The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems

Author: Alexander Pope

Pages: 336,516 Pages

Audio Length: 4 hr 40 min

Languages: en

Summary

Play Sample

An Essay on Man, Epistle I

To H.St.John Lord Bolingbroke

The Design

Having proposed to write some pieces on Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression)

come home to Men's Business and Bosoms

, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering

Man

in the abstract, his

Nature

and his

State

; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what

condition

and

relation

it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its

being

The science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a

few clear points

: There are not

many certain truths

in this world. It is therefore in the Anatomy of the mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The

disputes

are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the

wits

than the

hearts

of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory of Morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a

temperate

yet not

inconsistent

, and a

short

yet not

imperfect

system of Ethics.

This I might have done in prose, but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: The other may seem odd, but is true, I found I could express them more

shortly

this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the

force

as well as

grace

of arguments or instructions, depends on their

conciseness

. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in

detail

, without becoming dry and tedious; or more

poetically

, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandring from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: If any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.

What is now published, is only to be considered as a

general Map

Man

, marking out no more than the

greater parts

, their

extent

, their

limits

, and their

connection

, and leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the

fountains

, and clearing the passage. To deduce the

rivers

, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.

Contents

Argument of Epistle I

Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the

Universe

Man

in the abstract

section	lines	topic
I	17 &c.	That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things
II	35 &c.	That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a Being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general Order of things, and conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown
III	77 &c.	That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends
IV	109 &c.	The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfections, the cause of Man's error and misery.The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of his dispensations
V	131 &c.	The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural.
VI	173 &c.	The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the Brutes; though, to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him miserable
VII	207	That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man.The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason alone countervails fill the other faculties
VIII	233	How much further this order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed
IX	250	The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire
X	281→end	The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state.

Contents

Epistle I

Awake, my St.John!leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man.

5

10

15

Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,
May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole?

Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

20

25

30

Presumptuous Man!the reason wouldst thou find,
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove?

Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest
That Wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man:
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains:
When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Ægypt's God:
Then shall Man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur'd to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to day is as completely so,,
As who began a thousand years ago.

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

III

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then: with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind:
His soul, proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

80

85

90

95

100

105

110

Go, wiser thou!and, in thy scale of sense,
Weight thy Opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all Creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If Man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.
In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,
Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of Order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

115

120

125

130

Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, "'Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial Pow'r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies."

But errs not Nature from his gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No, ('tis reply'd) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;
Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?" — Why then Man?
If the great end be human Happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sun-shine, as of Man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As Men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce Ambition in a Caesar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit.

Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos'd the mind.
But All subsists by elemental strife;
And Passions are the elements of Life.
The gen'ral Order, since the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

135

140

145

150

155

160

165

170

What would this Man?Now upward will he soar,
And little less than Angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at every pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If Nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still
The whisp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

175

180

185

190

195

200

205

VII

Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the Flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood:
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
How Instinct varies in the grov'lling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier,
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?

210

215

220

225

230

VIII

See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of Being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing. — On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And, if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th' amazing Whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the Whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky;
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on Being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature tremble to the throne of God.
All this dread Order break — for whom? for thee?
Vile worm! — Oh Madness! Pride! Impiety!

235

240

245

250

255

What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing Mind of All ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart:
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

260

265

270

275

280

Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit. — In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever Is, Is Right.

285

290

Contents

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

Advertisement to the first publication of this Epistle

This paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some Persons of Rank and Fortune (the Authors of

Verses to the Imitator of Horace

, and of an

Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court

) to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my Writings (of which, being public, the Public is judge), but my P

erson, Morals

, and

Family

, whereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of

myself

, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the

Truth

and the

Sentiment

; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend,

the vicious

the ungenerous

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have, for the most part, spared their

Names

, and they may escape being laughed at, if they please.

I would have some of them know, it was owing to the request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs as they have done of mine. However, I shall have this advantage, and honour, on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless character can never be found out, but by its

truth

and

likeness

Contents

Epistle to Dr Arnuthnot

P.shut, shut the door, good John!fatigu'd, I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The Dog-star rages! nay't is past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.

What walls can guard me, or what shade can hide?
They pierce my thickets, thro' my Grot they glide;
By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the Church is free;
Ev'n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me;
Then from the Mint walks forth the Man of rhyme,
Happy to catch me just at Dinner-time.

Is there a Parson, much bemus'd in beer,
A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer,
A Clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a Stanza, when he should engross?
Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls
With desp'rate charcoal round his darken'd walls?
All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain
Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.
Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the Laws,
Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause:
Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
And curses Wit, and Poetry, and Pope.

Friend to my Life! (which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song)
What Drop or Nostrum can this plague remove?
Or which must end me, a Fool's wrath or love?
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,
If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.
Seiz'd and tied down to judge, how wretched I!
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.
To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,
And to be grave, exceeds all Pow'r of face.
I sit with sad civility, I read
With honest anguish, and an aching head;
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years."

"Nine years!" cries he, who high in Drury-lane,
Lull'd by soft Zephyrs thro' the broken pane,
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,
Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends:
"The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it,
I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it."

Three things another's modest wishes bound,
My Friendship, and a Prologue, and ten pound.

Pitholeon sends to me: "You know his Grace
I want a Patron; ask him for a Place."
"Pitholeon libell'd me," — "but here's a letter
Informs you, Sir, 't was when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine",
"He'll write a Journal, or he'll turn Divine."

Bless me! a packet. — "'Tis a stranger sues,
A Virgin Tragedy, an Orphan Muse."
If I dislike it, "Furies, death and rage!"
If I approve, "Commend it to the Stage."
There (thank my stars) my whole Commission ends,
The Play'rs and I are, luckily, no friends,
Fir'd that the house reject him, "'Sdeath I'll print it,
And shame the fools — Your Int'rest, Sir, with Lintot!"
'Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:'
"Not, Sir, if you revise it, and retouch."
All my demurs but double his Attacks;
At last he whispers, "Do; and we go snacks."
Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,
Sir, let me see your works and you no more.

'Tis sung, when Midas' Ears began to spring,
(Midas, a sacred person and a king)
His very Minister who spy'd them first,
(Some say his Queen) was forc'd to speak, or burst.
And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,
When ev'ry coxcomb perks them in my face?
A. Good friend, forbear! you deal in dang'rous things.
I'd never name Queens, Ministers, or Kings;
Keep close to Ears, and those let asses prick;
'Tis nothing — P. Nothing? if they bite and kick?
Out with it, Dunciad!let the secret pass,
That secret to each fool, that he's an Ass:
The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)
The Queen of Midas slept, and so may I.

You think this cruel? take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,
Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:
Pit, Box, and gall'ry in convulsions hurl'd,
Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.
Who shames a Scribbler? break one cobweb thro',
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew:
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
The creature's at his dirty work again,
Thron'd in the centre of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!
Whom have I hurt? has Poet yet, or Peer
Lost the arch'd eye-brow, or Parnassian sneer?

