is stated that the Essay was “the work of an author who had not yet attained the twentieth year of his age"; to explain which he seems to have told Richardson that "the Essay on Criticism was indeed written in 1707, though said 1709 by mistake." Pope was in his latter years anxious to seize every opportunity of establishing a character for precocity, and his uncorroborated statements are not deserving of confidence. The poem was at any rate published on 15th May 1711; it was, on 20th June in the same year, virulently attacked by Dennis; and on 20th December was highly praised by Addison in The Spectator. Praise and depreciation of this work have continued to appear, on almost the same lines and in nearly equal proportions, from those days to our own. I have set down my own opinion of the Essay in detail in the Life of Pope, which forms part of the latest edition of his collected works, and I see no reason to modify substantially what I have there said.1 But as this judgment has lately been questioned by an eminent critic, I shall take this opportunity of briefly recapitulating my view: 1 Attempts have been made (says Mr. Saintsbury) to give Pope a high place [as a critic] on the score of his charges to "follow Nature." Unfortunately this is mere translation of Boileau, of 1 Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vol. v. chap. iii. Vida, and of Horace, in the first place; and, still more unfortunately, the poet's own arguments on his doctrine show that what he meant by following Nature, and what we mean by it, are two quite different things. He, usually at least, means "stick to the usual, the ordinary, the commonplace." 1 I venture to think this is a somewhat inadequate statement of the point at issue. Whether Pope's idea of following Nature was precisely the same as our own (which, for all we know, may be equally transient) does not seem to me a very important matter; and to define with mathematical precision what is meant by "Nature" is impossible. Nor does it appear to be necessarily a proof of Pope's want of critical power that Boileau, Vida, and Horace, had all arrived at the same conclusion before him. But it is a matter of importance that the principle recognised by these poets was in essence the same as that of Pope; that it was radically different from the principle followed in practice by Marino, Gongora, Voiture, Cowley, and many other poets of repute in the seventeenth century; and that in Pope's antagonism to the principles of the Metaphysical School is reflected the opposition between the decadent spirit of the Middle Ages and the advancing spirit of the Renaissance. To say that the advice of Pope means only "stick to the usual, the ordinary, the commonplace," is scarcely a just way of interpreting the deeper movement of taste that runs beneath the surface of his argument. Pope meant something definite by the following of Nature"; and he shows what his meaning is by his constant antithesis (often, it is true, ambiguous and confused) between this word and "wit." Others had of course expressed before him the same artistic perception. Mulgrave had said in his Essay on Poetry : That silly thing men call sheer wit avoid, Granville had put the same thought into another shape : 1 History of Criticism, vol. ii. p. 456. |