No More Learning

12 No. 253.


## p. 55 (#79) ##############################################


The Spectator and The Tatler compared 55
questions common to all moralists of all ages; but, when straying
from the beaten track, and counselling his contemporaries on their
peculiarities and eccentricities, he was still guided by a Roman
sense of self-respect and reasonableness. His exquisite portrait of
the valetudinarian who took his meals in a weighing chair is really
inspired by Martial's contempt for those who are more anxious to
live than to live rightly? . The sense of solemnity which comes
over Mr Spectator in Westminster abbey descends on him from
Lucretius, and Seneca would have approved of the diary of an
idle man and of that of a woman of fashion s.
Steele, as usual, followed his master's lead and introduced
copious quotations and allusions into his more serious papers.
But, at best, he was an indifferent scholar, and, except in the
Pbaramond papers", he never approached Addison's tact and
felicity. Much as he admired Mr Spectator's cultured and con-
templative mind, his own experience was leading him to work out
a philosophy of life on different lines. As, in The Tatler, he had
taken refuge in sentimentality, so now, in The Spectator, he still
fought against his own inborn unconventionality by advocating a
regularity of conduct which he could not practise. The puritans
had always disliked what was unusual or self-willed, and Steele
brought Cicero and the Stoics to their help, showing how the
recklessness of the spendthrift, the capriciousness of the man
who varies his greetings according to his mood, or even the
impertinence of fops who affect hurry or indolence, are really
offences against 'decency' and 'decorum ' Such observances,
which had formerly been the creed of the middle class, began to
have a universal binding force, now that they were backed by the
authority of culture. It is significant that some of his leading
ideas on education, on the evils of vanity in dress and on the
reading of romances? , had already been fully put forward by Ascham
in The Scholemaster. This strengthening of public opinion was
undoubtedly important in a half-formed society, but it was soon
to grow into the narrow British insistence on respectability, bitterly
satirised by Victorian writers. Even at this early stage, the ap-
pearance of a girl riding in man's clothes, after the French fashion,
suggests to Steele the reflection that eccentricity of dress is nothing
less than an offence against virtues. Sometimes, Steele breaks away
i No. 25.
2 No. 26.
3 Nos. 317, 323.
• Nos. 76, 84, 97, 480. Pharamond was borrowed from La Calprenedo's novel.
5 Nos. 222, 259, 284.
® Nos. 157, 168, 230.
7 See Steele's comedies.
8 No. 104.


## p. 56 (#80) ##############################################

56
Steele and Addison
from the social formulae which he helped to codify and gives free
play to his gift of seeing things in a natural, almost a primitive,
light. Returning to one of the favourite themes of The Tatler, he
has independence enough to show how there existed among traders
a whole world of romance and destiny undreamt of by the politer
classes? . His sympathies led him deeper into human nature. As
the amusements of polite society became more costly and artificial,
a new class of lackeys had grown up beneath the glittering surface,
very different from the servingmen of the Elizabethan drama.
Steele was one of the first to discover not only the humour but the
pathos of their lives. First, we have a glimpse of high life below
stairs, in which the frivolities of the rich are absurdly aped by
their servants; and, then, the tragedy of the attendant's life, who
earns his daily bread as the silent confederate of his master's
viciousness and the victim of his caprice? Steele, again, was one
of the first to champion women of the lower class. Since the
Middle Ages, female character had been one of the favourite
butts of popular satire, and, all through the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, savage invective against prostitution had been
common. To Steele, all women are distressed heroines. He
shows how shopgirls and barmaids, so far from being naturally
bad, are often, by the nature of their employment, forced to
submit to the loose talk and familiarity of men; and, when he
comes to describe the most abandoned, instead of inveighing
against harlotry, he reveals, for the first time, the 'white-slave
traffic' of his age, with all its fiendish stratagems for sapping the
virtue of its dupes and its secret patrons among high society:.
Many of these glimpses of life are given us in the form of letters,
and, as The Spectator always welcomed correspondence, and, on
two occasions, publicly asked for it", there is often danger of
taking genuine communications for a device of the editors. Steele,
in fact, posed as the 'courier of Love,' starting a kind of "agony
column,' in which lovers could communicate with each other, and
in at least one paper he printed some of his own love-letters. Some
of the epistles, however, are unmistakably inventions. It must be
remembered that, for more than a century, the epistle had become
a recognised literary type, and that The Spectator would naturally
i Nos. 174, 218, 248.
? Nos. 88, 96, 137.
3 Nos. 155, 182, 190, 266, 274, 437.
4 Nos. 428, 442.
5 C. Lillie (1725) published two vols, of letters which had been sent to The Tatler
and The Spectator but not printed.
6 No. 204.
? Ante, vol. vii, chap. XVI, pp. 390—1.
6
>