* * * * *

Does not one table Bavius still admit?
Still to one Bishop Philips seem a wit?
Still Sappho — A. Hold! for God's sake — you 'll offend,
No Names! — be calm! — learn prudence of a friend!
I too could write, and I am twice as tall;
But foes like these — P. One Flatt'rer's worse than all.
Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,
It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.
A fool quite angry is quite innocent:
Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.

One dedicates in high heroic prose,
And ridicules beyond a hundred foes:
One from all Grubstreet will my fame defend,
And more abusive, calls himself my friend.
This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,
And others roar aloud, "Subscribe, subscribe."

There are, who to my person pay their court:
I cough like Horace, and, tho' lean, am short,
Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high,
Such Ovid's nose, and "Sir! you have an Eye" —
Go on, obliging creatures, make me see
All that disgrac'd my Betters, met in me.
Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,
"Just so immortal Maro held his head:"
And when I die, be sure you let me know
Great Homer died three thousand years ago.

Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobey'd.
The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not Wife,
To help me thro' this long disease, my Life,
To second, Arbuthnot!thy Art and Care,
And teach the Being you preserv'd, to bear.

But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise;
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St.John's self (great Dryden's friends before)
With open arms receiv'd one Poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd!
Happier their author, when by these belov'd!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.

Soft were my numbers; who could take offence,
While pure Description held the place of Sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill; —
I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answer'd, — I was not in debt.
If want provok'd, or madness made them print,
I wag'd no war with Bedlam or the Mint.

Did some more sober Critic come abroad;
If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel grac'd these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds:
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each Word-catcher, that lives on syllables,
Ev'n such small Critics some regard may claim,
Preserv'd in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.

Were others angry: I excus'd them too;
Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;
But each man's secret standard in his mind,
That Casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The Bard whom pilfer'd Pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a Crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;
He, who still wanting, tho' he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And He, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And He, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not Poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest Satire bade translate,
And own'd that nine such Poets made a Tate
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.

Peace to all such! but were there One whose fires
True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend.

A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by Flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise: —
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

What tho' my Name stood rubric on the walls
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,5
On wings of winds came flying all abroad?
I sought no homage from the Race that write;
I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now be-rhym'd so long)
No more than thou, great George! a birth-day song.
I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,
To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled thro' the town,
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;
But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by ev'ry quill;
Fed with soft Dedication all day long.
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
His Library (where busts of Poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head,)
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,
Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:
Till grown more frugal in his riper days,
He paid some bards with port, and some with praise;
To some a dry rehearsal saw assign'd,
And others (harder still) he paid in kind.
Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,
Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:
But still the Great have kindness in reserve,
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.

May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill!
May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!
So, when a Statesman wants a day's defence,
Or Envy holds a whole week's war with Sense,
Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blest be the Great! for those they take away.
And those they left me; for they left me Gay;
Left me to see neglected Genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:
Of all thy blameless life the sole return
My Verse, and Queenb'ry weeping o'er thy urn.

Oh let me live my own, and die so too!
(To live and die is all I have to do:)
Maintain a Poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please;
Above a Patron, tho' I condescend
Sometimes to call a minister my friend.
I was not born for Courts or great affairs;
I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray'rs;
Can sleep without a Poem in my head;
Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.

Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?
Heav'ns! was I born for nothing but to write?
Has Life no joys for me? or, (to be grave)
Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?
"I found him close with Swift" — 'Indeed? no doubt,'
(Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.'
'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.
'No, such a Genius never can lie still;'
And then for mine obligingly mistakes
The first Lampoon Sir Will, or Bubo makes.
Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,
When ev'ry Coxcomb knows me by my Style?

Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed Virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fall'n worth, or Beauty in distress,
Who loves a Lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a Libel, or who copies out:
That Fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:
Who can your merit selfishly approve.
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction, Lie.
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus tremble — A. What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
(His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
(Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
(And he himself one vile Antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile; — be one Poet's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways:
That Flatt'ry, ev'n to Kings, he held a shame,
And thought a Lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his song:
That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
The morals blacken'd when the writings scape,
The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father, dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his Sov'reign's ear: —
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave, to me, in ev'ry state:
Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail
A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a Pillory, or near a Throne,
He gain his Prince's ear, or lose his own.
Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;
This dreaded Sat'rist Dennis will confess
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,
Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhym'd for Moore.
Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?
Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.
To please a Mistress one aspers'd his life;
He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife.
Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his Will;
Let the two Curlls of Town and Court, abuse
His father, mother, body, soul, and muse.
Yet why? that Father held it for a rule,
It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:
That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore:
Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names, and memorable long!
If there be force in Virtue, or in Song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause.
While yet in Britain Honour had applause)
Each parent sprung — A. What fortune, pray? — P. Their own,
And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife,
Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walk'd innoxious thro' his age.
Nor Courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lie.
Un-learn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.
By Nature honest, by Experience wise,
Healthy by temp'rance, and by exercise;
His life, tho' long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant, and without a groan.
O grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than I.

O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!
Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine:
Me, let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing Age,
With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,
Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heav'n, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he serv'd a Queen
A. Whether that blessing be deny'd or giv'n,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav'n.

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Contents

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixt; sweet recreation;
And Innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

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The Descent of Dullness

from The Dunciad, Book IV.

In vain, in vain — the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
For public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos!is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries All.

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Epitaph on Gay

In Westminster Abbey, 1732

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child:
With native Humour temp'ring virtuous Rage,
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age:
Above Temptation, in a low Estate,
And uncorrupted, ev'n among the Great:
A safe Companion, and an easy Friend,
Unblam'd thro' Life, lamented in thy End.
These are Thy Honours! not that here thy Bust
Is mix'd with Heroes, or with Kings thy dust;
But that the Worthy and the Good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms — Here lies Gay

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Notes on The Rape of the Lock

Introduction

In 1711 Pope, who had just published his

Essay on Criticism

, was looking about for new worlds to conquer. A fortunate chance threw in his way a subject exactly suited to his tastes and powers. He seized upon it, dashed off his first sketch in less than a fortnight, and published it anonymously in a

Miscellany

issued by Lintot in 1712. But the theme had taken firm root in his mind. Dissatisfied with his first treatment of it, he determined, against the advice of the best critic of the day, to recast the work, and lift it from a mere society

jeu d'esprit

into an elaborate mock-heroic poem. He did so and won a complete success. Even yet, however, he was not completely satisfied and from time to time he added a touch to his work until he finally produced the finished picture which we know as

The Rape of the Lock

As it stands, it is an almost flawless masterpiece, a brilliant picture and light-hearted mockery of the gay society of Queen Anne's day, on the whole the most satisfactory creation of Pope's genius, and, perhaps, the best example of the mock-heroic in any literature.

The occasion which gave rise to

The Rape of the Lock

has been so often related that it requires only a brief restatement. Among the Catholic families of Queen Anne's day, who formed a little society of their own, Miss Arabella Fermor was a reigning belle. In a youthful frolic which overstepped the bounds of propriety Lord Petre, a young nobleman of her acquaintance, cut off a lock of her hair. The lady was offended, the two families took up the quarrel, a lasting estrangement, possibly even a duel, was threatened. At this juncture a common friend of the two families, a Mr. Caryll, nephew of a well-known Jacobite exile for whom he is sometimes mistaken, suggested to Pope "to write a poem to make a jest of it," and so kill the quarrel with laughter. Pope consented, wrote his first draft of

The Rape of the Lock

, and passed it about in manuscript. Pope says himself that it had its effect in the two families; certainly nothing more is heard of the feud. How Miss Fermor received the poem is a little uncertain. Pope complains in a letter written some months after the poem had appeared in print that "the celebrated lady is offended." According to Johnson she liked the verses well enough to show them to her friends, and a niece of hers said years afterward that Mr. Pope's praise had made her aunt "very troublesome and conceited." It is not improbable that Belinda was both flattered and offended. Delighted with the praise of her beauty she may none the less have felt called upon to play the part of the offended lady when the poem got about and the ribald wits of the day began to read into it double meanings which reflected upon her reputation. To soothe her ruffled feelings Pope dedicated the second edition of the poem to her in a delightful letter in which he thanked her for having permitted the publication of the first edition to forestall an imperfect copy offered to a bookseller, declared that the character of Belinda resembled her in nothing but in beauty, and affirmed that he could never hope that his poem should pass through the world half so uncensured as she had done. It would seem that the modern critics who have undertaken to champion Miss Fermor against what they are pleased to term the revolting behavior of the poet are fighting a needless battle. A pretty girl who would long since have been forgotten sat as an unconscious model to a great poet; he made her the central figure in a brilliant picture and rendered her name immortal. That is the whole story, and when carping critics begin to search the poem for the improprieties of conduct to which they say Pope alluded, one has but to answer in Pope's own words.

If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.

Pope's statement in the dedication that he had been forced into publishing the first draft of the poem before his design of enlarging it was half executed is probably to be taken, like many of his statements, with a sufficient grain of salt. Pope had a curious habit of protesting that he was forced into publishing his letters, poems, and other trifles, merely to forestall the appearance of unauthorized editions. It is more likely that it was the undoubted success of

The Rape of the Lock

in its first form which gave him the idea of working up the sketch into a complete mock-heroic poem.

Examples of such a poem were familiar enough to Pope. Not to go back to the pseudo-Homeric mock epic which relates the battle of the frogs and mice, Vida in Italy and Boileau in France, with both of whom Pope, as the

Essay on Criticism

shows, was well acquainted, had done work of this kind. Vida's description of the game of chess in his

Scacchia Ludus

certainly gave him the model for the game of ombre in the third canto of

The Rape of the Lock

; Boileau's

Lutrin

probably suggested to him the idea of using the mock-heroic for the purposes of satire.

Now it was a dogma of the critical creed of the day, which Pope devoutly accepted, that every epic must have a well-recognized "machinery." Machinery, as he kindly explained to Miss Fermor, was a "term invented by the critics to signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons are made to act in a poem," in short for the whole supernatural element. Such machinery was quite wanting in the first draft of the Rape; it must be supplied if the poem was to be a true epic, even of the comic kind. And the machinery must be of a nature which would lend itself to the light satiric tone of the poem. What was it to be? The employment of what we may call Christian machinery, the angels and devils of Tasso and Milton, was, of course, out of the question. The employment of the classic machinery was almost as impossible. It would have been hard for such an admirer of the classics as Pope to have taken the deities of Olympus otherwise than seriously. And even if he had been able to treat them humorously, the humor would have been a form of burlesque quite at variance with what he had set out to accomplish. For Pope's purpose, springing naturally from the occasion which set him to writing the

Rape

, was not to burlesque what was naturally lofty by exhibiting it in a degraded light, but to show the true littleness of the trivial by treating it in a grandiose and mock-heroic fashion, to make the quarrel over the stolen lock ridiculous by raising it to the plane of the epic contest before the walls of Troy.

In his perplexity a happy thought, little less in fact than an inspiration of genius, came to Pope. He had been reading a book by a clever French abbé treating in a satiric fashion of the doctrines of the so-called Rosicrucians, in particular of their ideas of elemental spirits and the influence of these spirits upon human affairs. Here was the machinery he was looking for made to his hand. There would be no burlesque in introducing the Rosicrucian sylphs and gnomes into a mock-heroic poem, for few people, certainly not the author of the

Comte de Gabalis

, took them seriously.Yet the widespread popularity of this book, to say nothing of the existence of certain Rosicrucian societies, had rendered their names familiar to the society for which Pope wrote.He had but to weave them into the action of his poem, and the brilliant little sketch of society was transformed into a true mock-epic.

The manner in which this interweaving was accomplished is one of the most satisfactory evidences of Pope's artistic genius. He was proud of it himself. "The making the machinery, and what was published before, hit so well together, is," he told Spencer, "I think, one of the greatest proofs of judgment of anything I ever did." And he might well be proud. Macaulay, in a well-known passage, has pointed out how seldom in the history of literature such a recasting of a poem has been successfully accomplished. But Pope's revision of

The Rape of the Lock

was so successful that the original form was practically done away with. No one reads it now but professed students of the literature of Queen Anne's time. And so artfully has the new matter been woven into the old that if the recasting of

The Rape of the Lock

were not a commonplace even in school histories of English literature, not one reader in a hundred would suspect that the original sketch had been revised and enlarged to more than twice its length. It would be an interesting task for the student to compare the two forms printed in this edition, to note exactly what has been added, and the reasons for its addition, and to mark how Pope has smoothed the junctures and blended the old and the new. Nothing that he could do would admit him more intimately to the secrets of Pope's mastery of his art.

A word must be said in closing as to the merits of

The Rape of the Lock

and its position in English literature. In the first place it is an inimitable picture of one phase, at least, of the life of the time, of the gay, witty, heartless society of Queen Anne's day. Slowly recovering from the licentious excesses of the Restoration, society at this time was perhaps unmoral rather than immoral. It was quite without ideals, unless indeed the conventions of "good form" may be dignified by that name. It lacked the brilliant enthusiasm of Elizabethan times as well as the religious earnestness of the Puritans and the devotion to patriotic and social ideals which marked a later age. Nothing, perhaps, is more characteristic of the age than its attitude toward women. It affected indeed a tone of high-flown adoration which thinly veiled a cynical contempt. It styled woman a goddess and really regarded her as little better than a doll. The passion of love had fallen from the high estate it once possessed and become the mere relaxation of the idle moments of a man of fashion.

In the comedies of Congreve, for example, a lover even if honestly in love thinks it as incumbent upon him to make light of his passion before his friends as to exaggerate it in all the forms of affected compliment before his mistress.