## p. 57 (#81) ##############################################


>
a
Letters in The Spectator 57
avail itself of the gentler art' to lend variety and grace to its papers.
But, while letter-writers, from Seneca to Loveday! , had used this
form of composition to convey ideas, Steele and his associates went
further. To them belongs the credit of discovering that the epistle
could become a picturesque type of character-sketch. Among
others, Thomas Hearne is said to have portrayed Arthur Charlett
as Abraham Froth, who describes the discussions of his futile club
with prolix self-satisfaction, and John Hughes composed the two
admirably characteristic letters on the education of a girl, one
from Célimène, who despairs of breaking in her charge to all the
artificialities of polite society and the other from a self-styled 'rough
man' who fears that 'the young girl is in a fair way to be spoilt. '
Steele is certainly the author of the footman's love-letter couched,
like The Yellowplush Papers of a later day, in language which
he can neither understand nor spell, with that inimitable touch of
nature, suggestive of The Conscious Lovers, 'Oh! dear Betty, must
the nightingales sing to those who marry for money and not to us
true lovers *? ' Besides revealing character, letters were admirably
adapted to disclose the secrets of private life. In the guise of a
correspondent, Steele found new scope for the gift of storytelling
which he had developed in The Tatler. Some of the communica-
tions contained glimpses into the comic side of domestic history-
such as the account of Anthony Freeman's device for escaping from
the over-affectionate attentions of his wife'; while others are
fragments torn from sordid reality, like the 'unhappy story in low
life' telling how the drunken weaver unwittingly sells a successful
lottery ticket which his wife had pinched herself to buy. In some
numbers, Steele goes further and narrates a sequence of events by
an interchange of letters. One of his noblest efforts in this style
is a correspondence by which a widow wins back her petulant and
wasteful son from the dissipations of London", and one of his wittiest
is the series of letters which release Cynthio from Flavia's in-
convenient affection
Thus, Steele was on the verge of inventing the epistolary novel;
but, as in The Tatler, so, now, he had neither the perseverance nor
the self-confidence necessary to create a literary type. He was
more inclined to follow his illustrious contemplative collaborator,
who, in the meantime, had created the serial treatise. Addison
1 Cf. , as to Robert Loveday, ante, vol. VII, p. 439.
? No. 43.
3 No. 66.
5 Nos. 212, 216.
6 No. 242.
8 No. 398.
4 No. 71.
7 No. 263.


## p. 58 (#82) ##############################################

58
Steele and Addison
began with a succession of rather fugitive but witty attacks on the
staging of the Italian opera', in which his own scholarly love of
simplicity, inspired by Terence and Horace, blended with the
inherited middle class dislike of all that was un-English. These
early papers are hardly more than outbursts of Addisonian irony,
such as he might have vented on any other of society's laughable
weaknesses. But material prosperity and the discussions of coffee-
houses had brought the middle class to a stage at which they felt
the need of culture and eagerly read anything on taste or style.
In this way, Addison found himself leading a reaction in literature,
just as Steele had led a reaction in manners. The drama was the
natural field for a critic nurtured at the university; so, Addison
began to discuss tragedy in a didactic spirit, not without sallies of
characteristic irony, insisting on what he calls the moral part
of the performance, showing how the technique of playwriting
contributes to dramatic effect, and how false art may be detected
by comparison with the great masters? As he warmed to his
work, he perceived that the coffeehouse public would never
take more than a passing interest in the stage. There was a
danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for
sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of
poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which
fashionable society still amused itself. What the citizens of London
really needed was a literature as serious as themselves. Accord-
ingly, Addison gave up a whole week’s issues to the criticism of
conceits and mere verbal dexterity, condemning acrostics, lipograms,
rebuses, anagrams, chronograms, bouts rimés, puns and paragrams;
and, after dismissing all these kinds of false wit, he shows his
unacademic readers in what true wit consists. It is illustrative
of the middle class reaction in literature that he should base his
definition on the reasoning of so modern and independent a thinker
as Locke“, and should follow up Dryden's preface to The State of
Innocence by restricting the meaning of wit to the resemblance of
ideas . . . that give delight and surprise to the reader,' always sup-
posing the resemblance to be founded on truth and common sense.
Addison, indeed, was teaching his fellow citizens to expect far more
than wit or art from literature. His aim was to find the precepts
i Nos. 6, 13, 18, 29, 31.
» Nos. 39, 40, 42, 44, 51.
8 Nos. 58–61.
• Essay concerning the Human Understanding, ed. 1690, chap. XI, p. 68.
• No. 62. See also no, 63, which sums up his view of false wit in a delightful
allegory.