The Rape of the Lock

Pope has caught and fixed forever the atmosphere of this age. It is not the mere outward form and circumstance, the manners and customs, the patching, powdering, ogling, gambling, of the day that he has reproduced, though his account of these would alone suffice to secure the poem immortality as a contribution to the history of society. The essential spirit of the age breathes from every line. No great English poem is at once so brilliant and so empty, so artistic, and yet so devoid of the ideals on which all high art rests. It is incorrect, I think, to consider Pope in

The Rape of the Lock

as the satirist of his age. He was indeed clever enough to perceive its follies, and witty enough to make sport of them, but it is much to be doubted whether he was wise enough at this time to raise his eyes to anything better. In the social satires of Pope's great admirer, Byron, we are at no loss to perceive the ideal of personal liberty which the poet opposes to the conventions he tears to shreds. Is it possible to discover in

The Rape of the Lock

any substitute for Belinda's fancies and the Baron's freaks? The speech of Clarissa which Pope inserted as an afterthought to point the moral of the poem recommends Belinda to trust to merit rather than to charms. But "merit" is explicitly identified with good humor, a very amiable quality, but hardly of the highest rank among the moral virtues. And the avowed end and purpose of "merit" is merely to preserve what beauty gains, the flattering attentions of the other sex, — surely the lowest ideal ever set before womankind. The truth is, I think, that

The Rape of the Lock

represents Pope's attitude toward the social life of his time in the period of his brilliant youth. He was at once dazzled, amused, and delighted by the gay world in which he found himself. The apples of pleasure had not yet turned to ashes on his lips, and it is the poet's sympathy with the world he paints which gives to the poem the air, most characteristic of the age itself, of easy, idle, unthinking gayety. We would not have it otherwise. There are sermons and satires in abundance in English literature, but there is only one

Rape of the Lock

The form of the poem is in perfect correspondence with its spirit. There is an immense advance over the

Essay on Criticism

in ease, polish, and balance of matter and manner. And it is not merely in matters of detail that the supremacy of the latter poem is apparent.

The Rape of the Lock

is remarkable among all Pope's longer poems as the one complete and perfect whole. It is no mosaic of brilliant epigrams, but an organic creation. It is impossible to detach any one of its witty paragraphs and read it with the same pleasure it arouses when read in its proper connection. Thalestris' call to arms and Clarissa's moral reproof are integral parts of the poem. And as a result, perhaps, of its essential unity

The Rape of the Lock

bears witness to the presence of a power in Pope that we should hardly have suspected from his other works, the power of dramatic characterization. Elsewhere he has shown himself a master of brilliant portraiture, but Belinda, the Baron, and Thalestris are something more than portraits. They are living people, acting and speaking with admirable consistency. Even the little sketch of Sir Plume is instinct with life.

Finally

The Rape of the Lock

, in its limitations and defects, no less than in its excellencies, represents a whole period of English poetry, the period which reaches with but few exceptions from Dryden to Wordsworth. The creed which dominated poetic composition during this period is discussed in the

introduction

to the

Essay on Criticism

, and is admirably illustrated in that poem itself. Its repression of individuality, its insistence upon the necessity of following in the footsteps of the classic poets, and of checking the outbursts of imagination by the rules of common sense, simply incapacitated the poets of the period from producing works of the highest order. And its insistence upon man as he appeared in the conventional, urban society of the day as the one true theme of poetry, its belief that the end of poetry was to instruct and improve either by positive teaching or by negative satire, still further limited its field. One must remember in attempting an estimate of

The Rape of the Lock

that it was composed with an undoubting acceptance of this creed and within all these narrowing limitations. And when this is borne in mind, it is hardly too much to say that the poem attains the highest point possible. In its treatment of the supernatural it is as original as a poem could be at that day. The brilliancy of its picture of contemporary society could not be heightened by a single stroke. Its satire is swift and keen, but never ill natured. And the personality of Pope himself shines through every line. Johnson advised authors who wished to attain a perfect style to give their days and nights to a study of Addison. With equal justice one might advise students who wish to catch the spirit of our so-called Augustan age, and to realize at once the limitations and possibilities of its poetry, to devote themselves to the study of

The Rape of the Lock

line	reference	meaning
Dedication	Mrs. Arabella	the title of Mrs. was still given in Pope's time to unmarried ladies as soon as they were old enough to enter society.
	the Rosicrucian doctrine	the first mention of the Rosicrucians is in a book published in Germany in 1614, inviting all scholars to join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with superstitions handed down from ancient times. Pope probably knew nothing more of them than what he had read in Le Comte de Gabalis This was the work of a French abbé, de Montfaucon Villars (1635-1673), who was well known in his day both as a preacher and a man of letters. It is really a satire upon the fashionable mystical studies, but treats in a tone of pretended seriousness of secret sciences, of elemental spirits, and of their intercourse with men. It was translated into English in 1680 and again in 1714.
Canto I
1-2		Pope opens his mock-epic with the usual epic formula, the statement of the subject. Compare the first lines of the Iliad, the Æneid, and Paradise Lost. In l. 7 he goes on to call upon the "goddess," i.e. the muse, to relate the cause of the rape. This, too, is an epic formula. Compare Æneid, I, 8, and Paradise Lost, I, 27-33.
3	Caryl	see IntroductionIn accordance with his wish his name was not printed in the editions of the poem that came out in Pope's lifetime, appearing there only as C — — or C — — l.
4	Belinda	a name used by Pope to denote Miss Fermor, the heroine of The Rape of the Lock
12		This line is almost a translation of a line in the Æneid (I, 11), where Virgil asks if it be possible that such fierce passions (as Juno's) should exist in the minds of gods.
13	Sol	a good instance of the fondness which Pope shared with most poets of his time for giving classical names to objects of nature. This trick was supposed to adorn and elevate poetic diction. Try to find other instances of this in The Rape of the Lock
		Why is the sun's ray called "tim'rous"?
16		It was an old convention that lovers were so troubled by their passion that they could not sleep. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (ll. 97-98), Chaucer says of the young squire: So hote he lovede, that by nightertale He sleep namore than dooth a nightingale. Pope, of course, is laughing at the easy-going lovers of his day who in spite of their troubles sleep very comfortably till noon.
17		The lady on awaking rang a little hand-bell that stood on a table by her bed to call her maid. Then as the maid did not appear at once she tapped impatiently on the floor with the heel of her slipper. The watch in the next line was a repeater.
19		All the rest of this canto was added in the second edition of the poem.See pp.84-86.Pope did not notice that he describes Belinda as waking in I.14 and still asleep and dreaming in II.19-116.
20	guardian Sylph	compare ll.67-78
23	a Birth-night Beau	a fine gentleman in his best clothes, such as he would wear at a ball on the occasion of a royal birthday.
30		The nurse would have told Belinda the old tales of fairies who danced by moonlight on rings in the greensward, and dropped silver coins into the shoes of tidy little maids.The priest, on the other hand, would have repeated to her the legend of St.Cecilia and her guardian angel who once appeared in bodily form to her husband holding two rose garlands gathered in Paradise, or of St.Dorothea, who sent an angel messenger with a basket of heavenly fruits and flowers to convert the pagan Theophilus.
42	militia	used here in the general sense of "soldiery."
44	the box	in the theater.
	the ring	the drive in Hyde Park, where the ladies of society took the air.
46	a chair	a sedan chair in which ladies used to be carried about.Why is Belinda told to scorn it?
50		What is the meaning of "vehicles" in this line?
56	Ombre	the fashionable game of cards in Pope's day.See his account of a game in Canto III and the notes on that passage.
57-67		See Introduction
69-70		Compare Paradise Lost, I, 423-431.
79		conscious of their face: proud of their beauty.
81	These	the gnomes who urge the vain beauties to disdain all offers of love and play the part of prudes.
85	garters, stars, and coronets	the garter is the badge of the Knights of the Garter, an order founded by Edward III, to which only noble princes and noblemen of the highest rank were admitted."Stars" are the jeweled decorations worn by members of other noble orders."Coronets" are the inferior crowns worn by princes and nobles, not by sovereigns.
86	"Your Grace"	the title bestowed in England on a duchess — The idea in this passage, ll. 83-86, is that the gnomes fill the girls' minds with hopes of a splendid marriage and so induce them to "deny love."
94	impertinence	purposeless flirtation.
97-98	Florio ...Damon	poetic names for fine gentlemen; no special individuals are meant.
100		Why is a woman's heart called a "toy-shop"?
101	Sword-knots	tassels worn at the hilts of swords. In Pope's day every gentleman carried a sword, and these sword-knots were often very gay.
105	who thy protection claim	what is the exact meaning of his phrase?
108	thy ruling Star	the star that controls thy destinies, a reference to the old belief in astrology.
115	Shock	Belinda's pet dog.His name would seem to show that he was a rough-haired terrier.
118		Does this line mean that Belinda had never seen a billet-doux before?
119	Wounds, Charms, and Ardors	the usual language of a love-letter at this time.
124	the Cosmetic pow'rs	the deities that preside over a lady's toilet.Note the playful satire with which Pope describes Belinda's toilet as if it were a religious ceremony.Who is "th' inferior priestess" in l.127?
131	nicely	carefully.
134	Arabia	famous for its perfumes.
145	set the head	arrange the head-dress.
147	Betty	Belinda's maid.
Canto II
4	Launch'd	embarked
25	springes	snares
26	the finny prey	a characteristic instance of Pope's preference or circumlocution to a direct phrase.
35-36		A regular formula in classical epics.In Virgil (XI, 794-795) Phœbus grants part of the prayer of Arruns; the other part he scatters to the light winds.
38	vast French Romances	these romances were the customary reading of society in Pope's day when there were as yet no English novels.Some of them were of enormous length.Addison found several of them in a typical lady's library, great folio volumes, finely bound in gilt (Spectator, 37).
58	All but the Sylph	so in Homer (1-25), while all the rest of the army is sleeping Agamemnon is disturbed by fear of the doom impending over the Greeks at the hands of Hector.
60	Waft	wave, or flutter.
70	Superior by the head	so in Homer (Iliad, III, 225-227) Ajax is described as towering over the other Greeks by head and shoulders.
73	sylphids	a feminine form of "sylphs."
74		This formal opening of Ariel's address to his followers is a parody of a passage in Paradise Lost, V, 600-601.
75	spheres	either "worlds" or in a more general sense "regions."
79		What are the "wandering orbs," and how do they differ from planets in l.80?
97	a wash	a lotion for the complexion.
105		Diana, the virgin huntress, was in a peculiar sense the goddess of chastity.
106	China jar	the taste for collecting old china was comparatively new in England at this time.It had been introduced from Holland by Queen Anne's sister, Queen Mary, and was eagerly caught up by fashionable society.
113	The drops	the diamond earrings.
118	the Petticoat	the huge hoop skirt which had recently become fashionable. Addison, in a humorous paper in the Tatler (No. 116), describes one as about twenty-four yards in circumference.
128	bodkin	a large needle.
133	rivel'd	an obsolete raiment of "obrivelled."
133	Ixion	according to classical mythology Ixion was punished for his sins by being bound forever upon a whirling wheel.
134	Mill	the mill in which cakes of chocolate were ground up preparatory to making the beverage.
138	orb in orb	in concentric circles.
139	thrid	a variant form of "thread."
Canto III
3	a structure	Hampton Court, a palace on the Thames, a few miles above London.It was begun by Wolsey, and much enlarged by William III.Queen Anne visited it occasionally, and cabinet meetings were sometimes held there.Pope insinuates (l.6) that the statesmen who met in these councils were as interested in the conquest of English ladies as of foreign enemies.
8		Tea was still in Queen Anne's day a luxury confined to the rich. It cost, in 1710, from twelve to twenty-eight shillings per pound.
9	The heroes and the nymphs	the boating party which started for Hampton Court in Canto II.