## p. 59 (#83) ##############################################

Addison on Paradise Lost
59
of morality' which should underlie every work of inspiration; and,
with this end in view, he endeavoured to explain the universal
charm of such artless compositions as Chevy Chace and The Chil-
dren in the Wood. Among the middle class, the love of medieval
ballads had survived the renascence and was probably not yet
dead; but Addison essayed a task beyond the learning of his age
when he attempted to subject folklore to the canons of criticism.
In his day, men could judge poetry only under the shadow of the
classics, and The Spectator is still pedantic enough to praise the
old minstrelsy because it finds therein a few parallels to Vergil
and Horacel.
Steele had loyally supplemented these more scholarly papers,
whenever Addison gave him an opening for a humorous contri-
bution and even succeeded in showing how Raphael's cartoons 3
are studies in the grandeur of human emotions. But his spontaneous
and erratic genius quite failed to keep pace with the dogmatism
of Addison's next and greatest critical effort. This was the series
of Saturday papers in which he criticises Paradise Lost by the
canons of Aristotle, Longinus and Le Bossu and, though finding
faults in Milton, judges him to be equal, if not superior, to Homer
or Vergil. From the eighteenth century point of view, he was right.
The middle classes who read books were not themselves subjected
to the great emotions of life, but were bent on methodically building
up their own culture. Hence, they could not appreciate the mystery,
the passion, the wildness or the pathos of ancient epic, and it is
significant that these qualities are not conspicuous in the great
translations of the period, which charmed by their rhetoric and
polish. The average eighteenth century reader had somewhat
the same point of view as the Italian critics of the renascence
and valued what had passed through the crucible of the intel-
lect and smelt of the lamp. When people at this stage of culture
consider a work of imagination, they are too prosaic to com-
prehend the romance of human activity. They want projected
shadows of life, which are vaster than reality and bolder in outline,
though less searching. Milton met these intellectual requirements
more fully than his forerunners, and Addison, in interpreting his
poet, seems to have followed Minturno's line of argument when he
championed the epic against the romanzi. Addison contended that
1 Nos. 70, 74, 85.
? Nos. 22, 36, 65.
3 No. 226. See no. 244 for an answer to this paper.
4 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357,
363, 369.