17		Snuff-taking had just become fashionable at this time.The practice is said to date from 1702, when an English admiral brought back fifty tons of snuff found on board some Spanish ships which he had captured in Vigo Bay. In the Spectator for August 8, 1711, a mock advertisement is inserted professing to teach "the exercise of the snuff-box according to the most fashionable airs and motions," and in the number for April 4, 1712, Steele protests against "an impertinent custom the fine women have lately fallen into of taking snuff."
22	dine	the usual dinner hour in Queen Anne's reign was about 3 P.M.Fashionable people dined at 4, or later.This allowed the fashionable lady who rose at noon time to do a little shopping and perform "the long labours of the toilet."
26	two ...Knights	one of these was the baron, see l.66.
27	Ombre	a game of cards invented in Spain. It takes its name from the Spanish phrase originally used by the player who declared trumps: "Yo soy l'hombre," i.e. I am the man. It could be played by three, five, or nine players, but the usual number was three as here. Each of these received nine cards, and one of them named the trump and thus became the "ombre," who played against the two others. If either of the ombre's opponents took more tricks than the ombre, it was "codille" (l. 92). This meant that the opponent took the stake and the ombre had to replace it for the next hand. A peculiar feature of ombre is the rank, or value, of the cards. The three best cards were called "matadores," a Spanish word meaning "killers." The first of these matadores was "Spadillio," the ace of spades; the third was "Basto," the ace of clubs. The second, "Manillio," varied according to the suit. If a black suit were declared, Maniilio was the two of trumps; if a red suit, Manillio was the seven of trumps. It is worth noting also that the red aces were inferior to the face cards of their suits except when a red suit was trump. A brief analysis of the game played on this occasion will clear up the passage and leave the reader free to admire the ingenuity with which Pope has described the contest in terms of epic poetry. Belinda declares spades trumps and so becomes the "ombre." She leads one after the other the three matadores; and takes three tricks. She then leads the next highest card, the king of spades, and wins a fourth trick. Being out of trumps she now leads the king of clubs; but the baron, who has actually held more spades than Belinda, trumps it with the queen of spades. All the trumps are now exhausted and the baron's long suit of diamonds is established. He takes the sixth, seventh, and eighth tricks with the king, queen, and knave of diamonds, respectively. Everything now depends on the last trick, since Belinda and the baron each have taken four. The baron leads the ace of hearts and Belinda takes it with the king, thus escaping "codille" and winning the stake.
30	the sacred nine	the nine Muses.
41	succint	tucked up.
54	one Plebeian card	one of Belinda's opponents is now out of trumps and discards a low card on her lead.
61	Pam	a term applied to the knave of clubs which was always the highest card in Lu, another popular game of that day.
74	the globe	the jeweled ball which forms one of the regalia of a monarch.The aspect of playing cards has changed not a little since Pope's day, but the globe is still to be seen on the king of clubs.
79	Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts	these are the losing cards played by Belinda and the third player on the baron's winning diamonds.
99		Pope's old enemy, Dennis, objected to the impropriety of Belinda's filling the sky with exulting shouts, and some modern critics have been foolish enough to echo his objection. The whole scene is a masterpiece of the mock-heroic. The game is a battle, the cards are warriors, and Belinda's exclamations of pleasure at winning are in the same fashion magnified into the cheers of a victorious army.
100	long canals	the canals which run through the splendid gardens of Hampton Court, laid out by William III in the Dutch fashion.
106	The berries crackle	it would seem from this phrase that coffee was at that time roasted as well as ground in the drawing-room. In a letter written shortly after the date of this poem Pope describes Swift as roasting coffee "with his own hands in an engine made for that purpose." Coffee had been introduced into England about the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1657 a barber who had opened one of the first coffeehouses in London was indicted for "making and selling a sort of liquor called coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice of the neighborhood." In Pope's time there were nearly three thousand coffee-houses in London.
	The mill	the coffee-mill.
107	Altars of Japan	japanned stands for the lamps.
117-118		The parenthesis in these lines contains a hit at the would-be omniscient politicians who haunted the coffee-houses of Queen Anne's day, and who professed their ability to see through all problems of state with their eyes half-shut.Pope jestingly attributes their wisdom to the inspiring power of coffee.
122	Scylla	the daughter of King Nisus in Grecian legends. Nisus had a purple hair and so long as it was untouched he was unconquerable. Scylla fell in love with one of his enemies and pulled out the hair while Nisus slept. For this crime she was turned into a bird. The story is told in full in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Bk.VIII.
127	Clarissa	it does not appear that Pope had any individual lady in mind. We do not know, at least, that any lady instigated or aided Lord Petre to cut off the lock.
144	An earthly Lover	we know nothing of any love affair of Miss Fermor's.Pope mentions the "earthly lover" here to account for Ariel's desertion of Belinda, for he could only protect her so long as she "rejected mankind"; compare Canto I, ll.67-68.
147	Forfex	a Latin word meaning scissors.
152		Pope borrowed this idea from Milton, who represents the wound inflicted on Satan, by the Archangel Michael as healing immediately: Th' ethereal substance closed Not long divisible. Paradise Lost, VI, 330-331.
165	Atalantis	The New Atalantis, a four-volume "cornucopia of scandal" involving almost every public character of the day, was published by a Mrs. Manley in 1709.It was very widely read.The Spectator found it, along with a key which revealed the identities of its characters, in the lady's library already mentioned (Spectator, No.37).
166	the small pillow	a richly decorated pillow which fashionable ladies used to prop them up in bed when they received morning visits from gentlemen. Addison gives an account of such a visit in the Spectator, No.45.
167	solemn days	days of marriage or mourning, on which at this time formal calls were paid.
173	the labour of the gods	the walls of Troy built by Apollo and Neptune for King Laomedon.
178	unresisted	irresistible.
Canto IV
8	Cynthia	a fanciful name for any fashionable lady.No individual is meant.
	manteau	a loose upper garment for women.
16	Spleen	the word is used here as a personification of melancholy, or low spirits. It was not an uncommon affectation in England at this time. A letter to the Spectator, No.53, calls it "the distemper of the great and the polite."
17	the Gnome	Umbriel, who in accordance with his nature now proceeds to stir up trouble. Compare Canto I, ll. 63-64.
20		The bitter east wind which put every one into a bad humor was supposed to be one of the main causes of the spleen.
23	She	the goddess of the spleen. Compare l. 79.
84	Megrim	headache.
29	store	a large supply.
38	night-dress	the modern dressing-gown.The line means that whenever a fashionable beauty bought a new dressing-gown she pretended to be ill in order to show her new possession to sympathetic friends who called on her.
40	phantoms	these are the visions, dreadful or delightful, of the disordered imagination produced by spleen.
43	snakes on rolling spires	like the serpent which Milton describes in Paradise Lost, IX, 501-502, "erect amidst his circling spires."
46	angels in machines	angels coming to help their votaries. The word "machine" here has an old-fashioned technical sense. It was first used to describe the apparatus by which a god was let down upon the stage of the Greek theater. Since a god was only introduced at a critical moment to help the distressed hero, the phrase, "deus ex machina," came to mean a god who rendered aid. Pope transfers it here to angels.
47	throngs	Pope now describes the mad fancies of people so affected by spleen as to imagine themselves transformed to inanimate objects.