## p. 60 (#84) ##############################################

60
Steele and Addison
1
1
6
>
Milton dealt with the destiny of the whole world, they but with that
of a single nation. His characters, though fewer in number, appear
more varied and less earth-bound than theirs. The conception of
sin and death contains 'a beautiful allegory'affecting all humanity.
Adam and Eve typify different beings before and after their fall.
Their conferences' are less mundane than the 'loves' of Dido and
Aeneas; Satan is more wily and more travelled than Ulysses? .
Besides, Paradise Lost was originally conceived as a tragedy, and,
though the dramatic atmosphere which pervades its final form is
rightly judged to be a blemish”, it is, for this reason, more easily
reducible to Aristotle's rules. After taking a bird's eye view of
the action, the actors, the sentiments and the languages, Addison
proceeds to consider each book separately. No greater service
could have been rendered to the unformed taste of his time than
to point out where Milton is to be admired, and Addison has the
wisdom to illustrate his criticisms so copiously that these papers
almost constitute a book of selected beauties. ' Much that he
praises is of permanent value, such as grandeur of style and
loftiness of conception; but, in much again, his literary judgment
is unconsciously biassed by a spirit of propaganda. In reality, The
Spectator was continuing, after nearly two generations, the same
reaction against restoration ideals which Milton had begun in his
old age. Thus, Paradise Lost had a hold on Addison's admiration
quite apart from its intrinsic merits. Milton's tumultuous and
over-burdened similes seemed perfect, in contrast with the artifices
of the little wits. Eve's purity and modesty exercised an
exaggerated charm in view of contemporary looseness', and it was
regarded as specially appropriate that her dream, inspired by Satan,
should be full of pride and conceits. Moreover, the age saw
6
that learning was its salvation and, in Paradise Lost, enjoyed the
quite artificial pleasures of research. Addison no longer holds
to Lionardi's, Fracastor's and Scaliger's? creed that all erudition
is an ornament to poetry; but he experiences a subtle delight in
tracing obscure parallels in inspiration comparing the sword of
Michael with the sword of Aeneas, or the golden compasses of the
Creator with Minerva's aegis, or the repentance of Adam and Eve
with the grief of Oedipus. And, finally, The Spectator was furthering
a
1 No. 297.
? L'Arte Poetica, 1564.
3 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285.
4 No. 303.
5 Nos. 321, 345.
6 No. 327.
? See Lionardi, Dialogi della Inventione Poetica, 1554; Fracastor, Opera, 1555;
Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem, 5th ed. 1617. See Spingarn, J. E. , Literary Criticism
in the Renaissance, 1908.


## p. 61 (#85) ##############################################

Addison 'On the Pleasures of the Imagination' 61
6
a religious revival under the auspices of culture and, therefore,
found in Paradise Lost the same kind of superiority that Harington 1
had claimed for Orlando Furioso. Addison reconciles himself even
to the speeches of the Almighty, though they are not ‘so proper to
fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of
devotion? '; while the morning and evening hymns, and the use
of scriptural phraseology throughout the poem, seemed like a touch
of inspiration higher than any of which a pagan could boast.
These Milton papers met with an enthusiastic reception. They
exercised an influence throughout the eighteenth century and only
became obsolete when Sainte-Beuve had taught Europe that the
critic should be less of a judge than a reconstructor-almost an
artist who creates a picture of the author's mind and of the
atmosphere in which he wrote. In any case, Addison never
attempted to enlarge the bounds of thought. His aim was to
gather up the best ideas of his time and put them within reach of
op
the ordinary reader. The same is true of his successive papers on
aesthetics, or, as he calls them, 'On the Pleasures of the Imagina-
tion. He wanted to show how the emotions can be raised and
purified by what men see and read. So, he discussed the intellectual
pleasure to be found, first, in landscapes and gardens, then, in
statues, pictures and architecture, and, then, in the mirrored views
of life which a descriptive writer can call up before the mind's eye.
This difficult and intricate subject involved an enquiry into the
psychology of the imagination and a scientific discrimination of
the functions and limits of the different arts. Granted his limita-
tions, Addison is more than equal to the task.
He draws on his
own travels and experiences, he applies the wisdom of the ancients
and the more recent discoveries of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley*;
yet his exposition is lucid and complete within the compass of
eleven short essays. But, though he popularises admirably the
ideas of his time, he cannot investigate for himself. The thoughts
of his contemporaries lead him to the very brink of Lessing's
discovery concerning the relation of poetry to sculpture", but
he does not take a step further when his guides leave him.
Nevertheless, these papers must have awakened in many a new
1 An Apologie of Poetrie, Pt 2.
2 No. 315.
s Nos. 411–421, originally written as a single essay years before. See Some portions
of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr Joseph Addison, Glasgow, 1864.
* New Theory of Vision, 1709.
6 Nos. 416, 418; Addison was probably aware of Varchi's comparison of poetry with
painting in Lerzioni, lette nell' Accademia Fiorentina, 1590; see Spingarn, ibid.
Lessing's Laokoon, oder Über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie, appeared in 1766.


## p. 62 (#86) ##############################################

62
Steele and Addison
sense of aesthetic enjoyment? Among other things, he protests
against the artificiality of rococo gardens, and shows what a
mine of wonder and reflection had been opened up by natural
philosophy
Although Addison varied these dissertations with humorous and
satirical essays, the tone of The Spectator became more and more
serious as the numbers continued to appear. At the outset, he
had declared, in two papers", that his practice was to put his
thoughts together without premeditation; but, towards the close,
he admitted the need of methodical discourses. He had other
things to teach besides the appreciation of literature and art. In
the latter half of the seventeenth century, England had exchanged
a civilization of war for a civilization of peace and needed a religion
a
to match. Martial patriotism, of course, still ran high ; but the
typical man of culture was a peaceful Londoner, busy with his
family and his profession, and the only battles which he fought
were those with himself. As has been shown, the votaries of the
old régime continued the tradition of atheism. But the middle
classes were still devout and only needed to bring into their wor-
ship that cult of urbanity at which they aimed in their daily lives.
No one could be more susceptible to this tendency than a man
of Addison's character, and, when he set himself to lead a social
reform, it was inevitable that he should write on religion. He is no
more original on this theme than on others. Humanised Christianity
is to be found, in all its sweetness, in Jeremy Taylor and had already
proved itself in John Webster's great book of sufficient power to
end the witch persecution. But, though Addison was not the first
to proclaim the gospel of peace and goodwill, he was the first who
could bring it into the hearts and homes of London citizens. Like
the earlier puritans, he held that religion should govern every
thought and action, but not to the exclusion of the world. His
creed was one of acquiescence and inward piety. Zeal was
often a cloak for pride, self-interest or ill-nature; enthusiasm led
to bigotry and superstition. A Christian's devotion should be
2
1 E. g. Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, 1764.
? Nos. 414, 420.
8 E. g. nos. 81 (party patches), 102 (the use of the fan), 205 (the woman of fashion in
church), 247 (women as talkers), 265 (the head dress), 275 (a beau's head), 281 (a
coquette's heart), 343 (the Pythagorean monkey), 361 (catcalls), 377 (bill of mortality
through love).
* Nos. 46, 124.
o No. 476.
6 The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, 1677. See ante, vol. VII, chap. xv,
pp. 396—7.


## p. 63 (#87) ##############################################

Addison on Religion. Cato
63
self-contained, with just enough fervour to prevent religion from
becoming a mere philosophy! Addison held, also, to the need of
self-examination, but not of despondency or self-contempt. To
him, everything was under the direction of a Supreme Being”, who,
as the Stoics and Juvenal had long before taught, knew better than
man what was good for him. The duty of human beings was to
be reconciled to their lot, to forget the differences and humiliations
of this life in the expectation of eternity, and to seek a sober
happiness in a sense of doing right*. These lay sermons are
accompanied by a few verse paraphrases of the Psalms, rendered
with polished simplicity, and are varied by allegories, among which
The First Vision of Mirza is justly celebrated for its tranquil,
lofty style.
The Spectator's last number appeared on 6 December 1712.
Both writers had cultivated to a surprising degree the art of
the Aâneur and knew how to turn innumerable and generally
unnoticed episodes of city life into charming sketches. Such
things as a sensation in a coffeehouse, a fencing-match, an argu-
ment in a bookshop, an old beggar, or a man who applauds with a
stick in a theatre gallery, are among their best studies of character'.
But, apparently, both editors had written themselves out. Addison,
at the instigation of his friends, set to work on Cato, the first four
acts of which had been written before the beginning of The Tatler,
perhaps as early as 1703. With many misgivings, he allowed the
tragedy to be produced at Drury lane on 14 April 1713. It was
a time of great political excitement; and, when so prominent a
public man as Addison produced a drama on Cato's last stand for
liberty, against the usurpation of Caesar, both parties turned the
situation against their opponents and applauded furiously. In any
event, the play was bound to have been a success. It pictures the
last of the Roman republicans, a statuesque outline magnanimous
and unmoved, surrounded by a treachery which is baffled by the
loyalty of his sons and Juba, accepting death rather than dishonour
and, in his last moments, taking thought for those around him.
The plot is twofold. Side by side with the study in public virtue
and high politics, a drama of the tender passion occupies the stage.
When Cato's son Marcius dies gallantly fighting against the traitor
Syphax, his brother wins the hand of Lucia, for which they had
a
i Nos. 185, 201, 483,
· Nos. 120, 121, 387, 489, 494, 495, 531, 543.
3 Nos. 207, 237, 391, 441.
- Nos. 186, 213, 219, 381, 483.
5 See respectively non. 403 and 481, 436, 438, 376, 235.
9