51	pipkin	a little jar.Homer (Iliad, XVIII, 373-377) tells how Vulcan had made twenty wonderful tripods on living wheels that moved from place to place of their own accord.
52		Pope in a note to this poem says that a lady of his time actually imagined herself to be a goose-pie.
56	A branch	so Æneas bore a magic branch to protect him when he descended to the infernal regions (Æneid, VI, 136-143).
	Spleenwort	a sort of fern which was once supposed to be a remedy against the spleen.
58	the sex	women.
59	vapours	a form of spleen to which women were supposed to be peculiarly liable, something like our modern hysteria.It seems to have taken its name from the fogs of England which were thought to cause it.
65	a nymph	Belinda, who had always been so light-hearted that she had never been a victim of the spleen.
89	Citron-waters	a liqueur made by distilling brandy with the rind of citrons.It was a fashionable drink for ladies at this time.
71		Made men suspicious of their wives.
82	Ulysses	Homer (Odyssey, X, 1-25) tells how Æolus, the god of the winds, gave Ulysses a wallet of oxhide in which all the winds that might oppose his journey homeward were closely bound up.
89	Thalestris	the name of a warlike queen of the Amazons. Pope uses it here for a friend of Belinda's, who excites her to revenge herself for the rape of her lock. It is said that this friend was a certain Mrs. Morley.
102	loads of lead	curl papers used to be fastened with strips of lead.
105	Honour	female reputation.
109	toast	a slang term in Pope's day for a reigning beauty whose health was regularly drunk by her admirers.Steele (Tatler, No. 24) says that the term had its rise from an accident that happened at Bath in the reign of Charles II. A famous beauty was bathing there in public, and one of her admirers filled a glass with the water in which she stood and drank her health. "There was in the place," says Steele "a gay fellow, half-fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore though he liked not the liquor, he would have the Toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honor which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a Toast." To understand the point of the story one must know that it was an old custom to put a bit of toast in hot drinks. In this line in the poem Thalestris insinuates that if Belinda submits tamely to the rape of the lock, her position as a toast will be forfeited.
113-116		Thalestris supposes that the baron will have the lock set in a ring under a bit of crystal. Old-fashioned hair-rings of this kind are still to be seen.
117	Hyde-park Circus	the Ring of Canto I, l. 44. Grass was not likely to grow there so long as it remained the fashionable place to drive.
118	in the sound of Bow	within hearing of the bells of the church of St.Mary le Bow in Cheapside.So far back as Ben Jonson's time (Eastward Ho, I, ii, 36) it was the mark of the unfashionable middle-class citizen to live in this quarter.A "wit" in Queen Anne's day would have scorned to lodge there.
121	Sir Plume	this was Sir George Brown, brother of Mrs. Morley (Thalestris). He was not unnaturally offended at the picture drawn of him in this poem. Pope told a friend many years later that "nobody was angry but Sir George Brown, and he was a good deal so, and for a long time. He could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing but nonsense."
124	a clouded cane	a cane of polished wood with cloudlike markings. In the Tatler, Mr. Bickerstaff sits in judgment on canes, and takes away a cane, "curiously clouded, with a transparent amber head, and a blue ribband to hang upon his wrist," from a young gentleman as a piece of idle foppery.There are some amusing remarks on the "conduct" of canes in the same essay.
133		The baron's oath is a parody of the oath of Achilles (Iliad, I, 234).
142		The breaking of the bottle of sorrows, etc., is the cause of Belinda's change of mood from wrath as in l. 93 to tears, 143-144.
155	the gilt Chariot	the painted and gilded coach in which ladies took the air in London.
156	Bohea	tea, the name comes from a range of hills in China where a certain kind of tea was grown.
162	the patch-box	the box which held the little bits of black sticking-plaster with which ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison (Spectator, No. 81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the face or the other, according to their politics.
Canto V
5	the Trojan	Æneas, who left Carthage in spite of the wrath of Dido and the entreaties of her sister Anna.
7-36		Pope inserted these lines in a late revision in 1717, in order, as he said, to open more clearly the moral of the poem. The speech of Clarissa is a parody of a famous speech by Sarpedon in the Iliad, XII, 310-328.
14		At this time the gentlemen always sat in the side boxes of the theater; the ladies in the front boxes.
20		As vaccination had not yet been introduced, small-pox was at this time a terribly dreaded scourge.
23		In the Spectator, No.23, there is inserted a mock advertisement, professing to teach the whole art of ogling, the church ogle, the playhouse ogle, a flying ogle fit for the ring, etc.
24		Painting the face was a common practice of the belles of this time. The Spectator, No.41, contains a bitter attack on the painted ladies whom it calls the "Picts."
37	virago	a fierce, masculine woman, here used for Thalestris.
45		In the Iliad (Bk. XX) the gods are represented as taking sides for the Greeks and Trojans and fighting among themselves. Pallas opposes Ares, or Mars; and Hermes, Latona.
48	Olympus	the hill on whose summit the gods were supposed to dwell, often used for heaven itself.
50	Neptune	used here for the sea over which Neptune presided.
53	a sconce's height	the top of an ornamental bracket for holding candles.
61		Explain the metaphor in this line.
64		The quotation is from a song in an opera called Camilla
65		The Mæander is a river in Asia Minor.Ovid (Heroides, VII, 1-2) represents the swan as singing his death-song on its banks.
68		Chloe: a fanciful name.No real person is meant.
71		The figure of Jove weighing the issue of a battle in his scales is found in the Iliad, VIII, 69-73. Milton imitated it in Paradise Lost, IX, 996-1004.When the men's wits mounted it showed that they were lighter, less important, than the lady's hair, and so were destined to lose the battle.
89-96		This pedigree of Belinda's bodkin is a parody of Homer's account of Agamemnon's scepter (Iliad, II, 100-108).
105-106		In Shakespeare's play Othello fiercely demands to see a handkerchief which he has given his wife, and takes her inability to show it to him as a proof of her infidelity.
113		the lunar sphere: it was an old superstition that everything lost on earth went to the moon. An Italian poet, Ariosto, uses this notion in a poem with which Pope was familiar (Orlando Furioso, Canto XXXIV), and from which he borrowed some of his ideas for the cave of Spleen.
122		Why does Pope include "tomes of casuistry" in this collection?
125		There was a legend that Romulus never died, but had been caught up to the skies in a storm.Proculus, a Roman senator, said that Romulus had descended from heaven and spoken to him and then ascended again (Livy, I, 16).
129	Berenice's Locks	: Berenice was an Egyptian queen who dedicated a lock of hair for her husband's safe return from war. It was said afterward to have become a constellation, and a Greek poet wrote some verses on the marvel.
132		Why were the Sylphs pleased?
133	the Mall	the upper side of St.James's park in London, a favorite place at this time for promenades.
136	Rosamonda's lake	a pond near one of the gates of St.James's park, a favorite rendezvous for lovers.
137	Partridge	an almanac maker of Pope's day who was given to prophesying future events.Shortly before this poem was written Swift had issued a mock almanac foretelling that Partridge would die on a certain day.When that day came Swift got out a pamphlet giving a full account of Partridge's death.In spite of the poor man's protests, Swift and his friends kept on insisting that he was dead.He was still living, however, when Pope wrote this poem.Why does Pope call him "th' egregious wizard"?
138	Galileo's eyes	the telescope, first used by the Italian astronomer Galileo.
140		Louis XIV of France, the great enemy of England at this time.
	Rome	here used to denote the Roman Catholic Church.
143	the shining sphere	an allusion to the old notion that all the stars were set in one sphere in the sky.Belinda's lost lock, now a star, is said to add a new light to this sphere.
147		What are the "fair suns"?