## p. 64 (#88) ##############################################

64
Steele and Addison
both been honourable rivals, and Juba, the once rejected suitor of
Marcia, Cato's daughter, romantically rescues her from the clutches
of Sempronius in disguise and finds that she has loved him all the
time. Thus, in the consecrated form of a Roman tragedy, the public
enjoyed that grandiose, if unsubstantial, projection of character
which they admired in Milton, together with the sentimental
chivalry of a French romance. To modern taste, the diction is
hopelessly declamatory, and the plot full of absurdities. But the
ordinary reader of the eighteenth century would almost regard
such artificiality as inevitable in a play which has strictly observed
the unities, contains a 'reversal of intention' and a 'recognition”
and abounds in crisp and quotable epigrams.
Meanwhile, Steele plunged into politics and, after much
pamphleteering, was expelled from the House of Commons for
uttering seditious libels. In 1714, he returned to literature and
started several periodicals, especially The Guardian, to which
Addison contributed fifty-one papers; and, in 1722, he produced
his last complete comedy, The Conscious Lovers. Though the plot
is largely borrowed from Terence's Andria and, where original,
abounds in more glaring improbabilities than his earlier work, the
play is remarkable because it resumes in brief all Steele's best
ideas on life and character. We have the sketch of servants whose
natural freshness is being gradually tainted by the corrupt and
contagious air of lackeydom? ; we have satire on marriages of
convenience, duelling and the chicanery of the law; a glance at
the opposition between the hereditary gentry and the rising
commercial class ; while, in Bevil junior, Steele portrays his ideal
of a gentleman, chivalrous and honourable to women, considerate
to men, respectful to his father and self-controlled amid the riotous
pleasures of the capital.
Steele and Addison produced other works separately. But,
when they ceased to collaborate in The Spectator, which was
subsequently continued by one of their circle, both became
authors of secondary importance. Their task was already done.
The peculiar circumstances of their lives gave them an unrivalled
opportunity of observing the movement of their time. Thanks
to a certain conventionality of intellect, coupled with amazing
1 The repetétela and ávarrópions of Aristotle; see Politics, ed. Butcher, 8. H. , 3rd
ed. 1902.
2 Besides the scenes in which Tom and Phillis appear, see the episode of the footboy
newly arrived in London, act v, sc. 2.
8 See bibliography.


## p. 65 (#89) ##############################################

Steele, Addison and the Essay
65
cleverness, they became the heart of this movement, and made it
literature. In this sense, they collaborated with their age. As a
comparison between the two writers is almost inevitable, it may
be said, in conclusion, that Steele was the more original and
Addison the more effective. Steele conceived the periodical essay,
but never perfected it; he accidentally discovered the short story
and verged upon the domestic novel, without substantially in-
fluencing the development of either genre. This ineffectiveness
was partly due to his volatile nature and somewhat unstable life,
but it was also largely due to the presence of Addison. That
successful and self-contained mentor seems to have unconsciously
restrained Steele's initiative. But, while he curbed his companion's
talents, he displayed the utmost efficiency in the use of his own
and, without any deep fund of ideas or sympathy, raised Steele’s
conception of an essay to a degree of perfection never since
surpassed. The Londoners of queen Anne's reign chiefly valued
The Spectator for Addison's humorous papers and religious dis-
sertations. The modern student most admires its accuracy and
penetration, and the true and long-enduring picture which it gives
of middle class culture and character.
E. L. IX.
CH, II.
5


## p. 66 (#90) ##############################################

CHAPTER III
POPE
The great writer of whom this chapter treats was a man of real
poetic genius, the growth and direction of which were powerfully
affected by his physical constitution, his circumstances and the
character of the age. None of his achievements belong to the
very highest forms of poetry. Where he excelled, his pre-eminence
is beyond dispute; yet his deficiency in qualities more prized by
a later generation has imperilled his very right to be regarded as
a poet. On certain points, all are practically agreed. Pope is
a memorable example of a conscious literary artist, the type in
our country of the classical spirit; rarely has a poet shown
himself a truer or more delicate representative of his own time.
Even did his work no longer appeal to us by its enduring
merit, he must escape neglect because of his part in England's
literary development.
Pope's true position has not always been recognised. He has
been viewed from the standpoint of periods out of sympathy with
his excellences and impatient of his defects, and his influence has
been regarded as a monstrous barrier restraining all deep and
natural emotion until swept away by the torrent of the romantic
revival. He has figured as one who left the free air of heaven
for the atmosphere of the coffeehouse, as the first to introduce
a mechanical standard of poetry, owing its acceptance to the
prosaic tone of his day. Attention to the historic side of literature
has brought sounder views. It is urged that, far from making
nature give way to art, he shared the reaction, not confined to
England, against an artificial mode, and stood in a real sense for
a return to nature. Rather than having been the originator of
a movement, he represents its climax, as he carried to completion
a work already begun.
Pope's attitude was not one of revolt. His poetry did not
disgust on its first appearance by deserting accepted models.


## p. 67 (#91) ##############################################

Early Studies
67
His immediate success proves how closely he was in touch with
his contemporaries. In the directness and lucidity of his style, he
improved his inheritance from Waller, Denham and Dryden. In
the skill with which he elaborated the heroic couplet, he was in-
debted to these poets, above all to Dryden, as well as to the
translations of Sandys. In the striving after simplicity, in the
rejection of the extravagance of the so-called metaphysical poets,
he instinctively followed an existing movement, precisely as the
justness of thought and clarity of expression in Swift and Addison
had an immediate ancestry. But, in prose and poetry alike, the
qualities greatly admired in that period, and valuable in any,
were won at the cost of others whose loss must be deplored, and
poetry suffered most.
Alexander Pope was born in London, on 21 May 1688, of parents
past middle age. They were devout Roman catholics; their son's
adherence to this creed seems to have been prompted by filial
affection. The accident of belonging to a proscribed church
decided the course of his education. It is curious to reflect that,
displaying such affinity for polish and precision, he should have
missed a classical training. After brief schooling, he was taken
home to Binfield, in Windsor forest, where his father had settled
on retiring from his linendraper's business, and from about the
age of twelve was largely self-taught. He grew up undersized,
delicate and deformed, though we have testimony to the beauty
of his voice and the brilliance of his eye. The presence of a fiery
soul within this frail tenement was proved when, in an unliterary
home, amid the languor of sickness and the lack of mental dis-
cipline, he developed a poetic genius, not fitful and uneven but
inspired by a continual endeavour after the highest attainable in
the form and music of his verse. Pope's own account of these early
studies was:
When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself, for which
I had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry: and in a
few years I had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian,
Latin and Greek poets. This I did without any design but that of pleasing
myself: and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several
poets I read1.
Of his knowledge of Italian, there is little trace. His Greek was,
certainly, not strong. In spite of some acquaintance with French
literature, he never seems to have had any real familiarity with the
language. With regard to scholarship, he was doubtless ‘shady
a
.
1 Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, S. W. , 1820, p. 193.
5-2