Contents

Notes on An Essay on Criticism

Introduction

The

Essay on Criticism

was the first really important work that Pope gave to the world. He had been composing verses from early boyhood, and had actually published a set of

Pastorals

which had attracted some attention. He was already known to the literary set of London coffeehouses as a young man of keen wit and high promise, but to the reading public at large he was as yet an unknown quantity. With the appearance of the

Essay

, Pope not only sprang at once into the full light of publicity, but seized almost undisputed that position as the first of living English poets which he was to retain unchallenged till his death. Even after his death down to the Romantic revival, in fact, Pope's supremacy was an article of critical faith, and this supremacy was in no small measure founded upon the acknowledged merits of the

Essay on Criticism.

Johnson, the last great representative of Pope's own school of thought in matters literary, held that the poet had never excelled this early work and gave it as his deliberate opinion that if Pope had written nothing else, the

Essay

would have placed him among the first poets and the first critics. The

Essay on Criticism

is hardly an epoch-making poem, but it certainly "made" Alexander Pope.

The poem was published anonymously in the spring of 1711, when Pope was twenty-three years old. There has been considerable dispute as to the date of its composition; but the facts seem to be that it was begun in 1707 and finished in 1709 when Pope had it printed, not for publication, but for purposes of further correction. As it stands, therefore, it represents a work planned at the close of Pope's precocious youth, and executed and polished in the first flush of his manhood. And it is quite fair to say that considering the age of its author the

Essay on Criticism

is one of the most remarkable works in English.

Not that there is anything particularly original about the

Essay.

On the contrary, it is one of the most conventional of all Pope's works. It has nothing of the lively fancy of

The Rape of the Lock

, little or nothing of the personal note which stamps the later satires and epistles as so peculiarly Pope's own. Apart from its brilliant epigrammatic expression the

Essay on Criticism

might have been written by almost any man of letters in Queen Anne's day who took the trouble to think a little about the laws of literature, and who thought about those laws strictly in accordance with the accepted conventions of his time. Pope is not in the least to be blamed for this lack of originality. Profound original criticism is perhaps the very last thing to be expected of a brilliant boy, and Pope was little more when he planned this work. But boy as he was, he had already accomplished an immense amount of desultory reading, not only in literature proper, but in literary criticism as well. He told Spence in later years that in his youth he had gone through all the best critics, naming especially Quintilian, Rapin, and Bossu. A mere cursory reading of the Essay shows that he had also studied Horace, Vida, and Boileau. Before he began to write he had, so he told Spence, "digested all the matter of the poem into prose." In other words, then, the

Essay on Criticism

is at once the result of Pope's early studies, the embodiment of the received literary doctrines of his age, and, as a consecutive study of his poems shows, the programme in accordance with which, making due allowance for certain exceptions and inconsistencies, he evolved the main body of his work.

It would, however, be a mistake to treat, as did Pope's first editor, the

Essay on Criticism

as a methodical, elaborate, and systematic treatise. Pope, indeed, was flattered to have a scholar of such recognized authority as Warburton to interpret his works, and permitted him to print a commentary upon the

Essay

, which is quite as long and infinitely duller than the original. But the true nature of the poem is indicated by its title. It is not an

Art of Poetry

such as Boileau composed, but an

Essay

And by the word "essay," Pope meant exactly what Bacon did, — a tentative sketch, a series of detached thoughts upon a subject, not a complete study or a methodical treatise.All that we know of Pope's method of study, habit of thought, and practice of composition goes to support this opinion.He read widely but desultorily; thought swiftly and brilliantly, but illogically and inconsistently; and composed in minute sections, on the backs of letters and scraps of waste paper, fragments which he afterward united, rather than blended, to make a complete poem, a mosaic, rather than a picture.

Yet the

Essay

is by no means the "collection of independent maxims tied together by the printer, but having no natural order," which De Quincey pronounced it to be. It falls naturally into three parts. The first deals with the rules derived by classic critics from the practice of great poets, and ever since of binding force both in the composition and in the criticism of poetry. The second analyzes with admirable sagacity the causes of faulty criticism as pride, imperfect learning, prejudice, and so on. The third part discusses the qualities which a true critic should possess, good taste, learning, modesty, frankness, and tact, and concludes with a brief sketch of the history of criticism from Aristotle to Walsh. This is the general outline of the poem, sufficient, I think, to show that it is not a mere bundle of poetic formulæ. But within these broad limits the thought of the poem wanders freely, and is quite rambling, inconsistent, and illogical enough to show that Pope is not formulating an exact and definitely determined system of thought.

Such indeed was, I fancy, hardly his purpose. It was rather to give clear, vivid, and convincing expression to certain ideas which were at that time generally accepted as orthodox in the realm of literary criticism. No better expression of these ideas can be found anywhere than in the

Essay

itself, but a brief statement in simple prose of some of the most important may serve as a guide to the young student of the essay.

In the first place, the ultimate source alike of poetry and criticism is a certain intuitive faculty, common to all men, though more highly developed in some than others, called Reason, or, sometimes, Good Sense. The first rule for the budding poet or critic is "Follow Nature." This, by the way, sounds rather modern, and might be accepted by any romantic poet. But by "Nature" was meant not at all the natural impulses of the individual, but those rules founded upon the natural and common reason of mankind which the ancient critics had extracted and codified from the practice of the ancient poets. Pope says explicitly "to follow nature is to follow them;" and he praises Virgil for turning aside from his own original conceptions to imitate Homer, for:

Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.

Certain exceptions to these rules were, indeed, allowable, — severer critics than Pope, by the way, absolutely denied this, — but only to the ancient poets. The moderns must not dare to make use of them, or at the very best moderns must only venture upon such exceptions to the rules as classic precedents would justify. Inasmuch as all these rules were discovered and illustrated in ancient times, it followed logically that the great breach with antiquity, which is called the Middle Ages, was a period of hopeless and unredeemed barbarism, incapable of bringing forth any good thing. The light of literature began to dawn again with the revival of learning at the Renaissance, but the great poets of the Renaissance, Spenser and Shakespeare, for example, were "irregular," that is, they trusted too much to their individual powers and did not accept with sufficient humility the orthodox rules of poetry. This dogma, by the way, is hardly touched upon in the

Essay

, but is elaborated with great emphasis in Pope's later utterance on the principles of literature, the well-known

Epistle to Augustus

. Finally with the establishment of the reign of Reason in France under Louis XIV, and in England a little later, the full day had come, and literary sins of omission and commission that might be winked at in such an untutored genius as Shakespeare were now unpardonable. This last dogma explains the fact that in the brief sketch of the history of criticism which concludes the

Essay

, Pope does not condescend to name an English poet or critic prior to the reign of Charles II.

It would be beside the purpose to discuss these ideas to-day or to attempt an elaborate refutation of their claims to acceptance. Time has done its work upon them, and the literary creed of the wits of Queen Anne's day is as antiquated as their periwigs and knee-breeches. Except for purposes of historical investigation it is quite absurd to take the

The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems

Summary

An Essay on Man, Epistle I

The Design

Argument of Epistle I

Epistle I

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

Advertisement to the first publication of this Epistle

Epistle to Dr Arnuthnot

Ode on Solitude

The Descent of Dullness

from The Dunciad, Book IV.

Epitaph on Gay

In Westminster Abbey, 1732

Notes on The Rape of the Lock

Introduction

Dedication

Canto I

Canto II

Canto III

Canto IV

Canto V

Notes on An Essay on Criticism

Introduction