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68
Pope
1
>
in Latin’; but he was profoundly affected by the Roman poets,
with whose style and ways of thought he showed a remarkable
affinity. We everywhere feel the influence of the finish, dignity
and sonorousness of Latin poetry.
Of his own countrymen, Waller, Spenser and Dryden were his
favourites. While yet a child, he began to ‘lisp in numbers. ' At
his first school, he was punished for lampooning his master; at the
next, he tacked together speeches from Ogilby's Iliad to be acted
by his companions. Shortly after, as he told Spence, he began an
epic, Alcander Prince of Rhodes, and completed four books.
This he destroyed in mature life. We hear, also, of a tragedy on
St Geneviève. The satirical lines on the author of Successio (1712)
were said by Pope to have been written at fourteen; but the
earliest poem that has a place in his works is the Ode on Solitude,
sent to Henry Cromwell in a letter of 1709, and there stated to
have been composed when the author was not yet twelve; the
lines, however, were retouched after transcription and further
improved before their publication in 1735. The boy soon recog-
nised the weakness of his own efforts and turned to translation.
He was already familiar with attempts by others. In after years,
he still spoke with rapture of the pleasure he had received as
a boy from Ogilby's rendering of Homer. His own translation
of the first book of Statius's Thebais was professedly made ‘almost
in his childhood, but corrected before publication. He also tried
his hand on part of the Metamorphoses and began to submit
Chaucer to a similar process. His half-sister remarked of these
early years, 'I believe nobody ever studied so hard as my brother
did. He did nothing else but write and read. ' But Pope's literary
judgment was not based solely on books. At a susceptible age, he
formed a friendship with more than one man of mature years,
knowledge of the world and taste for letters. Among the earliest
of these was Sir William Trumbull, a retired diplomatist living near
Binfield Others were Wycherley, Henry Cromwell, a literary
man about town, and William Walsh, styled by Dryden the best
critic of our nation. Pope corresponded with these, sought their
advice and submitted his verses. His Pastorals went from hand
to hand and were complimented in flattering terms. Tonson
offered to publish them, and, after some delay, they appeared in
the sixth volume of his Miscellany, on 2 May 1709.
If we take Pope's own word, they had been composed when he
was sixteen. Parts, at least, had been written a year or two later,
and none assumed their final form until both numbers and language


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Windsor Forest.
Messiah
69
had been assiduously polished. The paper is still extant, contain-
ing a list of passages drawn up by Pope, with which he was dis-
satisfied and alternatives appended for Walsh's choice. But the
pastoral was a dying form of poetry into which fresh blood could not
now be infused. Writing among country sights and sounds, Pope has,
at the utmost, two or three descriptive touches from his own obser-
vation. In his ironical criticism in The Guardian, Pope remarked
that Philips, in his Pastorals, gave ‘manifest proof of his knowledge
of books’; his own amply deserve this praise. He had gleaned,
not from Theocritus and Vergil alone, but from Spenser, Sidney,
Drummond, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Congreve, Walsh and Sannazaro.
The real merit of the Pastorals lay in the versification. The new
poet was clearly possessed of a quite exceptional metrical skill.
Windsor Forest (1713) belongs, in great part, to the period
of the Pastorals. It is no longer a purely literary exercise, but
an attempt to apply observation and reading to a larger theme.
The design, for which Pope was indebted to Denham's Cooper's
Hill, was to combine a description of the countryside and
field-sports with the historical and literary associations of the
district. He was induced to add the lines after I. 290 by Lord
Lansdowne (George Granville), who was anxious that he should
praise the peace of Utrecht. It must be confessed that Pope
is not strong in the appreciation of natural scenery, although
Wordsworth was pleased to allow that a passage or two in Windsor
Forest contained new images of external nature. Pope's treat-
ment is largely conventional, and the atmosphere is spoilt by one
of the worst faults of pseudo-classicism--the Mars-Bacchus-Apollo
element. The plumage of the dying pheasant may be over-elabo-
rated; still, it is distinctly pleasing to find a recognition that other
of God's creatures besides man have a right to enjoy themselves
on this earth. But, in his pastoral and sylvan efforts, Pope had
,
now clearly shown that, as a nature poet, he was not in advance
of his age. Thomson was yet to come.
The sacred eclogue Messiah was printed in The Spectator for
14 May 1712. In his attempt to pour the Messianic prophecies
of Isaiah into the mould of a Vergilian eclogue, Pope, in spite
of an undeniable impressiveness, lowered their majesty by artificial
epithet and paraphrase. It is curious to note how gradually the
false attitude came home to critics. Warton and Bowles use very
guarded language when suggesting that, in a few passages, Pope
had weakened the sublimity of Isaiah. It was Wordsworth who
cited the poem as an illustration of artificial poetic diction.


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70
Pope
E
]
An Essay on Criticism, which appeared in 1711, was, apparently,
written in 1709, though Pope attempted afterwards to assign
its composition to an earlier date.